Mmmm...Chocolate...

On Sunday we had dinner with Drew's aunt and cousins. Part of it was a fruit tray with sweet, juicy, DELICIOUS strawberries. Drew's cousin told us she had gotten them on sale at King Soopers (a local grocery store--I know, weird name, huh?). So when I was there to get a couple of things yesterday, I saw them and remembered how good they were, so I had to get some :) Today I was making some treats for Drew to take to the young men at church tonight. If you've been around me at all over the past 2 months, you could probably guess what I made. Yes, my new favorite sweet...peanut butter rice crispy blobs.

If you've had these, you'll know why some were already missing :)

Drew doesn't like them quite as much as I do (I'm seriously addicted to them), but he likes them better with melted chocolate on top, so that's the way I made them today. When I was getting ready to melt the chocolate, I remembered the strawberries...and I'm sure you can see where this story it going :) All we had was a bag of Hershey's chocolate chips and I've always been nervous about melting chocolate the right way (I usually make Drew do it), so I didn't know if it would work to dip the strawberries in it...but it did! They turned out SO GOOD!
Drew even loves them, which is a real compliment since he's the better cook between us :) So I was happy with my sucess with a refreshing summer treat and just wanted to share.

Trip to Cedar Falls

Kathryn and I recently took a trip to my hometown-Cedar Falls, Iowa. We got to stay for about 10 days and had a great time. Kathryn did really well on both plane rides, as always.
It was so great to be back in Iowa and get to see and do some of my favorite things there. I love the beautiful sunsets...
And the green cornfields.
Kathryn loved playing in the corn too...She even loved chewing on it...
The first week we were there it was so HOT and HUMID I could barely stand it. Our friends who live in our old neighborhood invited us to go swimming at the neighborhood pool which felt so nice. Kathryn loved splashing around.
The annual city celebration was going on while we were there which was fun to go to again after about 7 years. Here we are at the Saturday morning parade.
One of my old orchestra conductors directs the city band and they had a float. It was cool to see him again...
After the parade we took some pictures of Kathryn at the Women's Club where we had our wedding reception. I got my picture taken in this same spot...
Then we went to the park to get some food. It was all freshly made (fried :) and soooo good.
While we were there I met up with one of my friends from elementary/jr. high/high school. We hadn't seen each other since high school, so it was great to see her again.
It was great to spend time with my brother's Matt and Rob and their families too...We hung out with Amy (my best friend from home) and her family a few times, so that was a lot of fun too. Alex (their son) was so sweet with Kathryn and had a lot of fun hugging, kissing, and playing with her.
One night we took Kathryn and Alex on a walk in their wagon. They were so cute.
Several days later we took them on a bike ride, but unfortunately Kathryn cried the whole time. Hopefully she'll like it better next time :)

One of the days we were there, my mom, Kathryn, and I took a little road trip. First we went to a really cool clock museum. It had all the clocks these 2 brothers made by hand starting in the early 1920s. They never sold (even though Henry Ford offered them $1 million for one in 1928) or gave any away and they were all really intricate and unique. Kathryn loved the ones that played music and had moving parts.
After that we went to the worlds smallest church. It was built in 1885 and has 4 pews.Yep, pretty darn small!

After that we went to a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The couple who built it had no children, so they left it to the people of Iowa when they died and everything inside is exactly how they left it. It was really cool and we learned a lot of interesting things on the tour. Here's Kathryn in the old homeowner's boat...
And here she is being silly while getting her diaper changed. (Can you believe my mom made that cute hair clip?! It's adorable)
The day before we left to come home, I got to see another one of my friends I hadn't seen for awhile. It was great to chat and catch up on things over lunch.
I'm really thankful that we could go out there and do all we did. Thanks mom and dad for all you did to make it a great trip! We miss everyone!!!

We Moved!!! about 100 feet

Last weekend we moved to a different apartment in our same complex. We moved from apartment 6203 to apartment 3206 =). It’s a pretty cool story (in my opinion) so I thought I would share it. Sorry to some of you who have heard me bragging already, you can skip this one. We had given our notice to leave out current place and we were looking around at other places. We were paying $915 a month and wanted to find something a little bit cheaper hopefully close to $800. We really liked our complex and apartment and didn’t want to go but we thought it would be best to save a little money. When we were looking online for places Emily found a deal advertised for our complex. So after our first Saturday of looking at new places (which I hated) we went back in and asked them about it.

We were in a "deluxe" apartment. It had brown and sage paint, thicker carpet, crown molding, and a bit nicer fixtures. The deal was for the standard apartments that were more basic but still really nice, and the exact same floor plan and square footage. So they looked at their sheet of pricing and found they could get us into one for $685 a month! We signed on the spot. Same size, still really nice, just white walls, short carpet and more basic fixtures (appliances are pretty much the same). And are saving $230 a month. Plus before we were paying $35 a month for a washer and dryer (so $950 for rent a month) and we decided we are just going to buy a cheap set off of Craig’s list, so it is really $265 a month less on rent. We were pretty excited and really felt blessed. The story even gets a bit cooler though.

The apartment was in the building right next to ours and I was curious what the current occupants were like. I am allergic to cats and cigarette smoke so those were two things I was really concerned about. So we walked by the apartment a few times to try to stake it out. It is on a second floor so we could only see the porch and slightly into the living room. They had a few bikes, a car storage unit, and a kayak on the porch. They were neat and well organized which I thought was good. Also the bike had a child carrier which could be a good sign, or a bad one. We have a lot of single college age kids at our place, and we all know what they can do to apartments. But at the same time young kids can do quite a bit of damage themselves. So I was feeling good about it but still not sure.

