Freaky Fondue Friday (1-13-12)

I sent Jeff an email at work on Friday that said, "I'm quite fondue of you." Then right after I sent it, I realized it was Friday the 13th and I was mad my date didn't pull in a theme from the superstitious day. Despite my oblivion to the calendar, I'm glad I thought up this date because it ended up being one of my most favorite dates so far.

While Jeff put Eli to bed, I set the fondue scene -- complete with a burning candle for romantic effect.

I kind of think it looks like I'm glowing in this picture. But maybe it's just because my right eye has had an eyelash stuck in it all day and is kind of blurring my vision. But I like to think I have that much sought after pregnancy glow.

Yum and fun!

Here's my high of the night: I dipped a marshmallow in chocolate and put it on a graham cracker and told Jeff I wished I had put the oven broiler on so we could toast the marshmallows for s'mores. Next thing I know Jeff is toasting his marshmallow over the candle. Brilliant! It was the perfect s'more setup.

My marshmallow caught on fire several times which irritated Jeff because he told me after my fifth or so torched mallow that I kept blowing all the smoke in his face in my panicked attempt to control the flame. Whoops.

My second high of the night was seeing Jeff try to refrain from showing his full excitement when I told him part two of our date was to build a fort. Jeff immediately started rummaging through the house for all the supplies he'd need. I had to go read Eli a few books because he started crying. When I left Jeff, our living room looked like this:

And after I had Eli nestled back in bed, I came out to this beauty. I never knew my husband had such talents.

 It was the most perfect fort I've ever seen.

Maybe it's just me but it seems like whenever I built forts when I was little my brother and I always played the card game War in them. Jeff and I actually weirdly played a lot of War when we were dating. Playing took me back to my childhood and back to our early dating. Both were fun memories to return to.

There's something about being crammed in a fort that makes everything so much more fun.

 This last battle won me the first game.

We finished the night off watching our favorite shows snuggled up in our fort holding hands. Perfect.

Jeff High - The fort.

Jeff Low - The taste of the fondue. (I started the fondue way too early and it overcooked a smidge. Okay. A lot.)

Sarah High - The makeshift s'more.

Sarah Low - I got a lot of Braxton Hicks contractions at the end of the date (roughly one every five minutes. Not good). This is the second time I've had a worrisome amount of Braxton Hicks this pregnancy and it kind of freaked me out. But have no fear. After I laid on my side and downed a glass of water they went away. Stay in there, baby!

Setting Goals (1-6-12)

Jeff had us set goals for the new year for his date. Which made me think about our goal to date each other every week and how well we've stuck to it! Here's to many more dates in the upcoming year!!

Here's the list I came up with:

• Finish Book of Mormon by the time #2 arrives
• Bear testimony in Sacrament Meeting (Did it last week!)
• Make a new recipe every week
• Read a book every month (including The Hobbit per Jeff's request)
• Continue to date my husband
• Be 100% visiting teaching
• Run...or walk a 5k
• Learn names of cub scouts
• Attend Relief Society activities
• Potty train Eli (end of the year goal)

This is what Jeff did after he read me his goals because he was already feeling overwhelmed.

But he perked up to watch the movie I got him for Christmas -- "Night at the Museum 2."

I've been bad about doing our high lows. But I'll add to my New Year's Resolutions to do better at remembering to ask Jeff his high lows immediately following our dates.

A Happy New Year (12-31-11)

What did we do to ring in the new year? We cooked all night long!

We started with chicken and pineapple teriyaki kabobs.

I have to wear aprons when I cook these days because my belly is a splatter magnet.

To accompany our kabobs, we made a brazilian limeade drink type thing.

Yum.

Thank you, Our Best Bites for sponsoring our date night.

And for keeping our tummies happy.

Last on the menu -- crepes.

Then we played Sequence while watching Psych.

Then we watched the ball drop. I don't know what that guy is doing. We were too busy getting our sparkling cider ready to pay a ton of attention to the weirdo on the TV.

Happy New Year!

Spa Night (12-16-11)

Jeff is so lucky he watched Eli one afternoon so I could sit in a shoe store at the mall with my mom for an hour and a half. Because it was at that shoe store that I made a joke about how I've heard you can put Crisco on your feet to make them really soft. After my Crisco comment, I couldn't keep it off the brain. I knew Jeff and I had to try it for a date night.

What goes good with Criscoed feet? Yoga! We are not flexible.

I hesitantly pulled out the Crisco after our relaxing yoga session. Jeff was very agreeable and went along with our second activity.

So we greased up our feet and put them in plastic bags. Then we put our bagged feet in hot water and let the Crisco do the rest.

Married hot tubbing. Feet in bags of lard with a baby sleeping in the other room. I love it.

Mostly the experiment just turned my feet bright red from the hot water.

And we did our high lows but I forgot them. Whoops.

