Seriously!?

Yes, today is April 30! Really? Because it doesn't look like it. I'm starting to wonder if spring/summer will ever come :(

Plastic Gun + Mask = Scary

I am excited to say that I finished the semester strong! The unfortunate part is that I'm starting back up on Wednesday for spring term. This semester was weird in the way that I didn't feel a huge lift off my shoulders when I finally finished like I have with other semesters, but it was still nice to check off my last final from my list.

I don't know why, but I have this horrible habit of pushing off my most dreaded final to the last day of finals. It is something I have done since my first semester of Freshman year (I don't foresee a change in the future).

On a night during finals week, I had just gotten home from Highland and I returned a plate to the Willmore's. Natalie knew that Phil was at work and she was in the mood to pull a prank. Ok...quick explanation... Natalie and I have this little thing in common where our husbands love to scare us to the point of tears, but we can never scare them back. So Natalie tells me to tell Phil that I'm going to go to the store so I probably won't be home when he gets home from work. Drew put on a wolverine mask and a hoodie and grabbed a fake plastic gun and his role was to hid behind the fridge while Natalie and I sat on the bed in the bedroom and watched. Phil walked in the house, took off his coat and got scared (for once) by Drew. I guess if I can't scare him, a man in a supposedly "empty house" with a mask and a gun is the next best thing.

We reenacted it afterwards haha

Natalie and I were quite amused by the whole thing, Natalie so much that she wanted to pull a prank on someone else. The target... the Clark's. The Plan... Phil texted Ryan and said that he saw a man looking into their car window. Drew was going to be standing by the car and when Ryan opened his apartment door, Drew was to point the fake gun at Ryan and tell him to get back in his apartment. This whole thing would look a little like this from Ryan's point of view...

Let me just say, this was Natalie's mastermind plan, but it did sound really funny to me at the time. Unfortunately, we didn't think through the plan very well because we didn't expect the outcome. So Ryan opened the door just like we thought, he saw drew, and ran back inside and slammed the door. Phil booked it from our hiding place and started knocking on their door to let them know it was just us. Ryan finally opened the door and about 15 seconds later 911 was calling Ryan back. We stood in the doorway and listened to Ryan tell them that it was a mistake and give them all of his information. We felt horrible. I can't even imagine how he must have felt. Ryan told us later that he ran inside and told Courtney "There is a man outside with a gun!" and he quickly called 911. When he heard Phil outside he wanted to yell, "Phil, there is a man with a gun, get away!" The Clark's were nice enough to forgive us. Like I said before, it was really funny, but not very smart at the same time.

Good thing this wasn't a real situation

Once again, Phil and I are sad to move away from all of the great friends we have here in Provo.

Happy Birthday Philip! ...Two months early?

One of the things I love about Philip is how passionate he is. I'm coming to realize that this passion can greatly benefit me and I know that it will benefit our future family someday. However, this passion can also drive me slightly crazy depending on how it is focused :)

Lately, Phil has been obsessed with the iPad 2. He has recently convinced himself that he really needs an iPad. As he puts it, an iPad will "enhance my life." Just to illustrate how adorable he is when his passionate side kicks in, two days ago we talked about nothing but an iPad! No joke. Ok, granted we only saw each other for a few minutes before he went to school, 30 minutes after he got home but before I went to school, 30 minutes after I got home but before he went to work for the night, and 30 minutes when he got home from work before we went to bed. Oh, and then we did text about the iPad throughout his shift as well. So there wasn't tons of face time, but an iPad was the topic of discussion. See...cute right? But kind of annoying in a totally loving way!

I did a lot of thinking that day and I kind of came to the realization that he was going to get an iPad but I wanted it to be under my own terms. At 11:30 Monday night as I was washing my face, I realized that the next day was April 12th, exactly 2 months before his June 12th birthday. I kept thinking, and decided I was going to surprise him with the iPad as an early bday present. So yesterday I went to the BYU bookstore and bought the iPad 2 and a green cover, just like he wanted. Throughout the day, I decided that if I'm going to give him his present early, why not go all out and celebrate early as well. I sent out a mass text to lots of our friends and told them I was throwing Phil a surprise party that night. I know this was totally last minute but I was actually really excited about doing it. And more importantly, I knew he would be really excited about getting his iPad.

After school I went to the store and bought balloons, soda, and Chex Mix. I thought about making a birthday cake but I was already planning on making cookies for a friend and Phil knew that, so I stuck with cookies as to not raise suspicion. When he got home from a meeting at the U of U, I set him on the couch and this is what happened...

