Musical Genes

Looks like Nicole got some musical genes from her Dad and Grandpa...

7 Years!

Alex and I celebrated our anniversary yesterday...7 years! It has been fun reminiscing about all of the fun we've had together over the last 7 years. Most of our memories involve traveling, since that's what we love to do the most. And eating, since that comes second!

We celebrated by going out to dinner on Saturday night to a local Mexican restaurant called Tortillas. We've been missing our Mexican food and heard about this place so we decided to try it out. The food was the best we've had in this area (mind you, it doesn't compare to some of our favorite places in Utah, but we'll take what we can get) and the atmosphere was fun. Bob Marley was playing in the background, so Alex and the owner of the place were both just singing along the whole time. It was pretty funny! We also checked out a local bakery called Leidel's. I'm pretty picky when it comes to bakeries, and I will say that the Jewish Apple Cake was delicious!

For our actual anniversary we headed out to Longwood Gardens. We figured it'd be a perfect Sunday afternoon activity. I'm sure you'll see a lot of pictures from Longwood over the next year with our annual pass in tow! The gardens were BEAUTIFUL with all of the tulips out. My favorite time of year is spring because of tulips - how fitting that we were married when the tulips were in at Temple Square. On our honeymoon we were taking a scenic drive outside of Seattle and came across a tulip farm - it was an amazing sight. Longwood just reminded me of all of that and it was a wonderful day.



Nicole isn't a fan of standing or crawling on grass (or anything with texture). When we put her down, she made a cringing face and was trying to lift her feet off of the grass so she didn't have to feel it. Oh what a sheltered life she leads...

Iron Chef Challenge: Sweet Potato

We had a fun dinner the other night with friends - an Iron Chef Challenge. The secret ingredient was sweet potatoes, and we were each randomly assigned a part of the meal to bring. The Tolleys had appetizers and made sweet potato crunchy balls and sweet potato wontons. Both were delicious and very creative!

Alex and I were in charge of the main course, and we chose to make sweet potato gnocchi with garlic alfredo sauce. We had fun making something that we'd never made before (with the exception of our test run a couple of nights before). It figures that I didn't get a picture - we were a bit rushed in getting the food out!

For dessert, the Eads made a sweet potato cheesecake. It was very sweet (just like I like it) and inventive. And, seriously, can you ever go wrong mixing something with cheesecake?! Delicious!

Here's a picture of the whole gang. The Sappingtons, the Tolleys, the Robertsons, and the Eads.

And one of the cute girls hanging out - Nicole and Madeleine.

Easter Sunday

I love Easter because of the reminder it is of rebirth - and what better time for it than Spring! It's so beautiful outside with all of the daffodils and tulips out, and the buds on the trees. It was an exciting day for us because Alex was called as the Young Men's President in our ward. I think that calling has to be the most perfect calling ever for Alex. He's going to be so awesome.

When we got home from Church, Nicole got to open her Easter basket. She was in heaven playing with her wiffle balls (perfect for those little fingers to hold onto)! I think her favorite part was when Alex started juggling the balls - she was laughing like it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen. That night we enjoyed a fancy, delicious Easter dinner with some friends. What a great day!

On a side note - I made Nicole's basket with the help of my friend, Mindy, and I love it! After hauling around the Bernina sewing machine I inherited from my Great Aunt for 5 years, this was the motivation to get it fixed. It was missing a piece, and there's a great shop close by, called Steve's, that had the piece I needed. That night I got to work and made this basket. I had forgotten how much I enjoy sewing!

Rainy day fun

Newest Tricks

This girl just never stops! Nicole is now 10 months old, and one of her latest tricks is standing by herself - she started doing it about two weeks ago and is really good now! I think she likes being able to use both hands to do things.


Another fun trick of hers is climbing our stairs. She did it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and she scaled all 13 steep steps by herself. I like to have her climb the stairs when we're going up for naps, just to tire her out a bit! A couple of days ago we were sitting in the living room and the door to the stairs had been left open. Nicole crawled over to the stairs and just started going up them by herself. She obviously had a new agenda on her mind!