50 Free Dates: Photoshoot

I love this date!!! We got lucky and found a friend that was working on her portfolio for her photography business. We were so excited to have a photo shoot with Britta and it made us feel like we were engaged again. If you don't know any photographers make this a double date and take pictures of each other. Or look up Britta Photography and spend the money to book her for a session. Here is her website. And here are the awesome pictures she took of us!

50 Free Dates: Once Upon A Time (Part One)

I invited Dave to an impromptu at home date tonight and he accepted! We always argue about how we started and I don't know if we really came to a conclusion but I let him win.



I decided to do a little pampering with this date so we put on mud masks and have super smooth skin!

AHHHHH!!!!

The start of our story

We didn't actually finish our story but we did make progress. We are hoping to have it illustrated and turned into a children's book to share with our children and grandchildren. Here is the FIRST DRAFT of the beginning of our story:

Once upon a time, in the land of sunny California, lived two people destined to fall in love.  She, a young Maiden of only seventeen, and he, a handsome Prince about to depart on a quest.

       One Sunday afternoon, the young maiden gazed upon the handsome prince and thought to herself, “He is very handsome, but many years older than I.  I wonder if he would ever notice me.”

       They exchanged words in passing but were not brought together, until fate intervened.  The Prince’s younger brother requested the Maiden’s company to attend a film and she accepted.  When they returned, the handsome Prince joined them for a show.

       After that chance meeting, they continued to converse about things they had in common.  That November, a party was held for the Prince’s younger brother, where both the young Maiden and the handsome Prince were in attendance.  They sang, talked, and enjoyed each other’s company, leading to the beginning of their friendship.

We are hoping to finish soon. It was so fun to talk about our once upon a time!!!

50 Free Dates: Hike to the Block U

 

Who says you can't have a date the morning after a date the previous night.  It was my turn to plan and invite, so I chose a walk up to the "Block U" to have a picnic.  We were expecting a hike, but after driving through some ritzy neighborhoods, we were only about a 5 minute stroll away.  Here is a visual log of our enjoyable morning date.

 

Brook wanted to take a picture with the fragrant lilac

Go Utes!! As you can see, not much of a hike, although Brook might disagree due to the steepness of the hill

You can't go to a landmark without taking a picture by the plaque.

Even at the Block U, we are representing Sonoma County

Why don't you put that camera down Brook, and join me on this blanket?

Mmm...buffalo chicken wrap...

Not a bad view for a picnic.

Brook was concerned that she would fall down the hill and die.  She even gave the newspaper headline,"Woman falls to her death on a free date, gets what she paid for".

This led to her trying to climb back down from the U crab-style.

We had a great time.

A really great time!

50 free dates: You tube dance lesson

 Our 3rd of the free dates was a You Tube dance lesson. I made the invitation (with some help from my coworker) and planned a very cheesy, very fun date. I made Dave a boutonniere and myself a corsage out of old magazines and LOTS of hot glue!! I also made a disco ball with a ball and some tin foil and hung Christmas lights for little ambiance.

  

 Carter wanted so badly to be a part of our date that he went to his bedroom and put his tie on. We let him dance a few songs before we sent him to bed and I promised him a boutonniere of his own.

We got all dolled up and formal and found a waltz tutorial on You Tube. The basic step was easier than we thought but when we tried to add a turn it got a little complicated.

Here is our attempt at the basic waltz!

I had some strawberries and some chocolate chips so I decided to make some chocolate dipped strawberries. Yum! After that we changed into our jammies and popped some popcorn to watch Singing in the Rain. Total cost of the date $0. Love these free dates!!!

50 Free Dates: A Game and a Movie

 

Brook and I had our 2nd free date last night, this time in the comforts of our own home.  Once the boys were in bed, I inflated our aerobed and we played some cribbage.  We figured it had been about 5 years since we last played, so we reviewed the rules and then Brook let me win (wink wink).  

Next I popped some popcorn, set up my laptop, and snuggled up to Brook while we watched a documentary called "Happy".  We heard about the movie from the Ellen Show, when she had the director on as a guest.  He went from living the Hollywood lifestyle (Huge house, nice cars, fancy restaurants) to living in a trailer park as a result of a serious motorcycle crash that nearly took his life.  He looked at that event as an opportunity to reevaluate his life and understand what would bring him true happiness.  The documentary portrays the lives of happy people from all over the world, depicting what elements bring them happiness.  As expected, money is not one of them.  Ellen mentioned that the documentary was currently a free rental through iTunes, so Brook and I watched and enjoyed.  Here is a trailor for the film:

Overall, we had a fun night together without spending a dime.  We are enjoying these dates so much we might do them a couple times a week, once school is out.

50 free dates! Bookstore task

Today was our first of what I am calling 50 free dates. I assembled a list from Pinterest and Google and my head and we are going to try to do them ALL! Here is the first. I found this one on Pinterest and I thought it was perfect. When Dave and I first got married we would actually go hang out at bookstores and look at all the books so I figured this was right up our alley. I gave Dave this invitation earlier in the week and he was excited to see what it was all about. For the printable invitation and task card click HERE.

 I gave him the first card when we got to the bookstore and we set off together (you can go separately and meet up with your finding if you prefer) to fill our tasks.

