Love Day

Valentines this year was just as lovely as it has been in the past.  I know a bunch of people think it's dumb that we are told we have to celebrate our love on a certain day, but I think it's a fun opportunity to do something out of the ordinary.  This year we decided to forgo the presents and plan a date night instead.  Chase planned a lovely cheap date for us which was awesome!  He was able to get free tickets to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, which was really fun to go to because it was something different.  I unfortunately was not ready when Chase got home from work and I was having a hard time finding a dress to wear, which made us leave too late to go to dinner, so we stopped at Arbys'.  Chase had made a joke at work earlier asking the boys if Wendys' was fancy enough for our date, of course they all said no, so it was funny that we did end up eating fast food.  I was completely ok with it though and not disappointed one bit :)  The Orchestra was down town which is always an adventure since were not comfortable with the city.  Getting there turned out to be easy and we weren't scared since we were in the middle of the college area and there were plenty of people walking around with ease.  Going home was a different story though.  It was nice and dark, and the the street signs down there are pretty much nonexistent.  Needless to say we missed the onramp for the freeway because it was not marked at all and hard to spot.  Which then as soon as we missed the onramp we ended up in some creepy poorly lit area, not even a mile past the on ramp.  It's amazing how easy it is to feel unsafe by making one wrong turn (or not turning).  While we were trying to get back to the road (we had to make a loop because of the one way streets) we ended up hitting a car swallowing pot hole.  We hit so hard because neither of us saw it since the road wasn't lit, that we were afraid we broke Chase's.  Luckily all seemed just fine :) Even though we had our exciting make my heart race out of fear part to the night we still had a very fun night!  I'm glad that Chase had the great idea to do something outside of the norm.  It really was a fun night.  We haven't gone on my date night yet, because I'm waiting for the temperature to be warm enough to be outside at night.  We might be waiting a long time though ;)

Yeah, looking down at the camera makes for very attractive pictures. 

We did have a fun Valentines night though!  We made our favorite soup (asparagus soup) that we only get once in a blue moon and made fried ice cream.  It was definitely a tasty night :)

Like I said this Valentines was just as lovely as the rest! :)

New Years!

To ring in 2014 we celebrated with our friends Ryan and Jess.  It was pretty low key but at least we had good company, yummy food, a yummy drink concoction, and a movie to keep us up late enough to watch the ball drop and to receive a new years kiss.  It was a good night and we were glad to make it back home to our bed safe and sound :)  What a great way to start off our new year.

This is obviously not from new years! :)

2013 Christmas

Alright heres another late holiday post.

For Christmas this year we decided that we couldn't afford the plane tickets to go to Utah during Christmas and since the Johnson clan would be in Cincinnati which is only a 5 hr drive that our Christmas would be a little different.  So we headed out to Utah a few days after Thanksgiving and stayed a week.  Here's how our festivities went.

First off we had a heck of time getting out to Utah due to Expedia messing up.  Which caused for a very long day and a very grumpy Morgan.  Chase said he was surprised at how mean I was with Expedia when I myself worked at 1-800 Contacts, but this whole debacle is a whole other story in of itself.  So onto our week.  We ended up getting in around 11 or 11:30 pm, it's too blurry to remember.  The next day Adam had taken off of work to spend the day with us so dad got off early and we all hung out during the day.  Eventually we split off and the boys went to play with the airplane while us girls went shopping.  Later that day we had a group dinner with both sides of the family.  I love doing this because then we get to see everyone right when we get there and right before we leave.  Of course this was the day that everybody found out that we were pregnant :) so exciting.  The next few days we did a lot of hanging out and enjoying our time.  Saturday was set aside for Christmas with my side of the family.  Mom had also set it up to have the Larsen family $10 gift party.  It was a day of fun! :)  Sunday was Christmas for Chase's side.  We all went to church together which was fun since theres a good group of us and a handful of kiddos.  It was a lot of fun though being able to go to church as a whole family, minus Chan of course.  We also had a lovely Christmas there, but then it felt like Christmas was all over with, expect for the fact that it was the beginning of the month.  Whoops.  The next couple of days we did a lot of hanging out, visiting with friends and visiting those who requested a special visit ;) We even went to see Frozen with all of Chase's family minus the kiddos and my parents. We then ended our stay with another group dinner and getting in our goodbyes.  All in all we had a very fun and lovely visit!!!
(I didn't take any pictures :( oops.  I'll add some if I can get my hands on some.)

The next part of Christmas was spent with Tiff, Rob and the girls in Cincinnati for the actual Christmas.  We had a lot of fun down there as well.  We went and saw Frozen on Christmas Eve, made ambrosia, read the story of Christ's birth and acted it out, set out cookies for santa, ate the reindeer poop, watched the girls open all of their presents from Santa and family, skyped with Elder Chan and all of Chase's fam, went to the zoo, played at the park, made cardboard cars for our drive in movie, watched lots of movies, ate yummy food, and had ourselves a good ole time.  We enjoyed our time down there and loved that we could all be together for Christmas!!!

This Christmas was definitely different from all of our past Christmas' but I'm so glad that we still got to be with all of our loved ones to celebrate the season.

I wonder what 2014 will be like? :)