Trip to Utah

We took a trip to Utah a few weeks ago. Kat and I went early to go to my brother's wedding reception and then Drew came about a week later. We crammed in a lot while we were there (hence the many pictures) and had a ton of fun.

My brother's reception was at the Brighton ski resort. It was really pretty up there. We went on a little hike before the reception and then walked up to a little waterfall right outside of the reception to get some pictures during it.
Kathryn was a little afraid of the water, but it was really beautiful. There were a ton of rocks at the bottom of the ski lift and Kathryn and her cousin Adriana loved playing with them. They apparently tasted good too :)
Here's a picture of all of my family that was there...
And here we are with my brother (Chris) and sister-in-law (Di)...

Check out my brother's tie-it's a metal washboard and came with thimbles to play it. He jumped in with the band on a song to jam with them :) It totally fits his personality and he had a lot of fun with it.

Here's the happy couple dancing. Aren't they cute? :)
It was a really fun party in a beautiful place.

While we were out there, we got to see several of our friends. We forgot to take pictures with all of them, but here are the ones we did remember to take pictures with...

Friends from Iowa

Me with 2 of my old roommates-we all have little girls now which was a lot of fun.

Me and Kat with Renee, one of my best friends from when I taught school.

Kathryn and I spent a couple of days with my sister and her family at our family's cabin in the Uinta mountains. I hadn't been there for awhile, so it was great to be back. It has always been a place of peace for me and I have tender memories of it. In the cabin there is a spiral staircase which was Kathryn's favorite part. So this was her idea of fun...
Not this...
Can you tell? :) She was just sick of me trying to take a million pictures, but I had to include it because her face is just priceless :) I'm sure she was overjoyed when my camera battery ran out and I had forgotten to bring the charger with us to the cabin.

Drew's sister and her family got to Salt Lake the same day Drew did, so we had a lot of fun with them too. The day after they all got there, his sister was on the local NBC station's morning show which was so cool. She has an awesome cooking blog and showed how to make this amazing cinnamon caramel corn. Here's the link to the recipe and her little TV clip if you want to check it out. It is super easy, melts in your mouth and is addicting-so watch out :) The next day we all went down to Provo. We visited the BYU campus which was fun and brought back a lot of memories. Kathryn missed her morning nap, so she ended up like this...
After seeing BYU we visited Drew's grandparents who live in Provo. It was fun to see them again and Kathryn loved playing with all of their stuffed animals. They even sent her home with one.

The next day we had a barbecue lunch with some friends and then went back down to Provo with our brother-in-law and another friend to see the BYU football game against Florida State. We got amazing tickets through a connection Drew's dad has. Our seats were pretty much at the 50-yard line about 30-40 rows up and came with wristbands to get a ton of free food. It was an awesome hookup. Here we are right before the game started (which is why we have smiles on our faces)...
Unfortunately the game did not go well at all and we left with frowns on our faces, but it was still cool to get to be in the stadium for a game again.

Kathryn's First Birthday

Kathryn turned one on September 6th. It's hard to believe that a whole year has gone by and we can't imagine life without her now. How did she go so quickly from this cute, quiet little baby...
...to this cute, energetic, sweet little girl?
We had a lot of fun celebrating. I didn't think she really needed any presents (besides the one I got on sale about 6 months ago--sorry Kat!), but Drew, being the sweet daddy he is, couldn't resist and went shopping for her. So she got lots of fun presents.

(She'll never remember that we wrapped them in Christmas wrapping paper, will she? :)

She loved unwrapping them, but was a little confused at first when we were giving her permission to tear paper. Here she is in her new stroller with all of her presents...
Besides the stroller, she got a new shirt for Halloween, new pj's (camo pattern with teddy bears-of course picked out by her dad), a little piano, a ball, a Winnie the Pooh honey jar w/finger puppets and a gift card to Old Navy (Drew said I can only help her use it--I got my own for my b-day :) She really likes all of her new toys and especially loved playing with the gift card. This girl is smart! :) After she opened her presents, we gave her her cake. I baked it, but Drew did the rest. This is what it looked before we gave it to her...
And this is what it looked like when she was done with it :)
She did a pretty good job demolishing it, huh :) We're glad she had a fun birthday.

