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We had a great Halloween! On Friday night we went to the Carrboro Carnival. (You can see a pic of me and Luke on page 2 of the website). They have the carnival every year and it’s usually held on Halloween night. This year it was the night before. It’s perfect for young kids. They get to play games and win toy prizes. Allie and Luke spent a lot of time looking through hay for toys.

On Halloween we went to the student family housing party then came back to the apartment for a chili dinner with the Greens and Morgans. Afterward, we went trick or treating. This was Allie’s first time trick or treating. In the past we got so much candy from the ward trunk or treat that we decided to go to the Carrboro Carnival on Halloween instead. Since we missed the ward trunk or treat this year (we were in Utah) and since the Carnival was the night before we got to go trick or treating. Allie caught right on and was dashing from door to door. It was hard to keep up with all the kids. We then came back to our place to snack some more and hang out. It was an awesome weekend!

P.S. I’m embarrassed to say that I lost my camera (again!) while in Utah. Luckily it was a small, cheaper one this time. Anyway, if I happen to get it back, I’ll post pictures of Utah. I’m blaming it on pregnancy (I was pregnant both times I lost the camera). Oh yeah…did you catch that? We’re expecting again.

My super cool sister-in-law, Kelli, took pictures of Allie and Luke when we visited them in Carson City a couple months ago. She put Allie’s photos on her blog and Luke’s will probably be up tomorrow. Check out her Photography blog. I LOVE the pictures she took! She really knows how to capture their personalities. She is so much fun and my kids adore her. Thanks Kelli for sharing your amazing talent with us.

This is officially my last year with my little girl before she goes to all day kindergarten. I’m getting a glimpse of what it will be like now that she is in preschool 3 days a week for 4 hours. She had her first official preschool day today and although I couldn’t get much out of her on how the day went, I think she had a great time.

It was really weird not having her home. I should have gotten a lot done but somehow I didn’t. I found myself watching the time pass wondering what Allie was doing then, if she was enjoying it and if she was getting along with the other kids. I did, however, blog while she was gone (two blogs in one day…what the?) Anyway, hopefully I’ll become more efficient and productive with my time while she is gone so that I can focus on her when she gets home. Luke naps in the morning so I will be getting a lot of “me” time (although I’m not sure how long that will last since he is going from two to one nap).

Here is my sweetheart right before preschool:

Things I learned (I’m a novice at this preschool parenting stuff):
Send her with socks: she hated getting sand in her shoes at the playground and they wouldn’t allow her to take her shoes off.
Get her a backpack: she came home with like 10 different papers/flyers.
Pay tuition before the 10th: I just assumed that they would take the tuition on the FIRST day of school with out any fees, but I was wrong. It was due YESTERDAY! I was a little embarrassed and frustrated that I had to pay a late fee as were five other parents who assumed the same thing.

All in all, it was a good day for both of us and we are excited for the preschool year.

Here are some photos of our trip to Sacramento, Carson City and San Diego last month. For some reason, I didn’t get a whole lot of pictures from our reunion in San Diego (so family members, please feel free to send me some). I was having too much fun to get the camera out. Anyway, we had a wonderful summer. Allie started preschool today and will go 3 days a week. She’s super excited about it. Maybe I’ll have more time to blog. Don’t bet money on it though.

Our little man (aka Buster, Jej, bub, Lukey-poke) turned one last Friday. My mom and Dave came to visit for the occasion. We had a wonderful time with them, however, it went by way too fast. We did some fun things and ate way too much food. The pictures pretty much tell it all. However, we did go on a double date (thanks Tammy for babysitting) and saw Star Trek. I’m not a Trekky fan but it was awesome! Way better than I expected. Anyway, I’ll update ya’ll on Luke later. For now, enjoy the pictures.

Allie has had a lot of big events recently. She had her preschool graduation party, a dance recital and her 4th birthday.

The preschool graduation was held at a park. They played, painted their hand prints on t-shirts, ate pizza, took pictures and were given preschool certificates. I’m a little sad that it’s over. Allie loved preschool! Hopefully I’ll figure out something for her to do in the fall.

