A Little Summer Catch-Up

Wow, these last couple months of summer have felt like a whirlwind. Here's a quick rundown  of what we've been up to:

We painted our apartment! Well, Matt and Janet did most of it. They did a great job and now everything feels warm and cozy and less hospital-like (even though Matt swears that it looks the same...). Hooray for "sienna sand!"

My family moved to Hawaii last month (I know, right??) and before they left they took a trip up to Utah to see us! I wish I had taken pictures while they were here...there are some on facebook I think if anyone's interested. We had tons of fun hanging out with them and, bonus, we also scored some sweet stuff that they didn't want anymore or weren't able to take.

More books! These are the fancy ones that earned a spot in the front room. This includes our first leatherbound, and a first edition of Little Men--what a great start to our collection!

They also gave us a little charcoal BBQ! I kind of snuck up on him to take this picture...I mostly wanted to remember how pretty and green our yard is right now. The meal was delicious by the way. Real charcoal grilled food tastes so much better than the indoor grills. Sorry Mr. Foreman, but it's true.

What else have we been up to?

Enjoying affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. I snuck up on him for this picture too haha. He looks so content, doesn't he? I've never seen anyone tackle that huge of a piece of watermelon at one time.

Birthday surprises for Matt. His birthday isn't until tomorrow but he got his presents a little early this year. He is so hard to surprise because as soon as his bday rolls around he's on a mission to predict/guess all his presents. But I totally got him this year. Yahoo! Any name suggestions for the fish? Right now his name is "fish."

Quilting! I've been wanting to make a BYU t-shirt quilt for quite awhile, but I never had enough. But with our powers combined, and a trip to DI, Matt and I came up with about 25 t-shirts. With the help of Janet and Brittany, it's finally finished! I'm just sewing the binding on now. Phew! By the way, it's huge. I don't know if you can tell but it's big enough to cover a queen sized bed.

We've also been

• Playing lots of board games--Puerto Rico, Dominion, Pandemic, Ticket to Ride
• Going to local farmer's markets
• Attending the weekly outdoor movies at the Scera Shell 
• Mowing and weedwacking the lawn. A lot. Every week. Four lawns (front and back of ours, front and back of my dad's duplex). My farmers tan is awesome. 
• Growing herbs in our kitchen window. The basil is the only one that actually grew, but that's the best one anyways, right?
• Learning ASL (Sarah)
• Filling out med school applications (Matt)
• Planning out an excellent 8th grade English curriculum (Sarah)
• Killing spiders. Apparently spiders like to come inside during the summer. Yay for basements!
• Watching Tangled, Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Kung Fu Panda, Kung Fu Panda 2, Alice in Wonderland, playing Disney SceneIt. . . my husband loves me :)

And of course, camping! Our last two trips were Goblin Valley with our friends Matt and Brittany, and Zion. I'll do separate posts for those. Adios.