shower

Tuesday Brandon called and told me he would be working a little bit late and then suggested we go out to eat for dinner. I was surprised because it was the end of the month and the budget was tight, but of course I agreed to go. When he got home, he was in quite a hurry to get going and he was very insistent with where we were going. It was odd, but I just went with it. When we got to Zupa's he was insistent on getting a table before ordering- again very odd. You'd think that I would have realized something was going on, but I didn't. Our family (girls, of course) were all waiting for us to have a surprise baby shower for Luke. It was a lot of fun, and we got some really cute stuff for Luke.

Thanks Karen, Amber, Lisa, Mom, Syd, Amanda, and Grandma for coming and surprising me!

Story time

Abbie goes through phases of what her favorite book is. Currently it's this Christmas book that we checked out at the library (like 7 weeks ago). Usually when we read it we have to each eat of piece of the featured candy on each page. She knows it so well that she can read it too. It's seriously the cutest thing ever!

Congrats Dallin!

Dallin opened his mission call on Wednesday. He is going to the Georgia Atlanta Mission, English speaking. He reports to the MTC on August 14th. We are so excited and proud of him.

Splash park

Thanks Ninny for coming with us!

Our life lately...

I hate getting so behind on blogging because then I don't ever want to do it because there is too much to catch up on. But, I love looking back at it so here goes a quick catch up based on a few pictures we've taken. 

Abbie and I stayed the night in Park City at the beginning of May with great grandma and grandpa.

Mom and the 2 girls came up for awhile to swim. Abbie loved it even though it was a bit cold.

Abbie loves doing puzzles and she is pretty good at them too. :)

Riding her new bike from a yard sale (yard sales are our favorite Saturday activity in the summer)

We bought a zoo pass. Abbie and I went just the two of us one day.

Almost every morning while Brandon shaves his face, Abbie shaves 'beavery'. She loves all her animals. I sometimes wonder if she thinks they are real, because they do everything she does and she talks to them all the time. It's so cute!

One day we went to Temple Square because I wanted a picture of Abbie in front of the Temple. Because Brandon wasn't busy at work he joined us.

We bought a swing-set. Who knew those were so complicated to put together. Abbie loves it! She is always asking to go out and swing. Our yard still needs a ton of work. Brandon's latest project has been to dig up all the weeds (and trust me there are A LOT).

Memorial day weekend we were able to visit some of our relatives' graves.

(Grandma Nielsen)

Monday (memorial day) was our 'traditional' zoo day.

We are the proud owners of..

a House!!!!!!! 

We started looking at the beginning of February, once we had saved up enough for a down payment.  

We looked at several different houses, but none of them seemed to be the right one. Then we found this one. 

We went and looked at it one night at the beginning of March (I didn't really have high hopes for it) and coincidentally (or not) my family and Brandon's mom also came with us. It didn't take long to realize that we really liked it and so did everyone else. That evening we made an offer on it and the next day it was accepted. Yay!  It really is the perfect house for us. It's an older home, but newly remodeled inside, so it didn't need a lot of work. It's in a great neighborhood, close to the school, and close to pretty much everything. It has 5 bedrooms, so there is room to grow. 

We closed on the house last Thursday, and moved in Saturday. Our family was so great to help us with a lot of the packing and with the actual moving. Now that most of the unpacking is done, it feels like home :)

Since we have only ever lived in apartments, we bought a few pieces of furniture: washer/dryer, couch, fridge, and a sweet tv.

Abbie has transitioned so well! I wanted to make sure she was happy with our new house, so we decided to make her room a fun place for her. We pained it light pink, put up a cute rainbow and girly stickers on the wall, and got her a new big girl bed (twin).  She absolutely loves her room, and loves jumping on her new bed. I think she also loves all of the space (as do I) to wander and play in.

So far, it's pretty great to have our own house! We couldn't be happier!

Easter

We had a wonderful Easter this year. Saturday morning we went to an egg hunt. Abbie was so funny, she would grab an egg and then start to come back to show us and we would tell her to go find more, and then she would run past a bunch of eggs until she found one she wanted. Oh, well as long as she had fun.

Then we went and dyed eggs with my family. Abbie LOVED it! She would grab an egg and stick it in the dye, hands and all, for about 10 seconds and then want to do another one. She was very bossy about who got to use each color and when. She made quite the mess :)

Afterwards, we headed up to Farmington to go to the annual Crowther egg hunt and lunch. This time around she figured out the hunting and ended up with a ton of eggs. And she had fun playing with her uncles.

Sunday the Easter bunny brought Abbie a basket.  Brandon and I spoke in church, which was quite frightening because we were the whole meeting. (Can you say pressure?)  I am so glad that's over and am glad that I was able to study more about the resurrection of Christ. After church we headed over to my family's house for lunch/dinner, and another egg hunt. Abbie missed it though because she fell asleep. 

In the evening Abbie was spoiled once more and had her own egg hunt from Grandma Karen. She seriously ended up with like 25 eggs.