Goodbye Poof

Once upon a time Brennan's hair was getting long. I mean really long. We kept putting off getting his hair cut and it just got longer and longer. Until one day he was wearing a hat and Crystal pointed out the curly poof sticking out the back. It was practically a pony tail! I couldn't stop laughing.

Check out the poof!

Usually we just have my dad cut his hair, but Brennan convinced me to borrow my dad's shears and cut it myself. I have never cut anyone's hair before. Let alone Brennan's long, thick, curly stuff. It took a very long time, a lot of help from Brennan, and a few minor touch ups by my dad a few days later, but it all worked out and he had a decent hair cut in the end. Not sure if I will be doing that again soon though.

The new do. I'm pretty good. :)

My Birth Week Continued

The celebrations seemed to continue all week. On Monday my mom met me in Cedar Rapids for lunch. It was a lot of fun and a great break from the ordinary routine. On Tuesday Brennan took me to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. Delicious! My parents came over that evening for some delicious cake Brennan made from scratch. Delicious again! And then on Wednesday our friends Kassy and David came over for dinner. Kassy brought me a beautiful flower arrangement in a pumpkin. What a creative idea!

Brennan gave me Band Hero for the Wii for my birthday. Funny story about that...the night before my birthday Brennan and I were at Walmart picking up a few things. We parted ways at one point and I passed Band Hero and it was on sale!! I immediately called Mara, secretly hoping she would talk me into buying it (I'm a tight wad and it's hard for me to convince myself to spend money on fun things). As I got off the phone with her Brennan walked up and so I excitedly started telling him about the great deal we had before us. Brennan is usually just as good as Mara at trying to convince me to buy things like that but his reaction was completely different this time. He just kept asking me to just leave. He wasn't even excited about the steal of a deal I just found! It didn't take me long to put two and two together and realize why I he was being so weird. So.. I spoiled my birthday surprise. But it didn't make it any less great! We have already had a blast rocking out!

My mom and dad gave me a sewing machine. I have no idea where to begin with that mysterious machine but I am so excited to learn! I was sure to ask my mom if the gift came with free lessons from her. She agreed to it, assuring me that it is a piece of cake. We'll see about that. I actually kind of spoiled that surprise as well. When we were at my parents the other day my mom went in the other room to ask Brennan about his present for me. I waited right outside the room and pretended I heard them, even though I didn't hear a thing. When I teased them about knowing what mom's gift was, they asked me what letter it started with. Well since I had no idea what the present actually was I just went with the only guess I had (a sewing machine) and said "s". Haha, little did I know that I completely convinced them that I had heard and I knew what I was getting. Once again, I sort of ruined the surprise, but I still loved it.

All in all I'd say it was a pretty great birthday!

My Birth Week

It was my birthday last week. I'm 23. Wow, that seems incredibly weird to me. I'm not sure when or how I became an adult. I'm not even sure how I feel about it. But here I am. :)

It felt like there celebrations practically all week. Last Saturday we got to hang out with Gretchen and Andy at their cute house. They taught us how to play euchre and it was a blast! We've got a new favorite game.

On Sunday we headed to my parents house for my family birthday dinner. When I was younger, every year my mom would ask me what kind of cake I wanted for my birthday. And every year, without fail I would ask for a chocolate spider cake. I decided to revisit my childhood and requested it again this year. My sweet mother obliged.

How sweet is that?! It's pretty easy to see why I always asked for it, isn't it? Thanks mom!

It was a gorgeous fall day so we all headed out to Palisades to enjoy the weather and play some frisbee. We found a big tree that had fallen over part of the dam, so we all braved the heights and crossed over (except mom of course). We were sure to get plenty of dam jokes in since there were huge signs that said "dam" just about everywhere you looked. We Cardons sure are funny. :)
Brennan and Macy getting ready to cross together.

The girls after we survived the crossing.

After a delicious meal of homemade egg rolls and fried rice it was time for that amazing cake.

Making a wish...I failed. Only five candles, and I failed.

Despite the failed wish it was still a great day with family! Gotta love birthdays!

Frisbee Friday

You know I was actually complaining about our life being too boring not that long ago. But it feels like we have been pretty busy for awhile now without any signs of change in the near future. That'll teach me to complain. :) Anyway instead of inundating you with pictures and a huge update I think I will break it up into a lot of posts. I'm supposed to be posting more often anyway, right? (oops!)

Last week was [my nephew] Caden's birthday. 10 years old! I remember when he was born, it is crazy to think that he is 10 now. I'm getting too old. We were able to go to Lisbon to celebrate with the family on Wednesday. It was fun to watch him open his presents and try with all his might to not show any excitement. Too funny.

It was fun to be there on his big day and spend time with everyone.

