Birthdaying

REASON/EXCUSE #3: Birthdaying (verb)
I'm noticing that I make up words a lot on this blog.  It's my blog, right? 

Birthdaying is what I was doing last weekend with Rob, Peanut and Katie. We had a grand time! The day started off with some crunchy waffles, made by pizza and breakfast extraordinaire chef, Robbie. Then we were whisked away to this event Women Fly It Forward.  We had not signed up for flights in advance but somehow, my salesman of a sister, finagled a ride for both of us. She even got to fly her plane for a portion of the ride.

I'm guessing most of you have no idea that I've always wanted to be a pilot..so now you know. It's on the short list of goals if I choose to pay for them before I die. This was a really special treat. We had originally stopped by on the pretense that you had to visit this event in order to enter and essay contest to win a free pilot training. So a flight or not, I wanted to win the contest so we had to go. I will be finishing my essay in the upcoming week. Wish me luck.  Since I was lucky enough to get a flight they even interviewed me for the local newspaper as I exited the plane. What a great morning!

After that we made a trip down to DC. It was a beautiful day. The only place we could find parking was near the Tidal Basin, so we decided to see the three memorials on the basin: MLK, FDR and Thomas Jeffereson.  All three were superb. My favorite was the FDR memorial. In a few more weeks I'll get to venture back with my parents and see the basin looking like this:

Following our walk we were about to head up to the national aquarium when we happened upon a rugby game being played in the middle of downtown. So of course I wanted to stop and watch. It was exciting to remember those good times at BYU.  It's such a fun game to watch. I'll take rugby anytime over football.

Post game we decided we were famish so that completed our day. Katie had found a fun restaurant called "Eggspectations", knowing that I love eggs, so we headed to Silver Springs for a little grub. We all thought we'd be there real quick with it being only a wee 8 miles away. Who knew it could take 35 minutes to drive 8 miles. Ha ha. Welcome to a big city, right?

The night ended with a beach ball cake, ice cream and some good conversation with our first house guests in the new place...Hillary, Cameron, Paige and Grant. 

Can't wait to see what 27 brings!

Baby Walks

REASON/EXCUSE #2: This post is long overdue...Peanut is a walker. It's official. It's adorable. He waddles, he waves his hands, he trips and he gets back up. He loves to push and pull things as he walks. For instance, I captured this gem of a photo on our recent adventures through Washington D.C. He so darn big, I just can't believe it. Why do they grow up so fast?...Oh and the reason this is an excuse is it now takes twice as long to get anywhere or do anything because I delusionally tell my self that he'll follow me where I need him to go. Especially out the car or down the stairs when I'm carrying an arm-load of things. Not so my friends, not so.

Spring Catch Up

Ok so I haven't been blogging. This is due to a variety of reasons and excuses of which I will dole out one by one over the course of the next few days. I hope you consider them worthy of an absence. That being said, it sounds as if I am assuming I have regular readers to let down. Please humor me.

REASON/EXCUSE #1:  With spring time comes lovely weather, cherry blossoms, and spring cleaning. These past few months I have decided to forgo cleaning. Instead I used the tried and true tactic of just buying something new. The new item in discussion here is a home. Your right, I am implying that I didn't want to clean my apartment anymore so we bought a new home. A town home, to be exact. Wink! I wish it was that easy. Check it out. You can drown out my oh so exciting narration by just pushing mute. I actually might prefer it that way.

**I realized that I sound a bit under enthused in the video. I apologize. It was a post nap endeavor. I'll put some more pep in my step when I narrate next time.**

The story of the house is this...we made a goal to be down-payment ready to start looking for homes at the new year. And look we did, until we stumbled upon a wonderful deal on a brand new home and bought...much more quickly than anticipated. We are officially first time home owners and we did it on our terms. We stayed under budget, made our 20% down and it feels so good!

I love the new kitchen. We have enough cupboards that even with all our things in them some are still empty. I feel that we have exponential amounts of counter space now as well. Compared to this (below) it's not hard to do. Not even room to pack a box and eek out a peanut butter sandwich.

I also have come to the loving realization that when you have a lot of space and not a lot of belongings, those few belongings can be in a state of complete disarray but your house still feels clean. Brilliant! I also love that our mortgage payment is only slightly larger than our exorbitant old rental payment and we have over double the space. Hallelujah! I hope you enjoyed the short video tour of the almost unpacked, completely un-decorated new abode. I'll try and update as we make the place more our own.

Tomorrow....Peanut is Walking!