Thanksgiving Day

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving this year. We had a great day and you can see a sampling of the food we had above. My sister and her husband have tried their best to give Violet as much organic and unprocessed food as possible, so we tried to do our best to stick with that for Thanksgiving. There were, of course, several things that snuck in that didn't fit the bill (like my parmesan artichoke dip or Grandma's chocolate pie!). The stuffing that Mat and I made came from organic whole wheat bread and we used organic celery, onions and parsley. The carrots were organic and the turkey was straight from a farm where he lived his days roaming freely. Overall, I think we did pretty good. I think we all ate too much, but what a great day we had. It was fun to celebrate our first Thanksgiving as a married couple with the people we're so thankful for everyday.

Salt Lake City

Last weekend Mat and I took a little drive down to Salt Lake City. Not only did we get to see our cousin on his birthday, we also got to spend a good part of the weekend with one of my oldest friends and her family.

Friday night we spent with Jeff since it was his birthday. His mom and dad came down for the occasion and we all went to his favorite sushi place. We had such a great time catching up and they dined on what looked to be delicious sushi! I had some tasty chicken and was quite pleased with my choice. I'm not much of a sushi girl. :)

The next morning we woke up and made our way to the Armstrongs by lunch time. My favorite - eating time! We went to El Taco Nazo - delicious! The kids seem to have grown so much since we saw them at the wedding this summer. Gracie is just running around everywhere and Sean is becoming quite the big boy. After lunch, Mat and I headed to IKEA while the kids napped and Sarah and Matt probably did too! We were desparately trying to find some cheap window coverings since we have several windows with nothing on it since our new windows were put in. We had a successful trip to IKEA and now we have some great Roman Shades.

That afternoon, Mat and Matt took a few trips around the block on a bicycle built for two. It was one of the best sites I've ever seen!
That night Sarah made us some delicious lasagna and Matt made some not so delicious OSU punch to drink as we watched the OSU game. Mat and I each had a glass of the punch and switched to beer after that! Some of their friends came over with their kids, so we had a houseful. The ladies of the bunch played SingStar and the men watched the game. We ended up singing until the wee hours of the night and noticed Matt was missing. It's hard work being a dad. :)

The next morning Sarah, Gracie and I headed out to do some shopping at the Park City Outlet Mall. She had a lot more luck than I did finding some Christmas gifts for family members. I ended up with nothing, but it was sure fun to look. Us girls had lunch at a bagel shop that was yummy! Mat went to meet up with Jeff and they went to a swap meet. I'm not sure what they were looking for, but I don't think they found it!

When we got back to town, it was time for a little ice skating. I haven't skated since I was probably in junior high, so it was basically like my first time. Mat had never skated before and neither had Sean. Sarah and Gracie cheered us on from the sidelines. Here I am on my one and only lap around the rink.
Mat did great and caught on pretty fast. He definitely wasn't as good as Matt who is a great skater. The two of them went around the rink many times holding Sean's hands as he got used to skating on the ice. By the end of our time there, Sarah had signed Sean up for lessons. He had his first lesson last week and loved it!


That night Sarah made us Fettucini Alfredo and again, dinner was delicious! We really appreciated the meals they made for us. We also got fresh lettuce from their garden that was yummy.

There are a few more pictures if you click on the picture above of Sarah and Gracie.

The next day we had to head out. But not before we had a quick lunch at a delicious burger place - Five Guys Burgers - or something like that. YUM! The fries were to die for.

We're already thinking about when we can come back. It's so great to see everyone and we had the best time! Thanks again for spending the weekend with us!

Saturday!

I'm so happy for Saturdays! I slept in today and now just did a little a laundry. I think I might make up a grocery list and then play with Photoshop a bit. I'm still learning the ins and outs of it - my sister loaned me Photoshop Elements to see if I like it. I haven't really done anything but start trying to organize my pictures.

So that's my plan! Mat is taking a much deserved nap and when he gets up, we'll probably go clean my work and then my family for some delicious mexican food. I've been looking forward to this all week!