She also took a dance class. It ended a week ago with a darling recital. Allie was a little excited at the beginning and didn’t stay in her spot. She knew the dance well because we practiced at home but I think it was a little overwhelming to be on a stage in front of an audience…she was too distracted. But she was still so darn cute out there along with all the other 3 year olds.

Allie’s birthday was last Friday. She turned 4 years old. She wanted a purple princess Allie cake; so that’s what I made for her. Her party was at a place called Jumpin’ Beans. Twelve kids jumped their hearts out at this inflatable fun place. We played a quick game of stick the kiss on the frog and then sang and ate cake. Allie was so happy that most of her friends could make it to the party. She had a wonderful time! Now she’s on to planning her 5th birthday party.

Jake and I are doing well. Jake’s busy working on a dissertation and I’m trying to run the home. I was called back into the Primary as a CTR 6 teacher. I really enjoy teaching primary! Luke has taken five steps and is getting more brave every day.

We’ve got some more events coming up: Luke’s first birthday is on the 22nd, my mom and Dave are coming to visit next week and we’re packing up and moving to a bigger and better apartment in a few weeks. We’ll send out our new contact information the week of our move.

Allie – May 2009

Family picture after Allie’s Dance Recital

The purple princess Allie cake that she requested

The real purple princess Allie (if you haven’t noticed yet…her favorite color is purple)

Opening her present from Grandma and Grandpa D. She wore her new clothes to the party.

Singing Happy Birthday to Allie at Jumpin Beans

Having fun at the birthday party

Allie kept asking if we were going to see Patrick today. Nope, we didn’t see him. But we had a great GREEN day. We started out the day with green eggs and ham, green yogurt and green milk. Allie went to preschool where she learned all about St. Patrick’s day. A week ago we made a leprechaun trap. Those darn leprechauns are sneaky and elusive. We didn’t catch one but we could tell that a leprechaun did look around because he left some of his gold coins by the trap. For dinner, we had corned beef and cabbage, potatoes and rolls. We ended the night with some lime sherbet. I wanted to share this recipe with ya’ll because it was delicious! Even the cabbage was awesome and I don’t normally care for cabbage.

Corned Beef (baked)

3 lbs corned beef (in package)
10 whole cloves
1/4 cup hot sweet honey mustard
2 Tbsp brown sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Drain the corned beef from the package and discard the spice packet. Lay corned beef, fat side up, on a large piece of wide, heavy duty, aluminum foil (you may have to get creative with the way you wrap the beef if your foil isn’t wide enough). Insert the cloves into the top of the slab of corned beef, evenly spaced. Spread the top with the hot sweet honey mustard. Sprinkle brown sugar over the top.

2. Wrap the corned beef with foil in a way that allows for a little space on top between the corned beef and the foil, and creates a container to catch the juices. Place foil-wrapped corned beef in a shallow roasting pan and bake for 2 hours.

3. Open the foil wrapping, spread a little more honey mustard over the top of the corned beef, and broil it for 2-3 minutes, until the top is bubbly and lightly browned. Place on cutting board and cut at a diagonal, across the grain of the meat, into 1/2-inch thick slices.

Serve immediately. Serves 5.

Cabbage (Sautéed)

Olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 cloves garlic, minced
1 large head of cabbage, sliced into 3/8-inch to 1/2-inch wide slices
Salt

1. Heat 2 Tbsp olive oil (enough to well coat the pan) on medium high to high heat in a large, wide pot (8-quart if available) or large, high-sided sauté pan. Add chopped onions, cook for a couple of minutes, then add garlic.

2. Add a third of the sliced cabbage to the pan. Sprinkle with a little salt and stir to coat with oil and mix with onions. Spread out the cabbage evenly over the bottom of the pan and do not stir until it starts to brown. If the heat is high enough, this should happen quickly. The trick is to have the burner hot enough to easily brown the cabbage, but not so hot that it easily burns. When the bottom of the cabbage is nicely browned, use a metal spatula to lift it up and flip it, scraping the browned bits as you go.