Temple and a Tree (12-10-11)

Our date started at D.I. as we scoured the store looking for a "Yard Sale" gift for Jeff's sister. When we saw an ice-cream machine, we knew we found a winner. My parents make homemade ice-cream often and I think it's a fun tradition to have.

We also found our second fake Christmas tree of the season. Jeff has been wanting some greenery in our house for a while and we ended up finding a nice fake plant for $15. Before we had time to think we were already walking out of the store with our new tree and wondering if it would fit in our car. It was a little tight.

We dropped Eli off at my parents' and went to the temple. I was attacked on our way.

We got dinner and popcorn with my parents and the Goldens and then we had to hurry home to decorate our new tree.

I originally thought this tree was another perfect tree for a toddler infested home with the ornaments and lights being just out of reach.

Eli soon started pointing to the tree and calling all the ornaments balls. Then he found wrapping paper and toy bats to hit the tree with so the "balls" would come flying off. After he got sick of that, he found he just needed to shake the tree to wiggle the ornaments loose. Our tree didn't stay decorated for very long.

We spent the evening watching our favorite shows together -- Parks and Rec, The Office, and Modern Family.

Sarah High - Finding the ice-cream machine at D.I.
Sarah Low - Driving around with leaves in my face for half the day.

Jeff High - Finding the tree.
Jeff Low - (We can't remember. I'm a little behind on my documenting.)

Festival of Trees (12-4-11)

I heard about the Festival of Trees this year and thought it would make for a fun date night. As luck would have it, we were already headed south last weekend for our niece Kaelynn's baptism and her brother's baby blessing. It worked out perfectly to stop by for some tree gazing on our way home.

It was freezing cold and very busy since we went the last night it was open. But we made do. And looked cute wandering around in our Sunday best.

We documented all things Jimmer for Jacob's sake. Here's the first shrine.

Jeff spotted a tree made in our family blog's honor.

Jeff was pleased to see he made the nice list this year. But disappointed that Santa spelled his name wrong.

It only took about five minutes before Eli was screaming "All done! All done!" -- his trademark move these days. Here was one of our many efforts to keep him entertained.

Here's an "Up" tree.

A very Jimmer Christmas.

The tree that accompanied the Jimmer jersey.

We ignored the "No Outside Food or Drinks" signs hoping if Eli's mouth was full of marshmallows he wouldn't scream quite as loud. It worked.

"A Christmas Story." I've only seen this movie once. It was with Jeff when we were first starting to like each other. How romantic.

"Harry Potter" tree. Jeff's brother-in-law, Ben, told us to watch for this tree. His friend submitted this one and Ben had actually helped with it.

If I understood correctly, Ben shot a bullet through this book. Good aim.

The Cougars were even represented among the gingerbread houses.

Confession: We almost skipped the gingerbread houses all together with Eli being less than cooperative. But once we whipped out those snacks and made our way back towards dancers and music, Eli was a pretty happy camper. Boy am I glad we were able to see the gingerbread houses because I ended up liking them even more than the trees. The detail was incredible!

Another confession: One day in 8th grade my science teacher was gone and he left the substitute with a documentary on Stonehenge for us to watch. I took a weird liking to the movie and ever since then Stonehenge has been at the top of my dream vacations list.

The funniest part of this is I've been embarrassed of my love for Stonehenge, but I had just opened up to Jeff about it for the first time about a week before our date. We spent a good hour talking about the ancient rocks and we tentatively made our unlikely vacation plans to England.

So when we saw this creation we were a little tickled:

And then there was the White House.

I can't even imagine making just one of those flags. Props to whoever did this. I will forever wonder how long it took to piece together.

Since Eli spent the morning being reverent at a baptism, the evening strapped to a stroller and several hours confined to his car seat, we made a pit stop on the way home to reward him for his good behavior.

McDonald's. With a play place no less. A play place that sometimes results in pictures of what looks like your baby through a bug's eye.

And a play place that disorients your child with so much excitement that they forget where their mouth is.

Eli LOVES slides. The whole time we were there he screamed "SLI!...SLI!..." over and over. He was in heaven. Well, we brought the toy from Eli's Happy Meal to church with us last week. As soon as Jeff got it out of the bag, Eli started screaming about slides again. It's funny to see the things he puts together.

When I was little I loved finding my Mom from every window of play places like this. It was fun to be on the other side of play place hide-and-go-seek as I watched Eli wave at us through the windows, full of giddiness. Being a parent is the best.

Jeff High - Finding the Harry Potter tree because we nearly missed it.
Jeff Low - The crowds.

Sarah High - We actually made a quick stop at IKEA as well. I stumbled across a kid rug that looks like a road. We're planning on making Eli a car room so the new baby can have the dino room, and I thought that rug would be a fun thing for his room to have. I'd found one online for $25, but the IKEA one was way bigger for $15. I was thrilled when I found it and it has already given me lots of inspiration for Eli's new room!
Sarah Low - Also fighting the crowds at The Festival of Trees.