February Rundown

Well, things are finally calming down a bit since the hectic months surrounding our wedding. In February we had a bit more time to relax (and no one with major illnesses), but we did do some fun things.

Valentine's Day ended up being a lot of fun for both of us We went up to Cache valley to the Providence Inn and spent the weekend up there. It was a really nice bed and breakfast that not only included the room, but also all the popcorn, hot chocolate and cookies that you could eat, as well as free DVDs to play in the rooms.

While up there, Camshaft decided to take Mandee on a tour of all of his old haunts while at USU. We drove by all his old apartments and walked around campus (Which has changed a lot since he attended school there, with the new library and whatnot). We had dinner and lunch at the Bluebird and El Toro Viejo, before ending up at Hilary and Mark's for a good visit with them and the kids.

Mandee's family also made a trip to Utah again to help out with Chelle's wedding. The boys and girls went their separate ways for much of the visit, but we got together again to eat at Golden Dynasy and to go see the 3D movie Coraline. The design and the 3D was cool and we decided we didn't hate it, but it was really wierd and didn't explain a lot of things. Also, really not a movie for kids, as there is a lot of creepiness all over.

But other than that, we have been settling in on a routine, inviting family to come over when they are in town or available, and just going to work and enjoying each other's company. We have been playing a lot of Dokapon Kingdom on the Wii, Mandee has been quilting and cross stitching, while Camshaft plays Warhammer: Age of Reckoning with his boyz on Thursday nights.

So that's that. Hope everyone else is doing well these days.

January Round-Up!

Ok, Let's see, what did we do in January?

Well, for New Year's we ended up at Chelle's house celebrating with her, Victor, Greg and Holli. Camshaft somehow convinced them to try out the new edition of one of his favorite board games, Talisman! And they actually kind of liked it, at least they said they did. We spent the night and woke up early. Mandee went with the girls to shop and quilt, and Camshaft went up to Mt. Green to hang with his boyz.

And big news! Patrick and Michelle had their baby, a sweet little blonde baby girl named Ruby. We are an aunt and uncle again!

We also saw the movie Bride Wars with Mandee's sisters. Reviews were very mixed. Mandee thought it was entertaining. Camshaft can't quite put into words what he thought of it, but it was pretty much all negative. But it was fun to spend an evening together.

Little Heidi also had her birthday! She turned 1. We got her a Glow Worm, which she really seemed to like. We had a good time seeing Camshaft's family.

Mandee's mom also came up from Seattle to help Chelle prepare for her wedding. Mandee tagged along while Camshaft went and hung with his boyz. See Chelle and Holli's blogs for more details!

We have been trying to see most of the plays at the Washigton Terrace Playhouse since we started dating. Right now they are playing Blithe Spirit. It was an interesting crowd. Looks like there was some sort of high school drama conference going on. Luckily, they seemed at least somewhat serious about it, and they were fairly well-behaved while the play was going. It was a funny story about an author, who's wife had died and had re-married, that invites a medium over to his house to do some research for a book that he's writing. Well, the medium ends up summoning the spirit of his dead wife to the house and hijinks ensue! We quite enjoyed this one and was one of Camshaft's favorite's so far.

As a wrap up, we went and toured the Draper Temple. What can you say about temples that hasn't already been said? It was very beautiful. Its dimensions were interesting though. They are saying that it isn't what they call a "small" temple, but it didn't seem full size either. Some of the remarkable features included, a baptismal font decorated with cattails (besides the regular bulls) two small ordinance rooms decorated with murals, and a spectacular chandalier in the celetial room.

After the temple, we drove up to Mt. Green and had a Chinese New Year's celebration with Camshaft's family. We enjoyed hot and sour soup, won tons, char siu bau, potstickers, sweet and sour chicken, orange beef, fried rice with lop charg (not sure how to spell that) and almond cookies. We enjoyed the rest of the evening with the family and played Crossbows and Catapults and Lego Star Wars with the boys. Oh and BTW, it is the Year of the Ox!

Well, we think that about covers everying for January! Hope everyone is having a great year so far!

Holidays Part II

OK, this may be another lame picture-less post. We are getting really good at forgetting our camera for everything.

So anyway, it's been a holly-jolly Christmas! Mandee's parents came down from Seattle, despite the horrible weather up there. Between all the cancelled flights and hazardous conditions, they were lucky enough to have had their flight scheduled in between one of the lulls in the weather up there.

We met up with them Christmas Eve for the Mandee's extended family's open house at her grandmother's. There was lots of good food, and we watched a movie that Chelle had put together about Grandma's Christmases many, many times and said hi to some of the uncles, aunts and cousins.

That evening, we spent the night up with Camshaft's parents and spent the evening hanging out and playing games there with the whole family: Mom, Dad, all the siblings, their spouses, and the niece and nephews. The nephews were pretty wound up. At one point Brennan stated that he couldn't stand not opening a present for one more minute. Hilary finally relented and let them open the watches that they have been given. We think they were hoping for something a bit more exciting, like a video game or a toy, but when Camshaft asked if they would give him their watches, their answers were in the negative.

By 8:00 the next morning, the wrapping paper was coming off of presents at a frenzied pace. The boys were definitely the most fun to watch. Decker was very enthused about a LEGO Batman game he got and Brennan was excited by pretty much everything he got, tools, a castle (That we spent 2 hours trying to put together), and a treasure box, complete with the requisite pirate plunder.



We spent the rest of the morning playing games, eating everything in sight, like Christmas ham and sweet rolls, and enjoying our time with family. In the early evening, we braved the conditions and headed to Ogden to Chelle's house, where we had Christmas II and opened all of the presents that we had given and received from Mandee's family.



