Delicious Dinner

I made lasagna tonight and it turned out really good! I guess I've had better, but I was happy with it. I've only attempted lasagna once before and it was a disaster.

Here's a link to the recipe, if anyone is interested...

Low Fat Lasagna

I used whole wheat pasta and only put mushrooms on Calder's half (yuk)

Next time, I'll mix in a lot of Italian seasoning, it needed a little something extra and that seemed to do it.

I was nervous about it since you make it with uncooked pasta and let it cook in the over. That seemed sketchy to me, but it worked great. It looked really watery before cooking, but all the liquid soaked up in it. Delicious.

A Few Of My Favorite Things

I wanted to do this a long time ago - but my house was never clean enough at the same time for me to take all the pictures. Finally, I got it done.

The idea is to choose your favorite item from each room in your house.

The living room is my party-lite infinite reflections tea light holder. I was going to do this post when I first saw it on Sharon's blog, but at the time I had just ordered this and was holding out, since I was hoping it would be my favorite. I love it! It might be a little fancy for our otherwise very casual living room, but I still love it, and someday it will have a room more suited for it's prettyness.

Also in the living room, I love my wedding pictures and boxes...


Moving on to the hallway (this is a stretch, because it is absolutely still the living room, for for the sake of this post, it's a hallway) The flash wouldn't cooperate, but you get the idea.



Next is the kitchen, which was the easiest of all. Absolutely my fiesta dishes. I know it's weird, but I've loved and wanted these WAY before buying dishes was something I needed to think about. I love how bright and colorful they are - it makes everything feel relaxed and casual.

Next is our second bedroom/office. I had to get creative here, since it's mostly a storage room. We bought this bookcase just a few weeks ago. Before that, everything you see on the bookcase was still in boxes stacked on the floor, or just around. It's nice to have a place to put it, and finally be completely unpacked!

Bathroom - again, a little creative. I LOVE these bathtub crayons. Let's ignore the fact that they are made for three year olds and appreciate all the fun things to do with them. Every so often I color and write all over the bathtub, just to keep Calder on his toes.


Here's an example of some of my artwork (waiting on Calder to come home from his trip to Honduras in March)


Now, the second part of the hallway. We have two of these carvings that Calder brought home from his mission in Honduras. I love them!


Lastly, the bedroom. Another tie! The first thing I love is these two matching lamps I got from my mother-in-law for one of my wedding showers. I only took a picture of one, but it has a twin on the other end of the dresser.


And then, my bed. We have the cutest bed I've ever seen. I feel like I have to admit, this is a picture taken a long time ago, when we were moving in. I don't make the bed very often (but I do sometimes). It wasn't made when I was taking pictures, and instead of just doing it, I found an older one. Oh well.


That's it!

Dinner Dance

Here's the post I know you've all been waiting for! Just kidding! We got all dressed up and looked awesome, if I'm allowed to say that about us. The evening itself was uneventful. It was really fun to meet Calder's future bosses, who all seemed very nice. To me, it sounds like it's a pretty laid back place to work. It sounds like most people come into work around 9 so it looks like Calder will be walking to the bus stop since I have to be in at 8. I thought about changing my schedule to start work a little later, but Calder told me that was crazy. Oh well, at least we live close to the bus.

As for pictures, Calder absolutely forbid me to bring the camera in, but fortunately he let me take a few before we left.

My cute shoes

Here was the picture of my dress, for some reason I'm leaning weird, but the dress is cute.

We didn't actually dance since the music was a swing band and I have a hard enough time walking in heels. Oh well, maybe next time.

Take Off Five!

After months of putting it off - I finally got my hair chopped off! It looks pretty much the same, just five inches shorter. I went in planning to just get it trimmed, but decided to just go for it. For your viewing pleasure...

Before - it was a spur of the moment decision, so I found a recent picture

After (this was taken just now, after it being in a ponytail for a few hours, so it is a lot cuter)

I'm excited to have hair short enough to do things with, the long hair looked blah all the time, and never ever stayed down more than a few hours before I stuck it back in an elastic.

I'm sure there will be a better picture later.

This is what we have planned for this weekend! I'm super excited - although I must admit, a little nervous. I'll get to dress up, eat delicious food, and meet the people that Calder will be working with this summer. It sounds way more dignified and fancy than my Lewsiana upbringing trained me for. We went shopping a few weeks ago because I just knew finding an acceptable dress was going to be an impossible task. I was extremely lucky and found one right away! Now I have to find something to do with my hair and jewelry. I was waiting to post this until after the event so I could give you all some pretty pictures of us all dressed up, but I got impatient. Don't worry, the pretty pictures will still come.

I'm also excited because our 1 year anniversary is coming up fast! Three more weeks! I can't believe it's been that long. We're planning to go up to Duluth and spend the night in a cute little bed and breakfast. Costco has bed & breakfast $100 gift cards for $80 and I've been dying to get one since the first time I saw them. Duluth is a cute little city on Lake Superior that I've heard is really fun. I'm already planning fun things for us to do on our two days there. We'll head out the day after Calder finishes up with school and the journal thing, so it'll be a celebration of the end of the first law school year as well!

To Do Today:

I'm going to try to get everything on my to-do list done today. I can do it as long as Calder doesn't come home from school early. I always have great intentions, but then when he comes home early, we end up just watching TV.

• Return black shoes to Macy's
• Buy more black shoes
• Return pants to Costco
• Return swimsuit to Costco, if they'll even still take it back and if I can find it
• Exchange Land's End Shirt
• Buy pots to replant garden
• Get a haircut!
• Make a grocery list
• Buy Groceries
• Go to Byerly's for wild rice
• Buy some summer clothes - this can wait until this weekend.
• Get car washed

Happy Birthday/Baptism Girls!