We were walking by one evening and after we passed the apartment I heard a young voice say “Hiii.” I looked back and saw a naked little girl around 2 years old on the porch. In a matter of about 3 seconds I had the following thought process. Hum, it probably isn’t good for a grown man to spark up a conversation with a little naked kid. But, the parents are almost sure to come out if the kid is there and I can get a look at them, plus the kid is up on a balcony and Emily is just 10 feet past me. Curiosity won out, so I turned around and said “Hi”. Right after that a flustered and embarrassed mom came running out onto the porch. She grabbed the girl in a towel, said a quick “sorry” and then went quickly back into the apartment. But in the few seconds she was on the porch I realized I recognized her.

She went to church with us. They had only been in our ward a few months and though we had sat by them once at church we hadn’t realized they lived in our complex until about a week earlier and we didn’t know where in the complex they lived. So I stopped Emily and told her that I thought the person who lived there was the family from our ward. I didn’t even know her name and wasn’t positive it was her but I was about 80% sure so we decided to go check it out. So we went up and knocked on the door. I think I should have had Emily stand more in view because when she first opened the door she didn’t recognize me and I could see the “why is the guy who was just talking to my naked kid now at my door” look on her face. But I told her that I thought they went to church with us and then she saw Emily who she had talked to before and everything was cool. We talked for a bit and found out they were moving out because her husband was done with school and they were probably moving back to Utah. It was such a strange coincidence. We had a bunch of groceries so we didn’t go in but as I looked in the apartment was spotless. So a clean apartment, no pets or smoking, and a cool family we knew. I felt pretty good about everything.

One of the crazy things is that they where on a shorter 4 month lease and I think they were paying around $980 (with washer/dryer). The pricing really depends on the amount of units and which models they have open. We just got really lucky with timing. We are in our new place and things are good. The main problem we have now is that our new place is a mirror image of the old one. So that is pretty weird, but we are getting adjusted, and ready to start paying off some more debt =). That’s our cool story, hope you enjoyed it.

Crazy Weather

Starting on Sunday this week, we've had some really cool storms. On Sunday we stayed after church for a little bit talking to some people. When we were ready to go, it started hailing really, really hard. It continued to hail for 10-15 minutes and was the biggest hail I've ever seen. It came down so hard it was setting off car alarms. We were worried about it damaging our car, but it was fine. There was so much hail, it kind of looked like it had snowed...
And the hail was piled up on the ground at the end of the rain spouts...
These are the biggest hail stones I could find...
When we were finally able to go home we started hearing tornado sirens and when we got home, we saw the top (the bottom was blocked by some apartments) of a funnel cloud way off in the distance. Five tornadoes ended up touching down that afternoon. I only heard about damage from one which hit a mall, a Lowe's, and some houses. It overturned a couple of cars, blew out windows, blew in a garage, and threw tons of stuff everywhere. Here are some pictures I got off the internet...
The rest of this week has been filled with more thunderstorms and tornadoes in eastern Colorado. Mmm, I love summer thunderstorms. Yesterday afternoon we had a pretty long one and it ended with the biggest, most beautiful, vibrant rainbow we've ever seen. It was actually a double rainbow and the bottom one even had another faint rainbow under it.

(Just try to ignore the line in the middle. It's the best I could do with the panorama setting on our camera. I still need to figure out how it really works.)

Kathryn had her 9-month check-up on Tuesday and the doctor was happy with her progress. She now weighs 15lbs 5.5 oz (still only the 5th percentile, but at least she's back on the chart) and is 27 inches long. So she gained more than 4 lbs since her 6-month appointment which is great considering it took her from birth to 6 months to gain 4 lbs. Her first tooth also started coming in on Monday. So far she hasn't been too extra fussy, so that's a good sign. Here are a couple of cute pics I took of her on Sunday in her new dress...

Estes Park Trip

Last week, Kathryn and I had the chance to go up to Estes Park, CO for a few days with some friends and stay in some cabins that our friend's family had leftover time in from their family reunion. It was a lot of fun and so great to be back in the mountains. It had been way too long. We all left our hubbies at home so it was just like a big girl (and kids) party. There were 9 of us girls and 17 kids in total, so it was a little crazy but tons of fun. We spent our time just hanging out, going on some hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park, and doing lots of talking and picture taking. Here are some of the beautiful things we saw...
And some other pictures...
There were tons of elk everywhere. This is about as close as we got to one...
After we had checked out of the cabins, we went on one last little hike/walk up to a waterfall. It was really pretty and there were lots of cool rocks everywhere. I love rocks and was excited to let Kathryn look at them. There was one especially large and very cool-looking chunk of gneiss there, so I sat Kathryn next to it for her to take a look and hopefully find it as cool as I did. Well, she wasn't too interested in the rock, but did find the asphalt trail pretty fascinating for a few seconds...
But that soon turned into this...

Which turned into this...
And this...
So, much to my dismay, Kat's first exposure to cool rocks didn't go as I had imagined. (Just so you know, she only sat there crying like this for about 20 seconds-just long enough to get the pics.) I'll keep trying and maybe one day she'll like rocks as much as I do :) At least she was happy sitting on the rock with me.