It is already the middle of July and I thought I should post something before I head out of town tomorrow. Nothing too exciting has been happening here in the Gordon home so I haven't felt like posting but here goes...

Fourth of July weekend was a pretty busy for us. My parents came down on Thursday night before the Fourth to take a look at the house we are buying. Since there are a few things that need to be fixed in the house and we will definitely need my dad's help to do it we thought it would be a good idea to have them see it before we closed. We went over Friday morning to meet the realtor and look around. John and my dad spent the afternoon pricing out building materials while my mom and I shopped around for "girly" things for the house like paint colors and curtains. The next morning our ward had a Fourth of July breakfast with games. My parents left after that which gave us a little time to go buy some fireworks for that night.
For the festivities, we went to John's parent's house to have a cook out, play games and shoot off fireworks. All of the family from Gainesville came over so it was a full house. John and I were in charge of cooking the meat which wasn't the best plan. I was kind of distracted while Iwas eating my burger and didn't realize that it was not cooked very thouroughly until I had almost finished it. All of the food was really good and we ate TONS. Afterwards we played some games while we were waiting for it to get dark. Finally, it was the time John had been waiting for all day! He put on quite a nice little fireworks show for everyone. Later that night while we were getting ready for bed, I asked John if his stomach felt a little weird. He told me he felt fine and we went to bed. About an hour later, I learned my lesson about making sure your meat is cooked all the way. I have a great husband though who took very good care of me during the night.

July 10th was Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-Fil-A. If you went to Chick-fil-a dressed from head to toe as a cow you got a free combo meal. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me. John kinda thought I was joking about going but I printed off these "starter kits" online that had some cow spots, ears, a nose and an Eat Mor Chiken sign. We cut everything out and taped it onto ourselves along with some homemade hooves and extra spots. We did this in the parking lot and while we were getting dressed up it started to pour outside (what else is new it's FL?). John was really hesitant to do this at first but I was like hey it's free food and who cares who sees us. As we were waiting we saw several people getting out of their cars with spots and signs and some kids had even painted their faces. When we saw that he (and me too) were much less hesitant). We finally got sick of waiting for the rain to stop and went through the monsoon to get inside. When we got in there it was a zoo! There were tons of people dressed up, the big chick fil a cow was there and even a guy making free balloon animals. He didn't do a monkey though and so I got an elephant. Pretty much as soon as we walked in we saw one of our scouts and then his family also one of the other couples that we know came in while we were ordering. It was definitely funny to see what so many people will do to get free food one lady even made herself paper udders and taped them to her stomach. It was a pretty entertaining evening and I am posting the pictures we took. We didn't take the camera inside because of the rain but have some from the car.

Date Night

My old roommate Stacy and I had been trying to get together to catch up for a couple of weeks. Usually we would just go to lunch or something but we decided to allow our husbands to come along and so we planned a date night. Stacy and Jay had us over to their new apartment and we made pizzas and then watched a movie. They had tons of toppings to choose from and then we had some really really yummy pie afterwards. Stacy and Jay making their SUPREME pizza. John adding EXTRA cheese. Yummy pepperonis!

Six month anniversary

John and I went to Crescent Beach for the weekend of our six month anniversary. We got there late Friday afternoon and went for a walk on the beach. It was really hot but out by the ocean it was nice and breezy. We had a nice time wading in the water and goofing around. For dinner we drove up to St. Augustine and ate then we went and walked around the old fort there. There were lots of cool places around the fort and the walls were not made out of rock but out of what looked like crushed shells in mortar. We went back to the beach that night and took another long walk on the beach. Saturday morning John and I went to the outlet malls in St. Augustine and shopped for several hours. John was surprisingly good natured about shopping for so long and was even willing to shop longer. After shopping we went back to the beach to make a sand castle. We started out making a castle and as we got going John decided that he wanted to make a stadium instead of a castle. We ended up making a replica of Florida field complete with the spiraling walkways, upper decking and tunnel for the players to come out of. Sunday morning we woke up early to see the sun rise over the ocean. We got out there about 20 minutes early and waited for a while. It was very pretty but unfortunately it was too cloudy to see the sun. The weekend was really nice. We didn't have an schedule we had to keep to or any where we had to be. Nice and relaxing - just the way we like it!

We bought a house!!!

John and I have been looking at houses for a few months and finally put an offer on one. We have looked at dozens and dozens of houses in Gainesville trying to find one that had potential but was still in our price range. We finally decided to put an offer on a four bedroom one and a half bath 1200 sq ft house. It needs a little work but a lot less work than most we looked at. Also the price was really good and they accepted our initial offer which was kind of surprising. We won't be moving till sometime in July so we have a little while to decide on paint and carpet colors. We are both really excited but also a little in shock that we will be making such an adult step in our lives. We will post some pics when it gets a little closer to the big move. I am sure we will post some before and after shots too so you can see the transformation.

