Fun Family Friday and SUPER busy Saturday

Haha...how cheesy is THAT title? I couldn't think of anything else! So Friday Chip has the day off. This does NOT happen often : ) That morning we just had a relaxing time around the house. We decided to go over to his Grandma and Grandpa Brown's house in the afternoon to swim. Kenzie loves the water and lately has a new trick of "jumping in" (sitting on the edge and falling in to us). She does great and totally loves going under water! Here are some pictures of our fun time in the pool.









On Friday night after dinner, we invited Chip's parents over to play games. They came over around 8 and brought Dairy Queen with them : ) MMMMM! We played Settlers of Catan, completely expecting Chip to win like usual. BUT....I WON! Yay : ) I was really excited.

Saturday, we had a REALLY busy day. Chip had to be at work at 8am, which meant leaving at 7:30am. This doesn't happen often. But it helped us get our day moving. Kenzie had breakfast and played for awhile. I tried to lay her down for her morning nap early, because we were supposed to be at a baby shower at 11am, which meant she needed to be up by 10:30. I laid her down at 9:15, but of course she wasn't tired enough to go to sleep. So she didn't fall asleep for an hour. Soo....at that point I decided we'd be late to the shower. I let her sleep until 11 and then we got up and rushed out the door. We got to Christen's baby shower around 11:30 and enjoyed some yummy food, fun games, and a great time celebrating the upcoming arrival of Baby Evelyn. She is due 2 weeks before me, so we have fun comparing belly sizes and feeling sorry for each other being so hugely pregnant in the HOT HOT weather.


We left the shower at about 1:40pm and got home a little after 2. Kenzie was ready for a nap, especially since she had only gotten a 45 minute morning nap, which meant getting to our NEXT event late as well. We were supposed to be at a BBQ/pool party for our small group at 3, but I let Kenzie sleep for another 45 minutes and didn't wake her up until 3. We got to the BBQ at about 3:45 and got RIGHT into the pool. It was HOT outside! Chip had to work until 4, but was able to get there around 4:20. Kenzie LOVED swimming with friends and as you can see below, she REALLY enjoyed her hot dog with ketchup!

Mmm....loved the good food!

More "jumping in"


Luke relaxing on his mom's lap after a swim


The Frahm's....Amy, Riley, and Brian. A RARE smile from Riley while IN the water...she likes to sit on the side with her feet in : )


Kenzie playing with Jack.


They were both trying to smile at the camera.... but I had them looking into the sun.


Geoff was really excited to get some food after his crazy ping-pong tourney.

Brett and Audrey hosted the BBQ at their neighborhood pool and everyone was able to come! We had such a great time. Lots of good food, cool water, and catching up was done (we haven't been meeting over the summer). Thanks for everything guys!

Our 3rd Anniversary : )

Yesterday, Chip and I celebrated our 3rd Wedding Anniversary. We are so thankful for the 1096 days we've been a married couple : ) Chip told me he had surprise dinner plans for us. He told me to dress up (as much as I could with my limited wardrobe being 7 months pregnant...) and that we needed to have Kenzie over to his parent's house and be leaving by 6:30 at the latest.

We got to his parent's house at 6 with plenty of time to spare, so we had them take a few pictures.


Our little family after 3 years : )

So, we left and drove to the downtown area. I figured out where we were going before we got there.....mainly because as we were getting off the freeway Chip kept looking UP. He was taking me to the Compass Room at the Hyatt Regency in Downtown Phoenix. It is Arizona's only revolving restaurant. And VERY nice : ) I didn't take the second picture....I found it online....but I took all the other ones you'll see : )




The Compass Room is located on the 24th floor. We got in the elevator and I BARELY had time to pull out my camera and capture the view as we FLEW up to the restaurant. The elevator was SO fast and amazing. We ended up riding it up and down twice after dinner : )


We we seated at our beautiful table:


Here was the view when we were first seated. Luckily, even if the sun is bright, you're always moving to a new place, so you don't have it in your eyes the whole time!

Here was another one, just from another angle.

We were able to see so much from up there. Here are a few big landmarks I thought were fun to see from up high:


Since it is the "compass" room, every so often on the wall they have plaques that tell what angle/degree your facing and some landmark that is a certain distance away. It takes 55 minutes to complete a full 360.

Here is Chip as the sun was setting:

And me : )


We had a SPECTACULAR evening and I would recommend the restaurant to ANYONE! It is quite pricey, but the service, food, and atmosphere were everything you would expect and MORE for the prices we paid!

Our waitress was WONDERFUL! She was so REAL and PERSONABLE! She didn't press us to get more than we wanted, she was very encouraging about our menu selections...not in an annoying way, but in a very sincere way. She was there whenever we needed her, but not so much that we felt like she was ever interrupting. I REALLY liked her : ) It was funny, because she couldn't believe we'd been married for 3 years since we looked so young. Chip said "yeah, people think I'm 21 all the time" Her response was a little laugh and "I was thinking more like 18."

The food was SOOOO good. I am always nervous at places where the food is "gourmet" or "exquisite and unique" etc. But I shouldn't have been worried here : ) There menu is designed to have 3 courses: appetizers, soup & salads, and the entree. We decided to split one of each course and still have room for dessert. We're really glad we did.

The meal started out with their cornbread. It was sweet but also had a slight green chili taste. It was served with normal butter, honey butter, and salt. I have never seen salt for your dinner presented that way!


