Blake's Birthday #31

November 18th was Blake's 31st birthday! He is for 28 days after his birthday, 11 years older than me. It is pretty weird but I think it is cool that Blake and I are basically exactly 10 years apart. Well 9 years, 11 months, and 3 days, which is pretty  much 1 year. His birthday was so much fun. We went to Ikea, and to Fish-4-U, a saltwater fish store in Salt lake City. After we got back from Salt Lake we went to dinner at Bombay House, which is one of Blake's favorite restaurants. It was a really good day! 

I love that I can do anything with him and have so much fun. I really am very blessed to have him in my life.

Organizing the Storage Room

Every year when we ask my mother what she wants for her birthday she says "I want the storage room organized." which is an understandable thing to want because it is pretty unorganized. Last year my sister Shantel did an amazing job at going through all the boxes that hadn't been touched in years, and organized my parents storage room wonderfully. Unfortunately, there were plenty of boxes full of papers and other odds and ends that no one got around to going through, and after a year even more things got piled up in this forgotten room.

This year when we all asked my mom what she wanted for her birthday she said for the storage room to be organized (of course). Blake, (I know I say this almost every time I mention him) being the most amazing boyfriend ever, agreed to go to my parents house last Friday and Saturday to help me out. Friday we drove up to Morgan, after Blake's work. When we got there we had dinner, and we didn't actually get around to doing any work, instead we just caught up with my parents and watched a few episodes of Doctor Who. I am trying to have Blake watch all of the episodes before November 25th, that is the 50th anniversary episode, and I want him to watch it and know what is going on! Shout out to all the Whovians out there.

Saturday morning however we went right to work. I didn't really know where to start so we just started taking all the boxes out into my parents family room just to have empty space to work with in the storage room. I remembered to take a few before pictures after we had already started so just imagine a couple more boxes. :)

Blake organized all the food storage and I went through the boxes of stuff. It really was fun, and I love running across things that stir up old memories! We had to be back to Provo by six because Blake was playing at a venue,and we were running a little behind because I made chocolate chip cookies for Blake's show. I didn't get quite as much done as I would have liked, so I made a plan to come back the following week to my parents house.

Blake and I left my parents a little after four. That way we could have enough time to go to his house, get his drums, and go to his gig at Velour. Velour is a really cool venue and I love going to see bands there. This is the first show that I was able to go to of Blake's, because the last couple have been in 21+ venues or bars (one of those moments dating someone 10 years older than you isn't a plus). This is a picture of the band playing and right over Kevin, the guy in the middle's shoulder is Blake's head. Unfortunately this is the only picture I got of him playing. 

It really was so much fun watching them play and they did a really good job. Everyone in the band are really talented and I love the style of music that they play. It was awesome. 

Charlie turned two!

On Saturday Blake and I went and ran errands and ended up at Pep Boys to get my tires aligned. Sadly they weren't able to do that because there were to many problems with my car that needed to be fixed, before they could do the alignment. As depressed as I was it didn't really come as a surprise to me, my car seriously has issues. Blake was really awesome about cheering me up and my Dad helped to put my mind at ease as well, which I am always finding both these guys as a huge blessing in my life.

After Pep Boys, Blake and I drove up to North Salt Lake, to his brother and sister-in-law Bryan and BreAnna's home. They just moved in to their newly built house and it is so adorable! We were there for Charlie's (their son) two year old birthday party.

One of Charles favorite things to say is tractor. Pretty much everything is a tractor to him, if you have a book full of pictures of cars, trucks, buses, and tractors, he will point to every single one individually and say tractor. He loves them. Bre went above and beyond with the decorations and they were so cute! His cake was pretty darn cool as well.

Since BreAnna and Bryan just recently moved into their new house their back yard is not yet finished. Earlier that day they had a dump truck put a giant pile of dirt in their back yard and they had a small excavator to help move the dirt around and dig the holes for their new trees. If I was a kid it would have been a birthday party from heaven. After they opened presents all the kids went out and just played in the giant pile of dirt while taking turns riding on the excavator (with an adult of course).

