Valentines Day

We had some fun celebrating Valentines Day.  Chase learned to help open presents.

He loved the card.

Oh, and the box.

Really loved the box.

But Marcus and I love what was in the box.

Check out how awesome the whale!

Chase apparently also tried to eat his chair.  

One of his favorite things to do is sit in that little chair.  

Super cute.

Oh, and he made a boat :)

Later, he was excited to have another box with cute clothes, 

truffles (!), and some conversation hearts.

He would not let the boxes of hearts go.

We had a delicious pizza dinner from Belle Via, which is a great little place in Long Island City.  We ran across it when we went to Gantry park last year.  Mmmm... Margherita Pizza!  Chase had some too.  Though he enjoyed his slices of tomatoes just as much :)

And Marcus brought home dessert from work.  He carefully packed some Crumbs cupcakes.  Definitely a good food day!

chocolate brownie and red velvet cupcakes

And before Chase went to bed, we watched a movie all together.  Seriously, all together.  

 

Chase watched almost a half an hour!  Our little movie watching stud.

Valentines Day

This year, our Valentines Day lasted almost as long as Christmas. Seriously. It spread across probably two weeks. We had some problems coordinating/communicating with UPS, so that stretched it out. The funny part was that Marcus and I obviously didn't talk about what we were getting each other, but we ended up both getting a dvd and a book. And we watched the movie he gave me last night :) Marcus bought me The Help, which is probably one of the best movies ever. If you haven't seen it or read it, DO IT NOW! You won't regret it. I didn't really have many pictures, but here's what I had on my phone.

This is what I left out for Marcus before work. I had a closing shift, so I had slept in :)

We were also surprised and happy to find this box from Marcus' family-- two boxes of Carnation Instant Breakfasts! Marcus had been so sad when he realized the Costco out here doesn't carry them. But we're pretty stocked up now!

And my family sent a box of little brownies from Fairytale Brownies. If you ever need to send treats anywhere, get them from here! Sooooooo good! I thought about taking a picture of the cute box, but we tore into it pretty quickly :)

We also decided to go out to California Pizza Kitchen later in the week. I won't lie, I really wanted Cafe Rio, Zupas, or Texas Roadhouse, but the great west coast chain restaurants still haven't quite made it out here. One day. But I love CPK, and we had a great time eating way too much delicious pizza. (And it's conveniently located close to Marcus' work-- I think we'll be going back again soon!)

First day of spring... finally!

I am so glad that it is finally springtime! Not that the Utah weather listens and actually warms up for longer than four days, but it is promising. I thought it would be fun to post some pictures of pretty flowers that Marcus has given me over the past few months. I was going to do this sooner since they were all so pretty, but this seems fun too :) at least for me. And you can see my fun vase that we bought as part of my Valentines present. (A special thanks goes out to Misha for helping Marcus decide to get me flowers some days!)

This week's fun bunch:



during a really stressful week:

Valentines Day (these ones are hanging up in our room dried):


And I've had requests to show pictures of Fish's leaf couch, and a spring post is a great time to include pictures of cute little animals. The couch is pretty sweet. The fish really sits on it. Just ignore the food on the leaf-- we fed him while he was still napping on his couch. Maybe he'll get cable next :)

Sweet, huh?!

it almost looks comfortable :)

Our fat frog charging the phone

Even though I'm crazy excited about it being spring, which means it may be nice outside sometime in the near future, we had a great winter overall. Here's some pictures of one of the most random and exciting winter evenings at our apartment:
When I was trying to get my cello and tons of other stuff in the door one night, this cat jumped on the opportunity to run inside to get warm. :) He was very clean and healthy, so don't worry! :)

First he checked out the couch.

And then the toilet, naturally.

And His Cuteness was then treated to some milk. Too bad we only had skim and 1%. But he was a fun intruder. (Now we really want a dog-- don't worry we're trying to be patient.)

Be excited for more pictures as it gets warmer-- we bought a new camera today, so you don't have to see lame phone pictures but fancy Olympus Stylus 7010 pictures. YAY! We'll have to take more pictures of our fish and frogs so you can really see how awesome they are.

Valentine's Day

Let me start off by saying Happy Arizona Statehood Day! Definitely worth noting :) We had a fun day. Only three kids were in our Primary class today, so we sent them home on sugar highs due to some delicious pink funfetti cupcakes we made. The majority of the evening was spent in the kitchen working on our masterpiece dinner. Marcus made amazing Artisan No Knead Bread, and those pictures are about half way down. All the rest are the preparation of Penne Rustica, which turned out incredible! It was difficult to make, dare I say extremely complicated, but with some last minute tips from Mimi, we did it! Most of Marcus' comments after dinner praised the wine in the sauce, but hey, it was good. :)

This is only a fragment of the mess we had!

Saucin' up the chicken

Marcus' fancy bread right out of the oven

I'm not sure what this facial expression means in context with the bread...

the penne goin' in the oven

the table almost completed. p.s. the strawberry salad was way good too!

finally the timer went off

All done- hooray!

Just about ready to eat

...left overs. haha. Only the top Tupperware isn't Penne Rustica.

We'll definitely have to make this again sometime. Maybe when we're having around six other people over for dinner. We definitely had enough, as you could tell. So no mocking us, we made our impressive Valentines meal with complete success!

Our Day Off

Gotta love how Utah celebrates more holidays than Arizona! And today was an awesome day off. It started out... late. I think the clock said 10:30 when we got up. I hadn't realized how tired I was. And lucky Marcus, the first thing I said was that we were going to clean the apartment before doing anything else. He wasn't thrilled, but I will love not having to worry about the mess it was right before cello lessons tomorrow morning.









I know our apartment isn't too exciting, but it's never been this clean. Well, it hasn't in a long time! :)

And in the process of cleaning, we noticed that our cactus was looking a little sad, so we put him in the window. I figured you'd all want to see Cody the Cactus. Yes, he's from Arizona!

After our apartment was all clean, we started running errands, which definitely included In-n-Out!!! And to Marcus' dismay, several other stores. However, that was his idea. We went up and down about what to do for Valentines Day. We debated all kinds of gifts and trips. After much indecisiveness, we decided on a bluetooth for Marcus and 101 Dalmations (the Glenn Close version) for me. Here's some great pictures of Marcus with his bluetooth. He loves it! He didn't waste any time setting it up and testing it with computer stuff.









While we were out today, Marcus told me that the movie didn't count as my Valentines Day. I could pick something at any store that I really wanted, but didn't need :) Once again, I started debating all the things I almost got originally for Valentines, but then, we went into Pier 1 Imports...









And this is not just any piece of furniture... It holds all my cello music! Almost all, but still. And I love it! It looks so much better than the cardboard boxes by the dresser in our room and can sit beautifully in the living room, conveniently located for lessons.
Marcus also agreed to get the pretty flower for the top. The wedding picture was in our room, but I think it looks even better here :) Marcus' grandma made the Establish a House sign for us for Christmas, and we couldn't find a place worthy of it. But something about this place looks great... probably the thermostat :) JK.









I was so excited about this, you have no idea. Thanks Marcus!!!