The appetizer we chose was Baked St. Andre and Herbs (served with) Sourdough baguette, kiwi leather, and spiced cashews

Mmmm....It was great! One funny thing is that when we ordered it, we didn't even realize that St.Andre is a type of cheese. It's a good thing we liked it! The kiwi leather was like a YUMMY fruit roll up and there were SEVERAL fun fruit garnishes to try. We especially liked the kumquats, which neither of us had ever had before. We had to ask the waitress what it was and when we told her we really liked it, she surprised us with a little "present" of two more : ) She also offered to bring out extra sourdough baguette to go with the cheese, which we gladly accepted!


Our next course was our salad. We got the Baby Romaine Salad with garlic vinaigrette, reggiano, chile-lime croutons, and heirloom cherry tomatoes. Its a good thing we LOVE garlic, because it was very garlicy. But it was SO yummy!!!


For our main course, we went all out and ordered the Filet Mignon with sunchoke-potato puree, english peas, and pearl onions. We also ordered a side of grilled asparagus. We found out that "sunchoke" is the root of a sunflower! They puree it and basically mix it with mashed potatoes. We ordered the filet medium well and it was perfect! I LOVED every bite of the meal!!!

I was SO set on taking pictures of EACH food item before we started eating.....but the main course came and I must have been SUPER excited about it, because I dug right in and didn't think to take the picture until halfway through : ) OOPS!

Chip really liked the walk-way connecting these two buildings...so I took a picture : )


And here was a fun sunset picture.


For dessert, we got the Custard Trio. It came with Crem Brulee, Chocolate Mousse, and Tangerine Flan....all of which were very good and quite interesting! They put a fun chocolate anniversary message on the plate for us too : )



The whole night was WONDERFUL! We talked about all the things that have gone on in our life together the past three years and thanked the Lord for the ways we've seen Him work and for all the many blessings He has poured out on us.

So....thank you Chip, for planning such a fun dinner for us.
But even more so....THANK YOU LORD, for three wonderful years and for the extra blessing you have poured upon us at this point in our lives, making a dinner like this possible! We know a dinner like this is FAR beyond a "need" of ours and DEFINITELY a huge "extra" in life. And we are so extremely grateful that God has allowed us to enjoy the beauty and creativity He created in an evening like last night : )

Kenzie's First TP-ing Adventure......

Tuesday afternoon, Kenzie took a late nap and didn't get up until after 6pm. During dinner, I asked Chip what we should do that night...we had no plans and Kenzie was good to go for quite awhile. We thought about swimming, but Kenzie gets cold in the pool at night pretty fast, so it ends up being a lot of work for not much time in the pool. So we thought some more and decided it would be fun to TP our friends Clay and Rachel. Rachel is having a baby in November and will be having her ultrasound soon to find out boy/girl and do all the routine measurements and checks. We decided it would be fun to incorporate our gender prediction in the TPing job. So here are the supplies we brought:

The diaper even held a nice chocolately surprise:

We knew it wouldn't be a very spectacular job for a few reasons.
1. It was broad daylight
2. I am 31 weeks pregnant.....
3. We had a 14 month old "helping"
4. They live in a 2nd floor apartment

We got there and Kenzie was ready to go! (She never gets to play with the toilet paper at home, so I am pretty sure it was a dream come true for her....)

First we did the door. So exciting. This was probably the most "TPed" part of the whole place.



When we went around to do to the balcony, Kenzie and I worked on unrolling the toilet paper.



Then it was Chip's job to try to throw the TP really hard up to the balcony. It was so light and hard to throw that some pieces took 2-3 tries.


It was really funny to me, because as we were doing it, Chip kept looking around and trying to be sneaky. Like I said before, it was broad daylight. I also kept reminding him that I didn't think we would get into too much trouble, even if someone did call the cops or something....I mean c'mon....a giant pregnant woman and a 14 month old helping with a PATHETIC TPing job.....you just CAN'T get in trouble with those things on your side.....

Here is our "finished product". Haha. Such a miserable job:


After the TP, it was time to launch the "poopy diaper":


So...funny thing happened at this point. Chip had gotten so used to throwing really hard to get the TP up there, that when he went to throw the diaper, he totally overthrew and it landed on the 3RD FLOOR BALCONY instead of the 2ND!!!! Whoooops!!!

Luckily, Chip just happened to have a melted 3 Musketeers bar in his car and since we conveniently had Kenzie along, we also had another diaper..... The presentation wasn't quite as cute, but here was diaper #2:


Chip successfully tossed it up, even hitting the window a little bit (hoping to get them to come out and look). But they didn't come look. So we knocked and ran away, hoping they'd try to get us. Chip saw them open the door, take down the TP, and close the door. I waited, watching the balcony...and nothing happened. We went around to the other side of the building....wondering what we interrupted....small group? a nice dinner? We had no idea whether we should stay or leave. We contemplated it long enough that they ended up coming out : ) They had found the balcony and diaper and figured it was us.

Of course Clay and Chip couldn't let all the TP go to waste. We know some other people in the complex, so they took it over and re-used it on their balcony.

Kenzie REALLY liked this part:


After that, Clay and Rachel invited us in for awhile. We caught up a little bit and enjoyed yummy ice cream. (I had mine as a Rootbeer Float....mmmm! Thanks Clay and Rachel!!)

It's really hard to see in this picture, but if you look SUPER closely, you can see a BIT of an icecream mustache above Kenzie's lip. She REALLY liked the treat, too : )