Corey & Marci

     I'm one of those lucky people who absolutely LOVE their in-laws.  I really can't say  I have an in-law I don't adore.  My brother made a steal of a find in his beautiful wife Hayley, love all of Corey's siblings and parents and personally think Jared picked his sweet wife just for me (okay, I know he really picked her for him, but I'm sure part of his thought process was, this girl and Amber will be great friends..).  But I have to say, that this girl is by far the most ENTERTAINING.  Shes great on her own, but if you want some real belly laughs she works best with her comrade in craziness....Corey.
     As an example I thought I'd share a recent text-conversation between the two.  A little back-story....a cute man in our ward just gave us his piano as ours was quite old and in need of repair.  Corey had asked Marc if she wanted our old one.  They're in the process of selling their house so they didn't want it there so they didn't come up with a storage spot.  That's where the texts begin.

Corey: " Do you guys really want our old piano? We're fine to hold onto it for a little while, but we need to know either way."

Marci: " Yes we would love it!"

Corey: " Okay, come get it tomorrow k, ok. "

Marci: "Yeah, stick it in the trailer with the rest of our stuff"

Corey: "Um no, but I will stick it somewhere else hahaha"

Corey: "JK Marci"

Marci: "Real mature fart face"

Corey: " pooh head"

     They seriously communicate like this all the time.  Pretty darn funny I think. Oh and I looked for a "nice" picture of Marci where she's not making a funny face or showing her bum....I don't have one, not a one.  Love ya Marc!!

Keaton's Chinese Program

       Every year the Chinese Immersion kids put on a program at their school.   It's really fun that they get to learn so much about the culture of the language they're learning.  It's always astounding to me to see such young kids speaking Chinese.  Keaton can translate almost any normal phrase into Chinese and isn't allowed to speak English at all in their immersion class. 

 Each grade wore a different color.  The "kids in black" are the first graders.  The second graders were in red on the side and Keaton's class, the third grade wore white.  This is the third grades song about the clouds turning into sheep.  Super cute. 

 Keaton and his cute friend Ellie (who he asked to be his Valentine )

 Keaton doing the "dragon dance"

Great job Keat! We're so proud of you!

Happy Valentines Day!

 A few days ago Corey and I found a few valentine messages written on our bathroom mirror that I thought I'd share with you for Valentines Day.  Mac did the top one (M & D stands for Mom and Dad...it took me a minute to figure that one out) and Keaton did the bottom one, it's I love you in Chinese. What cute boys!

A few things I want to remember...

Kids are funny, and hard and cute.  I find myself very amused by my own kids quirks and want to remember a few of them.  Keep in mind that these may be funny to me because they're my kids and I'm quite isolated from the outside world, but here goes...

I love finding these monkey's in every small space they can find!

The kids love Chinese food so I try to make it regularly.  This particular night I was excited to be making something everyone likes...almost.  I loved McKay's separation of the foods he'd like and eat and the ones he wouldn't.  Funny.

This is one stubborn girl!  She's gone to bed wearing all sorts of shoes including cowgirl boots and these cute rain boots she got from her cousin Aubrey.  She also went to bed with 8 elastics in her hair just to wake up crying and wanting me to get them out. Taking them out before she went to sleep? No way!

So amusing to me that this was one of my projects this week...making a bigger space for the water bottles.  As you can see I doubled the storage space, Corey was very impressed as will all you bike-wives out there!

Dancing twins.  Brecken actually got frustrated with me this week because I was dancing with Avery, that's his job.  I love that they just take each other by the hands and dance. 

A little 'splainin.'  This is a bible board book of our kids that we read to them at story time or we take it to church to keep them busy there.  The funny thing is is that whenever I read this to Avery she always stops on this page and says "oh no the bird getting him!"  It makes me laugh every time. 

Lastly, the writing on frosty windows.  It's hard to tell from this picture, but every morning after showers and as kids and parents get ready there is always a picture in the foggy window.  It's usually of one of the boys with glasses...a very common tease, but I've seen all sorts of things from scooters to their names.  It's one of those things you just know you'll miss someday when there's no stick figure in your bathroom window. 

