Early Anniversary Celebration Weekend and Puzzling Adventures

Last weekend we took Jenna and Kevin's kids for the weekend so they could have a big date weekend before baby #3 was born. Then this weekend they took Lydia and Austin (and Caleb during the day) so Shantel and I could do a date weekend. (Insert from Shantel, which will happen occasionally through this post, I felt a little guilty leaving my kids with Jenna right before her baby was born but these were the only weekends that ended up working for the two of us.) It was so much fun! We basically used this as an early Anniversary Celebration. Here is a recap. (yay!)

We have been desperately wanting another tree in our backyard for a couple of reasons. First, the sun is just killer and we need more shade. The tree we planted when we first moved in has grown...not at all. As in it is the same size as when we planted it. We are going to work on giving it more water, but we also need another tree to help. In addition, we had a tree growing behind our fence, but unfortunately it was growing too close to the fence and we cut it down. (This was pretty traumatic for me. I loved that tree. I so wish that it had just been a foot further away and we would have left it! It grew so tall and shaded the backyard so well and we didn't have to do anything for it. I looked and looked for a tree exactly like it, but I didn't know what kind of tree it was and my descriptions were fairly lacking. After knowing how great the shade would be with a tree down at the bottom I was determined to get a tree planted this summer.) So we really wanted to buy a tree. You might ask, why would you waste tree shopping on a date weekend? Our kids are the best and they are awesome going to stores and doing just about anything we ask, except going to a nursery. Any time we try to pick out plants for anything it is a huge struggle. If we are going to spend $300 on a new tree, we needed both of us fully engaged. 

Our plan was to find a big tree for the very back corner of the yard. 

We went to Cooks Nursery in Orem and found a Autumn Blaze Maple Tree that we are hoping will be perfect. It is fast growing. The picture here is not actually for our tree, because we ended up paying $300 so we could get a bigger tree (and this is not the maple). But you get the idea, we were tree shopping.

After we picked up a tree we went to drop off Caleb for the rest of the day. So we saw the kids for a couple of minutes at the park.

Then we went downtown to do our "Puzzling Adventure." One of our 12 dates for the year was a puzzling adventure. You are asked various questions and you have to race around answering questions and looking at a bunch of things. One of the biggest surprises of the whole day is that Shantel does not remember ever being at the capital. (Shantel: David means, that I told him that I've never been to the capital building before and he is so surprised he thinks that means I just don't remember... but I really don't think I've ever actually been to the capital before. But for a first trip, this was the best!) So I am so glad our tour started there. We ran all around the capital answering questions and then it took us down to Temple Square and then up to Memory Grove Park. It was so much fun! Honestly, it was the perfect day to spend together. We raced as much as we could and when we had chances to take breaks, we just enjoyed talking and laughing together. Here are the pictures that we took (you actually took them in the app as part of the activity).

(I think this is like the tree that we had to cut down in our yard. I told you I was on the lookout for it. Too bad we had already bought our tree at this point. Here's sending lots of love to that Autumn Blaze Maple and hoping that it grows really well!) 

(I really liked this big tree. Apparently I had trees on my mind. Also, I really liked the dedication on this plaque next to a little bridge "Living to serve them she build bridges of unity with charm and honor, over moving waters." May I also live to build bridges in my life with charm and honor.) 

When we finished it pulled up the rankings and we finished #5! That is pretty awesome. We took a picture to prove that 5th is pretty good because it showed the top 100, so a lot of people have done this and we rocked it. (We are pretty awesome.) 

After the puzzling adventure...well at first we just sat and the grass by the Capital because we were tired! We did a lot of walking and running. (This may have been my favorite part of the day because we were able to just sit and talk about some deeper things in our family and our relationship and our lives. It ended up being the perfect place to talk about the things that mattered to us. I feel really excited and happy about the place that we are and the direction we have for our little family and these few minutes were very precious to me.) 

Then we decided on dinner, we were debating doing something really fancy (and expensive) or something less expensive. I am particularly bad at this because the thought of spending $100 on dinner is just too much. So I always lean to something less expensive because I feel like I'll enjoy the food nearly as much and pay way less. We had on our list to try Ruth's diner which is just up Emigration Canyon. We ended up going there and really loved it. We sat outside under these beautiful trees and both really like our meals. It turned out to be the perfect thing for the weekend. (This is quite possibly the best dining experience of the year and possibly of our entire marriage. It was just so perfect for the day. So beautiful and just so great.)

