24 And Counting

So I am the bad husband for not writing about this yet, but I wanted to make sure I had adequate time to do the wonderful birthday surprise justice.  Just more evidence for how fantastic my wife is.  

The Friday before my birthday, Rachel called me at work and told me we needed to be a shuttle service for one of my nephews, which kind of disappointed me because I had been hoping to go see a movie that night.  So I was walking out to my car and there was Rachel with my nephew and dad waiting for me.  We go the kid's car seat put in my car, and started driving north.  But as we were heading out, Rachel let me know we should get on the free way and head to Phoenix.  She had surprised me with a hotel reservation in Phoenix.  Other than my nephew crying like crazy and us having to wait forever at my brother's house, it was a great start to a fun weekend.  We had dinner at Claim Jumper, a steak house kind of chain.  If there is one near you, go.  It was beyond delicious.  The highlight was the dessert, a red velvet cupcake with this really good white cream cheese frosting.  Oh yeah.

We got up in the morning and went to see Prince Caspian (Rachel didn't seem to enjoy it too much, but I thought it was amazing).  Then we went to GameWorks, a huge arcade basically, and spent some time there.  Rachel is very proud that she beat me on a tennis game, but I remember dominating in our Nascar race.  We also went to see a 3-D Imax movie about the Grand Canyon.  Apparently we need to be better about conserving water, so everyone, go turn off your leaky faucets!  We ended our time in Phoenix by going to the Rainforest Cafe (never had been there before, kept jumping during the "rain storms") and a quick walkthrough of IKEA.  I think we have our whole future house decorated.  

Overall, my birthday was amazing.  

Mother's Day etc.

This weekend has been very exciting. 

It's getting hot, hot, HOT! The sky is cloudless and unforgiving

but things are starting to come to life. The question is how long will they survive?!

My African violet I thought was dead started to bloom!

Look! Clouds!

My strawberries are blooming!

I went to a very interesting concert of Kitran music at a Yoga studio with a family I babysit for. Kitran is a kind of Sikh music.. from what I could piece together. It was very pretty music... kind of odd culturally but... I'd go again. It was this husband/wife duo called Shantala. It was chanting and call and response songs. First song went on for 45 minutes. Long show. But this family I was with bought me a beautiful necklace made of paper in Uganda. 

I loved it!

Also this weekend I got some lovely presents in the mail from some lovely friends.

Susan sent me a framed scrapbook page of us, a box of Annie's mac and cheese(the best!), and this great card she said reminded her of me. And it does to me too!

And when we still lived in Rexburg, my sweet friend Jamie was teaching me how to do stained glass. I never got to finish my first piece so she finished off the edges and sent it to me! She is an amazing artist! Check her out!

Mothers day was nice because we have a really young ward with looooots of new babies so it was fun to see all the new moms. A man in our ward gave a really excellent talk basically calling the men in our ward to repentance about the way they treat their wives. Pretty intense but really good. And the bishop stood up and said he grew up in the era where to show someone you really really cared, you didn't get them flowers, or chocolates... you got them a mix tape! We all laughed so hard when he said that he wanted to get us all mix tapes but his counselors advised him not to. So he did something like it. He gave all the women a CD of General Conference talks about the importance and role of women. It was a very thoughtful gift. Also there's a guy in our ward who owns an ice cream parlor here in town called Penguin's and he brought in hundreds of cups of frozen yogurt in like 6 different flavors with toppings and everything! I enjoyed that I got Mothers day loot without the Mother part! :)

IRON MAN!

Nate and I just got back from the opening night of IRON MAN!!! We have been waiting for this for a while now and it was soooooo worth it!! 

It. Was. AWESOME.

4 thumbs up from Nate and Rachel

IRON MAN

Tagged

So Shayla made up her own tag and I am one of her tagees! Is that a word.....? Here we go:

A picture of what I look like right now:

(I'm eating a Skinny Cow!)

A picture of what I feel like right now:

(Arizona is so flippin hot!)

And three people I am tagging: Susan, Jamie, and Chelsea. Have fun!