Happy Birthday!

Okay, I know it's Halloween. We had tons of kids come by the house today and one that made us laugh pretty hard. I was on the couch in the sun room and Jer went to answer the door. This cute little kid is standing there on the porch as Jer opened the door. The dad asked the kid, "What do you say?"

The little kid says, "Happy birthday!"

Funny kids. We haven't had too much going on this week, just getting ready for winter. I have to say I am looking forward to it a little bit. That is, as long as it doesn't last until summer next year. Sure would be nice to have Spring. I never realized just how much work is involved with a house, especially one with a garden and fruit trees. Bills and a lawn, no problem. But all the tilling, planting, weeding, watering, pruning, trimming, thinning, spraying, harvesting, processing, cleaning, raking, and trimming adds up. Yes, trimming gets two since we have to do it before and after the fruit comes. I didn't think it would be as much work as it has turned out to be, but man that took up a lot of our summer days. And nights. That made us realize just how much effort Jer's parents put into this place. Now we just get to look forward to shoveling snow!

Anyway, as promised, here are our pictures from the Halloween party that our friend Tya and her husband Brandon put on a few weeks ago. Jer and I went over a few hours early and helped them get everything set up. Jer helped Tya with the food and I helped Brandon with some of the decorations. They went all out and we had a good time. I even got to play with a hot glue gun and an air compressor, how could that not be a good time? That was to make it look like there were cobwebs, it looked pretty good. Where it worked. We had some issues getting enough air pressure for the spraying of the hot glue. I wonder how easy that was to clean up...

After we got the house ready, Jer and I got into our costumes. Jer did a great job getting us something to wear. I wasn't much help, sad to say. Jer spent the morning sewing her little outfit together and making my little sailor tie-thing. At one point during the party, Tya asked me to go to Target to get her a new printer cartridge. She takes a picture of everyone when they arrive and at the end of the night hands them out. Like the picture you'll see down below. So Jer and I took off and walked through Target in our costumes, I kept my little hat on. It was fun to see how people reacted as we walked around the store.

Here is the picture I took of us getting ready for the party.

Picture of my cute wife in her costume, finishing with her makeup.

This is our party picture that Tya took of us, like a school dance picture. I hope that it is obvious that I am Popeye and Jer is Olive Oyl. I told people that I had no pipe or tattoos because I didn't want to condone them. Oh, and I have hair. Guess I am the younger version of Popeye, before years of service in the Navy wore him down...

I was able to get a little bit of the magician's act on video, not bad considering I just used my camera. One of these days we'll get a camcorder. The magician was great! He performed for about an hour and he was entertaining. He had some great tricks, and sadly I wasn't able to record the best ones. The first one you'll see was his opening trick, where he had a rolled up dollar bill and would make it appear under his cup. The second trick you'll see was with a few pieces of rope, where he made the uneven lengths of rope become even. You'll see what I mean. One cool trick he did that I didn't record involved a $20 bill, a pouch and a lemon. He had a kid in the crowd sign his name on the bill and another person on the other side of the room holding the pouch. In the end he pulled a lemon out of the empty pouch and the $20 bill had disappeared. He pulled out the lemon and then cut it open, and there was $20 bill folded up inside the lemon. Jer and I figured out a few of his tricks. But on most of them, just when you think you have him caught, he did something different. It was fun to watch. Hopefully the video and sound are in sync, when I watched the footage it seemed like some parts were a little off. Enjoy!

Our little getaway :)

Now that we have caught you up to last week, we can tell you about some of the fun things we did the past few days. To kick off our week we went to the Health department and got all of our shots for our trip to Africa. I ended up with 4 shots and Jer got 3, needless to say our arms were sore for a few days. And I think I'm sick now because of one of those shots. Awesome.

The real fun happened when we took off on Thursday after work and headed up to Logan to stay the night. For those who haven't heard about this, there is a great deal called the Cache Valley Getaway. Basically, you get a cheap rate on a room in Logan and a gift certificate for dinner for 2. We did this last year and loved it. Here's the link for those that would like to learn more (or you can ask us): http://www.getawaypackage.com/.

We got a room at Anniversary Inn again and loved it! We loved it last year too, but we tried out a new room this time and it was a lot of fun. We booked the Biker Roadhouse room, you can see pictures below. Last year we stayed in the King Arthur suite, which is nice. It was a great trip for us to get away from work and relax for a day. The next day we checked out and did an endowment session at the Logan Temple, then went and used our dinner certificate at Hamilton's. Highly recommended! We got the Early Bird special with our certificate since it was about 3pm when we went there, but that worked out because we got drinks, soup/salad, a very tasty steak, and desert. Yum. Worth going there again. Anyway, on to the pictures.