Right next to the restaurant was some commercial space that was for sale. It had a beautiful deck with some tress and a little stream nearby and we took our camp chairs up to it and just sat and read books for a little while. It was so pleasant. The funny thing (picture below) is that as we looked at the space and thought, this would be the perfect reception center! We were all in on calling to see how much and get an agent to take us through and start a reception center business...then we looked and parking and it just would not work. There were not enough spots for the restaurant and reception center and there is no place to put more parking. So our dreams ended after about 15 minutes...alas. (It's sad that we got a picture of the for sale sign but not of the actual deck area. It was just so quaint and peaceful. I'm usually a strict rule-follwer and wouldn't even think about doing anything that looked like trespassing. But the deck was open to the parking lot, but once you climbed the stairs you were tucked into this little tree and stream filled space. I figured it was fairly public property. And also, to David's point, the lack of parking is probably why it isn't doing well - but it just cries out wanting to be a reception center!)  

That night we picked up Caleb and then went home to spend the evening together. We picked the kids up on Sunday in Morgan. Shantel, I love you so much and can't imagine having more fun and more happiness than being with you all weekend. I loved laughing and joking and talking. Happy Anniversary, I love you!

(I am truly the one who is so so blessed. David is the perfect fit for me. He brings such light and peace to my life and I can't imagine doing this adulting/parenting/life thing without him. Nine years together, and it's just getting better. I love you David. Thank you for being mine.)

Weekend (Date Night!)

We've had a lot of fun weekends in the past several months, and some busy work-filled ones, too. But it's been a long time since we've been able to go on a date just for fun. Friday afternoon I started really, really, wishing that David and I could go out on a date. I started flipping through babysitters: Ashley - getting ready for Elsie's birthday party. Melissa & Blake - Need them to babysit when we go to the temple this month. Amy - Need her to babysit for David's "End of Busy Season" party at the end of April. Etc, etc, etc... (It's amazing how many things you need a babysitter for, and how few of those are casual dates.) I finally had the brilliant idea to text my nephews Josh & Daniel and see if either of them would be willing to earn $5 to come watch Lydia for us. It was kind of a shot in the dark, but after a few text messages and a phone call to Wendy it was all set up! I excitedly called David and told him that I found a babysitter (he didn't even know I was looking for one), and asked him how a Texas Roadhouse/Treadmill shopping date sounded. He was in!

It just happened to be David's half-birthday on Friday. We didn't really go out for his half-birthday, but it was fun to pretend that it was a giant celebration of how special David was. In actuality - we've been looking to buy a treadmill for a long time and treadmill shopping with a 23 month old is not the most fun thing in the whole world. Lots of "I want to try it!" followed by climbing all over the treadmill and then running around the store. (Even if she started in the stroller, we didn't have awesome success at keeping her in there.) One of us was always trying to contain her, and it wasn't super conducive to making such a big purchase. So buying the treadmill was really the main goal of the evening (as was using the Texas Roadhouse gift card my parents so generously gave to us after Melissa's wedding). However, I did surprise David with a Bocce Ball set as a little half-birthday gift.

Apparently, we were in a spendy mood and we came home with a bunch of great things:

1 Treadmill
2 Scheels hats
3 bags of jelly beans
1 diaper bag/backback combo
1 bloomin onion
12 Texas Roadhouse rolls
1 20 oz bone-in Ribeye steak
2 mashed potatoes
2 house salads

The best part? We only spent about $70!

Here's the story:

When David's firm merged into Eide Bailly, we found out that they now offered a "fitness stipend" to help their employees stay healthy and happy. It's actually pretty awesome, you get $600 a year to spend on fitness whatever (it can be a gym membership, fitness equipment, etc...) and the only catch that you "use it or lose it" and you have to use it by the end of April. We'd been talking about getting a treadmill for a long time and we'd saved up a couple hundred dollars for it - but this stipend opened up a larger variety of treadmills that we could buy (read: buy at a store instead of KSL). While looking at treadmills we found that one of the features that stood out to us was the hydraulic lift assist on some models. Pretty much every model folds up for convenient storage, but most of the ones in our price range just stayed in place with a steel pin in the side and when released crashed down unless a fairly strong adult was lowering it down. (Those things are heavy!) One child couldn't release it, but I kept having visions of two of my children working together to release the pin and then getting crushed under the track. We thought a lot about it, but couldn't ever make a decision. We couldn't make ourselves buy one without the hydraulics even if it was in our price range. But we also couldn't quite justify spending an extra $300- we could justify it in words, but couldn't ever pull the trigger.

