Happy Birthday to my Mama!

Today I'd like to give my Mama a little shout out!

It was her birthday this past weekend!

And we got to share it with her!

We arrived at my parent's house on Friday at a decent time.

Then we waited up for my brother and his girlfriend to arrive.

We'd never met her, so we were looking forward to meeting her.

They finally arrived around 1 in the morning, I think!

We talked for a bit and then headed to bed.

In the morning we woke up to my Dad's new theme song for my mom

(this isn't the best quality, but the actual music video is a little weird, so yeah watch this one).

Then we ate a delicious breakfast of french toast and bacon.

Then we got ready for a quick trip to the lake since the weather was cooperating for a bit!

When we got there it was a bit chilly and a little bit windy, but still okay.

My mom asked my sweet husband to put the ice chest under him...

 Silly boy, she meant under the seat where there is a place for the ice chest.

We found some stale food left in the boat from the last trip, so we fed it to the ducks, they were crazy!

 Here is the birthday girl, my brother, and his girlfriend.

 Birthday girl and my other little brother

 Ahh tender... this was a common way we found them... all weekend.

 My sweet husband

 Me

 My brother

 Sometimes getting a wet suit on is a three person job! LOL!

 My brother's girlfriend, 

this is one impressive fall!

 She really likes this boy?! lol

 My sweet husband on the wakeboard

 My Mama and my Poppa

 So cute.. minus my crazy lake hair!

My sisters surprised my mom and came down later that night.

Sadly, I did not pull out the camera after the lake... curses!

It was so fun to be all together!

My youngest sister should get her mission call any day! I'm so excited for her! I wish it would have come while we were there this weekend, but it's okay.

Technology is a great thing and we'll get to see her open it via Google Hangout!

Guesses are welcome, go here.

We also got to go to my best friend from high school's bridal shower!
It was a lot of fun! I'm so excited for her as well!
Three more weeks!

Visitors!

Two Sundays ago we had some visitors for the night!

And for once I remembered to take a picture of us while they were here!

Our visitors are great! 

We enjoyed having them here, we wish it could have been a little longer, 

but they were on their way for a fun adventure!

My cousin and her two boys and my aunt

 Plus my cousin's husband.... who happens to be much taller than he looks in the picture, 

he just didn't want to tower over us like he normally does!

Thanks for coming guys! It was so good to see you!

Love you all!

A Scary Story

In honor of Halloween coming up,

I thought I would share a scary story.

It's also a true story.

When I was in high school, 

one night I was laying in my bed when all of a sudden I heard a scratching noise at my window.

Please keep in mind, I am one of the biggest scaredy-cats you will ever meet!

Ever since I was a little girl my one of my biggest fears was that someone would break into my home and do something to me and my family.

So this scratching noise had me in a panic!

I laid there for a while terrified.

My thoughts that night went something like this.

Should I look?

If I do, he'll know I'm in here and get me!

No, I'll wait it will probably go away soon.

After the longest hour (it was probably 15 minutes) of my life I finally got up the guts to run to my parents' room.

I told my dad that someone/something was trying to break into my room.

At first I think he told me that it was nothing and I would be fine.

I insisted that there was definitely something.

So being the Best-Dad-in-the-world he got out of bed and went outside to check for evil people trying to come into my room.

What did he find?

A gopher!

Scratching away at the Styrofoam my parents' home is built out of.

He caught the little monster and that was that.

No joke, the next night ANOTHER gopher fell into my window well and did the same thing.

But this time I was brave, I knew what that sound was.

He wasn't going to scare me!

My uncle caught that one (because my dad was at work).

Now you are probably thinking, that wasn't really scary and why would she tell us this wacko story?

Because

nah nah na (scary music)

WE HAVE A GOPHER!

The pesky creature is trying to kill all of our grass we worked so hard to put in!

And he's pretty smart, we tried to trap him for three days in a row and he is somehow able to bury the traps without getting himself caught in it.

So desperate times call for desperate measures....

the stink bomb...

we'll see how it works.

Here's my handsome man setting it up.

Wish us luck.

APPROVED!

Today we found out that we are APPROVED for adoption!

It was one of the best phone calls!

I can't wait for the phone call that says that we've been chosen!

So now you all can officially start spreading the word!

We're working on buttons for blogs,

but you'll all be the first to know when they are ready!

For now you can use this link to get to our adoption profile!

PS If you share our adoption profile with others that do not know us, please do not use our last name
Thank you all so much!
You guys rock!

We've moved!

Well, just logistically in the blogging world.

After much stress and worrying that I would lose everything,

I finally took the plunge (after saving everything into a pdf using this).

I changed our url so that I could put our blog on our adoption page,

so if you could please change your links to our page to 

ourstrollthroughlife.blogspot.com

I would really appreciate it!

Thank you everyone!

PS I will link all of the posts for this blog on our old blog for a while so that everyone can successfully make the transition.