Blake and I got their a little late because my car stuff took so long but the whole drive up Blake was really excited to drive the excavator.

After Blake was on it for a second he convinced me to get on with him. For some reason I didn't want to but after controlling it for a little bit I was sold. It was so much fun! Who knew heavy duty yard work could be such a blast!

One of Bre's relatives joked that her and Bryan were the only people he knew who would mix heavy machinery and a children's birthday party. I thought this was hilarious and was pretty grateful no one was injured!

Charles is one of the cutest two year old's out there! He is also one of the oddest children I have ever met and I love his quirky mannerisms so much. He has the cheesiest simile ever, it kind of reminds me of my brother Matt's cheesy face he pulls in every picture. When I was playing with Charlie in the dirt I asked him to smile for the camera and he immediately pulled the biggest grin! Then he decided to give me his normal smile! He is just the cutest thing!

Steele, Charlie's older brother is 4 (I think) and I think he appreciated Charles birthday party way more than Charlie. Probably because he is a little older, but the whole time he wore his awesome Optimus Prime costume, drove the excavator "by himself" with the help of Bryan, and he dug the biggest hole on the side of the dirt pile. He was very proud of all his accomplishments throughout the day! :)

After the party I convinced Blake to take me to Ender's Game. It just came out on Thursday and I had been dying to see it. Having read the Ender's Series when I was much younger I had been looking forward to the movie for a long time. 

Let me just tell you it did not disappoint. I think I said "THAT WAS THE BEST MOVIE EVER" upon leaving the movie theater more times than I can count. Blake is such a good sport for not letting that annoy him. Even with me repeating this phrase over and over he still would just say, "Yeah Melissa it was really good!" I unfortunately couldn't get him to admit that it was the best movie ever. Maybe after we watch it again he will come to terms with this fact. Moral of the story is I think they did a really good job, obviously the book will always be better, but in the time they had they did awesome!

I am so happy for little Charlie for turning two and I hope my rant about the amazingness of Ender's Game has convinced you to go and watch it. BECAUSE YOU SHOULD.

The Alpine Loop

Blake never lets me down on making Saturdays the best day of the week. Wether we relax, lounge around, and watch t.v. all day or go on some crazy adventure Saturday's are my favorite. Neither Blake or I work so we just get to spend the whole day together and it is always so awesome! That being said this past Saturday was a blast! 

Blake and I had a fun little double date with our friends Jordan and Jentre. In the afternoon we all met up at my apartment, loaded my trusty Outback, and took off. We were going to drive the Alpine Loop. Blake and I had been meaning to do this earlier in the fall when all the trees were still their vibrant reds, yellows, and oranges, but it never ended up happening. Thanks to Jordan and his final push to get us to go we finally did it! It was absolutely beautiful. Even though it is later in the fall and a majority of the leaves had fallen it was still a very pretty scenic drive. The mountains are always an amazing view no matter what season it happens to be. 

While we were driving we stopped at a few of the turn offs to admire the views at a stand still. At one of the first stops that we came to we went on a short hike up a trail. Jordan being the rock climber at heart that he is thought it would be a good idea to try and climb an Aspen tree. I don't know if any of you have ever attempted this in your life but I was very impressed at his tree climbing abilities. He made it to the top and climbed down without killing himself, which I was grateful for. When he was at the top of the tree I heard a little voice that sounded a lot like my mom telling me to tell Jordan he needed to come down or else he was going to get hurt. I don't know how that maternal instinct is going to be when my little rock climber kids are a hundred feet off the ground but I am hoping I am not a total wreck the whole time.

At another one of the stops we found the prettiest little stream with green moss growing on the rocks and a tree full of red berries right next to it. It really was a beautiful spot to be. 

Blake enjoy's taking pictures and I think that he is really talented! He took this picture of one of the trees and I think it is absolutely beautiful!

