3 years ago...

Dear Dane,
3 Years ago, you made my day.



And you have kept doing it ever since. Thank you for the best 3 years of my life.

I love you!

Baby Shower

Last Saturday, some of my great friends threw a baby shower for me. It was so much fun to see everyone there, play a fun game and have some amazing food. It is always a little weird for me to be at a party for myself, but it was so fun. I just tried to think about it as a non-birthday party for our little girl who is on her way is 5 weeks! yikes.

Anyway, thank you sooooo much to everyone who came and to everyone who put so much planning and time into it. Especially because we had to change the time and date a few times because of my grandpa's funeral. You were all so amazing.

Here's some pics from the day:
Of course we opened presents :) I love these little shoes!





This was one of our faves. My friend Naomi made a little blanket that said "Daddy's little girl" on the front with a really cute pink pattern with ducks. I knew that Dane would love it because he loves ducks, but then I turned it over to see why he would really love it. And he did. And the first thing he said was, "It's sad, but I could name all of these different planes."




Here with some of my greatest friends from my BYU days. We all met our freshman year, me, Haylee (expecting her 2nd), Jessica (also expecting her second), and Lindsay who has been married only a few months.




These two girls are 2 of my other faves from my BYU days. Laura and Jordan, who I meet in Art Ed. They were my vice presidents for our art ed organization, NAEA BYU student chapter. Laura teaches ceramics at American Fork HS, and Jordan is teaching art at a charter school in West Jordan.




And last but not least, I had to share this. When Haylee and I were roommates our sophomore year, for some reason, we stuffed clothes in our shirts and pretended to be pregnant. (She is frowning because she isn't married.) Now that we are both pregnant and due basically the same day, we had to take a real one :).

Indian Corn

So, I am pretty sure that is not p.c., but I am not sure what else to call this.




This last Sunday, the owners and managers of J-Dawgs hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for all of their employees. They deep fried a turkey, and made everything from scratch. Mashed potatoes, candied yams, stuffing, rolls, everything. It was sooooo good! They invited the employees to bring desert and had a contest. So, this is what Dane and I came up with, with some help from Hello Cupcake!.



We won the prize for the most creative desert. It was so much fun. And no, the gourds are not cupcakes. Just the corn. :)

29 down, 11 to go

All right, all right. You asked, and I finally gave in. 29 weeks.

Bigger and Better

I am probably not the best one to be giving updates on Dane's flying, so if he wants to add an addendum to this post, I hope he does! I just wanted to say how proud of him I am for all of his hard work. So, here is the skinny. He is a licensed private pilot with his instrument rating. Which means he can fly in conditions where you can't see where you are going--like at night or when it is foggy, raining...etc. We took off to Houston literally right after he finished that. In Houston he received about 35 hours of training on a Boeing 737 simulator. Since we have been back he has been working on his Multi-engine add on to his private pilot license.

This is where bigger and better comes in. I guess it goes without saying that he has been spending all of his training in a multi-engine aircraft (or sim). If you remember this post from a while back, I think I referred to the planes that he flew as an "egg with wings", but these bad boys are a lot bigger. If you use Dane as the scale, it is a really big difference. He fits in them a lot better, and of course they are a lot more expensive to train in, but a lot more fun from what I have gathered. Dane is hoping to take his final mutil-engine check-ride with an FAA official in the next week or so.




So, the next steps are commercial and then flight instructor licenses. Luckily, UVU has a pretty nice set up for these two licenses so that you work on them simultaneously. Which means, when Dane has his commercial license (means he is certified to fly for hire) he will get his instructor license at (crossing my fingers) the same time. We are hoping this will happen early next year around the time our baby is born and I have to go back to school.

I am so proud of all the hard work he has been putting into school. He is not only juggling flying, and learning everything he needs to pass his tests in the air and on the ground for the check-ride, but is also taking classes online and in the classroom. Add on top of that working 17-20 hrs/week and leading the elder's quorum in our ward. Way to go sweety! I love you!

Sugar Cookies

Last Saturday a good friend of mine gave me a call and invited me to come over and decorate sugar cookies, and she discovered something genius. After we had decorated the white ghosts, and the orange pumpkins, our attempt to mix brownish frosting for the leaves was not working.

So, the thought came up that we should have used cocoa powder. Oops, that would have been great. And before I knew it, she had grabbed the Nutella out of her cupboard and was mixing it in. Wow. I was surprised first because it seemed kind of crazy, and secondly when I tasted it. Amazingness. Her husband agreed. Skeptical at first thinking that the cookies would just taste like they had Nutella on them, even he admitted the creative genius. So, that is my recommendation to all of you. Next time you make frosting, try adding a dab of Nutella!

Happy Belated Halloween!

(For those of you who can't tell, I am supposed to be a bottle of special sauce.)
I'd have to say that our costumes turned out pretty well this year considering the 15 min we took to put them togeter...