We walked into our room and there was a pinball machine and a Harley. We made it a goal to break 100 million points on pinball before we checked out. Jer managed it before I did and got the highest score too. Guess she likes pinball. :)



Me, obviously, sitting on the Harley in the foyer of our room.


Jer, playing more pinball. In her defense, at least she didn't get up in the middle of the night and play the stupid game to try and get the high score. I, however...

Next to the pinball room was our pool table room. We played each other a few times and had a good time, we even learned how to use the slight tilt to the bottom right corner to our advantage.

After walking through the pool table room you get to the bed and bath. Very comfy bed and we loved the bath area. The tub was big and the shower, well, I'll devote a little more attention to the shower in a minute.

Also in the bed area was our snack area, and we had our own soda fountain! We got hot dogs, chips, sparkling cider, and cheesecake for dinner in the room. We decided we just wanted to relax in the room and use our gift certificates for dinner the next day. We watched the Red Sox/Rays game 5 up until the 6th inning, but turned it off because it wasn't very exciting. I turned the game back on later that night just to check the score, and watched the Sox score the winning run after being down 7 to 0.

I thought this was funny, never saw one before. This is a little toaster specifically designed to cook hot dogs and toast hot dog buns. It's called, I love this, the Hot Diggity Dogger.

Okay, now for the shower. I love this shower. Looking at it, I was a little confused on what everything was. But once I turned it on...

It was like my own personal car wash! I always thought it would be fun to go through an actual car wash, minus the scalding hot, pressurized water and the scratchy bristles. This was great! It has the waterfall head at the top and then there are the two side heads you can turn on and aim around, but if that isn't enough, you also have one of the removable heads. I definitely have to get me a shower like this!

That was our fun Logan trip for Thursday and Friday. Next post we'll tell you about Saturday and our Halloween costume party with the magician that performed for us. :)

Recap

I guess it's about time for us to fill everyone in on what's been happening this past month. Or two. How long has it been? Best way to do this is to throw a whole bunch of pictures out there, so here we go:

Ha, I'm starting you off with my toe. I played in an outdoor 2 on 2 volleyball tournament a few weeks ago, my first and only outdoor competition this summer. This was a week after Jer and I gave blood. I mention that because of the next picture you'll see. Anyway, the toe. At some point, as I was diving around on the grass, I rolled on my toe and I thought I broke it. Needless to say, the last few games were a little rough.

So, apparently it's not a good idea to play volleyball for an entire
Saturday the week after you give blood. Here is my arm when I got home, I didn't even notice it during the day but by the time I got home I sure did.

For one of my Young Men activities my group went downtown to look at the Norman Rockwell exhibit put on by the Boy Scouts. Before we went to the exhibit the boys wanted to go up to the roof of the Conference Center. I invited Jer to come with us to see the paintings, so this is us on the roof at sunset.

Another picture up on the roof, I really liked it up there. It was my first time and it's amazing to think about all that up above you as you are standing inside the building. I thought this picture was pretty, but it also makes me laugh. I happened to notice the guy on the left doing a Superman pose...

Skipping ahead in time, Jer and I decided we needed a new quilt since mine is getting worn out. We asked my mom if we could come over for Conference weekend and spent the weekend putting our new quilt together. Jer took this one of herself as we were tying the quilt, notice the yarn in her hair. My cute wife. :)

Me and my cute mom as we started tying the quilt.

Me and Moose looking at each other as I sat tying the quilt. Funny story here. At one point Moose was sitting by me, sort of like in this picture. Jer was in a chair on the other side of the quilt. Moose decided he wanted to go over to Jer, but instead of going under the quilt to her he jumped onto the quilt. Luckily, the quilt was clamped on real well so it didn't collapse on us. Moose still tried to make it over to Jer but you could see he was really scared. We though it was hilarious! Poor Moose spent the next 30 minutes as close to Jer as he could possibly get.

Here is our quilt! It's nice and big, and Jer did a great job of sewing it all together. Jer took this picture to show the difference in the two sides of the quilt.

What else... Jer has been learning how to knit from her cubicle neighbor at work. This is a shot of her, and the puppies, as she is knitting a scarf. And yes, that is a bobcat on the wall.

Picture of me in my pajamas walking the dogs. Jer and I try to take the puppies over to the school down the street and let the dogs run if nobody else is there.

Poor, sad puppies. They never like bath time. It's pretty funny when it's time for them to get washed, they know it's coming and try to hide.

Lastly, here is a funny picture of Moose. I was sitting at the computer with my foot up on the sofa arm, when Moose decided to join me. So, he laid down on my foot, propped his chin on the back of the sofa and fell asleep. It was hard to get the picture taken without making him move, I was laughing to myself the whole time.

There you have it! We have more to write about, but I'll do that another day this week. We had a busy but fun weekend so that deserves a post of it's own. Hope everyone is well!