3. Once the cabbage in the pan has browned on a couple of flips, add another third of the cabbage to the pan. Mix well, then spread out the cabbage and repeat. You may need to add a bit more olive oil to the pan to help with the browning, and to keep the cabbage from sticking too much to the pan. Once this batch has cooked down a bit and browned, add the remaining third of the cabbage and repeat.

Serve with the corned beef. Serve with boiled new potatoes. Can be made ahead and reheated.

Serves 5.

Enjoy!

P.S. Go Anoop-dog!!

(To enlarge the photos, click on the picture, then click on it one more time)

Jake’s sister, Ashlee, flew to DC with her friends over spring break. We decided to make the 5 hour trek up North to visit her for the weekend. It was GREAT to see Ashlee. Allie adores her and got the quivering lower lip and teary eyes after we said good bye to her.

I wish I could say the trip was awesome, but unfortunately, it was not one of our better vacations. Maybe it was because it was the weekend of Friday the 13th; we had bad luck all weekend long.
1. Traffic: horrible
2. Hotel: not as cool as the website made it out to be and it was further from DC than we had hoped. And…we were soooo looking forward to going swimming in their indoor pool and sitting in the hot tub. The water was freezing!!
3. Food: crappy-we just kept choosing the wrong places
4. Sleep: What’s that? No one got any.
5. Kids: grumpy (due to reason #4 and #1-being strapped in the car all weekend long)
6. Weather: sucked big time!!!! It rained NON STOP. Okay, I take that back…it let up Saturday morning for a couple hours…enough to get a few pictures in. But it was freezing too. Note to self…do not go to DC in the winter.
7. Camera: was on the wrong settings so most of my photos turned out blurry.
8. Jake’s iphone fell and cracked the face. Jake was not a happy camper.
9. Jake’s huge pepsi spilled ALL over our car.
10. And now Luke is back to waking up 4 times a night. I don’t deal well with little sleep…I turn into a monster.

Whew, that was a lot of negativity from me. Overall, we are glad we went. It was so good to see Ashlee, even though it was short and luck was not on our side.

Maybe now that it’s St. Patrick’s Day and I’m part Irish, our luck will come back. Happy St. Patrick’s day to everyone!

Ten years ago today I was hanging out with my two roommates, Jodie and Teresa, in Carousel Court Apartments in Rexburg, Idaho. We were bored, wondering what to do on a cold Saturday night in a small college town. Out the window we saw some guys walking. We deemed them “hot” and decided to see where they were headed. Well, we followed them to Rockland apartments. We didn’t want to appear as stalkers so we decided that we’d stop following them and go say hello to our home teachers, who happened to live in the Rockland apartment complex. As we approached their apartment, the door swung open and Teem (one HT) and another guy, whom I had not met, were heading out. Their plans changed when we met up; Teem and Teresa went to rent a movie, while Jodie, the new guy and I stayed back.

As you may have guessed by now, the new guy was Jake. Jake and I flirted all night while singing along with the Proclaimers, playing Nuclear War, and swapping massages while watching “So I Married an Axe Murderer” (the movie that Teem and Teresa rented). Teem drove us home and Jake hopped in the back seat next to me and put his arm around my shoulders to keep me warm. At home, my roommates and I excitedly talked about Jake and how we totally hit it off. To be honest, I can’t say that I knew he was the man I was going to marry the moment I saw him like some people can, but I knew we were attracted to each other and I was excited to see him again. Jake later told me that on the way home Teem told Jake that he thought we’d be a great match. Teem was exactly right!!

• Five days later we went on our first date, swing dancing.
• Three weeks later we kissed (on April Fools day, ha ha).
• A year and one day later we were engaged. (He was hoping to propose on March 12th but the ring wasn’t ready until the next day).
• One year and three months later we were sealed and married in the Jordan River Temple. The best day of my life!

Ten years later I am so grateful that things worked out the way they did. I am happily married to my best friend. He’s an amazing husband and father. I feel so blessed to have him for eternity!