Also, today John and I hid our first letterbox. For those of you unfamiliar with letterboxing, to start you go online (letterboxing.org) and look up letterboxes in your area. You print out clues that lead you to a small box usually hidden in a park. Once you find the box, inside you find a hand carved stamp and a small pad of paper. You take your own stamp and pad along with you. You then stamp your stamp in the book you find and stamp the stamp from the box in your book. Basically, you follow clues, find boxes and collect stamps. It is a pretty fun hobby because it gets you outside and you also go into areas of parks that you normally wouldn't see. Anyway, John carved a stamp and we created our own "trail name" kind of like a screen name but for the letterboxing site and we went out and hid our box. We then came home and posted the directions to find it. From the site we can also monitor who finds it to be able to keep track of it. I have been finding boxes for about a year but this is the first one we have hidden. If you haven't tried letterboxing, it is a great way to get outside and have some fun with the family or by yourself. It is starting to take off in a lot of areas so there are a lot more boxes to find than there were even a year ago.

Completely unrelated - we went to see Star Trek this weekend. We hadn't been to the movies since November when we saw Twilight. Ticket prices went up again here so I don't think we will be going again any time too soon especially since we bought a house. It seems like summer time is when all of the good movies come out because there we a lot of previews that looked really good. I guess we will have to wait for them to come out on video.

The temple and poker

We started off the weekend by going to the Temple on Friday night. We left for Orlando around three and usually when we are going to the Temple we are in a hurry and don't have time to stop anywhere beforehand (which I know makes John secretly very happy). I have been wanting to visit Old Time Pottery for months and this time we finally had time for a quick shopping trip before we went to our session. After shopping we still made it to the Temple a little after five. As we sat waiting for our session, John's brother Burt and sister-in-law Lydia walked in unexpectedly and ended up being in our session - guess it was fate that we ended up going shopping beforehand so that we could be in the same session. During the session, I was able to do the work for my great grandmother.

After our session, the four of us went to Downtown Disney for dinner. We walked around for a little while trying to decide what we wanted to eat. We were going to try the Rainforest Cafe (which is the only picture we got) but the wait was an hour and a half - not gonna happen. We kept looking a found a place called the Earl of Sandwich - bet you can't guess what they served. Anyway, we got sandwiches which were pretty good and then walked around a little more. We even got to sample some chocolate in the Ghiradelli store. It was a good evening but I don't think that I will be visiting Downtown Disney on a Friday night for a long time. 

Saturday John and I had some friends over to play poker. We had invited a mixed group of our single friends but it ended up that the guys that we invited couldn't make it so it ended up being John, myself and four other girls. Any single guy probably would have enjoyed themself but too bad for John that I get him all to myself :) It ended up being a pretty good evening even without other guys though. We had lots of laughs and some really good food. I ate so much candy though that I was sick to my stomach after everyone left. I think it was worth it though. 

Memorial Day Weekend

John and I went to GA to visit my family for Memorial Day weekend. We left after work on Friday afternoon and got in around around 10 that night. My sister Carrie and her husband Brian also were visiting and they brought their month old baby Shayla too. She was super cute and it was very nice to be able see her while she was still small. On Saturday we girls spent a lot of the day shopping and the guys spent most of the day down in Dad's workshop.The boys all turned things on the lathe and John started to make a really nice bowl out of sasafras wood. He will get to finish it next time we go up there. He also made himself a new back scratcher because he is always asking me to scratch his back and he thought it was probably a good idea to make himself one. He kept it a surprise from me all day until he showed me that he had carved and painted it as a duck. It is pretty cool. On Sunday Christy and James came over and we had a huge turkey dinner and then played games for a while. Monday was a pretty busy day. We ran errands for a while and Carrie and I went and visited one of my friends. Dad wanted to have a little photo shoot out in the yard. He has been working pretty hard on the garden and with all of the rain they have been getting it looks really good. They will have tons of veggies to can in just a couple of weeks. We got to take lots of fresh herbs home which was super nice.

Playing in the Rain

Thursday John and I were on our way to an appointment and it started thundering and a couple of minutes later it started pouring down rain. It was our first thunderstorm since last summer. We both looked at each other and said that if it was still raining after our appointment that we should go out and play in the rain. We came home and changed into some t-shirts and went out and stomped around in the puddles and splashed each other for about 20 minutes. We got thoroughly soaked and had tons of fun. Everyone that drove by looked at us like we were crazy but I secretly think they were jealous.