The Alpine Loop circles around from Sundance up American Fork Canyon, which just happens to be one of our favorite canyons to climb in! So how could we pass that up. On the way through we stopped at a wall called the Division Wall. It was Jentre's first time climbing outside which was kind of unfortunate because it was pretty chilly so the rock wasn't exactly pleasant to hold onto. Even though it was cold it was still a good time climbing and we all made it home in one piece.

After our double date Blake and I went to his house to check on the tank and clean it up. In case you were wondering our tank is doing awesome. Our two fish Andy and (the black clown fish still doesn't have a name) are the best of friends and all our corals are doing amazing. The one thing I am a little worried about is our Feather Duster. It is still constantly under attack by our hermit crabs, I am still hoping that this stops soon. 

At the end of our great Saturday we topped it off with a couple episodes of Doctor Who. Can a day get any better? I submit that it can not!

Pumpkin Carving With the Larson's

Have my last 3 blog posts (including this one) been about pumpkin carving? Yes, yes they have. That being said now I can just jump into this post!

I aboslultey love going up to Bountiful to visit Blake's family. We try to go as much as we can but I know we don't make it up there nearly enough. Last Sunday we drove to Bountiful, to Blake's parents house and it was so much fun! Unfortunately, we didn't make it up to Idaho earlier that day with all of Blake's family to see Brinlee Breshears off at her mission farewell! She is going to be an awesome missionary! But we did make it up for dinner and pumpkin carving.

When we first pulled up to the house Steele, Blake's dad, came out to meet us. He was the only one home since everyone else was still driving back from Idaho. There was something a little odd about what Steele was wearing. On top of his casual shirt and blue jeans he was wearing a holster, with his gun. The best part about it was he just acted like nothing was going on, this is one of the things I love about Steele! When we got into the house he let me try it on and it was pretty sweet, not going to lie. 

The rest of the night was very eventful, and how could it not be with three little kids running and screaming around the house. We ate dinner, caught up, and carved our pumpkins! Since the last pumpkin Blake and I carved was pretty simple, we decided to try something a little more difficult. It ended up being to difficult for me and I just did the bigger things on the pumpkin and made blake do the little windows. He is always a good sport  about things like that! It ended up being really cool though!

Pumpkin carving was a blast and just a shout out to the Larson's for always making me feel so welcome in their home. I am pretty sad to see October go just when I was getting the hang of pumpkin carving, and I can't wait till next year.

Pumpkin Carving Take Two

Last Friday was a very busy, stressful, and fun day! After  I arrived home from work Blake came over and we headed on over to Pep Boys the auto parts store. One of the tires on my Outback was leaking air and almost all of them were bald so I needed new ones. The problems with my car never end. Getting new tires was something that I was dreading, and was adding a ton of stress to my life. The day before this on Thursday, Blake, being the awesome boyfriend that he is called around to a bunch of auto stores to price compare and see what the best deal out there was. By the end of that Thursday night we had decided to get my new tires from Pep Boys because we had found a 20% off coupon. Unfortunately they only had 3 of the tires on Thursday so we had to wait till Friday so they could order an extra one.

When we were in the waiting room at Pep Boys my really good friend Noah Knight came and visited Blake and I, and it was so good to catch up with him. The time it took for them to finish everything with my car really flew by. When they told us my car was ready, and we went up to pay, they apologized that it had taken so long. Apparently my car had been ready for over a half hour before then and they were just so busy they couldn't get to the waiting room to tell me it was ready to go. Since we had to wait so long the amazing man working the cash register gave us a ton off on my tires on top of the 20% off! I ended up only having to pay $226.00 which I took as a major win in life! 

After we left Pep Boys Blake and I went rock climbing at our favorite indoor gym The Quarry. We didn't have a lot of time so we just climbed for about an hour and a half before we had to leave. We had plans later that evening to carve pumpkins with our friends Jordan and Jentre, along with Jentre's roommates Kaci and Jessica. 

