date night ideas (:

So my brother showed me a program that's like photoshop but free and I have had fun playing with it all day & decided to create this date night to do list for Josh and I.  We stay pretty busy right now with traveling but when we come back to Utah in the fall we are going to start on the list.  There are a million date night websites so I looked through them today and made a list of my favorites.  Here it is!! 

I have to clarify a few.  "Make mugs together"  Turns out you can draw on mugs with sharpie, bake @ 350 for 30 minutes to make your own his & her mugs for each other.

"Be a tourist in Salt Lake" after all our traveling this summer I have learned that every city has plenty to offer and often times people who live there haven't taken the time to explore the tourist spots so time to be tourists in our own city for the day!

"Have a theme night @ home making dinner together/ordering in & a movie.  We are going to pick a theme: french, italian, chinese etc and pick food, movies & games to go along with a fun night in.

"Babysit" time to do some service.  Offer to babysit for a couple [family, friends, etc] so they can have a night away and feel good knowing you did some service for the day.

Trip for Becca!

Well Josh being the best husband in the world let me fly home to Utah this week for one of my best friend's wedding!  I'm pretty sure he missed my cooking more than anything but he won't admit it ... despite all the hot dogs he ate and fast food while I was gone and telling me he was starving haha.  

I had so much fun.  We flew home from DC on Sunday and parted ways at the airport.  I flew home to Salt Lake and he went back to our home in Dallas.  Our first days apart since we got married, SO SAD! I missed him but it was fun to see my family.  I went to church with my mom and had a family dinner sunday night.  And I just have to post this picture because I am pretty sure my nephew is the cutest little 4 year old in the world.  Here's one of the photos he just got done.

ADORABLE.  Sorry to be one of those people posting pictures of other people's children
but I just can't help how cute he is.  He was so funny at dinner on Sunday he kept asking where
Joshua was!

Monday I got to have a girls day with my mom.  I am the only girl in my family so my mom and I have been best friends from the start.  Solidarity sister!  So being apart from her I have missed her like crazy. We went and checked out the new outlet malls in alpine and FYI they are awesome.  Great selection and not overwhelmingly big.

Tuesday was the wedding day! And I have to admit my blonde moment... I totally forgot my temple recommend in the hurry of packing on Friday.  Thank heavens Josh was able to send me a picture of it and that saved me to get in easy peasy.  Being at a wedding made me miss Josh even more but I'm so grateful that I could be a part of my friends big day.  Everything turned out beautiful.  All the memories from my wedding day [don't worry despite being sick I still look at that day as one of my fondest memories] came rushing back being back in the Salt Lake temple for the first time since then.  Beautiful experience.

Here is the beautiful bride the new Mrs. Stratton

My bouquet was gorgeous!  Sorry I failed to notice I took this picture
half in the shade but I thought I'd share it anyway.
Almost brought them home on the plane with me but gave it to my mom instead!

The reception was gorgeous as well and my best friend Kenzie was my date since Josh couldn't come so we spent the whole time catching up it was a blast.  And of course while in Utah it was a necessity to hit up the best snow cone shack known to man.  If you have never been I do not know what it is called but it is on 90000 South right across from Kmart. Best snow cones around!

More quality time with my mom!

Washington DC ✈

No this isn't take your wife to work day [unfortunately].  I ended up taking the TRE train, it's like Frontrunner, to get to the airport this time and it stops right outside American Airlines headquarters. I got there early before our flight so Josh had me come see his cubicle and sit with him while he finished work so here's his cubicle folks!

Look at Josh's artwork I painted this for him and he took it
to work how sweet of him (:

Here it is!

We headed to DC this weekend. Dream come true! It was incredible. Our first flight was delayed an hour due to mechanical problems so smart Josh got us pushed onto a different flight and it worked out perfectly. We flew into DC while it was dark and were able to spot all of the famous landmarks from the sky lit up it was beautiful. Josh found a website where he could enter his own price and see if any hotels in a certain area would accept and this weekend we got lucky they did! We got to stay at an awesome hotel. So awesome we took pictures. You'd have to see some of the scary places we've stayed in to understand why we were so over excited.

