Center Stage

Jesse and I are kind of spoiled. We got paid to eat and go to concerts/shows every weekend all semester. This last semester Jesse was the student director of Center Stage. His job was to bring in, feed, find housing for, and take care of the needs of professional entertainment. Shortly said he's a gofer to a lot of really cool people. We got to see a lot of cool performers. Our favorites were Mindy Gledhill, Nik Day, Stephen Jones, 1960's Beatles Tribute band, and Paul Cardall. It was a really fun semester. Just so you know next semester Jesse will be working in the University Relations department on campus. He is working for performance tours and will be planning the next Dance Alliance tour. We had a great time going to all the shows but are excited to have our weekends back. Now we have to think of our dates on our own. So help us by leaving a comment with you favorite date idea.

This is us with Nik Day. Fun Facts about Nik: Jesse has actually performed with him. If ya'll didn't know my husband is a pro dummer. Also one of Nik's first concerts in Rexburg happened to be mine and Jesse's first date. Needless to say we are HUGE Nik Day fans!!

Happy Birthday America

Every year since I can remember I have gathered in Donnelly, ID with my mother's side of the family for the 4th of July family reunion. It's a week filled with eating, boating, and pinochle. Oh ya, and lots of family. This was Jesse's first time coming to the family cabin for the famous Curtis reunion. Jesse became a master pinochle player (for those of you who don't know it's the most complicated game EVER). My family takes pinocle seriously. Our reunion is equipped with a massive pinochle tournament every night. Jesse got so good he even placed 3rd one night. This is unheard of for a newby! Jesse even learned to waterski like a pro! He's officially part of the family. So proud of him. One day we drove up to McCall for the day and went to Ice Cream Alley, a delicious ice cream place that is actually in an alley. While in town we hit up a thrift store where Jesse and I found a vintage Rummikub. It was so old it's actually called Rummy King. It's sweet!!! The adventure started on our way home. We headed home Monday so we could be back for school on Tuesday. Monday was the 4th and because we were traveling we missed the fireworks in McCall and Donnelly. So we hurried home so we could catch the fireworks in Idaho Falls. I'm happy to report that we made it and got premo parking. They were awesome by the way! The adventure started when we tried to leave. Lets just say there were a lot of people also trying to leave. It took us over 2 hours to get home from IF (a 30min drive). We made it home exhausted. It was a great trip and a great way to kick off our summer. Enjoy the pictures. Keep in mind we are camping ;)

At the end of the dock

The Mountains behind the farmers market

Ice Cream!! All the people you don't recognize are siblings and cousins.

Viewer digression advised ;) 

Playing cards with the family

Jesse skiing

Almost

Not quite

And he's up!!!

Well, It didn't last long but it happened. This is the 1st time. He's pro now!

HP for LIFE

So I will fully admit that my husband and I are NERDS. Which is one of the reasons our relationship works out so well. As everybody knows (and in this case I really do mean everybody) the final Harry Potter movie has made its appearance on the big screen.  I'm proud to admit that Jesse and I went to the midnight showing... and we dressed up, along with our wonderful friends Jared and Rachel Anderson. Let me introduce you to the Order of the Phoenix.

  

Trelawney, not technically part of the order but we accept her just the same, Mad Eye Moody, Lupin, and Tonks. Pretty cool huh? We felt like celebrities. everyone wanted to take pictures with us. We were even interviewed for the news. It was pretty awesome!

The most coveted tickets of our generation ;)

The happy couple. Complete with their famous movie stance. I think we make a pretty good Tonks and Lupin. Don't you?

We even went to the park and whittled these wands ourselves. Pretty cool. We cannot promise that the trees in Porter Park did not sacrifice to make these wands. It was well worth it!

Harry Potter is now over. Tear. Long Live the Harry Potter generation.  

FHE

Jesse and I love family home evening. Sometimes it's hard to come up with stuff to do with just us two (especially in the winter in Rexburg). When we were cleaning our house we found some teeth bleaching pens. Then we had the idea of using them to bleach T-shirts.  The bleach had been sitting so long it didn't do anything. So we emptied the gel out of the pens and filled them with Clorox bleach. It was a really fun activity. Take a look at what we made!! If you have any other fun FHE ideas for the two of us please feel free to comment.

      *We only had one black shirt so I bleached my infamous sweats!

         *My husbands from the South. He thinks he's gangster.

           *My husbands from the South. He has weird nicknames for me.

Donut of Epic Proportion

 Jesse and I both recently celebrated our birthdays! Happy Birthday to us! We both had great days filled with phone calls from family, going out to eat, and opening presents. It was quite a series of events. Two highlights from my birthday my mom came to Rexburg to surprise me and Jesse can now say that he is no longer married to a teenager (he's really excited about that). Of all the great things that birthdays bring this year Jesse topped them all. In my family it is a tradition to go to the local donut shop and buy a chocolate chip cake donut. Jesse has only heard about this tradition. I continued to tell him about how big and awesome this donut was (he didn't know how big). So Jesse being the wonderful husband he is and wanting to fulfill a tradition went into a donut shop here and asked them to make him the biggest donut they could. This is what they gave him; it's about 4 or 5 times as big as my "big" birthday donut from back home. Jesse knocked it out of the park on this one. My husband is awesome!! (enjoy pictures from both our birthdays)

                       **Jesse really likes Reeses haha

Easter

Even though its almost the 4th of July we can't go without writing about Easter. This was our first Easter together. However, it was practically non existent seeing as we both had traveled for 15+ hours and gotten home after dinner time the night before Easter. Because we had been gone for that whole week we didn't even think about preparing our house for the Easter bunny to come (we'll do better next year). There was no egg hunts or Easter baskets. However, it was abnormally important to me that we dye Easter eggs. So, Jesse humored me and we boiled the eggs. Unfortunately, we were so tired from our traveling we actually fell asleep while the eggs were cooling in the fridge. Luckily for us we don't have church until 1:30 so we were able to dye eggs Easter morning with the Andersons. It felt so nice to just be at home with friends and family spending time celebrating a very sacred and important day. On a more spiritual note (no pun intended) we listened to Rob Gardner's  He is Jesus Christ to put our hearts in the right place before going to church. What an amazing production. If you haven't heard it you must listen to it. If you live in Boise the Institute choir performs it at the temple every Easter morning. It is an amazing experience. Anyway, after church we had friends over for a wonderful Easter feast. We had the typical Easter goods, well sort of. We had ham and funeral potatoes, deviled  eggs and broccoli, and a wonderful chocolate mousse made by Mrs. Jacky Northgrave. I only say sort of because the potatoes were not your typical funeral potatoes. We now call our "mishap" recipe On the border potatoes. Instead of plain hash browns we accidentally bought loaded hash browns with peppers and onions in the mix. We didn't realize it until we had already mixed it in. Usually topped with cornflakes or potato chips, ours was topped with spicy cheez its because we didn't have anything else in our cupboards (remember we had been gone for the week prior to this day). So we through it all together. They came out tasting pretty dang good but nothing like the funeral potatoes people know and love. They tasted like Texas ran up and punched you in the face. If you want some bold potatoes these are awesome. Ya'll should try them sometime. You know, just for a change of scenery. Despite our lack for fancy festivities it was a wonderfully wonderful Easter. It was a good opportunity for reflection and another wonderful day spent with my wonderful husband. Can't wait for next year!

   Notice the matching J&R eggs (In the middle). We thought it would be funny to both dye eggs in our wedding colors with our initials on them. We rather enjoy this same name business! and of course we are sporting BYU-I in the bottom right corner. Plus, (you can't see it very well) but Chip and Dale came to our Easter dying party and signed the yellow egg on the bottom row!

Texas Torture

It has been ages since I posted and A LOT has happened. Since I last wrote we have had both a new niece and a nephew come into the family. Welcome Lucy Rae and Slate Grayson! Because of these two wonderful gifts I was able to extend my traveling experience providing me with my second airplane ride since being married. For those of you who are counting that's now double how many plane rides I had been on pre-wedding. As you all know my husband is a dancing fool. He loves it and I love him for it. Dancing has taken him a lot of places but most recently to Texas! He was gone for 17 days. Sounds short but it was the longest 17 days of my life! While he was gone though I got to go home and meet baby Lucy for the first time. I sure love that little girl. What an adorable baby she is; good work Ang and Bry. After spending a week at home (a week that went by too fast, miss you all!!) with the family I headed back up to Rexburg to attend my cousins wedding. Congrats Brittney and Josh. Marriage is the best decision I ever made and I am so excited for them and their exciting new adventure. After everyone left back to Boise I was left alone in Rexburg, by myself, extremely lonely and missing my husband. A special thanks and shout out to Rachel and Jared who fed me and kept me entertained. You guys are the best of friends. After a pretty miserable 13 days without my husband Jesse decided it would be best for everyone if I just came down to Texas. That brings me to the second new addition to the family, Slate. Jesse's brother Andrew and his wife Sara live in Houston. I still hadn't met Sara or any of their kids. Jesse decided this was as good as opportunity as any so he got me a flight and before I knew it I was on my way to meet the family and SEE JESSE!!!! It was almost 15 hours of traveling but I got there. Once there I went with Jesse's mom (who came down to meet the baby and watch Jesse dance) to the theater where Jesse would dance. We saw Jesse, what a relief and happy feeling that was. That night we watched Dance Alliance do their show (the 6th time I had seen it) and it was wonderful. It was a show that invited the spirit like nothing I had ever seen before, it was beautiful. We all went back to Andrew and Sara's where I got to meet Sara and where we all got to meet Slate. Jesse and I didn't get to stay together for long. He left with Dance Alliance to finish touring Texas and I stayed with Andrew and Sara for the rest of the week (missing the first week of school in the meantime). I loved spending time with them and their kids, what a perfectly cute family. It was also nice to spend more time with my mother-in-law. I love the Hyde family. Every time I spend time with them I learn so much. What a wonderful group of people, I feel so blessed to be a part of it.  So thanks Andrew and Sara for letting me stay right after you had a new baby and sharing your family with me. Ya'll are wonderful people. I sure love you! Also, thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law for driving me to and from the airport and being such an example to me. The end of the story is, Jesse actually beat me home to Rexburg. He picked me up from the bus stop and we were never happier to see one another. We couldn't stop smiling. It was quite the joyous occasion. We have been spending a lot of time since catching up from missing that week of school. I think we finally got it under control. It only took half a semester! What I learned most from this experience was, I am all for supporting my husband but I would be ok if he never had to leave town again!!
(Pictures of our cute nieces and nephews and Jesse on tour)