Dating My Husband

Another post I forgot to publish a long time ago:

One of our favorite ways to spend our date nights is to re-enact old dates we've already done, especially before we were married. Andrew has always been the nostalgic type and I have been surprised how much fun it has been. Not only is it a perfect way to start traditions, but it's fun to reminisce and see how far we've come in the year or so since we did it last. So here are some of our favorites:

Tandem Bike

One of our first dates was a tandem bike ride down to Utah Lake following the Provo River Trail complete with a J Dawg feast. When Andrew first asked me, I said yes, but was very nervous about it. I had never been on a tandem bike before and wasn't very confident on a regular bike. I looked online and it scared me even more when it said it can be very difficult to coordinate the two bikers and in some cases can be a "relationship killer" instead of a fun date. But as soon as we tried I found it was completely easy and fun, which goes to show never trust what you read on the internet.

While we were riding that first time I jokingly asked him if he took all the girls on this bike ride. To my surprise and his embarrassment, he said yes. He made it up to me later though by saying he had the most fun with me. I also like to tease him that that first date he had the perfect opportunity to hold my hand as we walked around the lake, but was too chicken to do it. Last summer, as seen above, and the summer before he made sure not to make the same mistake. We have had so much fun all three of our summers together, so we hope to be able to do it again this summer after the baby comes.

 Art Museum

Our first date ever was a trip to the Springville Art Museum. It was my first time there, but Andrew was a pro showing me around his favorite pieces since his family has lived right around the corner for most of his life. That night they were having a college night with free food and entertainment so it turned out to be a great date. We ended up going back the next year to college night again and proudly told everyone who would listen our college night success story. This is us last summer once again enjoying another great trip to the museum.

 Alpine Loop

Another favorite date has been driving up the Alpine Loop in the fall right when the leaves are changing colors. It is absolutely breathtaking and makes for a great time to talk and enjoy the beauties of nature. The photo above is our third year making the trip and we look forward to many more.

This photo was our second time after we had been married nine months. I guess we haven't changed much since then.

Folk Fest

State Fair

Fantastic Mr. Fox

This one is kind of interesting, but has turned out to be a fun favorite. We always buy a turkey around Thanksgiving time because of the sales and freeze it for later. And then when we are in the mood for another Thanksgiving dinner, whether it's in February or June, we cook it along with other traditional Thanksgiving dishes. The first time we did this, as you can imagine, we had lots of leftovers. One night I looked up recipes that used Thanksgiving leftovers and came across a recipe called Meat Pie. It looked good and called for all of the leftovers we had, so I decided to make it. That night, we just happened to rent The Fantastic Mr. Fox which we had never seen before. We were pleasantly surprised with both. The food was really tasty and we fell in love with the film. It turned out to be a really fun evening. So now after we cook our turkey, we make sure we have a Fantastic Mr. Fox and Meat Pie night so we can enjoy the experience all over again.

Lucy at Four Months

Andrew made this post about Lucy a long time ago. Here it is:

Lucy has been growing so quickly lately that it is hard to keep up. She is no longer an infant or even a tiny baby, but has become a big strong solid girl. We are so excited to see all of the new things that she can do. Her biggest trick as of late is rolling over. She can roll from her back to her stomach, and she has been able to do it almost everyday since the first time. However, she still can't roll back to her back, and she usually gets frustrated pretty quickly when she is stuck on her tummy with her arm pinned beneath her. We had a big controversy at our house when Rose first rolled over, because only Ashley saw it the first time and Andrew didn't get to see it happen again till a few days later. But this time we were both sitting on the couch when we saw the first roll over simultaneously.
Lucy's other favorite thing to do is smiling and laughing. We think she's a little bit ticklish because she will laugh when we're changing her onesie and getting it off for arms she also laughs and smiles when Rose is around, and she seems to recognize roses voice even from across the room and get excited by it. We recently visited Andrews brother Paul's house and Lucy was held by her older cousin Rachel. Rachel has a brother just the same age as Lucy, so she was practiced in holding babies. Lucy does really well on most car rides, but sometimes she cries when she gets hungry. Whenever she cries in the car Rose cries out of sympathy. You can tell that grows really loves her little sister because she says "Lucy sad!" and cries until we make me feel better.