I think I might run over to Linens and Things to see what they have left. They are going out of business (I think everywhere) and had marked down a lot of stuff. I found some great shades for our windows, but I only bought two because I wanted to test them out at home and see how I really liked them. So I might go back. It's not really something I want to spend money on, but I am kind of tired of not having blinds or curtains on most of our windows. I do like to have some privacy!

First things first, I better shower. Have a great weekend!

Picture Time!

I thought I might update tonight by posting some pictures from recent weeks. To start, you can see that our leaves our changing. It is officially fall here! You can also see why Boise is called the City of Trees. Mat and I took a little hike up to Camel's Back Mountain (which is really not even close to a mountain) to take some pictures. The capitol building is a little over a mile away from where we were standing.
The sun was starting to set, so we got some fun colorful pictures of the leaves. We're both still learning our new camera and this was fun to try different settings. I think we need quite a few more experimental weekends before we feel like we know what we are doing.

We did go visit our great friends in Austin a few weeks ago. I left my smaller camera there and Joy has to ship it back to me. What was I thinking? I did get a couple fun ones with our nice camera. This little rascal wouldn't stay put long enough for me to get a great shot. But Chapa sure was a cute little kitten!

This guy sat still long enough for me to take a picture at lunch.

Same with his wife!
And this sweet thing was the perfect model. How can you resist that sweet face?

We sure had a great time in Austin, but spent so much time talking and catching up that we didn't take hardly any pictures. Oh, I just don't know why I do that. I'm determined to take a million picures when we go to Salt Lake City in a few weeks. There are two VERY cute subjects there that I know like to have their pictures taken.

One week until the election! Mat and I are going to vote absentee this year. We're trying to support the counties' vote by mail that they would like to get passed in the legislature. Plus, it will be fun to look up things as we vote on the computer. We probably should get to that pretty quickly...

New Windows!

The windows are in our house! They look great and I can't wait to enjoy this fall weather with them open for the next few weeks. Mat said it took them most of the day to install them, but they were in by the time I was home from work. We have our big window open right now and it is lovely! The rest we can't open until tomorrow, I guess they want to make sure everything is totally dry and sealed. So that's okay - we've lived long enough without being able to open them! It's crazy how clean they are though. We've never cleaned our other windows, mostly because we couldn't open them. I never thought I would be so exciting about windows!

Dinner is cooking - we made a penne casserole that we really like. I'm ready to eat!

Not much is new at home. The windows are probably going to be our big story for the next few weeks. We are just way too crazy sometimes. :) Bye for now!

Composting Fun

Here is Mat, hard at work on our compost bin. Since we have decided to create a larger garden next year, we thought we would try our hand at a compost bin. Mat did a great job and created the largest compost bin I've ever seen. Maybe not ACTUALLY the largest, but it sure seemed big after he was all finished.

The boards off to the side actually slide in the front as we get more materials in the bin. You can see what we have already composting here:
Looks fun, huh?
And here is our lovely little pumpkin gradually turning orange. It hasn't grown much larger, so I guess it will just be a tiny pumpkin. It is still pretty cute though!

I'm back from my conference and I sure am glad. I'm not the biggest fan of being away from my wonderful hubby for 6 days! We're going to spend the next couple days together and then I'll go back to work on Tuesday. Until next time...

Happy Birthday to Justis!

Off to Idaho Falls

I'm heading out in a couple hours to Idaho Falls for a week of conference fun. I'm ready to come home and I haven't even left yet! I don't like the idea of not seeing my hubby for 5 days. :( Hopefully it will go by fast and I'll get home soon!

We went to a family BBQ last night, but I didn't have time to get any of the pictures posted. Maybe next weekend?

By the way, if you haven't received a link to our wedding pictures, it is probably because I don't have your email address. If you want to take a look at them online, just shoot one of us an email and we'll get the link to you. They are amazing! I am so happy at how they turned out! Now we just have decide which ones are our favorites. That will take quite some time for sure.

Hope everyone has a great week and had a great weekend. I'm off!

BRMC + STP = FUN

Last night we went to a great concert! It was really a blast from the past for me because I saw these guys before I could even drive a car. I told Mat I wanted to go dig in the garage for my scrapbook to find out when exactly I went to see STP for the first time.