After we were done climbing we met the group at The Branbury where Jentre, Kaci, Jessica, and I live. We then went and picked out our pumpkins in the good old Macy's parking lot. Picking out pumpkins is a pretty hard task. In the end Blake and I found the perfect pumpkin which, looking back on it wasn't so perfect because it couldn't stand up on it's own very well.  Anyway, Kaci did a cute smiley face and Jess did an awesome Pokemon. This is a picture of Kaci and Jessica with Jordan and Jentre in the background looking really into their pumpkin carving. 

Since Blake had pink eye last weekend and couldn't make it up to my parents house to carve pumpkins Friday was the first time we have got to carve pumpkins together and it was so much fun. 

Blake has a weird obsession with saying "kitty cat", it is one of his favorite things to say, next to "steve". Which I think are two pretty strange things to say on a regular basis. Blake also used to say "turd-burglar" all the time until we decided to name all our hermit crabs turd-burglars. My logic is that if we name a thing something blake says all the time maybe he will stop saying it so much (even though that is one thing I love about him, his weirdness). The pumpkin below is my experiment with this and turns out it hasn't really stopped him from saying either of those things... So epic fail at the experiment but major win because our pumpkin turned out awesome, good old steve.  

Jordan and Jentre carved a very cool bird. Their bird was inspired by Pinterest, Portland, and hipsters. It really was such a fun night carving pumpkins with all our friends.

Walker Anual Pumpkin Carving

At the beginning of last week Blake had started to feel kind of sick. For the last couple of months Blake has had pretty bad allergies which are not fun at all! This past week specifically we both thought his allergies were just being really bad but it turns out he actually had caught a cold. Which just means that last week was full of soup, Doctor Who, and resting! He will probably be mad that I put this picture up but he was just so funny and cute when he was sick, he looked like a giant green marshmallow all bundled up in his coat, making soup!

To make things even better towards the end of that week Blake found out that he had pink eye! I was even more bummed about this because that weekend we were supposed to spend Friday in Lehi at a murder mystery dinner my sister Shantel put together and Saturday up in Morgan carving pumpkins with the rest of my family! Sadly Blake wasn't able to make it because he would still have been contagious.

Now, every year, since before I can even remember the Walker family along with the Oliver family, would get together to carve pumpkins. The Oliver's are our very oldest family friends and they are an awesome family full of great sense of humors and a bunch of wild red-headed kids. As we all are getting older we have gone in different directions and the Oliver's moved to Nebraska so we were unable to carve pumpkins with them this year.

As much as we missed the Oliver's it was a good time with the Walker family! Jenna and Kevin came down from Idaho, Shantel, David, and Lydia came up from Lehi, and Jacob, my mom, and my dad were thrilled to have us home. This past Saturday was full of games, mainly whatzit? (which is really fun) and so many chip dips you could hardly count them all! 

Later in that evening we started carving our pumpkins. We all had our ideas and went straight to work. I generally, for the past couple of years, have done Doctor Who themed pumpkins along with my brother Matthew, but this year I just decided to go with a rock climbing theme. I got a silloute of a climber from the internet and started my carving. When I was almost done it looked terrible, you couldn't really tell that there was a climber on it. I then had a little moment of insanity where I took my dad's power drill and on the other side of my pumpkin made one of the more classic Jack-O-Lantern faces out of anger at my pumpkin. (Yes I have issues) 

Everyone else's pumpkins turned out awesome though! Here are the finished products!

David and Shantel's pumpkins 

They went with a classic halloween theme with ghosts, graveyards, and pumpkins.

Jacob and my Dad's pumpkins 

Jacob's pumpkin might fool you, but it is not a winning game of tick tack toe, it is actually the sign of an elleite "hacker" group, but not the bad hackers the good hackers.... man, it is to hard to explain but just know my little brother is awesome. ANYWAY,  my Dad's was his favorite Rugby team, the All Blacks. 

