Livin' On Love and Lovin' Every Minute of It!!!

Here is a fun video of my nieces trying to pop balloons with me!!!

Well, I've been back home in Boston for almost a month now and have definitely been busy. I got home the night before my birthday, and Kent took me to Olive Garden to celebrate. Yum yum it was fun! He also had made a wonderfully crafty welcome home sign for me, and I had brought him home some chocolates and teddy bears!

I then got to teach Relief Society the next day at Church on my birthday. That was also a special day as our wonderful family all held a special fast with Kent and me for us to be able to start our family. It was a wonderful day and a spiritual experience to say the least. For my birthday, Kent was amazing and arranged with my family to have my parents, Lyska and Tyson to come and visit us out here in Boston for Spring Break!!!! I am so ecstatic and was so surprised and am so happy!!! Yay, we are going to have so much fun!!

And our wonderful friends the Christen's came over to celebrate and brought me a bunch of balloons, a party hat, and a Cold Stone cookie dough ice cream cake!!!! They are so amazing!! They also took us to dinner at Cheesecake Factory!!! We have such amazing friends all over this country.

So, we LOVE helium! hehe...

On Monday February 8th, Kent and I drove up to Vermont. We went to Sharon, where Joseph Smith was born, and saw the visitor's center there and had a picnic lunch in our car. It was great.

We then drove to our cute Best Western for a great night. We had a fireplace in our room, and there was an indoor pool and jacuzzi, exercise room, and game room, complete with ping pong and air hockey!

Needless to say, we kept busy having so much fun! Monday night we were putting our feet in the jacuzzi while about 7 ladies had a WATER AEROBICS CLASS!! in the pool, when we looked outside and realized there were swings just outside in the snow!!! So we put on our sweatshirts and FLIP FLOPS, and ran on out there and swung on the swings for like 5 minutes! We then ran to the kid playground down the way, where my feet promptly began to freeze off, so we ran to return to the jacuzzi, where we were met by a stunning applause by our water aerobics audience. So much fun.

On Tuesday after our great stay in the hotel, a wonderful breakfast and several VERY competitive games of air hockey (I would rather not discuss the outcome of these games, as they were all extremely close, ending not in my favor despite the fact that they should have!!!), we headed to the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Factory for a fun-filled tour and free samples!

We especially loved the ice cream graveyard!!

We also drove up to the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory.

We missed the tours, but saw enough in the gift shop. We also got to see some beautiful Vermont sights along the way. We had a great trip! It was so nice to be back with my husband again after a month of being apart!

For Valentine's Day, Kent wrote me a song, which was, of course, amazing. I borrowed a sweet idea from Krista and TJ Emrich and did a "Mini Date." I had a mini candybar path leading up to our bedroom for Kent, wear we had candles, and a cupcake tray holding our several course meal inside each cup! We had baby carrots and Ranch, tater tots, mini pizza rolls, and mini sausages.

We had chilled mini A&W Rootbeer cans to drink, and the best part, our mini marshmallows we roasted over mini tealight candles to make s'mores with teddy grahams and chocolate chips!!!

AND, because I got lucky and found them at the grocery store, we had mini "dixie cup" style cups of Ben & Jerry's ice cream!! I kid you not, the serving size was actually LESS THAN HALF A CUP!!!! SOOO fun!!! We topped the meal off with a mini movie on our laptop...we watched Dan in Real Life, because I saw it in Texas and loved it. So we have had some fun.

In other news, KENT GOT ACCEPTED TO WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY AND UNIVERSITY OF UTAH!!!! So, for now, Salem, OR or Salt Lake City, UT. We are still waiting to hear back from Texas A&M though, so no decisions for us yet. But whew, it feels oh so good to have options, and I am so prouod of Kent! AND the GMAT officially no longer matters for Kent!! Woot woot!!!

Kent and I also got to go to our friends' the Abernethy's to see their awesome son Dan open his mission call to Brazil! We love that family and know Dan will be a great missionary!

Our friends Nick and Heather Christen's son Mason is Kent's new best friend. He has on many occasions come to play guitar, and well, rock out. We love it!

Well, it's raining like crazy here right now. I know, RAINING!! That is "very uncharaceteristic for New England weather at this time of year," according to EVERYONE here. However, it is indeed still raining and so far there hasn't been much weather that has been characteristic of New England seasons. It snowed, but then it rained and now it's still raining and I love it. And that's your New England weather report that I know you didn't ask for, folks!