The opening band was Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and they were okay. Definitely not the best performance I have ever seen. I don't know if anyone else does this, but sometimes I might not really love a band or performer until I hear them live and then I adore them. Well, this was not the case. I didn't really like what I had heard before (Mat has several of their CDs) and they definitely didn't wow me. They were a talented group, just not really my style. Mat enjoyed them, but he agreed that they didn't really put on the best show.

The headliner was Stone Temple Pilots. They put on a great show and surprisingly, I remembered many of their songs from when I was in high school, so that was fun. I wish I could have taken some pictures, but they were pretty strict about the no camera policy. We had great seats and really had fun watching all the people in between the bands. I think we waited for over an hour to see STP and that was pretty annoying. Especially because the sun had gone down and it was kind of cold. Not too bad and I brought my jacket, but it warmed right up when they started playing and everyone filled in every gap.

Mat has now decided that he is going to be Scott Weiland for Halloween. He just has to wear some of my jeans, a button up shirt that he'll wear open with a tie and then just talk nonsense. I'm going to be Carl. A guy at the concert that we named and had a great time watching his antics while he was waiting for STP to come on. Talk about awesome. I think he tried to whistle 14 times by blowing his fingers - you know how people make that loud whistle that way? Well, he tried to do that so many times and then he would look down at his fingers like, I just don't get why this is working. Come on fingers! Work with me here. And then he tried to lead the crowd in chanting STP. Then he got mad and flipped off the empty stage. It was fun. By the way, I'm not really going to be Carl for Halloween. Mostly because the only person who would think it was funny would be Mat.

Look! It's a pumpkin.

I Heart 3 Day Weekends

It was so nice to have a three day weekend! I felt like Mat and I actually had an entire weekend together. Since he works on Saturdays, it seems like we really only get Saturday night and then Sunday together. So it was mucho fun.

We did a lot of work on our future garden. Mostly research work. But we did take some measurements and decide where all of our raised beds are going. Mat also started on our compost bin. We bought the materials for that, but decided to wait until next weekend to buy more supplies. The idea is that we'll build everything now and it won't be so hard financially in the spring to start up the garden. We'll have to buy seeds, plants and soil, but at least we'll have the basic design ready to go.

We haven't actually mapped out what will go in each raised bed yet, but we did list out everything we would like to grow. We'll keep working to find out what can go where and how it will all fit together. I didn't realize how much really goes into this whole gardening thing. Not only do you have to think about what plants work well together, you also have to think about what you can plant with your veggies to keep bad bugs away and good bugs to come in! The nice thing is that we can plan what is going in the ground all winter. We just want to get a jump start on the beds.

We now have two pumpkins! One is teensy tiny and the other is growing at a nice steady pace. I don't know if either of them will be big enough for us to carve, but I can sure hope. We might even get more!

I'll try to take some pictures next weekend as Mat continues his work on the compost bin. He's just my little carpenter!

It's starting to get cooler here and I sure don't like it. I don't really mind fall, but it does mean that winter is on its way and our winters just last forever. The one thing to look forward to is all the new shows coming up! Mat and I looked through my favorite tv website (The Futon Critic)to determine what we'll try out for the fall. I'm sure we'll end up throwing some shows out after we try one or two episodes.

I've got a big conference coming up in less than two weeks. AAH! Is it really that soon? I'll try to get some posts up here, but after staring at a computer for 9+ hours, I usually don't want to come home and get on ours again. I'll do my best though!

Oh, the Shame!

I haven't posted in forever! Work is crazy the last week. I had events after work and by the time I got home, I did not want to look at a computer! So that's that!

I'm ready for a good, long weekend. Mat and I are hoping to do some more research on our garden for next Spring. We want to get most everything ready before winter hits, so next Spring all we have to do is wait for the ground to warm up and plant some things! So I might head to the library tomorrow to look for some books on gardening.

I am also hopeful that Mat and I could get out and do some photography. We have been wanting to do some practicing with everything we learned from our camera class a few weeks ago.

But you know what? If all we do is just hang out and enjoy each other's company, I'll be more than okay with that.

Hope everyone has a safe and fun Labor Day!

Readers Beware!

