Tahoe Vacation

I realize this is two weeks late, but once you hear all of the exciting things we've been up to you'll understand why we've been just too tired to even attempt to post anything about it.

Saturday July 6th marked the two year anniversary of Kellan coming back from his mission. That's a pretty huge deal & quite a bit has changed for him in those two years. He's studied at two universities, gotten married, moved twice & so much more! We celebrated by having a very relaxing Saturday & watched Epic. Not as impressive as the title would lead you to believe, but still cute. 

We've also made a decision to eat healthier, which for most people could be easily accomplished by chowin' down on some fresh fruits & veggies, but not for us! Kellan's allergies include basically all fresh fruits & veggies so we have to get creative with our cooking & sneak the healthy things in (good training for when we have kids right).  A few weeks ago we happened to have a bit of zucchini left that we didn't know what to do with & decided to make Zucchini Soup! It turned out surprisingly good & a very pretty shade of green, double win!

S is for soup

Now that the stuff about our normal boring lives is over, on to the fun stuff! 

So as you may or may not have known, Kellan's Grandpa was turning 75 & to celebrate the family held a big Dickson Family Reunion up at the beautiful Lake Tahoe.  

It was beautiful & absolutely incredible; even if I had to use quarters to shower, sleep in a tent during freezing cold nights & be wary of bears. 

Kellan & I started our trip Wednesday after work & set out on a Road Trip to Cali. I don't usually love super long drives but a summer road trip with your best friend is always fantastic. 

We got into town EARLY Thursday morning and spent the day in Yuba City hanging out with Kellan's family. We got also got to go to the Sacramento Temple and do a session. It was so wonderful and my first time inside; I'd only been around the grounds a few times before so it was such a treat to spend time there. We grabbed some pizza from Mountain Mikes for lunch and went out to dinner with Kellan's dad in the evening. 

Bright & early Friday morning we loaded up & set out for the family reunion. Tahoe or bust! Nothing was going to stop us ... except some ill timed car troubles. Kellan's sister Leigh-Ann & her husband Peter were 20 minutes ahead of us when they called to inform us their car had stopped working and they were stranded on the side of the road.  We got there as quick as we could & ended up having to wait about forty minutes for the family already at Tahoe to send someone to help us. Surprisingly enough this was actually one of our favorite moments from the whole trip!

We pulled out some juice pouches, setup our camping chairs & passed the time playing UNO off the side of the highway. Easily the most exciting game of cards I've ever played.

The funniest thing about it all was when our rescuers finally arrived, the car started up just perfectly! I guess it just wanted to give us something to talk about.

When we at last made it to the campground it absolutely perfect. The air was cool & crisp and the water was beautiful & bright blue. We spent our weekend swimming, touring the Pine Lodge mansion just off the water, stargazing on the dock & enjoying being surrounded by family we love.



& for your viewing pleasure, a video of the last night there...we may or may not have gotten a little carried away with the glow sticks.

Fireworks & Thunderstorms

I absolutely love Independence Day & all the patriotism that the holiday brings out in others. Wednesday I was able to get my Activity Day girls together & discuss with them how blessed we are to live in such an amazing country and how grateful we should be for the rights and freedoms we have been granted & our responsibility as citizens to help uphold those rights justly. ...then we played patriotic hangman because 8 to 12 year old girls can only focus on things that deep for a limited amount of time.

Our 4th of July kicked off very early with Kellan getting up at 6 am to run off to the Parade to go fundraising with his Boy Scouts. The heat was sweltering but there was a huge turnout & the floats were beautiful...or so I've been told. We had stayed up extremely late the last few nights & I unfortunately missed most of the parade by sleeping in. I felt pretty awful about it because I'd been so excited to go but getting that extra bit of sleep was super helpful.

I tried to makeup missing the parade with a fantastic dinner & went back to my Southern roots for an All American feast. We fixed up some fried chicken in Kellan's beloved cast iron skillet (he says he feels like Flynn Rider when he uses it), baked beans & I wanted to make broccoli with cheese sauce but Kellan said it was getting late & we already had too much food. Party pooper.

I felt like Minny from The Help, frying up chicken; only it was definitely not as easy as she made it look in the movie. Oil got everywhere & it took forever. The end result was yummy & looked nice, but it was no KFC folks.

The only thing I was thoroughly pleased with was the Peach Cobbler. Just making it is summer-time perfection. It makes the whole house smell so yummy I could just die. Topped with old fashioned vanilla ice cream & it just doesn't get any better than that. 

