Happy Anniversary!

As of June 21, 2008 Nels and I have been married for 5 years. Wow! Time has flown by and it truly has been wonderful. To celebrate this happy occasion we decided to splurge and go to the Melting Pot restaurant. It's a fondue restaurant. We got there at 5 pm and didn't finish until 7 pm! The meal begins with a cheese fondue that you dip vegetables, apples, bread and chips in. Then the salad comes. Then you pick an "Entree cooking style" that you cook your vegetables and a platter of meat in. The platter of meat has Filet Mignon, Sirloin, Chicken, Marinated Pork Tenderloin, and Shrimp. Last, but definitely not least, comes the chocolate dessert fondue that you dip strawberries, bananas, marshmellows, cheesecake, rice crispy treats and brownies in. The first time we ate at the Melting Pot was when we got engaged. I remember we ordered all of the "safe" stuff. But this year we were adventurous and it tasted even better.

The first time we were there we ordered plain chedder cheese fondue, a vegetable broth and milk chocolate for the fondues. This year we ordered the spinach artichoke cheese fondue, a
Caribbean-seasoned bouillon, and the flaming turtle for the chocolate fondue. It was called the flaming turtle because they make it with milk chocolate, caramel and chopped pecans. Then they flambé the fondue right at your table. It's pretty cool. You can kind of see the flame in this picture.

We had a great time cooking the food, eating it and just hanging out together.

Here's a couple of things that I love and appreciate about Nels and why I am so happy that we are married.

I love how Nels still opens the car door, front door, any door for me, no matter where we are or where we are going. He's still a gentleman.

Nels is always telling me how beautiful I am and how much he loves me. I think he's told me at least one or both of those things every day.

For the past two years, Nels has made me pancakes every Sunday and every time I ask nicely for them. : )

He's kept his promise of keeping the freezer stocked with ice cream.

Nels writes little love notes to me and puts them in my lunch sack. I have a big stack of them that I have collected over the years.

Well, these are little things, but they sure do mean a lot to me. I'm looking forward to the next five years and I hope we can make them as memorable as the last five.

Oh Happy Day!

My happy day started on May 30. It was my last day of work. When I got to work my boss Mary and the person that I was training-Myra, took me out to eat breakfast. Then at 10:30 a.m. Krannert had a reception for me. We ate cake and lots of people came and said good bye to me. Pretty cake huh?Then Cindy and Jen took me out to eat lunch. I ate a lot of sweets that day. The best news came after lunch when Nels gave me a call and said that he was given a job offer from International Paper and the position is in Indianapolis. Yippee! So that's our big news. We're moving really soon and we're both way excited. That's why I haven't updated in a while. We decided to rent an apartment instead of buying a house because we may be moved to a different location after two years. (Nels' position is part of a leadership development program.) So we found a cute apartment that is 12-15 minutes from Nels' work. I'll take pictures once we get all moved in.

So the next couple of weeks are going to be a whirlwind, but I'll update again as soon as possible.

Pomp and Circumstance

"Quite a bit of pomp for this circumstance." (quote from The Bee movie.)

Well, Nels did it! He accomplished one of his lifelong goals. Nels' parents and sister Anna-Lisa came down for the ceremony and celebrations. We were all so proud of Nels. I think the pictures sum it all up.

Happy as can be!

Don't drop me! :)

"I did it!!!"

We just wanted to thank everyone for your love and support these past two years. We couldn't have done it without you!

The Stache

After graduation Nels shaved his goatee, but he left a little surprise for me.

Oh, dear. I don't like it much. Do the words "Vote for Pedro," come to mind? Of course, Nels' mustache is much better than Pedro's. :) I won't even ask for you to vote what you like best this time.

Tag, You're It

My friend Lora tagged me, so here it goes:
Here's how it works:
A ~ Each person has to list 6 facts / habits about them
B ~ After part A go to 6 people's blogs and leave a comment letting them know to read your blog and that they have been tagged. List at the end of your posting who you have tagged.
All righty:
1. My first one is a habit. I am a two time snooze pusher person with a ten minute faster than normal time clock setting. That's a mouth full. When I set my alarm I take into account my habit and the additional ten minute "cushion." It's very complex. :)
2. Another habit is that I say "just kidding" after almost everything. This is a habit I'm trying to break, so it is getting better.
3. Another thing I say is "Do you want to...?" Nels really dislikes this, because I'll say "Do you want to do the dishes?" or "Do you want to help me cook?" Nels thinks in his head, "No, I don't want to do the dishes, but I will." So I'm trying to phrase my questions as "Will you please...?"
Very hard habit to break.
4. Now I'm going to do three about Nels.
Nels is a terrific speller. He can spell anything and he can spell backwards...which is especially useful when playing the game Cranium.
5. Nels loves Othello and Checkers. I think he could play them all day long, fortunately he doesn't.
6. Pretty much everyone knows this about Nels, but, oh well, I'll state it for the record. Nels loooooves cars. He researches them, collects brochures about cars and test drives cars.
Quick story:
Earlier in April Nels had a 15-page research paper that he needed to work on. He kept complaining about it until I got tired of hearing about it. So, I bribed him. (a technique I learned from my parents:) I told him that if he didn't complain about this paper anymore then I would go test driving with him for 60 minutes. But every time he complained then I would subtract 5 minutes from the time. He stopped complaining about it and went to work on the paper. Worked like a charm, and he only complained one time so we went test driving for 55 minutes last Saturday. We test drove the Nissan Altima.
Anyway, I tag Rachel, Katrina, Kayli, Stephanie, both Heather's and Dalee
Have fun and I look forward to reading them! :)

Cards

Thursday night I went to a Stampin' Up party and made 5 beautiful cards. Each card was already pre-cut so we just had to put them together. I don't like cutting the paper because I usually do it crooked, so I really enjoyed making these cards. I also learned about a cool website that gives card ideas for the stamp sets from stampin' up. Here's some pictures of the cards we did.

I loved this butterfly stamp set.

Thankful for Warm Weather

I am so happy that warmer weather is coming our way. My mom sent me some pictures of the snow at the end of March. After seeing these pictures I tried not to complain about the cold weather, because at least we didn't have 4 feet of snow to trudge through!

Here's a picture of the trampoline. It's almost to the top! My Dad's old Chevrolet truck covered with snow. I don't think he drove it for a while.
Wow, I don't know how I survived winters in Idaho!

So anyway, like my title says, I'm thankful for warm weather today.

Lately, Nels has been playing soccer. He plays indoor soccer on Fridays and then they usually have a game on Monday. For the first THREE weeks in March/April the games were cancelled due to rain. : ( But he finally got to play two games and they won both of them. Here's a sweet action shot, but it's kind of dark. I tried to lighten it up a bit. They played around 8 p.m. Notice how he is wearing all Adidas, his favorite type of clothing. I'll have to blog about that another time.Oh and don't worry, I won't quit my day job to become a sport action photographer. I was sometimes too slow taking the picture and ended up getting just grass, so that was the best picture I got.