Easter

For Easter I decided to give Brody an egg hunt based on scriptures.  Some of them were harder than others, and some he never guessed (so I helped him).

Here are the clues with their respective hiding place:


Matt 11:28 I will give you rest - couch

Hidden was a t-shirt from Express

Matt 11:30 yoke is easy, my burden is light- chandelier

Hidden was small football/baseball/basketball colored eggs with candy inside

Also notice the cute table in the background :)

Mark 8:35 For whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall save it - treadmill

Hidden was several boxes of Muscle Milk

Rev 19:11 And I saw a white horse - zebra picture -- Hidden was a gift card for Amazon.com

Holiness to the lord - temple tile

Hidden was a bag of Candy

D&c 42:6 Preaching my gospel, two by two, in my name - missionary plaque

Hidden was Trident Tropical fruit gum (his favorite gum on his mission)

Nephi 8:2 Behold I have dreamed a dream- tree and bridge picture in our basement

Hidden was a gift card to Home Depot and a picture of a leaf blower (he really wanted one, true story)

Nephi 14:19 And I looked and beheld a man, and he was dressed in a white robe - garment drawer  -Hidden was Reese's cups and Twix
Acts 25:12 Hast though appealed unto Caesar? Unto Caesar shalt thou go - fridge  - Hidden was Cadbury eggs
John 11:34 Where have you laid him? - under the bed  -Hidden was a basket with a new polo shirt from Express, new shorts and more candy

We had several of our friends over for dinner and it was a blast. We had a Honey Baked ham, jello salad,  chicken salad, deviled eggs, twice baked potatoes, fruit and veggie platters, and cupcakes.  I didn't get a picture of the table unfortunately, but there is a glimpse of it in the picture of Brody finding eggs in the chandelier.

More Yard Work

Since we've moved into the house Brody has been ripping out grass left and right.  The first time was to add on to our patio, the second time to convert our hill into a flower bed, the third was when he created a planter box around our mailbox, and last week was when Brody decided to add a second flower bed to the back yard.  Although it turned out awesome, I'm hoping it's the last time we spend hours digging, tilling, pulling up roots, and scrounging rocks from the side of the road (at least for this summer).

Updated pictures from our back yard.

The newest addition. We now have a cute little bench for reflection time

A little bit longer and the trees will be big enough to hide our neighbor's houses

View from the porch

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O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree...

Ok so it's not really Christmas, but we did buy some new trees :)  Our backyard is fairly flat, then a steep incline and then it's flat again, making two levels to the yard.  The part of the yard that was inclined, was steep, rocky, and the grass didn't grow very well making quite an eye sore when you look out our Kitchen window.  We had debated for a while on how we wanted the backyard to look and when it came down to it, any major changes were pretty expensive, and something we weren't willing to justify.
In February we went to the Home and Garden Expo here in Cincinnati and it turns out a lot of places were hurting from the economy and from the winter months of slow business.  We found a few nurseries  and fence companies that gave free estimates and so we scheduled them to come look at our yard. After shopping around, comparing prices and ultimately booking while the weather was still really cold, we ended up getting some really great deals.
We put in a fence, 6 trees, about 15 shrubs and a bunch of flowers. Brody and our friend Brad went Saturday before conference and gathered a BUNCH of rocks to line the garden with so it really completes it.

Here are some pictures of what it looks like right now.

Brody in the corner mowing the lawn and Deja sniffing out morsels

It doesn't look like much yet since the Japanese Weeping Cherry Tree (right side of picture, kinda looks like a stick in the middle of the flower bed) and our mature Walnut trees haven't bloomed yet

Here's a better shot of the full flower bed

What a Japanese Weeping Cherry Tree will look like

Zagreb Coreposts. We have about 3 of these

Knockout Rose, we have two of these

Tigerlilies, we have about 7 of these throughout the bed

In addition to the pictures we have some small Juniper shrubs, some prickly bushes (no idea what they are) and some more flowers which I can't remember the names of right now.

I'm pretty excited for the next few weeks when everything starts to bloom and give us a nice peek into our future yard!

After months of sitting on the ground..

Since we've been in the house in April we've been without any furniture in our living room.  Blank walls, tan carpet and ZERO furniture.  We've been saving and looking at couches every month and we've finally found the ones we wanted and they were on sale!  After some visits to Ikea, Costco and a store call Front Room we've got the whole room furnished and everything was on sale or Brody worked his magic and got it to be on "sale" ;)

Here's our entry way when we first moved in

Hall way

This is actually a picture of the bed room, but it illustrates
what our living room looked like before

Our accent wall that Brody painted. He did an amazing job!

Our reading nook. Still need to add to the book
collection though ;)

We put a mirror over the stair to really bring the room together.
What a job to hang it though!

New couches and end table. Brody found that lamp for $10 bucks, what a deal?
(oh don't forget the nice accent dog toy on the ground)

Here's the whole room. Looks like we'll need to put a light
 behind the plant to really make it stand out

Better view of the coffee (or should I say hot chocolate?) table

Finally HOME SWEET HOME

The Mountain owned us!