We ended the day watching the Fireworks set off from the Stadium of Fire from the comfort of our own home & popped in Armageddon to top of our patriotic day. Nothing says Independence Day like watching Bruce Willis save the world. 

Friday was rough because we still had work but the day was saved by the arrival of our new coasters I had been waiting for!

Talk about an upgrade! The top sad coasters were ones we'd picked up from Home Depot right after we got married because we needed something, anything, to keep our coffee table from getting rings on it. I absolutely love these new ones, but I still find myself using our old ones because I can't bear to cover up the cute design. 

Friday also brought wonderful thunderstorms to the valley. Kellan & I both felt reminded of the South & the beautiful summer storms so common there. We're counting down the days until we head out to Florida! 

& speaking of countdowns, the clock is almost up for our trip to Lake Tahoe for Kellan's family reunion!

THREE.MORE.DAYS!!  

We are beyond excited to see everyone & can't wait! 

3 months in a nutshell

Well, here is even more proof that I am quite possibly THE WORST blogger ever, but I hopefully I can make up for the three months I've left you all in the dark about so let's get to it!

April showers bring May flowers, and the cutest baby girl! Shelby Carden Hall was born April 17th weighing in at 8 lb 10 oz. She was a chubby, alert little peanut & cute as can be!

She's only gotten infinitely cuter & already has poor Uncle Kellan wrapped around her chubby little fingers.

May brought us to our sixth month of wedded bliss & we celebrated with a quick trip up to Bridal Veil Falls and a picnic put together by yours truly. On the menu was roast beef sliders with creamy chipotle sauce & cupcakes with buttercream frosting which was the perfect chance for me to use my new icing tool. I think it turned out beautifully & the weather was just perfect.

May also brought a new calling for me. At the Mother's Day Activity for my Activity Day girls I was asked by the Primary President if I would be willing to work in the Nursery! For those of you who know me well, that's pretty much my dream calling & I was over the moon! The little peanuts in there are the cutest things ever & I'm absolutely in love with them all. 

Speaking of cute peanuts, Miss Shelby had her baby blessing June 2nd! It was so wonderful and baby Shelby looked darling in the blessing dress we all wore for our blessings. 

June also marked the beginning of summer for us & we hit it off with a trip to the CARNIVAL. 

We rode the Ferris Wheel & snacked on cotton candy & had our first funnel cake, to be the first of many I'm sure. All in all, it was a PERFECT date. 

This Saturday my thrifty sister got us all into a pre-screening of DESPICABLE ME 2 for free! It was HILARIOUS & so worth watching when it comes out. Even baby Shelby was enthralled by it and managed to stay awake for over half of it! If Shelby can stay awake for most of it, that means it's a definite must see. 

My sister, Shelby & I also hit up Old Navy for their flip flop sale before the movie & picked up some swim suits for our upcoming trip to Florida where we'll be roughing it on the sandy beaches of Destin for a week. Poor us. 

& that brings you up to speed with our last three months! Hopefully your's was as eventful & wonderful as ours. 

Arts & Crafts

I almost forgot to mention all the fun artsy things we did in February!

At the beginning of the month, as I was looking at Pinterest & Etsy (always the beginnings of my many interesting attempts) I kept seeing all this adorable metal stamped items and thought to myself, well that doesn't look so hard, I could totally do that! (& then my next thought was, I could have saved us so much money at Christmas, but that's too late now)

Anywho! So I looked up the tools and techniques and that same week went out and bought all the things I needed.  (I did my homework though and found all the stuff I wanted for a great price too, double score)

I then got some cute vintage looking spoons from the thrift store and kept searching for the perfect shaped frames in my perfect budget. I found some just big enough at Joann's and snatched them up! I painted them cute colors to match all my married siblings' homes or weddings and then the interesting part; the actually metal stamping.

I'd bought some extra spoons to practice on, but found it was much harder than I'd anticipated and had to wait for Kellan to get home and help me.  ... then it kind of turned into one of those projects were I just directed & helped hand things to him while he got it done for me. Metal stamping is tough my friends! But I'm quite thrilled with the results.

You can't quite see, with the flash & all but the spoons are stamped to say "I DO" & "ME TOO"

I also took my new sewing machine out for a spin in a big way. I made an unofficial New Year's resolution to sew something at least every month and so far so good.  In January I made this easy skirt that I'm really liking. I may just splurge on some nice fabric and make another. 

And in February I kept it up with some burp clothes for my sister. They're still not quite done just yet, I want to add some labels to them. 

This first one did NOT turn out like what I was envisioning in my mind. Partially because I couldn't find the fabric and ribbon I was dreaming of, and also because I had no idea what I was really doing; but I learned through trial and error for next time I try. 