A Weekend Away...

       Corey and I (like so many others) were married over Christmas Break while we were going to college.  Of course when you're planning your wedding you don't think about the date that will be your anniversary for forever!  At least I didn't.  Suffice it to say, we almost never celebrate our anniversary beyond a kiss, a note...nothing too big.  We're usually at Corey's parents cabin...with his whole family. It's one of my favorite family traditions and I wouldn't change it.  So we usually say "we'll celebrate in the summer" or something similar to that, but we never do. 

     This year I was determined that we would celebrate our anniversary and it was awesome!  It began with this....

Thirteen roses for our thirteen years together from a very sweet husband of mine!

     My parents came over and we were off for the weekend.  A big shout out to my parents who always make us feel like we're doing them a favor by leaving our kids with them...THANKS MOM AND DAD!!

     We started off with dinner.  Corey had gone to this cool pizza place about a month ago and was excited to take me there.  It's called the Rusted Sun Pizza & it was scrumptious!  It's very small and you  can watch the guys there throwing dough and making your dinner. If you plan on going be sure to get a buffalo chicken calzone with blue cheese crumbles...we loved it! 

   Then we headed over to the Brad Paisley concert.  Can I just say...I love country music!  He had great openers too.  Scottie McCreery was first off and wowed all the teenage girls around us.  He has a great voice and was very fun to listen to.  Then "The Band Perry" came out.  They're one of my favorites and put on  a great show!  Corey was laughing at me singing every word to their songs and loving it all so much.  And then there was Brad.  Wow!  Everything was so BIG!  He put on an amazing show!  Every song he sang was it's own production with lights, animation, video, etc.  He went through at least six guitars, one of which he signed and gave away to a lucky person near the stage.  Corey's little brother had told us what a great guitar player he is and he really is! 

     Scottie McCreery and The Band Perry came out and sang a song each with him which was really fun.  Then he started to sing "Remind Me," his duet with Carrie Underwood and the crowd went wild when we could see her walk on stage.  The rest of the night Corey was trying to convince me that she wasn't really there, that it was some sort of illusion or recording.  I thought he was crazy until I googled it....totally a hologram!  Seriously looked real....amazing. 

     We'd planned on staying our first night at the cabin, but Corey got a hotel close by, a very thoughtful surprise.  On Saturday we just hung out together, did a little shopping and a little eating.  That afternoon we checked into the Grand America Hotel.  It's a very beautiful and very fancy hotel!  I took pictures of our room because it was so pretty!  Here is our suite....

 

The bathroom was my favorite!  You can't really tell but the tub is super deep.....we're gonna consider that on our bathroom remodel this spring!

Corey's actually sleeping in the bed in this picture.  It's funny how I dream about sleeping in almost daily and then when I get a chance to I'm up and ready to go at seven-thirty...oh well.

 The courtyard view outside of our hotel balcony

City and County Building

The courtyard by day...

     After we checked in we changed into our work-out clothes for a run.  We ran around the city and county building, the library and ended up at a place called Euro-treasures.  I'm so sad we didn't have the camera or even a phone because it was such a fun, crazy & interesting place.  It's a warehouse of antique....stuff.  They have tons of chairs, tables, desks, night stands along with a stuffed lion, half a rhinoceros (I thought of you Harrises!), an elephant foot and more.  We probably spent an hour just looking. 

The only picture I got of us together on our weekend was right after our run.

    For dinner that night we went to Sugarhouse BBQ.  It was really great!  Another place we'd recommend if you like Barbecue.  They've been rated best barbecue in Utah for the past thirteen years!  Pretty impressive. 

Then we got some junk food and headed back to the hotel to watch the Jazz vs. Jimmer game. 

    The finale to our fabulous weekend was the yummy and fancy breakfast buffet at the Grand.  It included smoked salmon, blintzes with berry sauce, fresh fruit, croissants, brie, etc.  In other words...yum.   

     Happy Anniversary Babe!  I had a great time celebrating with you this weekend!  Maybe we could do it again...you know, next year!