Halloween 2009

This is our first Halloween in our own house with our puppy! It is awesome! We carved pumpkins the night before Halloween.

An Evening of Witchy Delight!

This year for Halloween, I hosted a witches party with Team UGLY. We invited Erin to come and be an honorary member. She is so nice! We all dressed as witches and played games and watched Charlie Brown. The food was great, too (always important). Even Stella dressed up as a witch! Here are a few pictures:

Cascade Springs

Today we went up to Cascade Springs in American Fork Canyon. It was a lot of fun. We took Stella and she was so well behaved! She didn't bite her leash at all, and she walked along with us really well. She had so much fun going to a new place. She was scared to go over the bridges at first, but then she got over it. We drove the Alpine Loop, which is a lot longer than I realized!! It was beautiful, though, with all the fall colors.

Puppy Stella!!

Today we went to pick out our puppy. There were 4 girls to choose from, and they are still so small that it was hard to choose. We couldn't see their personalities too much because they were so sleepy. But the lady said that this one is really cuddly but also playful too, so we thought she would be good. Plus she is super cute!! We still have to wait 3 weeks. We will go get her on September 4th.

She's gonna be preston's little baby!

Puppies!!

Preston and I have been wanting to get a dog for the longest time! Now that we have our own house we can finally get a puppy. We have been looking at different breeds and decided we love the Shiba Inu dogs. They are Japanese and are so cute!! We found some that were for sale on KSL, and decided to put a deposit down for a female. She was born on July 18th and opened her eyes on the 1st of August. There were 4 females and one male, and we get first pick of which one we want. The owner just sent us pictures of all the females, and they are all adorable! We will go up in a few weeks to pick which one we want. I am planning on bringing her home on September 4th, labor day weekend. I can't wait! I went to the library yesterday and got a bunch of puppy training books. She is going to be the most well-behaved dog ever!! (I can hope, can't I?)

We have been trying to think of a good name for her, and think we finally came up with one we both like...Stella. You must watch the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine is on muscle relaxants (Stella!!!) It is so funny. We thought of that name and then about an hour later that episode of Seinfeld came on, so it was decided upon. As long as it fits her personality.

Mom

Dad

Puppy 1

Puppy 2

Puppy 3

Puppy 4

Christensen Family Reunion!

We have a big family reunion every other year, and it is always a blast! This year we went to Moab over the 24th of July and went river rafting, hiking, etc. Preston and I had to go a few days late, so we missed out on the hummer ride, but that's ok. We had a blast. Its always fun to see my cousins that I don't get to see very often.
One really fun part of the trip was watching some old home videos from when my dad was young. He got them transferred from 8mm film to a dvd and we all sat around and watched them and laugh. My favorite part was when they were doing the twist. Ryan and Jordan Young also came from Tennessee and stayed a few days. They were so much fun to have there. They put on a show for us with Ryan on drums and Jordan on Guitar and vocals. It was about 10:00 at night and I was afraid someone was going to call the cops, but they never came. Grandma Blackgburn is 93, and she is still as spry as ever! My favorite part was when she practically climbed over the couch to get to her seat! She just makes me laugh. While we went river rafting, Grandma, Grandma B, Mike and the kids went on a Jetboat tour. Grandpa came rafting with us, and we had a good time. There were plenty of water fights. On our raft, we went over a rapid and Mom, Kellie, and a mother and daughter from another group fell off the raft and had a kind of scary experience. The other mom cut her eye, but everyone was okay and we kept going and had a good rest of the day.

July 4th/Moving

I've been so busy lately. We closed on our house on July 1st, 2009. It was awesome. We spent the next few days painting, and our fourth of July was spent in our house painting, too. It was kind of sad because the fourth is my favorite holiday, but I was ok missing it for my house. We got moved in the next day and are loving it! I will post some pictures later.

Our House

We finally got an offer accepted on a house! We have been looking since October 2008 and we were starting to think we would never get a house. We put an offer on a house in November. It was third party and we just heard back from them yesterday. I think we have made a total of about 7 offers. I am still a little concerned that something is going to go wrong. But we have signed the papers to get the mortgage going and we should be closing on the house in about three weeks. It is in Eagle Mountain, and here are the pictures:

View from the front porch

Looking in from the front entry

Master bath

The Air Show June 6, 2009

We went to Air Force Week's air show at Hill Airforce Base. It was really cool. We went up about 11:30 and Ilene came with us. It was free to the public. We decided to park at the high school near the south entrance to the base, thinking it would be faster than waiting in line to get in. What we didn't realize is that the air strip was all the way on the other side of the base. We ended up walking about 45 minutes just to get to where the show was. We felt like lemmings just following all the other people that were walking. It was fun though. Good exercise. They had a bunch of different planes that flew and did tricks. There was a red biplane that would go way high up in the air and then stall its engine and free fall end over end. It was cool. The Thunderbirds also performed, which was my favorite. It feels so patriotic when they do their formations. That's one of my favorite parts of the fourth of July, is when the planes fly by. Anyway, There was one part where they said they were going to do a really cool trick, so we were all watching to the south, and then from the north one of them buzzed the crowd really low. It scared us all so bad! It was fun.

Sorry for the quality of the video. You can just barely see the planes right when they are passing each other. They got so close!

Our Anniversary May 2009

May 8th was our 5 year wedding anniversary! I can't believe how fast time goes by! We thought we better do something special this year, since it has been 5 years. Preston was going to surprise me with an overnight stay at Little America (where we stayed on our wedding night). However, because I can't not be in control, I kept bugging him about if we were going to go on a trip or what, so it turned out to be not so much of a surprise. But he did surprise me with dinner that night. We went to The Roof at Temple Square. It was really good! It is a buffet-style restaurant on the top floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building right across from the Temple. It was beautiful and the food was great! We ate a ton of food, mostly dessert. It was a good time. It was nice weather, just a little chilly, but we went to the pool the next morning and then went to Park City to the outlet mall. It was a nice mini vacation. I also surprised Preston with a Wii and Wii Fit, which he was excited about and he made me a video montage of our five years together. I am lucky to be married to such a sweet man!

The tulips were beautiful! There were more than I have ever seen in my life!

We could see the conference center out of that window

The view from our table

Preston's Graduation May 2009

May 1st is the day that Preston graduated from college. It was a fun day. He didn't act very excited about it because it took him a long time, but I know he really was and we are all so proud of him. We went to the commencement at 10:00, where President Monson spoke. We thought that was pretty cool. Then we were going to have a picnic but the weather was really bad, so we went over to Diane's house and ate our lunch there. Then convocation was at 2:00. It was a good day. and we went to dinner at Asian Star.

Jello Jump! March 2009

I am way late on writing about this, but I had to put it into my blog. On one of the local radio stations they do a jello jump every year for St. Patrick's Day. Kellie was listening to the radio one morning and decided she wanted to do it. So she called in and told them what wacky outfit she would wear, and then called me and I decided to do it too. Kellie wore a leotard and tights that I had worn to girls camp before, and I wore a formal dress that used to be Kellie's. It was really fun. It turned out being a really nice day, which I am thankful for. The jello was freezing, but the water they rinsed us off with was even colder!!! They had about 20 people take turns getting in the jello. They had blarney stones(limes) that you had to get with your mouth. Depending on the number on the blarney stone, you won a prize. They were lame prizes, though. I won a Hulk cartoon video and Kellie won a Nerf game. But it was worth it for an awesome adventure!