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early to explore DC. We visited the library of congress. They have a section that's an actual library that residents can come to.  They also had Thomas Jefferson's library who claimed: "I cannot live without books" -1815. Well said.

Next we visited the Capitol. We have to give Utah some credit here I think our Capitol is just as beautiful. Smaller but looks very similar!

The back

The front

After the Capitol we headed to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. It was full of old airplanes and space ships. We saw a 3D video about repairing Hubble - so cool!

Josh with some AA old planes behind him.

Next we went to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Equally as cool & huge! We were so tired by the end we didn't even see it all. It's full of wildlife, sea creatures [my favorite] & tons and tons of science. We learned that some of the worlds tallest forests are in the ocean! Crazy. These museums are a must but there's so many we couldn't see them all in one day!  Best part is they were free. Well technically free josh says because we pay taxes ha.

Here were are at the Hubble movie with our awesome 3D glasses!

We visited Washington monument and the Supreme Court but both were under construction. So then we headed to the White House. For some reason it did not look like I expected. We saw a figure in the window and I told josh I'm just going to assume it's Obama so I can say we saw him!

Washington Monument

The white house!

We took a break to go to dinner at a delicious Mediterranean place [josh went to one once with work and now he loves Mediterranean food!] with Josh's old mission companion and his wife. They are interning in DC for the summer so we got to catch up with them it was a lot of fun and full of mission stories as you can imagine. Turns out Joshua was quite the prankster. Not surprised!

Next we went and saw Lincoln memorial. Incredible to see in real life! Much bigger than I imagined.

We visited the war memorials next!

Korean War Memorial

WWII Memorial has all the states surrounding it.  

We finished our night by going to see the Jefferson memorial. We walked there as the sun set it was the perfect evening.

Jefferson!

The view on the walk there. Gorgeous.

The view from the monument. Josh holding Washington monument in his hands!

We learned a lot in Washington and saw how much our early leaders  were divinely led. So grateful for their sacrifices & the opportunities we experience in America. We had an amazing time in DC together (:

American Airlines

Josh got to go tour DFW airport today at work!  I call it a field trip.  Sounded like one to me!  The HR representative and the guy over cooperate communications took a few of the interns around.   They took them where the flight attendants and pilots check in.  The chief pilots of pilots spoke to them about how they are going from carrying 40 lb. of paper weight including maps and different things they need for the trip to just having an ipad - crazy.

nothin but business. 

Then they toured the flight command center the tower where they manage all of the gates where the plans go to and from.  When a plane lands they tell it what gate it needs to go to.  You can see the whole airport from there it looked pretty cool.

The view...

The control tower..

Fun facts Joshua learned: There apparently are more than 500 departures from DFW every day.  & DFW is the size of Manhattan 

Josh had a great day sounded like a lot of fun and to top it off he got to eat at Popeye's.  JEALOUS!

Here's my exciting story for today.  I had left over BBQ chicken I made yesterday and decided I would make a BBQ pizza and I am so proud of myself I made up my own sauce and it was amazing!!

The pizza of love.  Half for Josh and half with cheese for me! (:

In case you want amazing BBQ chicken in the crock pot here is the recipe (mother).  Ingredients:

6 frozen skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

1 (12 ounce) bottle barbecue sauce (I used Famous Dave’s Zesty BBQ sauce)

1/2 cup Italian salad dressing

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Then easy as pie, you mix all the stuff together minus the chicken.  Put the chicken in the crockpot and pour your new sauce mixture all over it and let it cook on high for 4 hours.  Amazing.  And then you can make BBQ chicken pizza with the leftovers.  I mixed some BBQ sauce, Frank's hot sauce, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce and cider vinegar for my pizza sauce.  Success!  I never thought I would like to cook but I love it!  And so does Josh's stomach!  

Home sweet home! Utah!

Well I know most of you [probably all of you] who read this probably saw us this weekend but I just wanted to share our fun pictures and thank everyone who helped take care of us while we visited home it was so wonderful to see everyone we had a great time!  Thank you everyone who helped our car-less selves get around town and for all the fun and love!  We are so grateful Josh works for American so we could fly home and be with both of our families for Father's Day.