We got new mountain bikes for Christmas and we've been waiting for the weather to warm up so we could really break them in. This weekend the weather was beautiful (ok, 45 degrees isn't exactly warm, but compared to the 19 degrees on Monday it was amazing!)  We first took the bikes to the golf course and road up and down the cart paths with Deja in tow. It was a blast and we had a good work out while we were at it.  So today, when the weather was just as nice, we decided to tackle something closer resembling a mountain.




We piled into the truck and drove a few miles from our house.  From the beginning, we should have known it was going to rough going. The snow was just starting to melt so the ground was soggy and MUDDY!!  Biking through the flat part in the mud was exhausting, and we kept hoping for a nice downhill path, but we never found it.  A few minutes into the ride we hit the steepest hill I'd ever seen but we weren't quitters.  We headed up and quickly learned we were not in shape for this.  We were sinking into the mud several inches and walking the bike just as much as we were riding, so needless to say it was what real fun is :)

The top of the mountain! (well at least at the time, we hoped it was)

Working my way up. All that snow made the ground impossible to bike in

When we finally hit a downward slope we were so excited we just went for it. Well, I have some nice bruises and scrapes as reminders to not try that again.

Finally some actual bike riding

The view from the hill was amazing. The picture doesn't do it justice

Halloween: Two years and counting...

Compared to our last two Halloweens, this Halloween was pretty uneventful, I mean in 2008 boy meets girl, and 2009 boy asks girl to marry him, How can we top that?

Aside from life changing events, we had a good week. Busy with work, school, church callings and Brody's interview in St. Louis, the week flew by and Halloween came before we knew what hit us.

On Tuesday, we drove to the airport and wished Brody luck as we put him on a plane to St. Louis.  Wednesday he had a full day of interviews, meet and greets, and free meals all with top management of the Nestle Corporation.  Short of delicious Nestle Crunch bars I had no idea what the company made or did. As it turns out Nestle is the largest food and beverage company in the world. They own name brands such as Digiornio, California Pizza Kitchen, Hot pockets, Healthy Choice and various bottled water names. Nestle also owns the pet brand Purina, which is the division Brody interviewed with. As he was waiting in the lobby he watched employee after employee bring their dogs into work. THIS IS THE PLACE FOR ME! You get to work with your dogs?! How awesome!  We won't find out for a few weeks if Brody got the internship but we have high hopes. There were 1500 applicants, 250 phone interviews, and 50 candidates flown to St. Louis so he's done pretty good so far. Between all the interviews Brody managed to get some cool pictures of the arch.

For Halloween we had a nice relaxing weekend.  Made some chili, painted pumpkins and even made a scary haunted gingerbread house.

I think I got the frosting a little too runny. Once we put the house together all the frosting started drooping and smearing downward. I'm going to pretend like I did that on purpose to make it more 'scary'

The scary droopy cat with his eyeballs falling out

The Picaso side of the house. It's so scary even the ghost is in pieces

Happy Halloween! Thanks Moms for all the fun festivities!

Fall Fishing

The weather here has been unseasonably warm and we've been taking advantage of it by going to the lake and hiking and fishing with our friends Kevin and Emily and all the dogs. We have a lake about 7 minutes from our house that has miles of hiking trails all around it. We regularly lace up our tennis shoes, pile into the truck and take long hikes up into the hills, trying to take in as much of the scenery as we can before the sun goes down.  It's great exercise for us and the dogs are in heaven as they chase squirrels and birds and discover all sorts of new smells, sights, and tastes (yes, Deja continually finds new rocks, chunks of dirt, and who knows what else, to put in her mouth).  The other day as we we hiking Kita and Deja took off after a poor little squirrel.. Not to worry though, an animal with a brain as large as a pea outsmarted both of our dogs. Deja was close on the chase until the squirrel went under a log and Deja smacked her head full speed into a log.  Kita was small enough to follow under the log but not smart enough to notice the  squirrel was headed straight for a branch that over hung on the lake. Splash! Kita fell a few feet to land right in the lake. Needless to say both dogs weren't as gung-ho to chase after the next squirrel who crossed their path.

"Where did that squirrel go to now??"

On the trail.  "I'm a hound dog! Woof!"

a little jog in the woods

Fishing on a fall afternoon

We went to a new private lake this Saturday and caught a few fish. Luckily it was just catch and release so we didn't have to do any of the gutting and gross stuff  :)

First one of the day

Number two!

The dogs are loving the fish!

 I tried to upload the video of Nakita attacking the fish but, alas, no luck... :( Just know that it's pretty funny watching her try to bite a fish as big as her, as it flops around uncontrollably.

Still waiting on the first bite...

Kita wouldn't leave us alone or leave the water's edge, she was obsessed with the fish!

Number 1.5 for Brody (the first one got away before he could get it out of the water)

Long day of fishing, we both needed a rest

Reeling it in!

Kevin's performing minor fish surgery to get the hook dislodged before the little guy kicks the can

Give the fishy a kiss!