St. Patty's Day

Posted by Amber

**Update - 04 12 12: I finally got the pictures off of my phone and have rotated them correctly. Huzzah!**

Yes, I will still blog about the bridal shower, but I don't have those pics on my phone. Yeah, I'm blogging from my phone :)

Today was the St. Patrick's Day parade, which was fun since it's actually St. Patrick's Day. Since there are always so many dogs there, we took Mocha. I'm pretty sure she loved it. Outside, lots of new friends petting her... She and I also helped carry the banner for the band. She did very well.

Anyway, here are some of the pictures :)

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In Other News

Posted by Amber

Here's a collection of other stuff that has gone on, but aren't enough to warrant their own posts.

February 10th and 11th -
Matt went on the Klondike with the scouts. Apparently they fail at making fires lol He got home early because the boys didn't want to do the activities on Saturday. It worked for me :)

February 11th -
Hadfield Valentine's Day Party - yummy lunch and hanging out with family :) And an adorable heart-shaped cookie from Brian and Melody :)

Harmony apparently decided we needed a puppy-themed valentine. How cute is that?

Oh, and the cookie was DELISH!

Engagement party for Nicole at Grandma Covalt's. We got to visit with more family and meet her fiancé :) Grandma was also puppy sitting for a friend of hers - they were so cute!

February 14th -
I know there was something else we ended up doing on Valentine's Day, because I was a little surprised because we'd gone to the concert on Monday... Sadly, I can't recall what happened, and I apparently didn't document it anywhere :( Good thing I can text my husband, who remembers :)

He made dinner :) He made us burgers and we stayed in to watch The Big Bang Theory (love that show!) The price was I had to stop and buy chips lol It was a nice evening.

February 25th -
The Great Basin Branch of the Western United States Pipe Band Association awards dinner. It was at Golden Corral in Midvale again. This year, it was just us and Don and Ian from White Peaks. It was a good time with more yummy food, though. Matt took second in the branch for Grade 2 snare again. Matt is also currently the treasurer for the branch. We spent some time chatting with Don, and I got to know Justin and Ross better, so that was fun for me. (Justin is currently branch president - they play with Wasatch)

Here are a few pictures I stole from FB :)

Justin presenting Matt with his award

Matt hard at work.

Some people who were at the dinner

Current branch leadership:

Matt Biggs-Treasurer, Justin Howland-President, Jenna Tew-Secretary, DeAnn Goodman-Vice President

February 27th -

We woke up to find our little birdy Bethesda on the bottom of her cage :( A FB friend suggested we check our CO detector. It had gone off, although I'm not certain CO poisoning is what killed her. I think it may have contributed, but I wonder if she had been a little bit sick for awhile. She had been partially poofed for awhile. Matt buried her at his parent's house. Turk has moved into our bedroom, and appears to be doing well.

Picture taken 02 01 12 - I was going to use it on her page in our Emergency Binder.

March 2nd -

I got off of work early so we could go to the Payson High School Pipe Band's first annual concert. It was fun hearing some of our old tunes again. Since apparently this is a milestone year for the high school, Diana (current director of the pipe band) asked some former pipe majors to solo. It was fun. We also got to chat more with some friends from the pipe band community :)

March 3rd -

Matt's cousin Chase received his endowment in the Mount Timpanogos temple. It was the first time we had attended a session there. It worked out quite nicely because we were going to go to the temple that morning anyway. It had been quite awhile since we'd been (yeah, we're going to try to remedy that), and it was very nice to be back in the temple and to visit with family in such a beautiful setting. Afterward, we went to Texas Roadhouse for lunch. That was another first for us, but it was yummy!

That night, we had pizza and Root Beer/Coke floats at Jason and Camile's and watched Inception. Good movie, although I was a little sad at the end. It was fun to hang out and chat.

(Can you tell I love my family? It's always so much fun to hang out with them!)

Okay, I believe that catches us up on all of the latest happenings. Tune in next week (hopefully :D) for a post on Jackie's bridal shower! :)

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Hey Mama!

Posted by Amber

Monday, February 13th, Matt and I celebrated V-day by going to the Mat Kearney concert. (Remember how we found out about him when he opened for Owl City? :)) It was back at In the Venue, which worked well because we knew what we were getting ourselves into. (I wore sneakers this time, not heels :))

I stayed home from work so we could take off early-ish, although I did log in from home in the morning and worked about 4 hours. Matt ended up working a normal day for him. Since we weren't going to leave until about 5pm (concert started at 8pm), I stopped by Papa Murpheys for a Heartbreaker pizza. I thought it would be fun since it was almost Valentines, and it was only $7 :)

Matt was apparently starving and ate about 1/2 of the pizza before we left :) We got to In the Venue just after 6pm, which is about how early we were for Owl City - only this time we were *much* closer to the door. We hung out outside in the cold for about an hour before the doors opened. (At least it didn't rain! Although, I did take an umbrella just in case :)) Once we were in the doors, I headed up to claim a spot on the floor while Matt visited the restroom. When Matt got back, we decided to check our coats at the juice bar, and then visit the merch table. We each got a shirt :) Matt considered going up to the balcony in the 21+ area, but by the time we got done with the merch, it was pretty full too. We ended up just in front of where we stood at Owl City instead.

The opener was Robert Francis. He was alright. He reminded me quite a bit of Russell Brand, though :) It was amusing. His band came out with bottles, and the staff had to take them away. Gotta love Utah :) He would also pull funny faces when playing guitar solos. I'm telling ya - Russell Brand junior :)

Sorry - I have no good pictures. Little light, him moving quite a bit, and trying to find a good setting on my camera..... didn't work out so well.