As most of you know we came down for this sweet girl's baptism.  She wanted
Josh to baptize her and he was more than happy to.  We are so proud of her
decision to be baptized!  Sorry the picture is a little blurry!

Saturday morning Josh's dad and Jake took us 4 wheeling up in Farmington Canyon
with their new 4 wheelers it was a blast and so beautiful!

And special treat I got to see kenzie (:

I just had to show my cute little niece & nephew reading the Ensign  together
at our Father's Day BBQ!

Best cookies ever.

I know some of you are not on here for recipes [sorry] but for starters these cookies are one of the best you'll ever have and second mostly this is so my mom gets the recipe.  Here ya go!

Mix the eggs vanilla and oil.  In separate bowl mix cake mix and baking powder.

Then mix the two together and add the sprinkles.  I really wanted to do 1/2 C

red and 1/2 C blue for the fourth of July.  Would have been so cute

but tom thumb didn't have my colors!  Bake for ten minutes at 350 degrees then let

sit for 5 before putting them on a cooling rack.  Makes about 30!  Enjoy mom (:

Nashville, Tennessee

Well we had quite the crazy weekend!  We tried to leave on Friday but the plane had issues and we were sitting on it for over an hour!  Josh was a sweetheart and let me have the last ticket in first class.  Most of the time people in first class aren't the friendliest so I was surprised when the old man next to me kept chatting.  He asked me all about where I was going and when he found out my husband was in the back he insisted I go ask Josh if they can switch seats.  I told him no like 6 times before saying no was just awkward so I went and asked him.  So nice of this guy.  He said he wasn't supposed to be in first class anyways and he'd like us to be able to sit together.  So they switched and then this flight attendent called me to the front of the plane.  I felt like I was in high school again getting sent to the principal's office I was terrified and he chewed me out! He interrogated me asking me why I asked that man to move to the back and how its against the rules and even though I insisted I hadn't asked him and had done nothing of the sort.  Moral of the story it was awful!  And then we just ended up getting off the plane because due to the delay we would have gotten there too late for it to be worth it.

Welcome to Nashville!

Saturday morning bright and early we made it to Tennessee.  We were so blessed we happened to run into this guy from our ward at the airport and instead of having to pay for a taxi he took us downtown with him and his son in his rental car.  Sure saved us money!  His daughter is trying to make it big in Nashville so we went to her concert before going and exploring the Country Music Festival that was there [and the reason hotels were hundreds & hundreds of dollars!].

The music festival was incredible it was so fun!  There were concerts everywhere you turned.  We were surrounded by up and coming country singers trying to make it big.  We sat around relaxing listening to different concerts most of the day.

apparently the woman standing in the back was posed for our picture.

These are the Railers and pretty sure they are the next Lady A.

Listening to Corey Smith!

We went to the country music hall of fame and spent all our time exploring all of their famous places including the Johnny Cash museum!  We also went to the Riman auditorium where Johnny first met June!

Country Music Hall of Fame

Nashville is awesome!

After spending our day at the festival we headed to the Grand Ole Opry to our concert!  We were able to catch a taxi with some really nice ladies who told us all about the Gaylord hotel they were staying at and how we could probably hang out there when we wait to go to the airport.  The hotel was a castle!  It looked like the amazon inside with lots of shops and was HUGE!  We hopped on their shuttle to get to the Opry.

The Grand Ole Opry is a live radio broadcast like nothing you've ever seen!

He was impersonating the guy who sings "Hey good lookin.."

The concert was amazing we had a great time!  Scotty McCeery was very last and he was very interesting while performing.  He just kept rubbing his bottom!  It just looked awkward!!

There's scotty playing his new song that I love!

So we had decided that since hotels cost buckets of money and our flight was so early in the morning that we were just going to pull an all nighter so after the concert we went to this aquarium for dinner [so cool! We were surrounded by this huge aquarium of fish of every kind and sharks!]  then we went to a midnight movie and back to the Gaylord hotel to hang out playing cards before heading to the airport.

this is what Josh and I do at the movie theater at 2:30 in the morning...

It was an awesome trip (: