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.

Mother's Day Weekend

This past week we got to spend lots of time with John's family. His youngest sister Monica's birthday was Saturday so we had a surprise party for her on Thrusday. We left early Friday morning for a town called Crystal River where the annual retreat for my program was being held. I had to give a presentation that morning and John stayed to hear me speak. He got pretty bored though and left to go do other things while I listened to talks the rest of the morning. Our room was really nice and had a huge super comfy bed and a great view of the river. We got to go swimming and hot tubing that night. The next morning we went to the last of the presentations and then it was time for the beach! The beach was about 10 miles from our hotel so how could we not go? We were only there for about an hour but we both got pretty burned and are still sore.

Saturday night we went to another one of John's sister's house to celebrate Monica's actual birthday. The Gordons do birth"weeks"s not really birth"day"s. They have this cool X-box game like Karoke called Lips with microphones that you sing into and compete against someone else. It's pretty fun and we got to play for a while that night. Sunday was mother's day and we took John's grandma to church. She is in our ward but can't go very often for health reasons. She seemed to really like going and I think it really made her day. We all met over at her house that evening for dinner to celebrate and give John's mom her presents. We made her a mini scrapbook called a brag book with pictures of all her kids and grandkids. We also got to talk to my mom on the phone for a while. It was a pretty busy weekend but we also got some time to have fun and relax too.

Wicked!!!!!!!!!!

John and I went to see the Broadway play Wicked on Thursday night in Jacksonville. I had been wanting to see the play for several years and asked John to get me tickets to see it for Valentine's day. He picked me up from work and we drove to Jax for the show. We got a little lost trying to find the theater but the frustration was totally worth it. The show was absolutely AMAZING! Before the show we went to The Landing which is kind of a glorified outdoor strip mall. It was right on the bay and a beautiful afternoon. We were able to walk right down to the water and take some pictures.
We took lots of pictures while we were waiting for the show to start. This is John with the program for the show.

This is me with a poster of Elphaba. This was probably one of the best plays I have seen. I would highly recommended seeing it.

New Niece!!!

My little sister Carrie had a baby early Monday morning April 20 just two days before her three year wedding anniversary. The baby's name is Shayla Kay Johansen and she was just under 7 lbs. She is tiny and as Carrie says "perfect" and so cute!