My parents came for a couple of days a couple of weeks after her birthday, so we celebrated a little more with the presents they gave her.
Inside that box were a cute set of new pajamas (handmade by my mom) and this cute outfit:
Thanks mom and dad for the nice presents! They're perfect and so cute! My parents also brought with them the birthday present they had given me back in June (I didn't bring it home then b/c I was worried about checking it on the airplane)--A new sewing machine! Here's what it looks like...
I'm so excited to have my own sewing machine and keep thinking of all sorts of things I can make with it. I have a lot to learn, but my mom got me off to a great start with a lesson on how to use it. It's really nice and will be a lot of fun to have. Thanks mom and dad!!!

My Birthday

Alright, so I really tried, but I didn't get all caught up on here before our trip to Utah, so here's a little more catching up...

I turned 27 on August 26th. It's crazy to be getting older, but I still feel like I'm 21 or 22, so that's good. :) Drew served me an awesome breakfast-in-bed of a homemade breakfast burrito. It was really good. That night he slaved over the best dinner and dessert I've probably ever had. There is a dish that we LOVE at the restaurant Buca di Beppo called Chicken Saltimbocca. Drew is such a good cook that he figured out how to make it and it tasted even better than at the restaurant. It is sauteed chicken breast with prosciutto in a lemon butter sauce with artichokes and capers. Mmm, it was so good. My mouth is watering now just thinking about it :) We also had pasta, bread, and raspberry Italian sodas with our dinner. Here's what it all looked like...
And a little closer, so your mouth can start watering too :)
A few weeks before my birthday I remembered a dessert my mom made sometimes for my birthday growing up called icebox dessert. It has peppermint ice cream, chocolate, crushed vanilla wafers and almonds and a bunch of other stuff in it and is so good. So Drew called my mom for the recipe and made that for dessert. I had told Drew that all I wanted for my b-day was for him to make me a nice dinner. But of course, that amazing dinner wasn't good enough for him, so he also bought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a gift card to Old Navy.
Also, due to unforeseen circumstances, I actually got to spend the whole day with him too! Thanks Drew for such an awesome birthday. You really made it special. I love you!

Trip to Iowa (#2)

Kathryn and I were able to go to Iowa again the beginning of August for a surprise party my mom planned for my dad's 70th birthday. We stayed for 10 days and had a lot of fun with family and friends. My little brother and 2 of my sisters also came from out of town. My dad was SO surprised which was really fun. We had a lot of fun celebrating...

(Kat's root beer float mustache at my dad's party.)

Kathryn loved digging into some watermelon. (Can we say someone's a little possessive?)

Fun with cousins...

We even got to meet a brand new niece/cousin who was born on my dad's birthday. She is beautiful and her name is Charlotte Grace...

And friends...My friend Amy invited us to go to her son Alex's kindermusic class. Kathryn loved it, but cried every time we moved on to the next activity.
They made these cool little tambourines. Amy got this cute picture of Alex
Some of our friends from church have a farm and planted a ton of sweet corn for anyone to come pick and eat. So we went there twice to get some delicious fresh corn. I had never picked corn before and it was a lot of fun.Kathryn loved crawling around and munching on little baby corns we found.Just check out this cute face ;)The first time we picked 350 ears of corn and the second time we picked a little over 100. Here's Kat, my dad and all the corn we picked the first time.
Unfortunately the corn I brought home (and was so excited for Drew to try) got warm in the box and wasn't very good. Anyway, we had a lot of fun on this trip but missed having Drew there with us.

Trip to Seattle

It's been a long time since we've posted anything, so we have a lot of catching up to do and I'm determined to get everything posted today before we go on vacation again and have more to blog about :) So here it goes...

We were able to go up to Seattle the end of July to be with all of Drew's immediate family for a little informal family reunion. We had a lot of fun and did a lot of things the few days we were there. The second day we were there, we went on our first ferry ride together. We went with Drew's brother and family over to Bremerton. It was kind of chilly on the ferry, but really pretty and fun to finally go on a ferry together.
The next day we went downtown and walked around the Seattle Center. The kids had fun going on rides and playing in the children's museum. Here's Kathryn and her cousin Owen having fun together :)They had a lot of fun things in the museum and Drew's sister Sara took these really cute pictures of Kat playing in a log.
Then on Saturday we went to a Mariners Baseball game. They lost by a lot, but it was still fun to go as a family. When we got back, we put together a huge slip 'n slide in the yard with 3 or 4 really big tarps and had so much fun. It was awesome.

(Kathryn's cousins having fun on the slip 'n slide)

We also were able to get a good family picture...
And we got to see my sister, Sherene, and her family for a few hours. It was a short but very fun trip. We loved spending so much time with family.

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.