Mom would be so proud

I got brave and I made cheese bread today.  It didn't appear to be rising like it should so I was pretty worried it wouldn't turn out.  But, surprisingly enough, it did.  It was just ever-so-slightly overcooked but other than that not too shabby.  My mom has some incredible kitchen skills so I think she has always been a little disappointed at my lack of them.  I know my grandpa has sure been disappointed that I haven't inherited her abilities.  But making homemade bread?  I mean, come on, she HAS to be proud of that.  I did have to call her a half dozen times in the process...but I'll still count it as an accomplishment.

I decided I'd post a little picture of something else I'm sure my mother would be proud of.  She sent this shirt for Brennan in my birthday package.  She knows him too well.  It is so fitting for his personality.

Double deuce and Mat Kearney

So...this might be kind of a long post. It was my birthday last week. The big 22. It was my first birthday since Brennan and I met, and let me tell you he set the bar high for himself. :) He took me out to eat at Texas Roadhouse and then we went miniature golfing. He made quite a fancy birthday cake for me as well.

This is the yummy cake he made. I'd say he did a pretty good job for a guy. :)

The happy couple mini golfing. I won.

This was one of Brennan's presents for me. He has "Remember..." stitched into his scriptures and I always thought it was neat. So he did "Be still..." for me.

Okay, so we bought our mattress from this store on State Street in Orem and the guy working there was painting while there weren't any customers. He had a bunch of neat Book of Mormon scenes and I really like them. I mentioned to Brennan how much I liked his artwork and since forgot about it. Well Brennan took him a wedding picture of ours and had him paint it for me for my birthday. I love it!

I kind of feel like my birthday has been going on for over a week now. It's like we just keep celebrating. One of Brennan's presents was tickets to the Mat Kearney concert in Salt Lake this last Wednesday. We didn't get there as early as we might have liked but we ended up getting to stand in the second row pretty close to the center. (And we sort of inched ourselves toward the center as the night went on.) It was a rough start, with the concert starting a half hour late making a grand total of 4.5 hours standing in the same place. But it turned out to be a great night. We loved the concert! Mat Kearney was awesome live. And we really enjoyed the music of Vedera, the band who opened for him. We did have some crazies behind us and to the side. The ones to the side kept us entertained with their way of "feeling" the music. It was hilarious.

That's how close we were. We even got to touch him. :) I'm pretty sure he made eye contact with me a couple of times. My friend Kim was at the concert too and she said the same thing. It was kind of awkward when it felt like he was looking at you though.

He was awesome! If you don't know his music you should check it out.

So fun! Thanks for such a great birthday Brennan! And thanks to everyone else for the gifts and the birthday wishes. I had a great day.

Jack-o-Lanterns

Brennan bought pumpkins for us to carve quite awhile ago. We discovered recently that the smaller one was starting to look not-so-healthy, so we decided it was probably time to carve them. We gutted them first and roasted the seeds so we could have a snack while we worked. :) Neither of us have ever roasted pumpkin seeds before, but luckily it seems to be pretty fool proof so they were edible.

Here is Brennan getting the process started.
At this point I was starting to get annoyed with Brennan's vicious carving methods which were causing the table to shake rather violently.
The finished products.

I'm not sure why my face is like that.

Our glowing masterpieces.
This was my first time being the primary carver of any pumpkin, but I would say it was slightly succesful. It was certainly fun. Our pumpkins are now precariously balancing on the railing on our balcony, so hopefully it doesn't get too windy.

Pumpkin Cookies and The Sound of Music

We are enjoying our Sunday evening by making pumpkin cookies and watching The Sound of Music, hence the title. I just wanted to post something now that we have a blog. So here we are, officially part of the blogging world now. What a feeling of accomplishment. :)