Our first task: Each find a recipe that you want to make together and take a picture of it. Dave won with the recipes. He grabbed a yummy crock pot cookbook and kept yelling at me for peeking over his shoulder since his looked way better than mine. He chose a crock pot banana bread and I ended up with a coconut & sweet potato noodle soup.

The second task: Each find a quiz in a magazine and take them together. This was our favorite part! Dave found this gem and we found out that I would win social butterfly and Dave is a cross between Miley Cyress and Lady Gaga.

Our third task: Each find a book that you read as a child and read it together. This was a tough one for us since we own most of the books we used to read from our childhood. We were both able to find one and Dave had fun summarizing his to go with the pictures like we do with Carter when his books are too long.

We moved to the second card and our third task was to find a joke and read it to each other. We ended up just looking through this book and laughing.

Task number five: Plan your dream vacation. We each picked a book and then we got tired so we decided to go home and make cookies.

The major thing that attracted me to Dave was his sense of humor and I give him crap about a lot of his jokes not being funny. When he has a good one I always let him know and today he made a funny. Right before this photo was taken he said something about being Mitt Romney.

 After making cookies we walked over to the church for our ward adult activity called the Asian Occasion. Many things about the evening made us chuckle.

All in all it was a fantastic FREE date. We had loads of fun!!

Taming the mess!

I'm literally embarrassed to blog this and I pray you don't judge me for the before pictures. It's no secret that our place could use some organizational help. Frankly, when I get home from work I would much rather do something I enjoy than clean and organize my house. That being said... it is definitely time. I found this 52 weeks to an organized home challenge and have accepted. I've decided to hold myself accountable by showing you all our progress with before and after shots. The first challenge was kitchen organization: counter tops and sinks. We basically had to decide what we use often and what we could put somewhere else. In the end... who needs 3 timers?

Here are the before and after pictures... Don't judge.

Another update

Jude:

7 months old. 16.4 lbs. 25% for height and weight and 85% for head circumference.

Jude is doing much better lately. He's pretty much done taking his prevacid and only has an occasional barf (usually on other people's couches and more than you can imagine...) His impetigo is pretty much under control with the occasional use of an antibiotic cream and his rash is under control with the use of zyrtec. He is still the happiest baby on the block and is so funny. He is starting to learn to sit up and scooting around getting ready to crawl. He is in the process of transitioning out of the swaddler for sleeping. He is starting to get more RED hair and his favorite food is sweet potatoes.

Carter:

3 years 3 months old. 28 lbs. 37.5 inches tall. On the chart for weight and that's all that matters.

Carter is so stinking funny lately. After our trip to California last week he seems to have really come out of his shell. Now he will play on a playground if he knows we can see him and actually wander a little. He tells jokes and makes up lyrics to songs (my favorite is "Hey Carter" which he thinks is a Beatles song.) He loves He-man, his cousins, waffles, taking baths, writing words and reading. The biggest and best Carter news is that he is POTTY TRAINING!!! We've had 2 days without any accidents!! Yahoo! He enjoyed seeing all his family in California but the highlight of the trip for his was Charlie Brown. Any time we had an hour to spend we pulled out our Peanuts map and found as many as we could. He loved it and we enjoyed looking like tourists.

Dave:

31 years old on Tuesday. 215 lbs (that's 35 less than the beginning of the year!)

Dave has made some big changes to his future plans. He is now pursuing a bachelors degree in City Planning and then will enter the accelerated masters program in Architecture. It should take him about 4 years to finish school but this will make him more marketable and actually speed up the process considerably. We recently took a financial greatness class offered through my work and are now feeling much better about our future. The picture of Dave up above was the first step we took towards getting out of debt. We are both very excited to make this happen and control our money rather than the other way around. Dave has also been called to teach Elder's Quorum at church and he loves it. He also enjoys the challenge of being a stay at home Dad and has been great with the first days of potty training. He has recently been doing most of the cooking and is realizing how good he is at it and how much he enjoys it.

Brook:

27 years old next Saturday. 129.5 lbs (UNDER 130 BABY!!! 35.5 lbs down!)

I've obviously been doing stuff since our blog has pretty much been abandoned. I spend a lot of my time doing our food blog and planning our meals. I know I do more than that these days but I just can't remember. Ok, let's see... I work. I exercise. I blog about food. I spend time with my boys. I watch the Bachelorette. Oh, here's something. I have recently decided to change my educational goals as well. I usually come up with one crazy future career after another and most of the time I end up returning to my goal to be a special ed teacher but I think I may have actually found one that will stick. I want to go to school to become a Nutritionist. It's something I am really interested in, have some basic knowledge in and could still be helping people. Sadly I have to wait until Dave is done and both boys are in school to even start but I am determined to complete more than just "some college" for those times when my children are asked about their mother's level of education.

That's us right now. It seems like in the previous months we had a bit of a dark cloud looming over our house but now things seem to be looking up. Everyone is mostly in a good place and we are all hoping to stay healthy for at least a little while. All in all things are good and happy over here in the Mann house.

Before and After

Putting the weight back on challenge

30 pounds lost 27.8 pounds "gained"

Might as well eat healthy

Dave and I started a food blog to share some of the best recipes we've tried on our journey to a healthy life. Please check it out and let us know what you think!

www.mightaswelleathealthy.blogspot.com

Wrestle Mania!