Update on Nathan

Nate is now home (I brought him home yesterday) and feeling a lot better. His surgery was successful and he will make a full recovery. No more hernia! Thank you all so much for all the prayers and text messages and emails on our behalf. Now I just need to think of some things to keep Nate entertained while he is at home! I did tell him that if he was well behaved today he could have a sno-cone. :)

Worst End to Date Night Thus Far

Guess where Nate and I are? In the hospital! So long story short, Nate has a hernia and is having surgery this afternoon. That is how date night went last night, dinner, shopping, ER visit. Not exactly how it was supposed to go. Nate is a little nervous, and so am I, so keep us in your prayers today.


P.S. Question, am I the worst wife ever for taking pictures so I can scrapbook this?

Happy Wedding!

Today was Brandon and Julianna's wedding and we just wanted to take a second to say congratulations! Here is a quick page so you can see the happy couple.

Banana Crumb Muffin Recipe

This morning we spent a few hours dipping chocolate strawberries for the wedding tomorrow. I have to admit, we were really quick. I thought it was going to take all day! Thankfully Amanda knows where to get the chocolate for dipping, and thanks to Lori for hosting, she has a great nice long island that we used. Anyway I brought these muffins to share and everybody loved them and wanted the recipe so I thought I would share.



Disclaimer: I do not like bananas so I did not try these, but they smelled amazing!

I Might Be Crazy

Just before our first Christmas together Nate's mom gave us a huge box of all his mission letters, photos, and souvenirs and informed me that it was now my job to scrapbook and preserve his mission memories. So I hurried and rushed to make a 15 or so page scrapbook for Nate (this was back before I started digital scrapbooking) in time for Christmas. It turned out okay, definitely nothing amazing. I told myself that one day I would make something better. Since I got Photoshop I have really wanted to go through all of his pictures (2000+)and really make something nice.

So two weeks ago I lost my mind. I was looking at a cute scrapbooking site and saw this darling book this girl had made. It was a full fledged book, with an engraved cover and everything, so so cute. She had it made by Winkflash. I went to their site (winkflash.com)and they were having a sale! Their custom books are 60% off through the end of August. So, my 100 page 12x12 leather cover engraved book would be just a little more than $40. Sold! I have everything all picked out now I just have to scrapbook 100 pages! I am officially crazy. Did I mention that Nate's brother is getting married this week too and I have been busy helping with that? It would seem that I like to keep busy. I do have to admit that I am off to a pretty good start. I have a little more than 50 pages ready to go. My goal is to be all done by the 25th so then all I will have to do is organize them in the book and place my order! I am going to do it!!! Just a few more weeks of no sleep and I'll be done. Wish me luck!

Here are a few of my favorite pages thus far. I'm trying to keep everything similar without being to matchy-matchy so each page has this dark blue paper on it somewhere to keep the theme going. Also I've tried to make the pages seem somewhat masculine, as masculine as scrapbooking can be. I worry that they look too boring but I don't want to add more if it is going to make it too girly. Tell me what you think.








P.S. Please excuse any grammar and spelling errors, as previously mentioned I've had very little sleep.

Summertime Crafts

Every other Friday morning my mother-in-law hosts girls' time. We have been making bead jewelry and I have to say they have been turning out super cute! In addition to the jewelry it is so fun just to spend time together talking.


I made homemade bread for the first time yesterday. I know, shocking! I'm 24 years old and have been married for over three years and I've never made homemade bread. Here's the story: a few weeks ago Nate's cousin Alisha made these super yummy rolls. One day at our jewelry making session I told her that I had to have that recipe. Alisha told me that it was the Pantry Secret recipe and that she would teach us all a class with the recipe and all the variations. I decided I couldn't wait for a class, so I googled the recipe and tried it yesterday. To be honest I think it turned out pretty good for a first try. Now I am even more excited to attend Alisha's class! Thanks to Alisha for the great recipe!!

Durfee Family Reunion

Nate's mom's side of the family had a reunion the weekend of the 24th. We didn't camp out, but we did go up for a few hours Saturday morning. I got to play with Keith and Nate had to defend his arm wrestling prowess. It looked like everyone had a good time. Thanks to Mary, Sabrina, and JJ for being in charge of the party planning. I just learned that there is another reunion occurring in September, seems like we can't get enough of each other!! Here are the pages I made of the reunion. If you want to make them bigger and easier to read, just click on them:).