The main activity of the evening ended up being watching Mamma Mia. The reviews were very mixed. Mandee loved it and Camshaft did a lot of eye rolling and sighing.



The ride home ended up being a white knuckle ride. By the time we got out towards the west side of Ogden to get on the interstate, the weather was awful, but we made it home, slowly and surely, just in time to go to bed and get ready for another fun-filled day in Mt. Green. We mostly did more of the same, played with the boys, and played games. We also broke out the new Cooking Mama, which everyone enjoyed.



Saturday was the big party with Mandee's family. They all headed over for an all-day party, where we spent the bulk of the day playing Rock Band, which Mandee's parent's had gotten us for Christmas. Too bad we don't have pictures, as we all pretty much made fools of ourselves. We also busted out Cooking Mama and Loaded Question while enjoying Mandee's pulled-pork sandwitches. Good times were had by all.

So anyway, there's our Christmas activities. Hope everyone had a good one as well. Here's to a happy 2009 for everyone.

Holidays Part 1

Yes, we know. We have been slackers. We keep putting off posting, because we are afraid we will foget something that we did.

But we'll just post what we remember and let it go at that.

It's been a fun month. The holidays are gearing up. Thanksgiving was a blast. After spending the night before with Mandee's incoming family at our house, we ended up at Mandee's aunt Julie's house for the big meal. And we do mean big. There were like 35 of us there. We ate and ate and ate and then went over to Chelle's house to visit with her new beau's family and with each other. The next day we ended up at Camshaft's parent's house and spent a nice afternoon with his family. We've been lucky to see them quite often and especially enjoy going up there when the niece and nephews are there. Heidi is so cute, Decker is so fun to play with and talk to, and Brennan is so funny.

We also made a trip to Temple Square with Mandee's parents, down from Seattle, and siblings to see the play "Savior of the World."
It was very well done, with a large cast and a very cool, modular set that they could transform into about everything. We enjoyed it very much and were glad it helped us keep focus on the most important aspect of the holidays.

After a meal at the Lion House and the play, we saw the lights at temple square and then headed down to Mandee's grandparent's house and stayed the night there. Here's a couple of shots of us at temple square, one with just us, and one with Mandee's whole fam (We stole from Chelle and Holli):







That weekend was also Mandee's birthday. We had a great time with everyone, and Mandee finally got her big mystery birthday present that Camshaft had been holding on to for about 5 months, a Nintendo Wii. It's been fun so far, although we've probably been spending too much time playing Lego Star Wars

Another highlight was going to the Scrooge: The Christmas Carol musical at the Washington Terrace Playhouse. We went along with Holli, Chelle, and Victor and had a good time. It was quite the production, and their big finale of the year, with a huge cast and lots and lots of musical numbers.

So anyway, that's all we can think of at the time. Things have been good and we are looking forward to spending the holidays with friends and family. Thanks for all your love and thoughts this holiday season.

We hope everyone has a merry Christmas and happy holidays.

The Wedding Pics

So they are finally here!

We think we will just let the pictures tell the story:























Sorry the format is off. It just doesn't seem to format well.

Thanks again everyone that was there for all your love and support. We wished we could have taken a day to spend with each of you and we miss all of you that we don't see as often as we would like.

Mid November Update

Well, we have mixed feelings about posting without any pictures or anything else very interesting. But some people are starting to complain because we haven't published anything in the last few weeks, so here goes.

Really, we haven't really done anything very out of the ordinary for this time of year. We've slowly been getting our apartment and all of the usual activities that come with moving into a new place and getting married entail. Our Christmas shopping is almost done as well.

For Halloween, we went to Chelle's house and fended off the trick-or-treaters while watching a silly movie called The Orphanage. The night after, we went over to Mandee's extended family's Halloween party and had soup and played games. Our Team Ninja ruled at the "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader" game we played in.

We also went and saw the play Aida at the Washington Terrace playhouse. Mandee's cousin Kelland and his wife Ashley were in it. It was quite a departure from the typical Terrace play and was a tragedy instead of the silly stuff they usually do, and because of that, it was Camshaft's favorite play that we have seen so far at the Terrace.

Not too much else to tell besides a trip to the Olive Garden (lasagna and chicken maranara) with Chelle and Holli and a visit to the movie theater to see the newest James Bond flick (mixed reviews, but generally entertaining), we've been slowly settling into some semblance of normality again, while still trying to tie up a few loose ends from the wedding and getting the apartment in order.

Hopefully, there will be more to tell with Thanksgiving and Mandee's birthday the 29th!

The Pre-Halloween Festivities

So hopefully after this post we will mostly be caught up, except for the actual wedding, but it may be a bit before we get those pictures. We're in the process of picking them out and getting them printed and whatnot.

Anyway, last weekend was a good warm-up for Halloween. Friday night, we headed up with Camshaft's fam and went to the Pumpkin Walk in Logan.

For those of you who have never been, it is a really fun (and free) activity that the community puts on every year where people make displays of famous scenes out of mostly pumpkins along with other vegetables. For example: Noah's Ark and Batman.

Michelle and Patrick helped out with the Pumpkin Walk, as Michelle's parent's help organize the event, and were part of the creation of a Sword in the Stone display.

We also caught two Jedi knights at the festivities.

This is just a small sample of the fun things at the Pumpkin Walk, but it should give you an idea as to what goes on there. It's a fun family evening.

Afterward, we also got a chance to see the Heidi and the boys in their halloween costumes.

The next evening, we went on the Ogden Ghost Tour, another great activity for anyone interested in the history of Ogden and is not easily spooked. We had been last year and enjoyed it, but this year we brought our camera and got some... interesting... photos. We won't go too into detail here, because we know some people are sensitive about that sort of thing, but there was some strangeness to be had along with all the history of the area.

Anyway, Happy Halloween everyone!