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.