Valentine's Extended

Happy Valentine's Day everyone. This Valentine's has been a little different for Brad and me for lots of reasons, but overall it's been good.

Valentine's started for us on Friday since we knew there would be too many things going on Saturday to do all the things we wanted to. I had to run do some errands on Friday and when I returned I found a beautiful orchid plant on the coffee table. I love fresh flowers and I especially love having plants because then I can have fresh flowers all the time. There are lots of buds waiting to open up so I'm going to get to watch as they all open up. Plus, I really love orchids.


So, I wandered into our bathroom. There I found a beautiful red rose. I had to call Brad and say thanks for the beautiful flowers. Later that day I even had a special delivery. It was a giant sugar cookie with a card from Brad.


But this wasn't all the surprises Brad had. When he came home he brought with him some more flowers which are just beautiful.

The plan from there was to go out for dinner and come home and make sugar cookies. However, after dinner at Red Robin Brad wasn't feeling too great. Instead of cookies, it was Advil and Tylenol to cool his fever down. It wasn't too bad because Brad and I just got to sit and talk for the whole evening.

Saturday, I made pink, heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast. I think that was the only Valentine's related thing for the day. After lunch, Brad had to leave for a trip with the Men's Chorus. They were going up for a master class with the King Singers. Once Brad got home it was off to the adult session of Stake Conference. While it was disappointing in a way to go to Stake Conference on Valentine's Day, it was well worth it. When we got home we were going to try again to make our sugar cookies. However, fever hit again and we ended up just watching a movie instead.

The sugar cookies did get made though. It took us till Sunday evening, but Brad was finally feeling good enough.


Even though it took from Friday to Sunday to get done with all of our Valentine plans it was fun to have Valentine's everyday.

Oops!

I had to get some pictures off Brad's camera today and I realized there were pictures from Christmas in Minnesota that I never got off the camera. Thus, they never made it to our blog. So, here they are.

We had a giant Nerf fight.

No fair Aaron!

You need to watch out for Aaron. He'll sneak up on you.

Lauren and Ethan

Trying to teach Kate and Ethan to walk.

Crazy Uncle Aaron and Mr. Man

The hydrodynamic building set in the form of an ice cream making plant. This thing provided hours of entertainment.

I loved having Christmas in Minnesota. It was relaxing, fun, and a great break from school. The only not fun thing was venturing out into the freezing cold weather.

You know you've married a Biology major. . . Part 2

. . . when you husband has a song describing polymerase chain reaction.

Brad got this amazing song in his Molecular Biology class and since then I've heard it at least ten times a day. I'm not even kidding. While it's a little bit confusing for those of us who have no idea what polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is, I will admit, it's kind of funny how into it these people are.

You know you've married a Biology major when. . .

. . . your husband wants to try out the experiments he has read about in his textbooks. Or at least make up his own variation. Here are some pictures of Brad's experiments.



I'm not exactly sure what this experiment was about. We just had markers on paper and were seeing how the colors separated.


This experiment really was ridiculous. Brad wanted to seeing what materials he could get to dissolve in water and thus discover if they were polar or not. Brad pulled all sorts of things out to test. I had to leave for a exam, but I really shouldn't have left him unsupervised.


I came home to find all these different experiments on the counter. I'm really not sure what some of these are. I know a few of them, but I don't dare ask what are in the others.

Pie, Tuba Polka, and Yoga

What a weekend! Brad's family was in town so we had lots of fun. There was lots of shopping and eating delicious food. We even tried a new Mexican restaurant that was pretty good. Brad sung in Winter Choirfest on Saturday night. That was lots of fun because not only was Brad's family there, but my family came down for the occasion as well.

The real party started after the concert. Brad's parents went and got pie while Brad, Aaron, Kendra, and I headed back to our place. Sugar probably wasn't the best thing for all of us. It resulted in a performance of the Tuba Polka by Aaron. It's quite the treat if you ever get to see it. The sugar must have got to me to and I did a few yoga stances. I can't remember what quite inspired it, but we all ended up laughing hysterically. So much for yoga being soothing and relaxing.

While we were together we HAD to play games or according to Brad's mom we couldn't be family. That's just what families do, they play games. So, we ended up playing Spoons (no one got hurt) and Hearts. I believe Aaron successfully beat all of us at both games.

Christmas Photos

So, Brad and I didn't make a Christmas card this year. However, we did get some Christmas photos taken. My little sister Malinda came up with the idea to take a photo of all of us kids and give it to my mom for Christmas. So, we all got together, secretly, and we took some pictures together. They turned out pretty well I think. Here are some of the best.

Bowling Night

One of my favorite things last fall semester was bowling night. Brad used to play in a bowling league that would meet every Wednesday to play against other teams. It was crazy. There was special theme music and announcers. The teams even had costumes. Brad's team was the Roll XXXs (for rolling strikes) and Brad was Packman. I loved going because the games were so intense. The teams would cheer their team members on and would try to get their opponents to mess up. It was just so funny to see people get so excited about this. But there were some amazing bowlers there too. One of Brad's teammates and old mission companions bowled a 240. He had 5 strikes in a row. It was the high score for the league.

Since bowling league last fall year, we have gone bowling once. So we thought it was time again to go bowling. We went with Aaron and Kendra and it was a fun night.

Brad concentrating on bowling.

Brad happy with the strike he just got. I guess the concentration paid off.

Silly Aaron. That's for kids.

Nervous anticipation.

I think we were all pretty proud of ourselves by the end of the night. We all scored over a hundred which at least for me is a big thing. I think last time Brad and I played I got an 88. Brad did have the high score of 146. Aaron also had an amazing bowl during the game. He had a 6-7-10 split (Brad said that's what it was, basically two pins in one corner and one in the other) which is moderately hard to get all the pins. Aaron proved us all wrong with a spare. Good job Aaron! I think we'll have to going bowling sometime soon for a rematch.