Three day weekends and Madelyn's B-Day!

We have been busy! Memorial Day weekend and Madelyn's birthday! It's been crazy fun at our house. Our Memorial Day weekend started out with a girls night, which turned my evening into a boys night. On Saturday we hosted a special Memorial Day Rockband party... and I think it was our best one yet! We went down to San Antonio to spend some time with the family, and used every moment we had where we weren't going somewhere to relax!

We spent some time with our dogs (because we're nuts) and took them to a couple dog parks over Memorial Day.

Here is Sugar hanging out in the car while we grab some pizza. We were on our way to the dog park downtown.

Here's Sugar enjoying her time at the downtown dog park.

And here's Sugar AGAIN, but this time at the creek dog park closer to home...

And here's Rocky enjoying the water! It has rained a TON the night before, so the creek was super fun.

What's a holiday weekend without a Rockband party?

The biggest event of the past week was Madelyn's birthday. I threw her a surprise party... and she was totally surprised! It was worth the weeks of planning! She had NO idea!

Action shot of Madelyn getting surprised!

I took the afternoon off to decorate the house....

Baby Charlotte even came over, but she did not like when everyone yelled "Surprise".... she had to go home after that.

I even baked! I made brownies (Madelyn's favorite)... they were pretty good considering I made them, but pretty terrible by most brownie standards.

Here's all the ladies in the kitchen... this might be my new favorite picture of Jessica.

Sugar even celebrated... although, she did not like her hat.

Who can't resist dog ears? Rocky was getting some serious lovin' from Lorena. Our dogs love their dogsitter, Lorena.

It was a birthday of favorites, we had brownies, Madelyn's favorite Queso, guacamole, Izzies, Diet D.P., Peanut Butter Cups, and we played Catch Phrase, which is Madelyn's favorite game.

Playing Catch Phrase outside on the porch on a nice summer night? What could be better?

We also played "El Numbre", which is one of Madelyn's other favorites... it was hilarious.

I hope Madelyn had a great time on her birthday... I know everyone else did!

Lazy Weekend

Well, we had no plans this past weekend. We didn't do anything. We went to lunches and dinners, watched the rain, went on a run in the rain, we hung out with the neighbors, we took the dogs to the park, we cleaned up to the house.... Might seem like a lot, but it actually was a nice relaxing weekend. Just in time for the marathon we got coming up.... three different "parties" next weekend, Madelyn's Birthday, and then we're going to Dallas.... then boom, it's June. Craziness.

Since I don't feel right creating a blogpost without a picture, here are a couple from this weekend.

Here is me and our new foster dog... we decided to call him Murray. After the Flight of the Conchords show not after the city.

This might be my new favorite picture.... I took this in Old Navy. Can you pick out Madelyn?

She pulled off the smile perfectly!

Karaoke Party

This weekend our friend Justin graduated and threw a Karaoke celebration party. Everything in this Karaoke place is in Korean... the machine talks in Korean, the remote is in Korean, and the entire song book minus one small section where the songs are listed in English... organized by song title. The strangeness of this place only adds to the amusement! We had a great time...

Here are some pictures I will regret putting on the Internet in about 1 hour:

Who knows what I'm singing... I think this was Toxic by Brittney Spears.

Jessica and Bobby singing "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go"

Ohhh here she comes... watch out boy, she'll chew you up! She's a Maneater.

Like I said, everything is in Korean. Pick a song to sing....

Who likes Karaoke and has one finger? This girl...

I'm going to archive this photo under my "Blackmail against Jarrett" folder...

I'm going to archive this one under my "Blackmail against Jonathan" folder...

I don't know what I'm dancing to....

Madelyn never officially sang a song at the party, but she was signing every song from the audience.

My arm couldn't reach far enough... but here is Madelyn, me, Jessica and Bobby.

Jonathan is getting into it....

I don't remember which song this was... but I'm sure it was amazing.

I guess I was doing a lot of dancing....

Karaoke parties and Rockband parties... I guess we have a group of friends who loves to sing, dance, and make complete fools of themselves.

Our April: In Pictures

April has been a crazy month... but that's not really different than any of our months in the past year. We've been to SLC twice, I was out of town for a week, we celebrated our 3rd anniversary, we've been out with friends, we don't have a dirt backyard anymore, we saw a great dog get adopted, and we've been spending all of our extra time landscaping and studying.