Just to preface Jenna and Kevin's pumpkins, here is a little update on Jenna. My sister Jenna is 6 months (27 weeks) pregnant! Only 3 more months left and I have a brand new niece. Right now I only have one niece and I can't wait for Jenna to have her baby girl. It is so amazing to see our family grow so much. Two of the five kids in the family are married with one grandchild and one on the way! Family is so awesome!

 Jenna and Kevin's pumpkins

Here is my first attempt that I didn't like at all. where I am concerened my pumpkin carving this year was no good! I can't wait for next year maybe I will resort back to a Doctor Who theme, that always seems to turn out good :)

 I don't say it enough but I am so grateful so spend time with my family. I love playing boardgames and just spending good quality time together. I am very blessed to be so close to my family. I can't wait to carve pumpkins next year at the Walker's annual pumpkin carving extravaganza!

Cornbelly's

Every year since I first moved down to Utah Valley I have gone to Cornbelly's. It is the most fun fall festival, for all ages! The first time I went was with my ward for FHE and I had so much fun I can't help but come back every single year. They have everything you can imagine for a night full of fall entertainment.

This past Friday night Blake, my boyfriend and I, drove up to Lehi, at Thanksgiving point to go to Cornbelly's. I had prepared well with multiple layers of pants and jackets, I was not going to be cold if my life depended on it. Even with all this preparation I was still shivering in the line to get in, so Blake being the amazing boyfriend he is ran and got his spare coat from his car. Thanks to him for the rest of the night I was warm and toasty!

When you first walk into Cornbelly's it is a little overwhelming! There are so many options of what to do, so making that first decision of what direction to walk is pretty difficult. Blake and I always try to do everything "strategically" so that we don't miss anything. We went to the children's area first just to look around, and it made me want to be a child again! I even convinced Blake to race horses with me which actually was pretty difficult!! It was more like waddling/running but it really was so much fun!

One thing I love that Cornbelly's has is a giant pumpkin tree! It is really awesome, it has pumpkins carved with everything from disney characters to Gordon B. Hinckley. This year was actually a huge disappointment because I found out that the pumpkins are actually plastic. Which makes sense because they sit there for a month or more and if they were real they would be really gross by the end of the season, I don't know why I didn't guess they were plastic before. Knowing they are plastic makes the intricate carvings on them a little less amazing and impressive. It is still pretty cool though and I love looking at all the different (plastic) pumpkins.

After that we just looked around some more, played in a room full of dried corn (my personal favorite), and headed toward the corn maze! Blake doesn't think he has ever done a corn maze up till this point in his life and that blows my mind because I love corn mazes! We totally rocked it and if we had been racing anyone else we would have dominated! For it being Blake's first corn maze he was pretty good at finding the way out!! 

Since we were there at night they have a couple mini haunted attractions. The lines were really long so we didn't make it to all of them before they closed but we did go to a few. The first one we got in line for was called "The Creature", it was pretty awesome. The Creature is just a giant blown up monster that you walk through. It is weird, you walk through the whole body, past the heart, and out... well you know... anyways there are scary people throughout the whole thing that do a very good job at surprising you and are really frightening!

The next one we went to was called Big Top Tower and it had a clown theme. Bake and I loved this one even though I was pretty afraid the whole time it was really funny and entertaining with the clowns! If you had some sort of phobia of clowns however, I would not recommend it!

The last and scariest in my opinion was the one called Chaos Castle. It is just a maze made out of hay bails. When you first walk in it is completely silent and pitch black. The hay insulates the inside so it is eerily quit, and so dark. The second I walked in I was convinced I was going to walk back out. I had no idea if there were scary people waiting for us in the maze.  If there weren't scary people in it, it would be almost fun to walk around in the pitch black, trying to find the exit. I convinced blake to wait for the next group to pass us and go in first so I could hear them scream, if they did scream I would know if there were people waiting to scare us!