Mat and I just finished our two day digital SLR class at Idaho Camera (free with camera purchase). So now, I'm sure, our pictures are going to be so amazing you won't know what to do with yourselves. The class was actually pretty good and a great refresher for both of us on shutter speeds, f-stops and basic techniques. I already know a great picture I am going to try this Saturday morning. I think I'll try a few different settings to play around with it.

Our fattest of our two kitties, Dr. Benjamin Wiggles, went to the vet today for a checkup and to look at his leg. He's been limping a little lately and then he holds his little (fat) paw up when he sits down like he doesn't want to put weight on it. The vet said that it was a little sensitive, so he guessed that it was probably because his excess weight and jumping up and down on things. So he has some medicine and we'll see if that helps it at all. Poor little guy! The vet did say that he has lost 4 pounds in the two and a half years we have had him and that is really good! Puff didn't go to the vet. I told her she doesn't have to go anymore unless she is really sick.

I'm off to read for a little bit. Have a good night!

Latest Happenings

I have officially wrapped up the honeymoon, the wedding is over and what's next for us?? Well, the last few weeks we have been busy getting back into the swing of things. I think we're pretty much settled in to married life. :)

Our biggest news is that we're going to buy new windows for our house! It's going to be a lot, but we figure it is something that is really worth it to us. Our windows are actually painted shut right now and they are only a single pane. So you can imagine how new windows are going to affect our heating and cooling bills! We met with several different people in town and finally settled on Champion windows, which seem to have everything we were looking for. I think it will be so wonderful to have new windows and be able to enjoy fall with our windows open!!

Tonight we are going to take it easy and watch tv, one of our favorite sports. Have a great night!

The Last Days...

Thirteen or fourteen days later (now I'm just confused) it is all coming to an end. Or came to an end. You know what I mean! We had an amazing time and spent the last day and evening of our cruise just enjoying being on the boat. We relaxed and read and laid around. It was surprisingly cold that day, so we didn't spend much time outside. In the picture above you can see our waiter, Manuel, who was amazing and we had such wonderful dinners with him as our waiter.

My favorite towel animal of the bunch:

And a lovely picture from the Grand Buffet:
I forgot about the Grand Gala Buffet! We were so excited about this buffet because it was supposed to be all this fancy schmancy food and we thought it would be fun. It was cool to see some of the designs they did, but it seemed more for show than for eating! We took a couple pictures while we were there and none of them turned out too great. But you can see all our miscellaneous photos by clicking on the elephant towel animal.

Our journey home was relatively painless. LAX was a bit of a nightmare and I think by that time we were so ready to get home and see our family, friends and especially kitties! And boy, did they miss us!

And that about does it for our honeymoon. It was a wonderful two weeks and I am so thankful that we could spend that two weeks together!

Violet's First Birthday Party!

Today was Violet's First Birthday Party! We had such a fun day. I think the pictures will tell the story better than I can! To see all the pictures from the party, just click on the hats above!Happy Birthday Violet! We love you!
Love, Uncle Mat and Aunt Kristin

Day Thirteen

Cabo San Lucas - Our last stop on our cruise before heading back to Long Beach. We did schedule an excursion for this port called Cabo by Land and Sea. This turned out to be a pretty great tour. The one drawback was that we had to be up early and that is not our favorite thing to do! But we got there on time and then loaded the boat (they called it a catamaran) to sail to the very tip of the Baja Peninsula. This is where the famous Los Arcos is that many people recognize as Cabo San Lucas.

We got some pretty great pictures, so that was fun! It was overcast and looked like it might rain any minute, but we didn't really get any rain until later and that was when we were on the bus. You can kind of see in the pictures that there are a ton of birds (don't ask what kind they are), but they were really cool because they were just gliding around and for some reason I just found them fascinating! The boat just took us to the tip and then turned around and headed back to the dock. Then we all loaded up on buses and headed to our first stop on the "by land" part of the tour.

Our first stop was at a restaurant that was open for dinners only, but they open it up to tours to take some pictures of the coast and Cabo. So we had a few minutes to take pictures and everyone got a free bottle of water. If you look closely in the picture above, you can see our cruise ship docked in the middle of the water (it was too shallow to pull up to the port) and the Los Arcos from far away. This was taken from the restaurant we stopped at.

Our next stop was in the sister city of Cabo, which was called San Jose del Cabo. I didn't realize that when when people said Los Cabos, they were referring to the two cities together. Interesting stuff, huh? Anyway, we got to walk around their town square and saw a mission church and looked in a couple shops.

Then we headed to Mat and I's favorite stop, but I don't think anyone else really liked it. The Cactus Arboretum! There were tons of cacti and we had a great time playing with our new camera and taking pictures. We only had a few minutes there, so that kind of stunk.


After that, we headed to the glass blowing factory where we saw a guy make an angel right there in front of our eyes. It was pretty cool to see the glass blowing process. We had a couple minutes to look in their store, but that didn't seem like enough time either!

Then we headed back to the ship to head home. :( But we still had one more day at sea and there was more fun to be had before our honeymoon was officially over! For all of our pictures from Cabo, click on the picture of the cactus leaf below. Be warned, there are quite a few of them!

Day Twelve

And we're in Mazatlan! Just like that. The night before, we had looked through all the excursions and decided not to do an excursion in Mazatlan. We thought we could just find something to do on our own and experience the city. So we head out from the boat and this guy walks over to us and wants to take us in his cab. So we agree (since we really needed a cab anyway) and he takes us to see the famous cliff divers. Now we didn't get a picture of them actually diving because we pulled up right as they were jumping! But we did get to see them and there is a picture above of where they would jump from. Then they walked around for tips. Kind of interesting that this is someone's job!

Before we got out of the cab, our driver asked us if we were interested in a tour of Mazatlan. We decided that it would be fun and he seemed nice enough. I think sometimes you just get that feeling that someone is a good person and that was how Mat and I felt about Pablo. Turns out, he was a nice guy and we spent the entire rest of the day seeing the sights of Mazatlan! It was way better than any tour with the cruise ship. Pablo was in his 70s and had lived his entire life right there in Mazatlan. He told us stories about his wife and kids, and was just an amazing person. He showed us where he goes swimming every morning and took us anywhere we were interested in. We felt like we really lucked out with Pablo and it was totally worth the money!

So our tour started with the cliff divers and then we headed to Old Mazatlan. There we saw this great old cathedral:

And then we saw these great street vendors who were selling fresh seafood. You can see they have shrimp and scallops in those buckets:

We headed then over to the newer part of Mazatlan, where all the new hotels were located. There were lots of shops and then the beach!

We tried to put our feet in as many beaches as we could, so we checked this one right off the list! Then we headed back to the ship and left Mazatlan around 5:30 pm. This was a great stop and we really enjoyed the stories Pablo told us. The one disappointing thing about the day was that our nice, brand new camera totally fogged up right at the beginning. You can see all our pictures if you click on the picture of Mat. So you can see where the camera got so foggy and I was so worried that it was ruined. We had our other little camera and that was what we took the rest of the pictures with. But we got back on the ship and it cleared right up, so it just must have been the humidity there.

Yikes! Only 3 days left of our recap! Perfect timing though because our niece's 1st birthday party is on Sunday and we can't wait!

Day Eleven

Puerta Vallarta - our first stop in Mexico! We were ready to get off the boat by that time. I can't imagine doing a cruise where you go more than the two days on the ship. So we get all ready and sunscreened up before we leave the boat. We had booked an excursion later in the day with the cruise, but we decided that we wanted to get out and see a little of the downtown where all the great shopping was supposed to be.

So we exit the ship and on our way out, we had to take like 5 different pictures with different dressed up people and one parrot. Of course, you can always buy these great pictures later! So we walk around for a minute, but there wasn't much to see where we were. We really needed to get in a cab to go to their downtown area. So we piled in a van with several other people from the cruise and when we got off, we found out we had only $3 in cash. We had totally forgotten to cash our traveler's check before we left the ship. Oops. So a nice lady had to pay for the other $5 we owed the cab driver and that was totally embarassing. We were just thankful she was there!


So we set out walking around, with the main goal of trying to find someone that could cash our traveler's check. Of course, we did find an american express place, but they were closed and said they had moved their new office to some address that we had no way of knowing where it was! We eventually found a money exchange place and got pesos. Whoosh. At least we could get back to the ship now! Which is basically what we did. We had already seen that the shops were nothing we wanted, so we just headed back to the boat. We had lunch and then went back out to go on our excursion!

Our excursion was the Tropical Jungle Paradise Tour. We boarded a bus that was supposedly air conditioned and headed up to the jungle. We made a stop along the way so everyone could take pictures of these little islands that looked like a turtle.
The jungle area we were in was within a mile or so of the place where they filmed Predator, so our guide had some stories about that and where the cast stayed, etc. So we get to our destination and it is a restaurant kind of in the middle of nowhere. We all could have a complimentary beverage (mat and I stuck with bottled water) and then we headed up on the tour. It was actually more of a hike than I had thought and I really don't think I've ever had that much sweat on myself! It was so humid and I think it looked like I had been swimming! Our guide was interesting and knew quite a bit about the plants in the area. He showed us the trees that made the original chiclet gum and different fruits in the area.
We did have to walk across part of a river, but it was only up to our knees, so we didn't have to swim across. Lucky for us because we had our camera! The tour overall was not the best, but the guide was funny and he had some good stories. It wasn't very expensive either, so I'm sure you get what you pay for with these tours!
After the tour, we did decide to have a beer at the restaurant across from our boat and then we went in to shower after our sweat baths. Overall, we did not love Puerta Vallarta very much. It was not near as nice as the Riviera Maya area we had been in last year for Joy's wedding. I'm sure there are some great places we didn't see though.

Click me for all the pictures in Puerta Vallarta!

That evening was the same for us - we had dinner and went to the show again. We did have a fun day, but weren't sad to be moving on to our next port of Mazatlan!

Day Ten

Day ten of our honeymoon and day two at sea! Ugh. This day was not that much fun. The boat was pretty rocky the whole day, so we spent a lot of the day in our room reading. Of course, we manged to come out for meals! We also rented a movie in our cabin - Untraceable. It was fun! Definitely not the best movie I have ever seen, but a good renter.

It was actually nice to just relax all day and enjoy doing pretty much nothing! We skipped the social that evening that we were invited to since I had cruised with Carnival before. But we did go down for dinner and had another nice meal. I think we even went to bed kind of early and I know we skipped the show that night! Neither of us got sick, but it was just one of those rocky days that made you not want to do a ton of running around on the ship. So when we went to bed, we were in the middle of the ocean and the next morning we woke up in Puerta Vallarta!

Day Nine

Yup, back to the honeymoon! Days Nine & Ten of our honeymoon were spent on the cruise ship at sea. We actually sailed all the way down to Puerta Vallarta and then made our way back up to LA. But you'll hear all about that later!

Day Nine (Monday) we decided to sleep in. We do love sleeping in! When we finally got up, it wasn't that late, but we had missed breakfast! So we had an early lunch and wandered around the ship for a lot of the day. We did sit up on the deck in lounge chairs and read our books for a few hours. Eventually, the sun started to set, so we made our way back to our room and got ready for dinner. I didn't necessarily love getting ready for dinner every night because I don't love spending time getting ready, but I would have to say it was a lot of fun to get dressed up every night to go to dinner! I wore a dress every night and this first night was the Captain's Dinner. We went to a reception before dinner in the big lounge where they do the shows. It was kind of a strange reception because everyone just sat down and faced the front of the room as if we were going to watch a show. But there wasn't a show. The servers would walk up and down the aisles and hand you different appetizers or drinks. At least the drinks were free!

So then we headed to dinner and it was nice. One of my favorite parts about the cruise was when we would get back from our dinner and our room would be all nice and turned down and our Carnival Capers was just sitting on our bed, waiting to be read from cover to cover! Carnival Capers is their daily newsletter that gives you an overview on everything that is going to be happening the next day. I would read through it and then just tell Mat what we were going to do the next day! Kidding. I would read through the things I thought we might want to do and then we would decide together. But I did sometimes leave out the things I didn't want to do so he couldn't choose them. Hey, he should have read Carnival Capers if he really cared!

That night we did go and watch the comedian from Sunday night, Lowell Sanders, at midnight. He was funny again and we were glad we stayed up to watch his show! And that just about did it for our first fun day at sea. We didn't end up taking that many pictures while we were on the ship, so I'll post a few here on the blog that were fun.