Whitney Weekend

I was so lucky to have Whitney come and visit me from Washington last weekend!  It has been soooo long since I've seen her and I needed a little Whitney time!  She now has two babies and the last time I saw her she only had one...who was just a few months old at the time.

We met first at the Idaho Falls zoo.  It's a small one, but it's perfect for an 18 month old.  I'd have to say the flamingos were my favorite this time and it's hard to explain why.  But we took our picture in front of them to remember their awesomeness.

After the zoo we went to Bambino's in Rigby for a Great Bambino!  I forgot to take any pictures there... We ended up at our little apartment and first thing's first...diaper change time!  Aren't they cute??

Me and little Whitney.

And little Wade...

For dinner we grilled out hamburgers with the Duffy's and so the girls swang while the boys grilled.  They sure tasted yummy!

Val just loved Nate...awwwweeeeee.  Isn't he the greatest??

Logan Wedding

On Saturday, Nate and I drove to Utah again for a wedding.  Nate's friend, Ben, got married in the Logan temple.  We were already running late/ right on time when I realized 30 minutes into the drive that I forgot my temple recommend.  Thankfully, Nate drives a little fast and we got there in just enough time for them to look up my recommend and I was able to attend.  I'd never been inside the Logan temple so I really wanted to go!  After the sealing, we stuck around for a bit for pictures and then went to their absolutely gorgeous luncheon.  I guess luncheon's are a thing out here.  We just went to Subway for our after wedding meal haha  Everyone else went to Chick-fil-A I think.  Nothing fancy for us Tucker's!  Instead of staying in Logan all day and waiting for the reception, we decided to go home early and attend the drive-in that night.  We watched Cinderella and Furious 7.  Well, Nate watched both, I feel asleep for the second.

Our Engagement Park

After the Sunday afternoon session of conference I asked Nate if we could go visit our "engagement park" in Downtown Salt Lake.  It's been two years since we got engaged here so I felt like it was a good time to go visit.  It was exactly as I remembered it.  So cute and perfect...and swingless.  I sure am grateful that he asked me to marry him two years ago!  I can't believe all that has happened between then and now :)

General Conference Weekend

We headed down to Utah again for General Conference.  This time, Nate's family was able to fly out from Ohio as well.  Natasha and Ivan even got to come since they were on spring break.  We drove down on Friday afternoon and met up with Nate's family at the Outlets in Lehi....since we always go to the outlets and spend too much money whenever we are in Utah.  After shopping, we went to Rodizio's for dinner.  It's a Brazilian steakhouse that Nate picked to go to for his birthday dinner.  Honestly, it wasn't as good as Texas de Brazil that we went to at the last conference.  However, the Brazilian lemonades they had were delicious!!!

Natasha, Ivan & Nate (they all have birthdays within a week or so of each other!)

We stayed at the City Creek Marriott, which is where we almost always stay in Salt Lake.  On Saturday we attended the afternoon session of conference.  Nate's parents ran into Nate's mission president at breakfast that morning so we knew he was around the hotel somewhere.  We decided to wait in the hotel lobby after the Saturday afternoon session to see if he would walk in...and he did!  It was really special for Nate to talk to him again as he's from Portugal and came to Salt Lake City just for Conference.  This time we also got a picture with him!

I also ran into my cousin who is serving a mission in Salt Lake City!

They boys had tickets to the Priesthood Session so while they were there, the girls and kids went to the hotel pool for a bit.  The kids even convinced me to get in for a bit.  After they got out we went to Bucca de Bepo's for dinner.  It's a family style Italian restaurant.  We also went with Nate's uncle Tim's family.

Funny story time... After dinner Nate and I were craving something sweet so we went and bought a slice of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory (Oreo, of course).  When we got back to our hotel room we decided just to order some room-service milk to go with it.  I am the one who ordered and the attendant on the phone was a little hard to understand.  I had to repeat myself at least twice that I wanted two glasses of 2% milk and also a bottle of water.  She asked if I wanted a large and I said yes.  In the rooms, they have these mini water bottles so I assumed a large was just a regular size bottle...Nate got quite a surprise when he answered the door!!  He was like "what the heck did you order?!?!" hahahahaha  The large water really was a LARGE water.  I don't even want to know what we had to pay for that...

On Sunday we went to the morning session, including Music and the Spoken Word.  I ran into one of my best friends, Sarah Pratt and it was so good to catch up with her.  The Sunday afternoon session we watched from Brandon & Sheridan's house in Spanish Fork and then ate dinner at their house.  Since it was Easter, Nate and I hid about 1000 eggs around their yard (okay, maybe like 200...) for the kiddoes to find.  It was hard to leave everyone since we aren't down there too often.  We didn't leave until late that night so I made Nate drive home while I slept in the back of the car.  Even with that, I was still super tired at work the next morning...

Nate's Birthday!