When the group behind us entered almost immediately two giant gorillas came at us from two different directions, I was really freaked out. I closed my eyes for the rest of the maze and Blake was really brave to walked through it basically alone. The second I saw some sort of light I ran towards it and it just so happened to be the entrance not the exit. I didn't really care because I was so over that maze!

On the way out of Cornbelly's, Blake and I got the classic picture on the giant rocking chair. The man who took it and his wife, were so funny because his wife was telling him how to take it "better" than he was. He then asked her if she wanted to take it, and she said no, for him to! It was just the classic husband wife argument. He took a ton which I love because then you get to go through and find the one you like the most!

These are my favorite ones that the guy took! Corn Belly's was really so much fun and I am glad that I got to spend it with my favorite person!

Saltwater Tank Update

Some of the best, most entertaining things in life are only fun because of who you are doing them with. I feel so fortunate to have met my boyfriend Blake because anything and everything, we do together immediately becomes the most fun thing to be doing, ever. That is why I think I like working on our saltwater tank. It is something that we both love and have an interest in and that we can do together, and I love that. 

On Monday, Blake and I got a new fish, and a new coral! Since we have such a small tank (29 gallons) deciding on the fish we want is a huge decision. We can only have a certain amount of fish, per gallons in our tank. We were told once that we could have seven smaller fish by someone, and by another person that it is an inch of fish per five gallons. Since there are always a million different rules every other person has we think it will be best to be right around both of those rules. Which means we can only get 4-7 fish, depending on their size.

Our first fish, Andy, is a Clownfish. He is so cool! It is crazy the amount of personality one fish can have. Blake and I are huge fans of Clownfish, and we had been debating wether to get a second Clownfish for a while. When you have two Clownfish they can mate and get along really well. It is kind of weird actually, because a Clownfish, when it is younger is genderless. After it mates, the dominate one, usually the larger one becomes the female, and the smaller the male. They can flip-flop between sexes but generally that is the rule of thumb. I think that it is so interesting so Blake and I decided to get a second Clownfish. 

Our saltwater store was having a sale on their Clownfish at the time so that helped us to make our decision. Some Clownfishes are not compatable if they are different species, but Andy, our first fish is an Ocellaris Clownfish. That means we just had to find another Ocellaris Clownfish that we liked, and we found the perfect one! He is yet to be named but he is a black Clownfish.

When we got home it was a little later in the evening, and at 8 o'clock the bright lights on the aquarium switch off to more of a lunar light, to signal the end of the day. When the lights switch Andy goes directly into his sleeping corner and falls fast asleep. It is so funny because he sleeps vertically, instead of horizontally, and he stays in the same spot in the corner.

Blake got to put the black fish into the tank. I felt kind of bad releasing our new fish into the water while Andy was sleeping because we didn't know what was going to happen. After the black Clownfish had acclimated we put him into the aquarium. He immediately swam over to Andy trying to wake him up to play. 

You could tell Andy was cranky since he was trying to sleep but later that night they were swimming around the tank together like best friends. They even sleep right next to each other vertically in their little corner. Hopefully all the fish we get don't sleep in that corner because things are going to get pretty crowded! 

I got to put the new coral in, once we decided where to place it! The new coral that we got is called Duncan Coral but it is also known as Whisker Coral. It is awesome and looks kind of like a flower. When I first put it into the tank it was closed up and nasty looking but later in the night it opened up and I think it looks really awesome.

Just as a side story, while we are on the subject of our saltwater tank. Blake, my boyfriend is in a band, called The Beautiful People of Belgium. He plays the drums and they all have a bunch of fun. One night while they were practicing in the basement I was upstairs on my computer and looking at the tank. I couldn't help but laugh at how Andy was swimming in the water. It almost looked like he was dancing to the the band's music. I tried to take a video of it but he sort of stopped doing it, so it isn't as good as at first.

I love listening to Blake and the band play. They are all pretty talented and it is just fun! Tonight they have a show but it is pretty lame because you have to be 21 and older, which I am not, to go.  This is definitely one of the cons of dating a guy 10 years older than you! :)