The grass is always greener in your neighbors yard... not today!

Remember when our yard looked like this?!

 Now it looks like THIS!

Ahh... isn't it beautiful!

We had some awesome helpers! They were great! Thank you to them.. not that they read this blog, but hey, I can thank them anyways!

Quick Update

I just wanted to quickly update you all on our weekend.

My wonderful in-laws came to help lay sod on Saturday, 

they got here late Friday night during the last quarter of the BYU football game (which we won!).

After the game, we were all pretty tired and knew the next day was going to be a bear.

So we headed to bed.

We woke up early on Saturday (we planned on picking up the first load at 7 AM).

My sweet husband and father-in-law headed to the sod farm,

while my sweet mother-in-law and I worked on spray painting lines where the sod would go,

we ran out of a spray paint after finishing the backyard and headed to Home Depot to pick up some more.

We called my sweet husband to see if there was anything else he needed,

he said no and told us to head back because they were almost home.

So we turned right around, excited as can be, and got home just before them.

But...

the truck was EMPTY!

Uhh... didn't you forget something?!

It turns out that the sod guy got the sod farm just after they did and said something along the lines of,

I'm so sorry, you didn't leave your number, so I couldn't get a hold of you, but I'm being evicted from my house today so I can cut the sod for you, but you'll have to load it all after this first pallet 

(I'm sure it was all one long run-on sentence too).

Since we were going to have to unload it ourselves anyways they decided that loading it as well would be too much, so we'll get sod this weekend if all works out!

We spent Saturday instead organizing and cleaning our garage for our home inspection and listening to General Conference! It was so good! 

I loved all the talks, I especially loved this talk! It spoke right to my heart!

Sunday, we listened to General Conference and then after my sweet in-laws went home we watched the rest of our adoption classes online.

Yesterday, was our home study.

I'm not sure what I was expecting 

(I think something along the lines of a cleaning check at BYU).

It wasn't quite what I expected, but it was good.

Our caseworker talked to us for a while, basically did the interviews we had before again.

Then she looked at our home, told us to change a few minor things, 

and then told us we would hear from her soon!

She told us that she received two calls from prospective birth mothers on the way to our home!

Not that they will be our birth mothers, but they could be!

I know Heavenly Father is preparing someone so special for us, someone that will change our lives forever!

And we can't wait!

It kind of feels like Christmas

Do you know what tomorrow is?!

Tomorrow is going to be a great day!

For a couple reasons:

1. It's time for this!

 

2. It's sod day!

We will be listening to #1 while we lay #2!

I'm sure our neighbors will love it.. lol! 

But that's the best part about General Conference, it's for everyone!

The October General Conference always reminds me of this memory:

If you listen to the video with sound, please ignore my incredibly high voice and crazy laughter. I was SO nervous/excited.

The Canoe Adventure! Vimeo.

We worked on that canoe for weeks, so when it came time to test it out, we were full of jitters! It worked like a champ, but we took it out to avoid some rapids and we weren't able to get back in without taking on water. So after we abandoned ship we ran back about a mile to the park where we met up with out friends who drove with us (PS they found those bottles and threw them away, they were not intoxicated).  We ran back because I needed to go to the Relief Society Session, I think when we started running it was about 5ish, the RS session starts at 6 and I needed to shower and get dressed! But I made it in time!

and this memory:

We decided to go on a drive in between sessions the Sunday of Conference (the next weekend after the cardboard canoe), it was beautiful!

As we were taking pictures we happened upon a professional photographer also taking pictures.

He offered to take one for us using my sweet husband's (who was my sweet boyfriend at the time) camera.

I love this picture! One of my all time favorites.

T-minus 7 Days

We've been busy busy busy!

Last week we spent many hours fixing trenches,

and laying and gluing pipes for sprinklers.

I forgot to take a picture of all the trenches in our yard,

so here is a picture of most of the front yard before we buried the pipe.

 And the side yard...

 Here is the other side and the backyard after we buried the pipe and marked the sprinklers (the little orange flags).

Saturday we deepened a few of the trenches some more so the rototiller wouldn't break the pipes.

Then we buried them and marked the sprinklers.

Then we soaked the ground so that there wouldn't be too much dust when the dirt work guy rototilled the yard.

He did a great job, unlike me, he didn't break any of the sprinklers (that we know of yet).

I broke one was we were burying.... apparently I don't know my own strength.

Today, the plan is to hook up the sprinklers to the valve box (we wanted to do this before we buried them, but we ran out of time.. oh well).

Tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday we need to spread compost all over the yard.

Friday too if we aren't finished.

Then on Saturday,

we will lay sod!

So excited!

But

that isn't all that is coming up.

As we do all of that we also need to clean our house and baby proof our house because....

drum roll please...

our home inspection is next Monday!

We have a busy week ahead of us!

But I think we can do it!