Celeste's B-Day

So to celebrate my sweetie's 28 b-day we had lots of friends over and a great BBQ. It was so fun to have our friends come to our new place. We were plagued by some flies which was pretty lame, but the food was too good to complain about it.

We played some Scategories which is Celeste's favorite game. Sadly I don't think we won...but we played pretty well. We also played some fun Wii games with up to 4 people! Ooooooh... That Monkey Ball is one crazy game. And whoever thought up Rayman Raving Rabbids was a bit raving at the time I'm sure.
Here are some pics.

Got Harry Potter?

We've been Harry Potterizing ourselves for the last week. We saw the "Order of the Phoenix" (5th movie) and enjoyed it. At the Midnight Harry Potter Party at the local bookstore, Brad figured out the incredibly hard crossword with other crazy Harry fans, while Celeste shook her head and said over and over again "How did you know that?". And all day Saturday and Sunday Brad read "The Deathly Hallows " out loud while Celeste entertained Brooklyn. We finished it at 1am completely satisfied. Thank you J.K. Rowling! You made our weekend!

Moving on up!

Man we feel like we're on Cloud 9! We finally moved into Winfield Village and it is SO much better than any other place we've lived during our married lives. Almost 1000 sq. ft. over 2 stories. Washer/Dryer hookups, 2 bedrooms, a little backyard, community pool and exercise room, rentable garden plots, roughly 30 Mormon couples reside in the community, city bus line, cheaper rent, and equity that builds interest while we stay. We've definitely "moved on up"! Take a look for yourselves.

Giggles

Nauvoo Pageant

So we took a quick trip out to Nauvoo to see the pageant. It was really fun. It's crazy that we live so close to so many Church History sites. It was fun to bring Brooklyn to see all the sites. I know she won't remember any of it, but maybe it'll make an impression on her somewhere deep in her subconscious.

So we started out with a trip to the visitors center where they had some small performances and the Christus statue. Then we went down to the Browning gun smith shop. It's kinda cool to see that all the modern military firearms are based on this mans work. He (and his lineage) was a genius in rifles and gun making. And he was a Mormon to boot! Then we went to the brick-makers and got a Nauvoo brick. It was amazing to see the devotion and adoration of the presenter to the people of Nauvoo and their sacrifices. He probably gives dozens of presentations every day for weeks and weeks, and he still got emotional talking about them and testifying of the Savior. It was really touching.

After a small picnic for dinner, we headed over to the pageant area. Because of Celeste's extensive Utah Theater connections, she practically knew every core cast member in the show. They were all so glad to see her again and meet Brooklyn. The pageant itself was actually really good! It reminded me of the old Legacy movie that used to play in SLC, just a stage version of it. It was chock full of doctrine and the spirit. It was like cramming the discussions into a 90 minute theater presentation. It was a great experience.

Driving home for 3 1/2 hours at 11:00pm was the hardest part of the day. We finally got back at 2:30am and dragged our sleeping frames into bed. Unfortunately we had an early day at church on Sunday so we didn't get very much sleep. :( But it was worth it to see Historic Nauvoo one more time!