Lee's Birthday Weekend!

Last Friday was Lee's 23rd birthday! We had been planning a mini vacation to go down to Utah for the last little while and we figured his birthday was a perfect time to go do that! Both of us requested the weekend off so we were able to spend some real quality time together! I LOVED it!!! So here's what went down:

This is what Lee woke up to on the morning of his birthday :)

Gassin' up for the drive! We spent the morning driving down to his grandparents house in Sandy, UT. We were greeted with hugs and a yummy lunch!

After that, we visited the Hogle Zoo. I just love the zoo! This is where Lee wanted to take me after going to the Tautphaus Zoo in Idaho Falls. It was pretty neat!

This dude was huge. Seriously.

That night, Lee's grandma made a delicious dinner for us of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. We played Skip-Bo and visited with Lee's aunt "Teens" and his Uncle Russ. It was so fun just to relax and spend time together!

We spent most of the next day in Salt Lake City. We went to the Salt Lake Temple in the morning - which was absolutely magnificent!!!! But that's a whole other blog post... Anyway, after we got done at the temple we walked around temple square. I hadn't been there in a couple years so it was nice to see everything again.

This was in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Lee was pretty insistent that we get a picture of me in this chair! He's so cute. :)

This is the inside of the tabernacle. This place has some pretty amazing acoustics! There was a sister missionary at the pulpit who was demonstrating how awesome the sound is without a microphone. She dropped pins and a nail and tore paper and we could hear it all as if she was using a microphone. Neat!

Lee got an iphone 4 for his birthday so he's been having so much fun playing with it! Almost all of these pictures were taken with his iphone and they turned out pretty good! I can't wait to get one too!

We had a good time just walking around and seeing the sights. We also went and saw the Joseph Smith movie. I cry every time I see it! It is so powerful and really puts everything into perspective as far as what the saints were put through to bring the gospel where it is today. That's a whole other blog post too. :) So after we got done in Salt Lake City, we went to Chuck-arama to eat with his grandparents. It was so nice to be able to spend the weekend with them and get to know them too! They were so hospitable and we are truly grateful to have had the opportunity to visit them.

That night we drove home and got milkshakes. I made him a chocolate cream pie...but it didn't quite turn out how I wanted it to unfortunately :( But the weekend was wonderful and we had such a great time together! We've gotta do this more often!!!

Traditions

Lee and I spent last evening at our friend's apartment across the yard. They invited us over for dinner and family home evening and we sure had a great time! For family home evening, we talked about traditions. We talked about the ones we grew up with, the ones we wanted to continue in our own families, and new ones we wanted to create. This has been a topic of conversation for Lee and I lately, as the holiday season is coming up. It's so important to me and to us to continue those traditions in our new family. Not only are they usually fun and sometimes silly, but they also helped me feel so much closer to my own family. It felt like we grew closer together because of the things that we did together. For example, my dad is a pretty big gamer...as in he likes to make his own games! So he made this Trick-or-Treat board game that has all these houses on it. Everyone would move their piece through the "neighborhood" and collect candy and do whatever was on the space that was landed on. Anyway, super fun! We would always play that every Halloween while we were answering the door for the real trick-or-treaters! One of Lee's favorite traditions is going to dinner with the whole family after the general priesthood meeting of conference. He also said that after Thanksgiving, all the Christmas decorations go up! I love that because we did that too! The weekend after Thanksgiving, we would go pick out our Christmas tree. That has always been my favorite thing to do because it ushers in the Christmas season.

I love being with family around the holidays! I love the traditions we share and the moments that bring us all closer together. I am so thankful that our families taught us the importance of being together and sharing those special traditions with each other. I, being the home body that I am, am going to miss that this year being so far from all of them, but I am so looking forward to brand new traditions too!

Scrub-a-dub-dub...

Whomever invented washers and dryers is a genius. Seriously. Lee and I were able to purchase a new set a couple weeks ago and they got delivered and installed today! I am absolutely BURSTING with excitement to finally have our own washer and dryer! Oh, it's wonderful!!!

Laundromat runs once a week: $6.00+

Cost per year to trudge to the laundromat: $312+

Having perfectly clean and dry clothes every single time without having to go anywhere: priceless.