Since we have so much updating to do... and seriously, who likes to read blogs anyway? It's all about the pictures! So, here is our April... in pictures (and some boring writing).

This is a picture of our sod installation... it was pretty wild. They just laid it down like carpet... I thought it would be a lot more complicated!

Here is baby Charlotte (our neighbors newish baby) on our brand new lawn. Charlotte is one cute kid... always smiling (or at least, that's what we see). We both really enjoy when Charlotte comes over to play... well, I enjoy it... Madelyn LOVES it.

Madelyn and her niece, Elly, having fun at our favorite stop in SLC: Cafe Rio.

Madelyn's sister Lacy and her daughter Elly.

When all of Madelyn's nieces and nephews are older they aren't going to have any pictures of me with them because I'm always behind the camera or not in town. Now when Elly gets older I can send this to her as evidence that I was actually around occasionally.

Here is a picture of all of Madelyn's first cousins (there are 44 of them) taken at her grandmother's funeral... I think all but a few are there. All I had was my camera phone... so the quality is not great. By the way, I think I could totally dunk a basketball. I would have tried it, but it's not really funeral reception appropriate... but Robert (Madelyn's dad) and I were discussing it. If it hadn't been for our suits we may have actually tried.

When we were in SLC we got to visit our friends Barbara and John and their new baby Charlie. He was cute... of course. Our old roommates Barbara and John havin' babies... that blows my mind! John and I had a poker table and ping pong table in our dining room 4 years ago... but of course that feels like 3 weeks ago.

Elly is a popular kid in Madelyn's family. Everyone wants to hold her and play with her... so I felt pretty lucky to get to spend an entire hour with Elly while Madelyn, Lacy, Keri and Kathryn went to get their nails done. I took her to Toys 'R Us... we just walked around and played with everything we could see. For some reason she really wanted me to take a picture of her hiding in this shelf.

When in Utah I went on a little trip with Fictionst to one of their shows. That's Stu (lead singer) and Robbie (guitarist) on the "bus"... aka, the airport shuttle.

This is Madelyn at our lakeside anniversary dinner. It was really beautiful and romantic... and we'll always have a great story to go along with it! We'll never forget this dinner (ask us sometime). Since our anniversary was kind of a blur with all the other April happenings I didn't get to post my blog letting the world know how much I love Madelyn.... I am so thankful everyday that I get to spend my life with her. She is my best friend. We've been together (dating and marriage) for 8 years! It sounds crazy because being with Madelyn is so effortless. It still feels like the first few months we were dating. I still look forward to her emails and her calls during the day. I still get excited for our date nights or just having her walk through the door. She really is a very special women. I'm a very lucky guy. You know how to spot the customers who don't usually go to fancy restaurants? They're the ones taking pictures of their food.

Speaking of Anniversaries, we went back to SLC to celebrate Robert and Kathryn's 40th wedding anniversary! I think they were just trying to upstage Madelyn and me with our puny 3rd year anniversary. We went to a nice dinner and took a nice family picture. Here we all are after the anniversary dinner. This was also the moment where Madelyn and I decided we were getting a new point and shoot :(

This past weekend Madelyn and I did some landscaping of our own... we went to the local nursery and loaded up on some nice plants. Madelyn finally got the tree she wanted... Here's hoping that we can keep it all alive. We've managed to keep our dogs alive... so I'm optimistic about our plants.

You can still see the trench marks from the sprinkler installation.... Our house also looks blue in every picture we take. Either our house is actually blue and we're living in some sort or "Emperors New Clothes" type situation or the camera makes gray look like blue. When you come visit you can decide.

Sugar enjoying life at lunch one day... our lunch spot also happened to be the place of the Celtic festival that day. So we had nice conversations in between songs from a 10 person bagpipe band. I'm going to proclaim it on the internet right now: I don't like bagpipes. I'm also pretty sure all you have to do is learn one song, because every "song" sounded just like the one before.

It was a crazy April... and after looking over this blog I've come to the realization that we're getting a lot older. This whole post is filled with babies and landscaping. When did we get so old?!?

My Spring resolution (yes, I made that up) is to be better about updating this blog. The Facebook is taking over my life and I'm neglecting our poor blog!