Lucy has a strong grip and is getting better at holding onto a toy.
She has discovered her feet and loves to suck on them.
She is a tough girl. She rarely cries when Rose throws a toy on her, or accidentally smacks her.

Here is that first roll over

And here she is after rolling over and getting stuck

Lucy is always up for an adventure. Here she is hiking the mountain with her Daddy

We thought that her cousin Daniel was so much bigger than she, but it turns out they are about exactly the same size.

Finally finished our 2012 Photo Book

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Our Little Garden

This year we were able to have a little garden by our apartment. Growing up, Andrew always had a lot of fresh tomatoes and other produce from the garden of the Wells family home. Last year, he was coveting delicious fresh home grown tomatoes. We like to eat tomatoes, but the ones from the store barely deserve the name tomatoes. They just don't have as much flavor or juiciness. So this year we took advantage of the little garden plots that are available for residents of university student apartments. We planted about 6 tomato plants, pepper plants, a little lettuce, and and some basil and oregano. Andrew grew up gardening, so he sort of knew what he was doing, but it turned out that we planted the tomatoes too close together, and we didn't have baskets for them, so they all grew together into a big bramble.
It turned out that the lettuce grew well for a little while, but soon became wild and bitter, so it was not a huge success, and the oregano did not grow very well either. The basil has been big success, and we were even able to make our own fresh pesto. But the tomatoes have become the real stars. We have we have been able to harvest a lot of small tomatoes from 5 of the tomato plants, but a real success has been gathering huge juicy beefsteak tomatoes from the one beefsteak tomato plant. I estimate that we got over half of our total harvest from just that one plant. With all these tomatoes, we have able to experiment and make a lot of delicious food. We've had some of the best be BLTs I've ever tasted, featuring a cream cheese spread that Ashley found  a recipe for. We've tested out some recipes for homemade spaghetti sauce where you slowly cook the tomatoes down all day long, and it has yielded probably the most delicious pasta sauces that we've ever tasted. We've made some fresh salsa with the peppers, and we even experimented with sun dried tomatoes. But mostly we just enjoy the fresh tomato slices on sandwiches and salads or just plain with a little bit of salt and pepper. It has been so fun to walk down to the garden almost everyday to harvest a couple more tomatoes, or to water, or to cut some basil. The walk is good exercise for us, and its nice for Rose to be able to get out of the house as well. Here are a couple pictures of our wild tomato garden and some of the fruits of our labors.

Lucy's Baby Blessing

This is Andrew, & I am just taking a turn posting on this blog from my new smartphone. I have had so much fun playing with this new phone and I figured I would do a guest post just because I have the technological capability to do so.

We were lucky to be able to have Lucy's baby blessing on the same weekend as Katie's wedding. Because of this timing, we were able to have a lot of family from both sides here for the baby blessing. of course the star of the show was Lucy herself. She was so sweet and smiled all through her blessing. she also looked stunning in a beautiful white dress that her great grandmother Haws made for her.

Ready to be a big sis at 18 months

Rosie is a big girl now and shows it. She's already having serious adult conversations (if you're patient enough to try and figure out what she's saying), loves cleaning up a mess as fast as she can make one, and can't wait to find everyone their shoes so we can all go outside.

Some of her most used words: fish, shoes, Ella (her neighbor friend), mess, ouch, scriptures, please, thank you, Jesus, diaper, mail, doorbell, up, bed, juice, house, eyes, Rose, strawberry, rock, yuck, beam (for sunbeam), and stuck.

She's even beginning to put a couple of words together like "big piece" and as I said before, she will have a conversation with you and tell you a story over and over again until you really really understand. She makes sure of it.