We decided to go to Sheels to check out their treadmill selection. We were instantly woo'ed by their "Free Delivery and Set Up." (About an $80 value at RC Willey and not covered by the fitness stipend.) We'd been looking at treadmills for a long time, in-store, and online. We knew we just needed a basic treadmill with at least a 2.25 motor. The only extra functions we cared about were the easy-lift, and that it had a place to set our ipad so we could watch netflix while running. (Both kind of silly things.) The guy who was helping us kept trying to sell us on the super cool features of some of the more expensive models, but we don't really need "runs a simulation of a trail around Boston" or whatever. After talking with the guy for a while about several other models we found out that they had a model with the easy-lift that was only $599. They didn't have a model out on the floor, but he said that they had several in boxes in the back. We looked at some pictures on his computer and it looked good. We told him we wanted to think about it, and that we were going to go look at some other places and we'd call him back later if we decided to buy it. We took his card, stopped by the outdoor games to look at Bocce Ball and then headed to the escalator. Before we even got to the bottom we decided that we just wanted to buy that treadmill. It was basically everything that we'd been looking for, and for almost $300 less than we'd been able to find anywhere else. We turned around and headed right back up to make our purchase. The guy seemed a little surprised to see us, but we had been looking for a treadmill for so long that we were just ready to make it happen. Our final total? $641.09. Plus, they threw in a couple of Sheels hats for spending over $250. Haha. Awesome. But not as awesome as the fact that our treadmill was only going to cost us $41.09 including delivery and set up!

(Delivered and set up today!)

We finished all the paperwork and were so excited as we got back in our car (around seven o'clock). I called Texas Roadhouse for their "Call Ahead Seating". Earlier we had decided that we'd go to dinner later in the evening instead of right at 6, but when I called they said that they had a 70-90 minute wait. Yikes! We were really feeling TRH, and so we decided that we'd just wait. I texted Josh & Wendy to make sure that he'd be okay to watch Lydia for a little longer than planned and we headed to American Fork to burn an hour while we waited for our table to be ready. We stopped at Target to look at Bocce Ball sets (just in case David wanted a different kind) and walked around for a while. Sometime during this, I started telling David about this diaper bag/backpack combo that I really wanted. We had gone to the gardens with Elsie and Carson (and Ashley) earlier in the day, and I was wishing SO much that I had a little backpack to wear instead of carrying my purse/diaper bag all over. My shoulder was killing me. I had noticed a pretty inexpensive backpack type diaper bag at Walmart so we headed over there so I could show him. I think we were both on a spending-high from our awesome treadmill deal, and I barely had to twist his arm to buy me the diaper bag. (I've never been much of a purse girl, so it makes me laugh at how many diaper bags I've accumulated and how much I love them.) I'm seriously in love with it! It's grey and pink (David thinks that it's red, but it's totally just a hot pink) and it's perfect.

We also picked up a couple bags of jelly beans because they are so yummy (we've gone through like 4 bags in the last month - luckily they are only a dollar). Then we headed to dinner. We basically walked in and were immediately seated, it was awesome. We decided that because we had a gift card we were just going to get whatever we wanted to eat. We ended up with a yummy bloomin' onion appetizer, and then decided to split the 22 oz Ribeye described as "our most flavorful steak", we each added some sides. Our waiter took it to heart when we said that we didn't want any peanuts but that we really loved their rolls. He kept the fresh rolls coming and even brought out four extras to send home with us. It was a delicious dinner, and we had a great time eating and talking. After using the gift card from my parents, the total was only about $1.20 (plus tip). So awesome! We are so grateful to my parents for giving us such a nice night out. It was so nice to be able to go out on a real date and be so successful at getting the things done that we wanted to get done. We got home, and Josh had taken great care of Lydia who was sleeping soundly. *sigh* It was pretty much perfect!

Our Saturday was just as fun and successful. We got up fairly early, ate yummy breakfast, then went out into our yard to do some spring prep work. We turned on our sprinklers and weeded our front flower bed. Lydia was such a champ and she walked around and helped us, never trying to run away into the road (which is real progress for us). She would pick up a weed stem and say "I help" and then drop it into the bucket. It was nice to be outside as a family and get some good things done that we needed to get done. The afternoon was busy, as David went and presented at a Beta Alpha Psi meeting about "The First Audit Engagement", and I had a Red Ladder Design consultation  while Lydia took a nap/chattered up in her bed. After those things, we hung out for a while and then got ready for Elsie's birthday party!

We had volunteered our house to the Coopers to host Elsie's 2-year birthday party so that they didn't have to worry about renting out a church or a park. The kids loved playing on the slides outside, and the adults all seemed to have a great time. Elsie was a darling birthday girl, and Lydia loved eating the birthday cake. She savored every single crumb.

It was a fabulous weekend, especially because it was my last Sunday of doing all of the Primary Secretary responsibilities. An assistant Secretary has been called, and I met with his this week to divide up the duties. I'm so relieved and SO so excited to be able to really be able to feel like I'm fulfilling my calling and not just barely staying above water. Yay for wonderful weekends!