Long Time Coming

I know I have been horrible about updating our blog lately! Things around here have been insane! Dan is staying busy (as usual) with school and work. The end of the semester is quickly approaching so he is in crunch time. With school and work I feel like we hardly ever get to really see each other. I am so thankful for all that he does for Nate and I and look forward to the day that he is done with school and we get to see him more often. I am staying busy chasing after Nate and trying to stay on top of my household work and the apartment's work. It sure is hard to do all that I need to do with the apartment complex when I have a toddler (sad...not a baby anymore) who is constantly hanging onto my leg! The apartment manager position certainly is a blessing and yet some days we have to wonder what the heck we got ourselves into. I was called a "female dog" on more than one occasion in the past week (part of the joys of evicting people)!
We were able to get away for a couple of days about a week and a half ago and it was GREAT. We went camping with my best friend Sarah and her husband Eric at Zion National Park. We all managed to cram into a compact car, all 5 of us and ALL our camping gear. Camping gear including two tents, two queen size air mattresses, four tents, all of our clothes, and our food (cooler included)! We looked like a bunch of clowns shoved into a toy car. Nate had the most room of any of us in the car and he was happy the majority of the time in the car or asleep. Nate was not a fan of the dirt the first day and a half that we were there, which we all found funny. When we would sit him down on the ground he would play with the little flowers for a moment and then go to crawl and realize that he was in the dirt and freak out. We had a great time all around and look forward to going camping more this summer.
I cannot believe that our baby boy will be turning one at the end of this month. It truly seems like yesterday that I was in the hospital with a new born! Nate is such a wonderful blessing in our lives and I have no idea how we lived without him before. During the week during and after we went camping Nate cut three teeth. He did amazingly well considering that he had THREE come in back to back, I am sure the poor guy felt like it was never going to end. A couple of days after getting back from our camping trip Nate took his first steps. Sadly Dan was not here to get to see that, but my mom and Autumn got to see him do it on webcam. Nate of course was happy to oblige and show Daddy when he got home! Nate has been walking several steps at a time every day since then. It is truly amazing to me how much Nathaniel has grown. It is also amazing to me to think back to before we had Nate in our lives and think about how much Dan and I have grown as individuals and as a couple.
About a week or two before going camping Dan and I celebrated our two year anniversary by going out on a nice date! We have not had a chance to go on a real date without baby boy in a long time and in all honestly since we did not really "date" before getting married, this was probably our nicest date ever. We dropped Nate off at Grandma Char's before dinner (well, actually she met us at the restaurant and picked Nate up since we were running late) and went to dinner at Tuscany. The restaurant is a beautiful place and was absolutely divine! I had that night's pasta special and Dan had the Manzo di Veneto (Tender Venetian Style Beef with soft Gorgonzola Polenta in Port Wine Reduction). Dan said that his food was unlike anything that he had ever had in his life before. For dessert I had the Vanilla Bean Crème Brulee with fresh berries and thought that I had died and gone to heaven. I have had Crème Brulee a few times before but this was certainly the best I have ever had. Dan was full from dinner so he got his dessert (that night's cheese cake) to go. After dinner we had to go back to Char's because I forgot our tickets to the show in my diaper bag, which I of course handed over to Char at the restaurant. We then went to an improv comedy show. Dan and I are both huge fans of improv so we had a fantastic time. This was the first time that I had ever gone to a live improv show, so I think that made it even better for me. We both look forward to getting to go back one day soon!
Well, bed is calling (it is 3:30 am) so here are a couple of random pictures from over the past month. Hopefully I will get back into the routine of pasting regularly again!

Almost there

We are getting so much closer to be set up in our new place. We went a bought ourselves a few needed items from Ikea this past week (like a dresser for our bedroom)! The dresser was becoming more and more urgent since we do not have tons of closet space and therefore all of the stuff that should go in a dresser was in piles around our bedroom! We tried to get one from the DI, but they ended up nearly costing us as much as our brand new one that matches our bedroom set. Of course by bedroom set I mean, we have two night stands and two dressers. Hopefully one day we will be able to get the bed that goes along with the set, but for now, our bed is just fine on the floor :D The next big purchase is going to have to be a new couch... ours looks like something straight out of outer darkness and it now smells like it too (thanks to the cats peeing ALL over it). Lucky for us, we do have a large tax return headed our way and we will end up taking $300 to buy a new couch (I wish I had money)! Of course we have some people to pay off (hahaha) with that tax return too. Oh, we were also able to get Nate a high chair at Ikea for a whooping $25! I was completely excited and Nate is too! It is so much nicer to be able to feed Nate in a high chair instead of TRYING to feed him while he is sitting on the floor, you can imagine the adventure that was!

Nate is learning to walk... it is crazy exciting (and mommy thinks it is sort of sad because he is growing up so fast)! He has the ability to stand up on his own, but does not have the confidence yet. Nate is also getting his first tooth! Needless to say, the poor little guy screams at random, but he gets really excited if he sees the Tylenol, my druggie baby! As most of you know, Nate HATES sleeping in his crib... if you put him in it he will scream is little head off for as long as you can take it (an hour is the longest that I have let him scream before finally letting him sleep with me). Well, it has gotten worse! If you put him in his crib for ANY reason (to play, sleep, change him) he SCREAMS bloody murder. When I say he screams and freaks out I mean it, he is shaking so bad by the time you pick him up from his crib 5 minutes later. It is horrible and I feel so bad for him. I do not know what to do for him, but we are ready for him to sleep in his own bed!

Next Sunday Dan and I will be celebrating our two year anniversary. How are we celebrating you ask... by giving talks in sacrament of course! Our new bishop asked us two weeks ago if we would speak in sacrament (we both knew it was coming... we both got that feeling during sacrament meeting last week... pretty neat) and we said of course. Than he told us it would be in two weeks, we agreed and went on with our day. It was not until the next day that we realized the date that we would be speaking and the reason that Dan has that weekend off. So who knows if/how we will actually end up doing anything to celebrate! We were hoping to be able to find a baby sitter over night Saturday night and be able to go out of town, but I guess that will not be happening. So if anyone has any good ideas of a fun way to celebrate, let us know!