On Friday Caden had his birthday party with friends. Brennan has brainwashed Caden into thinking ultimate frisbee is the best. :) So for his party he wanted to do an ultimate frisbee camp and then play a game of ultimate. Brennan was obviously top choice for teaching the 15 boys all the fancy frisbee throws so we headed back to the Mt. Vernon area on Friday afternoon as well. The weather was absolutely beautiful and I think Brennan had a blast teaching frisbee. After he taught and they practiced all the throws, they did diving practice on a blow up couch that Rich gave me years ago. A great photo op.

Some of you may know that my favorite (or not) thing about Brennan is that he loves to wear a bandanna around his head when he plays frisbee. But of course he is the cool one, not me, so his style had to be copied as well. It was blue bandannas vs. red bandannas.

Here is Brennan with his red team.

After the boys played for awhile, we did adults (Mom, Dad, Crystal, Rich, Brennan, and me) against the 15 or so fourth grade boys. It was a blast!!

With the birthday boy himself.

Sadly, I'm not even bending over that much.

We got to finish off the evening by watching Diary of a Wimpy Kid (actually quite entertaining) and heading to the Cornell homecoming fireworks, streakers and all! Yep, you read right. Apparently every year some streakers make an appearance at the Cornell fireworks. Lucky for us they weren't close enough to our watching place for any emotional scarring to occur.

It was certainly a fun-filled Friday!

An Apple-Picking Weekend

Last weekend Brennan and I were able to go to the local apple orchard. It's not quite as cool as it used to be but it still provides a good fall outing. The best part is that they let you try as many kinds of apples as you want as you walk through the orchard.

Brennan scouring for some good apples on the ground.

The biggest apple I have ever seen!

Much to Brennan's dismay, I refused to leave without a picture of him in this lovely wooden Wilson's Orchard scene.

They have some pretty delicious apple turnovers there. (Although I would argue that yours are just as good, if not better, mom!) Way back when, my mom and I went to Wilson's orchard and Mrs. Wilson herself taught us how to make these turnovers. It was an experience full of a lot of laughs. I didn't learn much, but my mom obviously mastered the art.

Over a year later, and we still love each other. :)

It really was a fun way to spend our Friday evening. Mostly it just felt good to do something not in our ordinary routine.

The rest of our weekend was spent watching General Conference. We spent Saturday and Sunday in Mt. Vernon so we could watch with Dad and Crystal and Rich. Actually, the real reason we spent it in MV was so I could be present for girl's night (+Caden). I couldn't miss that!! We had tons of fun, from ice cream, to watching The Middle, to Caden getting scared out of his pants by a truck in the parking lot of DQ... good times...

Anywho, Conference was great, the apple orchard was beautiful, girl's night was fun, Brennan got two good test scores this week, and the rest of the week has gone smoothly thus far. Life is good!

One Week

Well for some reason, unknown to me, I decided to blog once everyday this week. It's actually been kind of fun even if some (or most) of my posts have been pretty pointless. Hopefully I will continue to blog more often, maybe not everyday, but more often.

I'm at Crystal's tonight for the semi-annual girl's night while the boys are at General Conference. In honor of the Hawkeye game today I stole one of the kids' pieces of Hawkeye art. Last I checked the Hawks were beating Penn State soundly. Go Hawks!

Funny story about that Hawkeye game. They decided to have people wear black or gold according to where they were sitting in the stadium in order to have a cool visual effect. But it got cold here in Iowa this weekend so they worried that it wouldn't work because everyone would be bundled up in coats and such. Well I shared this information with Mara and she passed it on to mom who is visiting her right now. They checked out the game online, and the colors looked pretty cool. The idea was successful. Mara attributed the success to the fact that Iowa fans are hardcore. To which mom responded, "No they aren't, they had to buy tickets to get into the game." Say what??? You lost me somewhere. Turns out mom thought Mara said it worked because Iowa fans are poor. Ok...still not following? Me either. Why would it work because they are poor? Well, mom thought Mara was suggesting that because the fans are so poor they wouldn't be wearing coats anyway. Problem solved. The color idea will work in any weather with the poor Iowa fans!! Hahahahahaha, oh dear. Good ole' mom. What a hoot!

Anyway, goal met. One whole week. Woohoo!!

It's October

And I can't believe it!! And if you can't tell, I'm excited!! I love this month and this season. First of all, I was born in October...I'm pretty sure there couldn't possibly be a greater month than that. :) But in all seriousness, it's just great. The weather is awesome. Beautiful during the day and a perfect chilliness at night. You can start having soup for dinner and hot chocolate for breakfast. You get to sleep under the covers, the best! Pretty much I'm just excited for fall and all the fally things that come with it. Apple orchards, camping, pumpkin carving, bike rides, blankets, hot chocolate, birthday celebrations, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, hoodies. What's not to love?!

And I leave you with a picture of our newest addiction. Puzzles. Brennan got one for his birthday and we just barely got around to putting it together. It was a blast! So we went and bought a 500 piece puzzle from the dollar store and did that one too. And now we have a stack of puzzles we borrowed from my parents. It's a great past time. I highly recommend it.

Such a feeling of accomplishment.