This was an exciting week for my primary class - two girls are having birthdays and another girl is getting baptized! To celebrate, we had a party for our activity this week. The girls love playing outside and since it's just now warming up, we played outside! Here are some pictures.

I made a crown cake and taught a quick lesson about being a Daughter of God. I don't think any of the girls heard a word of it, but I was pretty proud of my cake.

Here's the whole group!

What fun girls! I love working with them and seeing them learn and grow. It's a difficult age, and that makes class hard sometimes. They are all great girls and make such good choices. Happy Birthdays/Baptism!

I've had a lot of cute pictures that I've been meaning to post for awhile now. So I decided to do a 'this year so far' post. So... this year so far...

We wrecked our cute green car (not our fault) and replaced it with the exact car, only blue. Thankfully, the insurance was really good and we didn't loose much in the whole ordeal.

I made some cute bean dip for the superbowl. We went to a small party at a friends house. We brought it and I think Calder and I ended up eating almost all of it ourselves. Yum!

(and yes, the sour cream football on top did make it taste better)

We bought a 6 game package to the Timberwolves games. As you can see, our seats were nothing to be proud of but we still had a lot of fun. The team is so terrible they actually gave away some more tickets (which were a lot better than our original ones) so we had better seats to a few more games.

I made gumbo and it turned out DELICIOUS! I was scared of burning it so I had the heat for the roux a lot lower than probably necessary, so it took forever. In the end, it was all worth it. I sat on the counter and stirred, stirred, stirred while Calder kept having to bring me water because it was burning up in there. Notice the cute apron I got for $2 at Target. You can't really tell in this picture, but the red parts are heart shaped pockets.

We survived -13 degree weather. Notice that this wasn't the temperature in the middle of the night, it was 11:05 in the morning. Sadly enough, I don't think this was as bad as it got.

Along those same lines, snow. Lots of snow. It snowed mid-December and didn't melt until a few weeks ago. I loved when the snow was pretty and fresh, but wasn't as thrilled once it got dirty and icy.

Easter!

April Fools Day!

I tried to buy curlers for my hair. Once I took them out, my hair was just as straight as it was before. No curl at all, not a single one. I then bought a curling iron (yeah, I didn't have one before.) which worked a little better, but the curls still fell about an hour later.

Calder shaved. He had cut it into some weird beard which wasn't very professional the day before an interview, so he had to cut it all off. It's all grown back by now of course, but I'm looking forward to working at the temple together - he'll have to be clean shaven for that!

And finally, this was taken yesterday. That's right, April 26. I know it's not much snow, I got out after most of it melted (there was about an inch covering everything) but it's more the fact that snow can still happen in late April that amazed me. I've decided this is probably the last snow of the year.

A Garden!

In case anyone was wondering the fate of the flowers that I mentions a few weeks ago...

A clear failure.

So today we decided to plant a garden... on our balcony! We bought some baby plants (seeds seemed like too much to take on, and apparently if we wanted to grow seeds, we should have bought and started them a long time ago). We're trying some tomatoes, red bell peppers, and strawberries.

The tomatoes said they could grow in a pot or containter, we're not sure about the rest. I'm excited to have some home-grown vegetables this year - hopefully they live a better and longer life than those silly flowers.

Happy Spring!

There's so much I've been meaning to blog about - I just haven't gotten around to it.

Last Sunday we had stake conference. We actually had Elder Bednar come and speak as well as a member of the 70 (ok, so it's been 4 days and I forgot the name). We got there about 30 minutes early hoping to get a good seat, but it was pretty full by the time I got there. Towards the back I saw two of the girls in my primary class whose families were sitting together, so we sat with them. I kind of wanted to sit further up but decided it would mean more to the girls to have me sit with them than for me to be 15 rows closer.

Our stake president gave an excellent talk about how God is a 'fourth watch God' - how it's not until we have struggled and can't endure any long that he comes and helps. He gave some examples from the scriptures, and it made me realize that if it is the fact that God lets us struggle and suffer for as long as we can endure that allows me to feel the strength of his love when I am miraculously rescued from whatever trial it may be.

After he spoke, some people bore their testimonies. My favorite was that of a man who had recently joined the church. He was talking about how the gospel has changed his family, and he told a story about his 3 year old daughter. She was being a 3 year old and he was at a point where he didn't know what to do and she was driving him nuts. Finally he asked her - what can I do to help you, since I don't know. She responded by asking him to give her a blessing. I love how in the church children are taught as such a young age the things they can turn to when they are having a hard time. Sometimes children's problems seem so silly and small to adults, when to the child it really is a big deal. I love that children are taught that Heavenly Father loves them and cares about every problem they have, no matter how small or silly.

Follow that and a few other testimonies, the next guy spoke. The one whose name I forgot. I don't remember much of what he spoke about. I remember him telling stories, about his dad dying, then his grandson being born on the one year anniversary of his dad's death. He talked about how on that day as they were welcoming the new baby into the family, he imagined his dad standing with Jesus and them both kissing the baby goodbye and sending him to Earth. It was a great talk and focused on the amazing love Heavenly Father has for each of us.

Elder Bednar was the concluding speaker. He spoke about how when we have trials that are too much for us to bear, the Lord helps us, not by taking away or lessen our burdens, but by making us stronger and more able to bear them, so that they seem less.

The entire meeting was very inspiring and the spirit was strong throughout the entire time. I am thankful for the opportunity to learn.