Happy Birthday Tim!

Happy Birthday Tim! I can't imagine life without you...

Here are some of my favorite things about you (in no particular order):

1. You make me laugh every single day.


2. You put up with and understand my numerous "Friends" references, and have even gotten pretty good at it yourself. Ikea? Yep, you are probably the only other person besides me that finds that funny.


3. You do the ironing- and never complain.


4. You pick up after the dogs and never ask me to do it instead.


5. You always wash my car for me without me ever having to ask.


6. You rub my shoulders every morning when I am getting ready for work- just because.


7. You always fulfil your church callings and then some.


8. You always support me and my decisions, no matter how crazy they may be.


9. You are willing to try anything I cook- and eat every bite, no matter what it is.


10. You are the best husband and friend I could ever ask for!

And a few of my favorite memories- so far... (once again, in no particular order):

1. The time we left the play during intermission and didn't realize there was still another act. We had no idea how it ended!


2. The time we drove home from Ikea with the bed frame on top of the car. My fingers were freezing. That was um... interesting.


3. The time you sanded the wall so our TV would fit because you just had to get that thing to fit that night.


4. Staying up all night painting our new house. Do you remember how exhausted we were?


5. Moving the treadmill and elliptical upstairs on our own. I was convinced we were going to get trapped on the stairs with the heavy machines crushing us, or the dogs. I'm so glad we survived that! And, yes... we did it all by ourselves!


6. Assembling the basketball hoop in the garage in the freezing cold. How many hundreds of unlabeled parts were there? And the awful instructions? But we did it, and we only ended up with a few extra parts. If only we knew where they were now. The rim is a little crooked.


7. Getting engaged- You caught me way off guard!


8. Getting married- Best day ever!


9. Dropping the top layer of our wedding cake in front of the Sheraton after our wedding reception. We were covered in cake and couldn't stop laughing! I'm so glad I had already changed out of my wedding dress!


10. Our cruise to the Carribbean- what a great honeymoon!

I hope you have a wonderful birthday! I love you!

4th of July

We had a relaxing 4th of July. How nice! We started the day out by taking the dogs to the dog park. I recently found out there is a new dog park only a few minutes from our house. There are even seperate areas for small & big dogs. We were a little worried at how Echo & Bandit would behave. Would they be the "bad dogs" that tried to take the other dogs' toys, or the ones that everyone thought were just plain crazy? We were pleasantly surprised to find out that they LOVE the dog park & were so good! They ran and played their little hearts out. They even played nicely with the other dogs. Sure, they marked on every square inch of the garbage cans and fence, but hey- so were all the other dogs, and I can only imagine how many different scents there were for them to cover up! Once the smoke clears and gets cooler than 90 degrees at 8:00pm, we'll be back for more fun!

Echo & Bandit- exhausted after a fun day at the dog park!

After the dog park, we joined my family for swimming (and food, of course!). We had lots of fun, and were all dead tired at the end of the night.

Here's a picture of Cristian enjoying the waterfall.

Having fun in the pool...

To top the day off, we get a full fireworks show every 4thof July right from our bedroom window! We have no idea where they are coming from (maybe the river or old town?), but a great display nontheless. We enjoyed it!

Dinner & a show

My stepmom got tickets to the Music Circus through work so we were able to go see The Sound of Music last week. First, we met Beka & Bill at The Melting Pot for a fun fondue dinner and then enjoyed the show!

Bring on the fondue!

The amazing cast of The Sound of Music. While they were all super talented, cute little Greta stole the show in my opinon. She had to be the cutest thing ever...
Just us...
Bill & Beka
Jenn, Tim, Bill & Beka having fun during intermission

We all had a great night. What a great way to start our 3-day weekend!

Natomas Crime Spree

So, many of you in Northern California have heard about the recent crime spree in Natomas. Tim and I heard about the actual spree yesterday (Monday). From June 1 to June 24 there have been 15 home invasions and 14 street robberies in our neighborhood. I have always felt our neighborhood was fairly safe, and while I have always been a bit paranoid about safety, I have felt comfortable taking the dogs for a walk, leaving for work in the morning and returning in the evening with all being just as I left it. We have a security company that patrols the neighborhood 24-hours, so that makes me feel good too.

This past weekend was exhausting. I got home from my day trip to Girls Camp Saturday morning around 2am. Just after getting ready and laying my head on my ever so comfy pillow, I realized that I needed to send in some reports for work. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep that night. I was dragging all day Saturday and attempted to run errands and keep up with my normal Saturday pace to get as much done as I can. Tim literally had to drag me along on our errands. We helped chaperone the youth dance that night and had to do some household chores once we got home. Once again, we got to bed later than I would have hoped.

Just before 5:00am, we were all (Echo & Bandit too) jolted out of bed when our house alarm went off... loud. I looked next to me and we were all laying in bed. No one opened a door by mistake. Tim & Echo ran downstairs. Luckily, no one made it into our house, but our sliding glass door was slightly open. We think the latch must not have "caught" and locked properly. Thank goodness for our alarm! It scared off whoever was there!

I checked our bedroom windows, which give us a view of the entire backyard (and most of our neighbor's backyards too), but saw no one. Poor Bandit was scared senseless, as he has never heard the alarm sound before and, after peeing on the carpet (I really couldn't get mad at him for it this time) curled up in a ball on our bed and waited for everything to get back to normal. He kept looking up at me with his big scared puppy-dog eyes.

It's scary to think that had we not had our alarm, someone would have been inside our home with a gun (all of the other home invasions and robberies involved guns). I'm grateful that we are all ok, but realize that there are more precautions we can take to keep our family and homes safe. In my household, we will no longer put off getting a motion-detector light in our backyard. We will be adding an additional lock to our front door (we currently only have one deadbolt and that's it- not like most houses that have a key lock and a deadbolt). Gone are the days of opening the downstairs windows and sliding glass door in the morning to cool the house down while we are getting ready for work upstairs. And, I just ordered a key remote to our alarm so that when we leave in the morning we can set our alarm on "no-delay" so that it sounds instantly if someone tries to break in (as of right now, it will only beep for 30-60 seconds and then will sound if the code is not entered).

Tim and I have been talking about other ways to keep us safe and won't be stalling on getting them done. This has been a real eye-opener for us. Most of the criminals have been caught, but there are still more out there. There will always be someone out there willing to break and enter, harm, and take what isn't theirs. We hope you all stay safe and are aware of what is going on in your neighborhood!