Since I was quite a bit bummed about how the first one had turned out, I decided to try again, and this time with a much simpler idea and much more success. Also, I'm a little bit in love with the beautiful pink fleece houndstooth design. So cute!

And that's it for now. I'm currently working on my March sewing project of a cute (hopefully) peplum shirt.  Keep 'em crossed folks! 

The Month of February

So clearly I haven't been the best at keeping this a weekly thing...or even a monthly thing apparently, but I'm going to try to be so much better at this.  But for now we'll just try to catch you all up on most of January & ALL of February.

 But first, January in a few pictures:

Maybe a week after Kellan's birthday, as he came home from work on Tuesday (yes, I know it was a Tuesday because he works super late & it's dark when he gets back & I'm super sad by then) he found this little guy hanging out in our driveway in the cold. 

I felt so sorry for him because it was below freezing so we smuggled him inside even though we're not allowed to have dogs in and gave him some water.  He was only inside for about 5 minutes total and stayed in the foyer so I don't feel like we did anything wrong.  That's me justifying it. 

Anyways, Kellan made a makeshift leash for Doug as I called him and hit the streets and bitter cold to find Doug's home.  

They came right back after like 5 minutes because Doug had led Kellan to the wrong door. 

But Kellan tried again and this time found success.  Apparently Doug, aka Snoopy, often gets out and lives just down the street from us with a family in our ward. 

Later that week I made pulled BBQ, homemade hamburger buns & Jim N' Nick's Cheese Biscuits. That wasn't anything hugely significant about January but I was pretty pleased with myself & Kellan's tummy was pleased too so a win win! 

January also hosted our The Vow inspired date night.  We rented the movie and came back to our own vow setup.  We played Chocolate Russian Roulette (delicious), drank sparkling cider, cuddled up & had the option to write each other our own vows.  

I for one was super exciting about the vow writing part because we never exchanged vows, but Kellan thought it was pointless. He didn't use those words exactly, but that's what he meant.  

Those papers sat on our coffee table for days with nothing on them until I had a particularly rough day and Kellan surprised me by filling his out! It was just perfect...that coupled with the cute, unsolicited things he'd written about me in his journal when we were dating.    ...I was cleaning & found it laying around. 

But in my defense, he clearly knew I'd be reading it one day because he had a line in there that said something to the effect of "maybe one day I'll feel comfortable enough to let Michelia read this." 

We're married, that's as comfortable as you're gonna get! 

 In January I also became obsessed with making homemade thin mint cookies.  Not only are they SUPER delicious, they are so so much easier than trying to make homemade somoas.  Yet another reason why thin mints are superior.  We are currently a house divided, but I'll win over Kellan eventually.

 We ended January with a Hatian Night of food and fun.  My sister & brother-in-law came down for a Hatian extravaganza planned and prepared solely by Kellan.  It was delicious.  We had a bunch of stuff I can neither spell nor pronounce, but boy was it good.

Cue in February.

Our month of love began with a wedding. & not just any wedding, my older brother's wedding!

Here Micah is with his cutest Dollar Dance partner, our niece, or as Kellan likes to say, His niece.

It was beautiful & I got to help do the bride's makeup, & I don't mean to brag, but she was looking quite nice. Also, that weekend was the first time Kellan got to meet my oldest brother, his wife & their five children.  This meeting made Kellan an uncle for the very first time, & boy did he love it.

He couldn't get enough of all the kids and spent half the time trying to get the youngest one to say his name.  Lexi eventually did, but not till they had already arrived home & were looking at pictures haha.

Here's Uncle Kellan with both the girls & you can clearly see how they have him wrapped around their little fingers. They're not our nieces & nephews anymore, they're just His.

Valentine's Day! I had all these plans for fancy dinners & Kellan came home the night before and asked if we could just have pizza. Thankfully I was still able to at least put a cute spin on our simple dinner.

We bought a BEAUTIFUL garden stool that I was drooling over. Yippee!

We went ice skating in the snow for the very first together. It was beautiful & also very very cold. Kellan fell once and he says it was because I was spinning him, but I was really just trying to teach him how to skate backwards. After that it was smooth skating for the both of us.

& just this Saturday (just two days into March) we picked up the cutest little plates for Spring & I made us some adorable little mustache mugs. 

Ah Spring, Provo has warmed up this week to balmy temperatures of 50 degrees.  I'm getting excited!

...to bad this Saturday the forecast is snow. 

I'll just look at my cute plates & dream of warm sunshine.