Fresh Paint

Ever since we moved in and started changing the house to fit our style I find it very hard to actually make decisions. Partly because really cool stuff is expensive and I know that when I do purchase something it will be a while before I can purchase something else. Which is why we have chosen to do lots of things our self.
For instance, a month or so after we moved in we purchased a king size mattress with the idea that we would make the bed frame and headboard our self. While this did save us lots of money, I think we spent under $100 total, it took lots of time and many iterations. But I must say the final product is beautiful and worth it.
Painting is another thing we like to do ourselves. We like color and lots of it. Those who lived here before us like the same yellow color for pretty much everything. So we feel the need to paint most everything. So far we have the kitchen, family room, living room, stairway, hallway and now master bedroom done! I only have the bathroom and baby's room left on my "must finish before baby comes" list.

I found this pic online and liked the idea. Cool huh. I think our bedroom turned out very well.

Inspiration Pic

My secret to super crisp lines... Acrylic Gel Medium. You put on the edges of the tape and it seals in the cracks. It is cheap, and literally guarantees crisp lines.

Done! We have a bed frame! We have a headboard! And we have stripes on the wall!! Brian did a great job with the bed frame and headboard. I did the stripes on the wall, but he helped me finish painting the rest of the room. I only have the bathroom and baby's room to go before the baby comes. Then my nesting will be complete. I don't really think it is nesting though, just procrastination till now. Now I just need window treatments, nice lamps, and some artwork for the walls. Oh and I may re-furnish the furniture not in the picture.

Baby-Moon

Let me start by saying that blogger has to have the absolute worst GUI for uploading images. Please enjoy the pictures, because they took me a better part of a half hour to upload.

In the past months, Steph and I have been told literally 100's of times, "Make sure you take a vacation, because you'll never get to again after the baby comes." While I'm confident that Steph and I will find a way to take vacations post-baby (since we love getting away), it will be a long time before we can enjoy a private couples get away again. Certainly, our days of eating in nice resturants and swimming far into the ocean together are numbered for a while.

So... we took a trip the Florida panhandle. We started our trip in Pensacola. Really, the only reason we went to Pensacola was so I could go to the Nationa Naval Avation Air Museum. It was trully amazing. One of the best air museums I've ever been to.

Me in front of the F-18 on a stick in front of the museum.

Us in front of an old Blue Angle A-4

While on the Navy base, we also climbed around the old Spanish fort, Barrancas.

We also drove out Pensacola beach and enjoyed the beautiful water.

To our surprise, the Blue Angles were practicing the upcoming airshow out on the beach. So we sat back on the beach, had some lunch, and watched F-18's scream overhead.

Fat Albert, the C-130 that travels with Blue's kicked things off.

F-18's are so cool!

After a couple of nights in Pensacola, we set off down the coast to Destin for some fun on the beach.

We went to the local aquirum, which had some fun Sea Lion and Dolfin shows.

We ate a lot of good seafood next to the ocean!

Our pretty hotel. We stayed in the uglier building not shown in this picture. :-)

Oh, and we visited one more air museum! The air force's armament museum at Eglin Air Force base. I have a very patient wife.

Fourth Weekend!

Apparently we live really close to this huge lake. The map makes it look deceivingly far away, like at least 30 min or so. And I guess it is such a big lake that you could take awhile getting around to the other side.... or you could drive up the road, turn right, turn left and just go play in the lake.

So, on the third, we packed lunch, took the dog and some towels, and drove the under 10 min drive to go play in the lake for a few hours. It was so much fun!
Portland is a big wimp though, and wouldn't venture in very deep. Brian had to pick her up and walk her out to the deep water so we could see her swim. She was not happy about this the first or second time it happened. Otherwise, Brian and I had fun swimming in the warm lake, eating our picnic, and taking a walk around the little park.






The fourth was full with exhausting social events. I say exhausting because it literally took me till Tuesday to recover my energy after all the fun.
We spent the majority of the day doing chores around the house- Brian cleaned the fridge!!!! Later that night we went to a BBQ with friends of approximately our age. In any other ward I would consider most of the people there "older" than me only because there would in fact be other young couples equal to my age. But since no other such couple exists in this ward, the people we hang out with are close to our age, but beat us by two kids. It was fun to talk and watch the kids run around like monkeys.

Our second social event was Fireworks at the Depew Farm. This was also a fun event, but with less talking and more explosions. Someone threw down for some pretty impressive, slightly illegal, fireworks. It was fun, it has been a few years since we have experience fireworks first hand.

The last part of our Fourth weekend was spent preparing a Family Home Evening lesson.
Normally yes, you just have FHE on Monday night with your own family. Scripture reading, lesson, games, dessert, and what have-you are all done with your own family. But our ward has put together a few groups of Family FHE's both so we can get to know the other families in the ward, and so that investigators can come and see what real weirdos mormons are. Who gets together every monday night, learns a "lesson," sings songs and plays a game? Mormons, duh. Now we have lots of families in one small room, with the Sister Missionaries and an investigator or two who is either highly amused by the antics, or still confused about why they are there. Either way, it is entertaining.

This was the first FHE lesson that Brian and I were in charge of. So we had to take most of sunday planning our game. Who cares about the lesson, we all know the game determines how awesome or lame an FHE is. If you didn't know it, Brian is really good at teaching. So he came up with a lesson on Temples and making our homes more like temples. Half taken from the lesson he taught in Sunday School that day.

I pretty much think this is the coolest game ever. "The Game of Life Mormon Style" is shockingly similar to the game, "The Game of Life." But instead of going to college or choosing a career, you choose to go on a mission or get married. You collect mini Books of Mormon along the way when you land on yellow squares, blue squares and every kid you collect (12 possible) is also worth a BOM. Person with the most BOMs wins! Pretty much the best game ever.


Okay so this happened two weeks ago, but Brian won "Best Nut Pie" in our ward's pie contest: So You Think You Can Bake. I'm so proud, he is the best.