California Trip

Last week Matt and I had the opportunity to go to California to see my family! We had such a fun, relaxing, amazing time. Mom and Dad were out of town until Saturday night (we got there on Thursday) which was kind of a bummer--we would have loved to have had more time with them. But we had so much fun hanging out with just the kids for a couple of days. Matt especially enjoyed some quality bonding time with his "in-laws." It's so fun for me to see how well he fits in with my family. It's like he's always been part of things over there!
We played a lot of Wii Olympics, Matt and David bonded over Lego Star Wars, we made exploding Calzones, watched Michael in his track meet, watched Michael and Stephen win their semi-finals church basketball game, played some basketball of our own, played Sorry (one game was plenty), jumped on the trampoline, and watched a lot of Chopped (which we're now obsessed with).

My biggest regret is that we only took three pictures...but hey, we'll do better next time. And thanks to the internet, you can still get a visual of our trip :)

On Friday morning Matt and I took an adventurous trip to LA while the kids were in school. I found an awesome interactive map on the USC website and was able to put together a little walking tour of a little piece of LA. I grew up less than an hour away from this city, but have never really been a tourist there. So it was fun to explore it together! We started in Pershing Square, then made our way to Grand Central Market. The market was probably our favorite place. Crazy food and tons of different cultures all mashed together--it was definitely our scene.

We had so much fun wandering around and looking at all of the different types of food and things they had for sale. We bought some mole at a Mexican market (which we had for dinner last night...AMAZING), and shared the most delicious pupusa ever.

From Grand Central we took a ride on Angels Flight, and ended up in the California Plaza up at the top.

Our last stop was the Los Angeles Public Library. This is one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen, and you all know how much I love libraries :) The children's section was the best. You can't really tell in this picture but the ceiling was all painted and the walls were covered with murals. Combined with the beautiful wood, lamps, and the original glass windows, it was a sight to see!

The rest of the library was very ornately decorated as well with mosaics and large murals. You can just stick your head in for a second, or spend an hour wandering around. It's a free, must-see for anyone who's in the area!

 On Saturday we packed everyone up and headed out to the beach! We spend a long day at Huntington and had so much fun playing games in the sand, building sand castles, and braving the freezing cold water. Mom and Dad came straight from LAX and met us for a bonfire which lasted long into the night. We roasted hot dogs and made s'mores, told corny jokes, and had the biggest fire ever. It felt like old times, only better, because now I was sitting next to my husband!

Easter Sunday had three major highlights. A delicious turkey dinner with my favorite neighbors, the Jacobsons, and a crazy Easter egg hunt. Matt and I hid the eggs and I have never been more entertained watching the kids search for them. There were a couple of "magic money" eggs that provided great motivation and even the too-cool-for-school 15 year old was running around like a little kid.
But the most important part of the day was remembering our Savior and the sacrifice he made for us. It's easy for this holiday to be overshadowed by the chocolate and Robin's Eggs, but we watched an amazing video in Relief Society that really stuck with me. Watch it if you have time. Happy Easter!

Dinner on Fast Sunday. One of life's little pleasures :) The Cheddar Herb Biscuits really stole the show...hint hint. (Don't be scared of all the butter, just have these on a day when you can rationalize. . . like "oh, I went to the gym today" or "It's fast sunday, I need some calories and butter is one of those essential fats right?")

The Scott Family Gardeners

Ok we're not gardeners yet. But we want to be! Matt and I have both got spring fever and we've decided that we want gardening to be on of our "things." We've already made at least five trips to Home Depot in the past couple of weeks just looking at the flowers and gardening stuff. We like to walk around and act like we know all about potting soil, bat guano, and steer manure. It's almost as fun as wandering around Costco. One of our trips was to get supplies for a flower box. . . that we made! Oh fine there was no "we" there. It was all Matt. But I picked out the flowers and he did a spectacular job (I'll post a picture later when it's not all cold and dark outside). To top it all off, Janet, my amazing mother-in-law, loaded us up with tulip bulbs this weekend so we get to watch those grow too! As of now our little flower garden consists of tulips, pansies, mums, and primroses, and I'm confident that we'll be experts in no time :) Life doesn't get much better than this.

This is what I want our garden to look like some day.

This is just funny:

Ahem.

Ok friends. We have not posted in quite awhile so I'm going to give you all a quick rundown of what's been going on over here the last month or so.

Valentines Day (we're really behind ok?)
Valentines Day was perfectly wonderful. I got 3 bouquets of flowers (one from Matt, one from Rick--my father in law, and one "from Matt" that I bought for myself because it was pretty), Matt got me a book that I've been wanting for awhile, and we had a delicious dinner followed by our delectable wedding cake. There was some slight disappointment when I realized that I had forgotten to buy food coloring and wouldn't be able to dye our mashed potatoes pink, but I got over it pretty quick.

The other Valentines Day highlight? Matt's valentine from Hannah. She had a kindergarten project where they had to bring in an address of the person they wanted to send their valentine too. She asked Mom for "Sarah's address," but the envelope came addressed to "Matt Scott," with every letter of his name carefully outlined in a different color. Adorable!

Cooking
Our favorite discovery--Soft Wrap Bread. Random, I know, but you guys have no idea how delicious it is and how easy it is to make! We've had it twice now. The first time we sliced little pockets into them and stuffed them with all the random salad-y, wrap-y things we could find in the fridge. But that was nothing compared to the second time when we had them as chicken gyros with tzatziki. Holy cow. It was good.

I started this "catch up" post a couple of weeks ago so now I'm feeling realllly behind. Rather than just play the catch up game I think I'll just start from here. It's spring and time for new beginnings right? Right. Well we have just enjoyed a wonderful conference weekend with the Scott family and now we're just enjoying our Sunday night and gearing up for another week!

This week at the Scott's.

Matt got his special "coaches picture." How adorable is this? He is coaching a 4th grade basketball team and they all loooove him, both the kids and their parents. The games are always very entertaining and it's especially fun because they don't keep score. Everybody wins! He'll be coaching the Jazz in no time. 

Power couple. We both left the house before 7:30 am on Thursday. Neither of us were wearing jeans, and neither of us were going to school. I wasn't even wearing a backpack. It all felt very professional. Matt was able to shadow a doctor all day, and I got to teach 7th grade! Being a grown up is fun, right?

Also, we had delicious breakfast burritos on Saturday morning. I discovered that if you put fried potatoes and salsa inside it doesn't even matter what your eggs taste like!

Super Bowl Sunday

We don't have TV in our lovely abode so our Super Bowl Sunday was nonexistent. However, we were able to watch the commercials on YouTube. These were our favorites. Which ones did you like?

More pictures...?

I'm not really into those ginormous posts that have 50 million pictures to scroll through. I find it hard to believe that anyone cares that much! However, I do have a Flickr account (mostly for the Moms) so if you want to take a peek at some honeymoon pictures, since that's the only thing that's up right now, email me at sarah.scott610@gmail.com and I'll add you to our "photostream." It's a pretty nifty thing actually. We'll try to keep it organized for ya :)