Setting up for Mat

Mat put on a great show - just like last time. Yes, he did come out into the audience again, but I wasn't as lucky this time. lol We ended up behind a group of ridiculously tall people for a good part of the show - so I was stretched to the max and looking for holes between people. That was less than enjoyable.

So, until I found a halfway decent setting on my camera, my phone actually took better pictures...

It was fun to look at my Matt and see him singing along :)

Mat shared a story about when he was younger and a friend and he passed through Utah and ended up sleeping in their vehicle next to some railroad tracks. He's so fun. I like that he shares things from his personal life.

Mmk, his guitarist was cute :) (on the left)

Mat asked if there were any musicians in the crowd, and there were quite a few hands. Then he asked if there were any drummers... too bad we were further away - this kid in the plaid shirt got to go up and essentially keep time (so nothing too exciting - except for playing on stage with Mat!) during one of the songs. It was lots of fun!

Cute guitarist again :)

In true Mat fashion, during one of his songs, he improvised a verse or two about Utah. So fun! He had been out to the Salt Flats earlier shooting footage for the Ships in the Night video, so that got mentioned as well :)

We had a really good time at the concert. February is definitely a better time to go to In the Venue than July - the temperature was bearable :) Mat played our two favorites (and his first two singles from Young Love) during the encore. He also covered Adele's Set Fire to the Rain in honor of her accomplishments at the Grammy's. I captured video during those :) It's not as good as at Owl City, because I was less concerned with keeping still and more concerned with dancing and singing.... so you don't get to see it :)

Thanks to my honey for getting the tickets so we could have an awesome date night!

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Baptisms

Posted by Amber

This past Saturday, February 4th, we got to go down to St. George for a quick trip to see two of my nieces baptized. It was really nice because a) it was in St. George - easily accessible for a day trip and b) Marquessa had permission to be baptized up here so we could see her as well, instead of making the long trip to Phoenix.

We left around 2pm, after dropping Mocha off at the Biggs' house for the evening. She loves going to Grandma's house :) She did, however, give us a scare as we were heading down. She was outside running around, and when we left, she was goin gto see what Dad was doing. As we were leaving the drive, we saw Mocha running after us. We slowed to see if she would turn back. When she wasn't, Matt flipped the car around to head her off. She reached the end of the drive about the same time we got there, and there was a car going the other way. Fortunately, she didn't run in front of them. Silly dog. So we herded her back up the drive and secured her in the house before leaving again :)

The drive was the usual - long and boring :) I swear we have radio for much more of the drive now, though. I spent some of the time reading Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey on my phone. Huzzah! We got to St. George at about 5:30pm, and the baptism was at 6pm. We met up with everyone at the church and got pictures and chatting in before the service.

Ryan and Marquessa

Lainee and Marquessa

Aren't they cute? :)

Greg and Lainee

Being a stake baptism, they had the two talks given by two young men who are getting ready to leave on missions. Good practice, right? :) Lainee and Marquessa were last to be baptized, so we got to hang out and listen to primary songs for a long time. (Most everyone failed at staying reverent and was whispering and talking quietly to each other.)

After the baptisms and confirmations, we migrated to the cultural hall for dinner. We had yummy food and got to chat even more :) It was really nice to be able to go down for a bit and see my family. We don't really keep in touch much, so it's nice to have occassions to get together :)

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Yay!

Posted by Amber

Exciting news - Curtis and Jackie are getting married!

We went to dinner at Matt's parents' on Sunday (like we usually do), and we had the Superbowl on in the background. Jason and Camile stayed home because Jason really wasn't feeling well. Curtis and Jackie were supposed to be coming over at some point too. When they finally walk in, we hear, "We're engaged!" and then of course, there was much hugging and looking at the shiny ;) Super cute proposal story, but I won't reiterate.

Can I just say, it's about time!

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January 14th, 2012

Posted by Amber

The 14th ended up being a busy day. In the morning, we had a Primary breakfast for teachers and leaders. It went swimmingly (except we couldn't do our little presentation thing, but that was okay). It's really a shame we didn't have a better turn-out. This was fine and dandy, except it was moved back a week. We initially were going to do it on the 7th, but we ended up having a baptism, and our President had some family stuff happen, so we bumped it. Like I said, it was good to talk with our teachers and leaders and eat yummy food.... I must get that recipe from Denise....

Anyway, this made my day a little hectic because I had to finish prepping for and then go set up for Camile's baby shower! Um, yeah, it was adorable :) (I'm so humble. Can you tell? lol)

The theme was toys. The food was actual food (not just sweets), and it was a lot of fun. I had ordered some blocks off of Ebay, and spent Friday disinfecting them and making them kid-ready. I also made some socktopusses (easy, and so cute!) and an adorable diaper bike (also surprisingly easy :)). I had to do a Walmart run before heading over to Carrie's, and I was so excited to find a teddy bear to ride on the bike that was the right size, oh-so-soft, and on clearance! $5 baby!

Pictures now :)

McKade had an awesome idea to spell out "It's a girl" with the blocks. Mom helped with the arrangement :)

Socktopusses!

Diaper bike and teddy bear!

Rubber Ducky Bathtime Punch - tasty and adorable!

The spread. I promise there was real food too - mmm chili :)

The big boys went to the car show during the day while the girls did baby things. Jason ended up not going, but instead, working on the nursery some more :) Melody had her whole family, and near the end, we had the whole family over :) Camile got lots of great things to help stock their nursery. It was fun seeing all the cute baby things and talking with family. There were birth stories and plans, talk of names, even an engagement story! (Congrats, Nicole!) Below are some highlights :)