Well, I thought I was going to be able to surprise Nate for his birthday again and have a surprise party with all of our friends.  I even texted people to let them know when to be at our house and had set up a plan to get Nate out of the house for a bit.  My plans were ruined when Nate started inviting people over for cake...  So it turned out we just had a party.

First we went to Fuji Japanese Hibachi and Sushi in Idaho Falls.  It just happened to be opening night!  We went with Nate's friend, Ben, and his fiance, friend, and sister.

To kill some time, we went to the mall so Nate could have a massage in the $1 massage chairs.  I think this was his favorite birthday present!

After dinner we went back to our apartment for cake with some of our friends from the ward.  I made a strawberry shortcake cake that turned out half decent but I definitely have room for improvement :)

He got a shirt and a water filter.  I'm an awesome wife :)

Yellowstone Adventure

I've been wanting to go on a day trip for quite some time.  It has finally been getting warm and so I needed to get out of the house!  A week after Nate and I were talking about this, some of our friends invited us to go to Yellowstone Park with them.  It was the perfect adventure!  We headed out late morning.  When we left, it was probably 70 degrees in Rexburg, and beautiful, so we all dressed in light jackets and Nate even wore shorts.  Well, the day would prove to prove us not very smart.  First, Yellowstone is further north than Rexburg and it's much colder.  We did not anticipate this!  There was still snow on the ground.  It also happened to be extremely windy.  When we got to Yellowstone we were disappointed to find it had not yet opened for the season.  We did not even think to check to see when it opened!  The worst part was that our friend, Phillip, was visiting from Germany and he was the main reason we went to Yellowstone.  We had to settle with a picture with the sign since we never actually got to go in.  Somehow, we managed to find stuff around West Yellowstone to do for three hours or so.  It also got a little warmer and less windy so we could walk around outside.  All-in-all, it was a good trip, even though we definitely missed seeing Old Faithful and the hot springs.

Utah Weekend

This weekend we headed to Utah for a last minute mini vacation!  Eli managed to acquire some free tickets to an exclusive Imagine Dragons concert and asked Nate to go with him!  (crazy story how he came upon the tickets and after the got these two he actually won two more!!  He gave these to some other friends.)  I didn't have to work on Friday this week and Nate didn't have any tests so it worked perfect for us to go.

We left Friday around 12:30 and headed first to Salt Lake City.  We had a free night at a Marriott (due to our Marriott card) that we needed to use by the end of the month so it worked perfect that we decided to go to Utah.  When we got to SLC we went to our hotel and Nate stayed there for a few hours while I went to visit my best friend, Alexis, who just recently moved to SLC.  It was soooo great to visit with her and her cutie patootie daughter.  Her husband is in dental school and they did shots for the first time that day so when we got home I went with them for celebratory custard :)

Saturday morning Nate and I went to the Salt Lake temple.  He went once before his mission (so like 4 years ago) and I had never been there so it was a real treat.  It was absolutely more beautiful than I could have imagined inside.  It's no wonder it took the early pioneers 40 years to build it!  I really wanted a picture outside but it was a little difficult because there were at least 10-15 weddings (seriously, probably more haha).  We had to sneak onto the picture spot in between newly married couples and since no one else was around, I asked a groom to take our picture.  Is that bad??  Nate was embarrassed.  But I was going to get a picture!

After the temple, we went to the oulets in Lehi.  We stop there every time we go to Utah now.  It's a problem.  Because we always buy things!  I never really shop for clothes otherwise so as long as we don't go to Utah often I guess it's okay.  We continued south to Provo and met up with Eli there.  He wanted us to take him suit shopping so we did that for a bit although he didn't find one he was ready to buy quite yet.

At this point it was a little after 7:00 and Eli wanted to get in line for the concert because doors opened at 8:00 and he wanted a good spot.  When we left the mall there happened to be a random crazy blizzard that started so they had to wait in the cold for an hour before getting into the building.  Both of them loved the concert though!  Nate was a little worried because he loves Imagine Dragons and was worried they wouldn't be as good live and didn't want to be expected to jump up and down the entire concert haha  He said they were even better than on their album and so he was very glad he got to go.  Eli was even interviewed for the local news!  There were only 200-300 people at the concert and they were in about the sixth row so needless to say, the "seats" were fantastic and they will probably never have the opportunity to see a major band perform that close because those seats would normally be hundreds of dollars!  Can't beat free!!

Eli on the news.

This is how close they were...the camera wasn't even zoomed!

The Velour (left) is where the concert was.

While they were at the concert, I went to go visit my friend Sarah Jane!  Its been so long since we'd seen each other and I loved catching up with her and hearing all about her wedding plans.  She went with me to pick the boys up after the concert and we decided to go out to Chili's for dinner.  I seriously can't remember the last time I laughed so hard!  The other people in the restaurant probably thought we were crazy but we didn't even care.  It was a much needed night out with friends :)

Today we slept in again and got home before it got dark and we've just been home chilling ever since then.  I've caught up on blogging (since I never do it anymore) and scrapbooking our life away.