I didn't get the excited reaction I was hoping for on camera, but don't you worry, later he was jumping up and down all over the place. I was really glad he was happy. But I honestly didn't understand why he already figured I had bought him an iPad. He said it was because I was late coming home from school and I'm never late. I think that's a stupid reason especially since I had a totally legit lie for being late, plus I had told him over and over that I was still thinking about whether or not I even thought we should buy one. Apparently he knows me too well just like he said.

He might have seen through the first surprise but there was no way he was expecting friends to show up for a party. We had dinner and Phil spilt on his shirt so he decided he would just get in his PJs and settle in for the night even though it was only 7. Haha I thought it would be hilarious if people showed up and Phil was in his pajamas so I didn't tell him to change. Plus, I wasn't going to ruin this surprise and make him suspicious by telling him to put clothes on.

Although Phil claims he suspected the iPad, he was very surprised that I had thrown together a party as well. Even though it might sound kind of lame and cheesy to do all this...I like cheesy, and Phil definitely loved his Birthday Party. So Happy Birthday Phil...(oh, and happy Easter, fathers day, anniversary, Halloween, and Thanksgiving! We just rolled everything into this iPad. I hope it is worth it). I love you Phil and your passions!

This is Phil's cake made out of cookies!

He only got 10 candles instead of 24 because they were hard to put in the cookies.

Even my little sister Ali came!

Good Ol' Times with the Willmore's

Phil and I moved into our first apartment in August 2009 and the first people to welcome us were our next door neighbors, the Willmore's. Since that first encounter, we have become lifelong friends and we have had a lot of fun. Due to the curve balls of life, we are both moving this summer. I think I'm slightly in denial and I'm trying to push off reality for as long as possible. But the other day, the Willmore's officially sold their apartment contract, which made the inevitable feel a whole lot closer. Here are just a few of the fun things we have done over the past almost two years...

One night we were outside talking (not sure how we got outside). Phil and Drew were standing next to each other facing one direction, and Natalie and I were next to each other facing them. Suddenly both of the guys freaked out because they just saw a shooting star. Natalie and I were disappointed that we didn't get to see it. A few minutes later, we saw one coming from our direction. We then realized that there was a meteor shower that night and we were catching some of it. You can imagine how excited we were, so we decided it didn't matter that it was already midnight or that Natalie had to work at 6am the next day...we were going to the park with blankets to watch the rest of the shower. It was such a fun and spontaneous night.

Another spontaneous night once again took place after midnight. Phil and I were at the Willmore's just talking like we often do. I was having a craving for breakfast, so we went to IHOP. Clearly that's what you do at 1 in the morning when you want breakfast right?

I'm sure you can tell, but we are trying to spell IHOP... definitely didn't do a good job. We needed Phil to complete it but he was obviously taking the picture.

Last August, we went on a moonlight lift up at Sundance. It was a fun night where we enjoyed talking about our future plans of having babies together...and plethora of other topics as well ;)

The Girls...

The Guys...

The Gang...

The MOON!

(horrible pic ) In real life it was big and full and beautiful.

The Willmore's are notorious for random jokes. One night we came home to this on our door...

Kind of weird, but it was really funny at the time. The best thing I ever came home to though, was this...

This seriously was so funny! Our ward was having a party and Phil couldn't go for some reason and neither could Natalie. We joked about how Drew and I should just go together. The next night, I came home to a formal asking. I felt like I was in high school again. It was pretty funny. And no, we didn't really go together.

And finally, one night the four of us were going on a walk around the block. Natalie was in a weird mood and wanted to steal a sign of some kind and put it on someone's door. I quickly jumped on board but the boys were a little more hesitant. Natalie and I first tried stealing a HUGE political sign that was three times as big as us. We couldn't get the stupid thing to budge. So we settled with a "For Rent" sign. We were nice and took one that didn't have a number on it. We wrote Ryan and Courtney Clark's number on the sign and put it in front of their apartment (don't worry that Drew and Phil didn't help out at all with this). We found ourselves to be quite amusing.

Oh and we did put the sign back where we found it...

Thanks for the memories!

Sleep Over in the Family Room

On Friday, Phil and I were hanging out with our friends Ryan and Courtney. They told us that on weekends, they often take their mattress off their bed and put it in their family room to watch movies and sleep. I thought that sounded fun but I didn't think about it again once the conversation was over.

Phil and I got home from our General Conference weekend up in Highland last night and while I was on the phone, Phil suddenly started picking up our mattress. I had completely forgotten about our conversation with Ryan and Courtney and my first thought was that Phil was probably rotating our mattress (not like we have ever done that before). I then realized that he was putting it in our family room. We had a fun night watching Chopped All Stars on the Food Network and spending the night in the family room on our mattress!