Weekend Update

This weekend was General Conference. It was wonderful. I was so grateful to be able to stay home all weekend. I stayed in my pj's for most of the weekend and didn't put makeup on once! I turned Conference on and picked up around the house. I COMPLETELY cleaned the downstairs this weekend in preparation for my sister's bridal shower on Friday. Once I got the kitchen clean, I decided to start taping it off to paint. I was wanting paint last night, but I ran out of painter's tape so I am planning on picking some up this afternoon and painting today. I cleaned all of the walls and appliances, so the kitchen is totally prepped. After I get it painted and set back up, I will take and post pictures of the entire downstairs, since it will be finished.

Weekend Update

So I have made a few resolutions this weekend, one of which is to start doing my weekend updates every Monday. Sometimes (actually most of the time) our weekends are pretty boring, but it is still the weekend, there are always things that get done. So I will start sharing what has been done with you all again.

1. On Friday we made a grocery shopping list, which meant going through my Rachel Ray cookbooks trying to find some new recipes that Bryce might like. We decided on a few and Saturday morning I went grocery shopping. Last night I made the Meaty Stuffed Pasta Shells recipe. It was REALLY good. I ended up with leftovers, which I am going to cook tonight and take them with me for lunch tomorrow. Yummo!
2. Saturday was basically a day of running errands. I had to pick up some music books that I had spiral bound, get some more face wash, pick up some bathroom accessories (see #3), and then get groceries from 2 different stores. It took me like 4 hours to do all of my errands.
3. We recently (I use the term "we" loosely since I did 99.5% of the work) painted the downstairs 1/2 bathroom in our townhouse. It is the same color as the rest of the downstairs, kind of a tan-sage color. There were these really cheap looking bright silver fixtures that I really didn't want to put back up once I painted. I did put them back on, but I had a $25 off coupon for Bed Bath and Beyond, so I figured I'd see what they had since we only needed a new toilet paper holder and towel ring. They had the exact line that we used for a new flusher for the toilet (which we replaced about 8 months ago). So I went ahead and got the tp holder and towel ring. They are beautiful, brushed nickel. It looks so much richer and totally matches with the paint. Now we just need to replace the light fixture. I have my eye on one at Lowes. It looks exactly like this one, but it has a brushed nickel finish. I will have to wait until Bryce lets me get it and then the bathroom will be perfect.
4. We cleaned house, but didn't finish a whole lot. At least the house is cleaner than it was last week.
5. We watched Twilight for the 4th time since we bought the DVD last week. Bryce has said (at least twice), "we should watch a movie." I returned with "okay, what should we watch?" He said (in a sarcastic-ish tone), "can we watch Twilight again?" Then when I said, "sure" he didn't say, "oh, I was just kidding" so we watched it again. I think he really likes it. He loves vampire and/or zombie movies. He just has this thing for stories about 'the undead' which I don't really get, but I like most of the movies too, so I won't complain.

Yay for a 3-day weekend!

Since yesterday was Memorial Day, neither Bryce nor I had to work, so we got a LOT done this weekend. Bryce doesn't work on Fridays so I took a half day to get some errands run. Bryce didn't really want to come with me to run errands, so Kileen and my sister Kristen came with me. Here's what we got done:

1. Picked up some assignments of Kileen's from campus
2. Picked up Kristen
3. Went to Kohl's and found some great deals (like my $25 electric skillet and 50% off ties for Bryce)
4. Dropped Kristen off because she was sick of being around married people
5. Went to JoAnn fabrics to pick up some fabric my mother-in-law requested that we bring over to England for her. Ki and I also were looking at the scrapbook stuff and thought we were getting an awesome deal on some paper packs, but really they just had them poorly labeled and only certain packs were 50% off.
6. Went to Wal-Mart to pick up some other things for my mother-in-law. We did find some great deals on scrapbooking stuff here.
7. Went by Ki's house to pick up her scrapbooking stuff and drop off her new goodies from our shopping trip.
8. Went back to my house and scrapbooked with Ki (while watching National Treasure 2) until like 1 in the morning.

On Saturday, Bryce and I slept in (which I really needed) and then cleaned house all day. We got everything in the house completely clean except for our extra bedroom, which still needs to be organized a little bit.

On Sunday, Bryce and I went to church then came home and took naps. My visiting teachers came over and visited for a little while and then Bryce and I worked out in the backyard some. We planted our 3 bushes and started preparing the ground to plant our new tree. Then I did laundry for the rest of the day.

Monday was a very productive day. These are all the things Bryce and I got done:
1. Took some old clothes to Plato's Closet
2. Went to Michael's to look for some bridal shower decorations to take to my mother-in-law, but had no luck.
3. Went to Wal-Mart to get milk, eggs, and a weed wacker.
4. Came home and finished doing all the laundry
5. Cut out the fabric for my dress so that I can finish making it this week!

I love 3-day weekends. You can get so much done! But now I'm tired.

A weekend in Richfield

This weekend Bryce and I went to Richfield, Utah to visit his Grandma Colleen. We try and go down as often as we can to visit and we realized with our callings in the Primary and this weekend being Stake Conference (i.e. no Primary), this was our opportunity to go. We drove Bry's Jeep down so that we could go play around in the foothills and mountains a little bit. We also brought our new shotgun to go shoot out in the mountains, but there were too many people out riding 4wheelers and stuff, so we decided against it. Here is Bryce playing King of the Foothills after we drove the Jeep up this really steep hill (which scared the crap out of me). He was proud of his accomplishment.
After playing around in the foothills we drove up to the mountain. When we hit the base of the trail/road we saw all of these trucks and campers, etc., parked all together. We thought it was a group camping and 4wheeling until we drove a little further and saw a bunch of dirt bikers. They were doing some pretty crazy stunts climbing up the mountain. It was awesome to watch.

After observing the dirt bikers for a few, we drove up the mountain into Fishlake National Forest. It is so beautiful and was really a fun drive. Unfortunately, we didn't make it too far before we had to head back to Grandma's house to relieve ourselves.
We had a really fun couple of days down in Richfield. We played around and hung out with Grandma Colleen on her porch. We love to go visit and it is nice to have family close.

What we did this weekend.....

• worked a little. I also had the after-hours emergency phone for the complex because our on-site managers were out of town. This was a nightmare... especially when I had to go up and close the clubhouse and pool every night at curfew (including 1:30 a.m. on Saturday).
• cleaned house
• put together our new patio furniture from Ikea
• took pictures of our backyard before we tear everything out and plant 2 new trees, 3-4 bushes, and a few planters full of tulips and gerber daisies, put pavers down for the grill area and leading to the back fence, and hang a few outdoor decorations. (I'll post those when I have the 'after' pictures to compare).
• colored and laminated visual aids for teaching the music to the Primary
• went to church
• folded some laundry
• called my mother-in-law and mom to wish them a Happy Mother's Day!