What she likes to eat: spaghetti, beans, goldfish crackers, eggs, baked potatoes, hot dogs, pizza, sausage, mac n cheese, potato chips, tomatoes, yogurt, and garlic toast.

Still not wanting much sweets, or fruits and veggies, but she is more willing to try new things as long as it's "hot."

What she likes to do: read books, go outside, go on Mom & Dad's bed and look out the window, watch as much TV as we let her, color with crayons, go to the library for story time, swing on the playground, check the mail, take a bath, take care of her baby doll, sing with her microphone, push her shopping cart around the house, have all of her binkies in her mouth and hands at all times, climb all over Daddy and sit on his lap, say hi to everyone she sees, play with stickers, roll around in the laundry and climb into the baskets, dig up dirt with a shovel in our garden, play the piano, help Mama stir the juice, throw her balls, and run away when being chased.

Her favorite songs: The Wheels on the Bus, If You're Happy and You Know it, Jesus Wants me for a Sunbeam, ABC's, Popcorn Popping, Dora the Explorer, I am a Child of God, Ring around the Rosie, etc.

It's so fun to watch her try to sing them and how fast she picks up on them. She also loves to dance to them and spin around in circles.

A typical moment for Rose: At about 10:00, after watching her favorite show Bubble Guppies, Rose gets grumpy. She keeps whining and doesn't want to eat or read her books any more. We decide to take her outside. "Do you want to go outside?" we ask. "Oooh! Shoesh, shoesh, shoesh. Bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye!" "Can you get Mamma's shoes? Can you get Dadda's shoes?" we ask, then she brings them to us. We put on her shoes and go out. once down the stairs, she squirms until we put her down and she runs through the grass. She sees her friend Ella. "Ewa, Ewa! Push, ouch, push, no no," she says before Ella even does anything. Ella comes over and pushes her down while Rose says "no no." She use to cry at this point, but she has toughened up, and just gets up and runs away, shrieking with delight. She spends most of her time in the sandbox, digging with a shovel and putting the sand in a bucket before dumping it out. She goes over to the little plastic play house by the swing set and says "house, doorbell." She rings the doorbell and opens and shuts the little door. She goes out and finds a stick and says "stick, stick," and then asks to go on the swing. After a while she decides to go over to the slide. On the way, she sees a bug, and points to it for a while. After climbing up and down the stairs, (she rarely goes down the slide any more) she is back to the sandbox until it is time to go inside. Once inside, she drinks some juice takes off her shoes, then tells us a story with a very serious expression on her face: "Dist dai moss Ewa. Ewa. Bye-bye" She points outside and continues. "Babbit dit ow aesip Ewa, Ewa. Push. Thea spa thash. Owch." As long as we keep nodding, she will continue this story for five full hilarious minutes. Then it's time for lunch and nap time.

The Stork is Circling the Neighborhood

38 weeks today! I can't believe it's almost baby time. Unlike last pregnancy with Rosie, I am totally fine with this little girl taking her sweet time. As uncomfortable as I am, I now know that this is the easy part compared to taking care of a newborn. So there's no rush. I am anxious to meet this little one though. What will she be like? Will she be similar to Rose or will I have to learn everything over again with a completely different baby? Obviously we just pray she will be healthy and that all will go well with the delivery.

This pregnancy has actually been easier than I remember with Rose. Maybe it's because I'm not trying to finish up school, or maybe Rose has been keeping me active and distracted. Either way, it hasn't been too bad. In fact, right now I'm in major nesting mode. I don't feel tired much because I'm so excited about finishing this project, or cleaning this closet. Andrew is always saying, "don't you want to go to bed?" or "don't you want to take a nap?" and most of the time I don't. Part of it is because Andrew has been in between jobs, so I've wanted to take advantage of his help. Now that he's working again though, my goal is to redirect my nesting mode from cleaning to blogging. It's been so long and I feel like I have a million things to document before our life gets crazy. So hopefully I'll be able to catch up in the next couple weeks.
Stay tuned!