Birthday

My birthday was this past Sunday and I am now an old twenty-six year old. I think I realized something this year as birthday time rolled around. I was feeling rather amazed that half my life ago I was already as old as thirteen! I felt like, "This can't be right!" It seems like it took so long to get to thirteen, whereas the following thirteen years essentially flew by. So what I realized is that time seems longer the younger you are. I think the cut off point is around eighteen, when you graduate and move off to college. Everything before that, while not necessarily dragging on, seemed to go much more slowly. Once you hit college life speeds by and before you know it you're twenty-six, married, settled and you have a cat. Okay, well I guess it doesn't happen like that for everyone...

If ever my birthday lands on a Sunday it is always General Conference so I get to stay home in my pajamas for half the day. This is nice and I get the amazing gift of being able to hear from apostles and prophets on my birthday! However, I generally am not a fan of Sunday birthdays because I like to get gussied up and go out on the actual day of my birthday. Since that wasn't an option, we had a low key Sunday birthday where I opened presents, Bryan made me breakfast, we had cake and we took a nice walk downtown in the evening in this lovely autumn weather.  A few people asked me if Bryan was making my cake. No, though he did offer, I did make my own birthday cake. He said, "You have three options. I would be happy to make you a cake from a box or buy you a cake. You could also make your own cake and it would be delicious." So even though I like to be pampered on my birthday I also do still love to cook and bake and so I decided I'd try my hand at a carrot cake. It was very moist and quite delicious. Here is my final product:

We saved the more exciting plans for the next day. Bryan didn't have to work because it was Columbus day. In addition to all the main holidays he has off, there are four rather random throughout the year and he gets to choose two of them to take off. Columbus day just happened to fall nicely around my birthday. We slept in and then went to the Idaho Botanical Gardens. It was very nice and peaceful. There weren't many people there-- mostly because it was a Monday and more fall like weather. We wanted to check this place out and we had a lot of fun. One thing that was cool and also kind of surreal was that it was built near an old penitentiary so we saw a few tall guard posts around. I felt like I was in a movie of some sort. Anyway, I got a few pictures.

Beneath a stone gazebo.

Then, even though it is still early, we decided to carve pumpkins as a fun activity. I'm sure they'll rot before the holiday but we can always carve new ones. I made Harry Potter (is anyone surprised?) and Bryan made an Angry Bird.

Callie desperately wanted to come out. We let her out for a little bit but we live next to a pretty busy road and shes not well acquainted with the outdoors yet and kept running out of sight so we had to put her back in.

 Saving the seeds to roast them.

 Dry erase markers. Best idea I've ever had. 

After that, we went to Bonefish Grill in downtown to eat. I'd never been before but I'd seen it as we were driving one day and wanted to try it out. It was very nice. I had a steak and Maryland crab cake dinner!

Thus ended the birthday festivities but later that week we found out that Cirque du Soleil was visiting Boise and we decided, spur of the moment, to get tickets and go! We just went earlier today and it was very cool and actually very funny, too. It is amazing what humans can do! I doubt I'd ever have the coordination for any of it. I didn't get any pictures because they weren't allowed but here are our tickets. We were surprised when we got there at how good of seats we had! Very close to all of the action. Someday when we have kids we won't so much have the opportunity to do things like this so we decided to seize this chance. We sure do enjoy our life here in Boise.

Busy Bees

Well, September was sure a whirlwind month! It went by the fastest of all the months we've lived here so far. Last post was about us going to Ethan's baby blessing at the beginning of the month. We visited Utah again in the middle of the month so that Bryan could take part in recruiting for his company at BYU! It was fun to be back there as a visitor even though it hasn't been all that long since we lived there.

Here is Bryan at Clearwater's booth. I came to meet him at the end so it was half taken down by this point but I wanted to get a shot of him here anyway.

When we were done in Provo we headed up to South Jordan and had a fondue party with our friends the Pfaffs and the Jasps and then we spent the rest of the weekend with family. I didn't really take pictures to post up here but I happened to be taking a video of cute Ethan when the following occurred. (Sorry it is sideways!)

We came back to Boise for less than a week and then flew out to Maryland that next Saturday for Jack and Sylvie's baby blessings! I was so excited to meet these little guys for the first time and to spend time at my home with my family. There is nothing quite so comforting as that, it seems.

Here are a a few pictures I took from our time in Maryland. Here is sweet Sylvie, sleeping soundly in mom's arms. She spent a lot of time sleeping!

I liked this picture of my mom. I don't think she knew I was taking a picture. She just seems so genuinely happy. Jack is, of course, so adorable. On Sunday he slept in my arms and it was the most precious thing.

Ivy loved playing hide and go seek with us. I found her in a cabinet like this. She didn't seem to realize she'd been found-- I think she thought if she couldn't see you, you couldn't see her.

Here's Uncle Bryan entertaining Ava by pretending his tie is an elephant nose. I just love the look on her face.

Here are Jack and I on the blessing day. I almost missed the blessings altogether! I was sitting with Ivy on my lap as Sacrament Meeting began and she suddenly got a bloody nose. I had to run her to the bathroom to help with it. By the time it was finally done and she was cleaned up I walked back in and they were announcing the blessings. That was close! I'm so glad her nose cleared up just in time.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture with either baby in their blessing outfits-- I think their parents wanted to get them out of white clothes before they did what babies do best.

Do you see what I mean about the sleeping? She would be in her car seat for what seemed like hours just sleeping while we all talked loudly around her. I lifted up her car seat cover and snapped this shot (don't worry, no flash!).

I could have sworn I had gotten a picture of Bryan holding Jack as well but I can't find that anywhere. Pretty disappointing but this one is still pretty cute.

I know you thought that picture of Sylvie smiling was precious so here you go!

We flew back home on Monday-- what a short trip!We are glad to be done with traveling for a while and ready to enjoy our first autumn in Boise. The weather is starting to cool down and some of the leaves are changing color. I think this is one of the most exciting times of the year!