where: ruby turns 1

ruby is the favorite child of all of my mom’s side of the family, because she’s pretty much the only child. (besides mason who is far away!)

david and i feel forever bonded to ruby gal because she was born just a couple weeks before our wedding. so we can always be on track with her age and our anniversary!

even though she gets passed from person to person every 60 seconds, ruby stays cool as a cucumber and mellow as can be. she was really confused what to do with her birthday cake and why she had 30+ people staring at her and taking her picture like a celebrity photo shoot.

happy birthday ruby pyfer!

where: the parents wine and dine us

minus the wine, of course.

last saturday the whole brown clan was all in one city! my parents came to bring bailey kate to EFY, and then they hung out with the rest of their children while she was off on that adventure for a week. and just our luck – momma shari kunz came to town at the same time!

we soaked up all our time with the fam. we ate out a lot, which is a rare treat for us and our strict budget lifestyle. we went to settebello and dolcetti gelato, we had a picnic at memory grove with moochies majorly messy sandwiches, we hit up lone star taqueria on our way down to utah county, and topped it off with plenty of treats from the likes of banbury cross donuts and farrs frozen yogurt. all the hot spots! all the deliciously unhealthy hot spots.

we also went shopping and touring park city main street, went to a community pioneer day breakfast and parade, had a birthday party of our little cousin ruby, and played some intense rounds of the new family favorite game, perpetual commotion.

here’s to family bonding!

our adventurous weekend last week ended with a trip to the farmer’s market. when i first moved to SLC i went almost every saturday because i was so enchanted by it, but last summer i never went – not even once! wedding planning and being engaged got the best of my time, but this past weekend we finally got to hit it up once more.

we headed over around 9:30 am, before the crowds hit, and had theeeeee best eggs benedict of our lives!!! it was from the frida bistro food truck and had us talking about it for days afterward. let me just add that it had verde hollandaise sauce and smoked salmon on super tasty, grainy bread. so worth the trip alone.

we also bought some super cheap cherries, tomatoes and giant summer squash.

cooking with fresh produce is always more fun.

where: we have a truly american fourth of july

we spent our fourth of july in the magical land of huntsville, ut, where david’s family has a “cabin” a.k.a nice house in the wild west. we invited about 12 people to come with us and they all backed out or had other plans, but we wouldn’t let that stop the fun! we like each other best anyways! pshh. so we decided to make it our “11 month anniversary” trip. ha

since we were itching for a campout and the cabin was packed with family anyway, we decided to take our sleeping bags out to the “family campground” in the back of the property, which is really the epitome of glamping (glamorous camping). We had a wood pile all ready for us, a fire pit, freshly-cut grass and just a few minutes walk up to the bathrooms in the house. Nature at it’s finest.

when we arrived on wednesday night before the fourth of july, we “set up camp” for a little bit, visited the new baby horse named scout, took pictures and wandered the property. magical! all pure magic.

then when it got dark we made the best smores you’ll ever have: trader joe’s dark chocolate sea salt bar, trader joe’s homestyle cinnamon graham crackers and good ol’ fashion marshmallows. that’s the recipe to perfection. they were so good, david ate about 10. i had 2 and felt sick, because i’d already eat some of the chocolate bar and grahams on the way the drive up. couldn’t resist.

thursday morning we went with the family to the fourth of july hometown parade. full of kids squirting us with water guns and throwing saltwater taffy at our faces as the drove by in their cars. but there were goats! so i liked that.

next we headed up to causey reservoir, where david was pumped to jump off cliffs and row around in our canoe. too bad we couldn’t figure out how to blow up the canoe (david said it was missing a part). and when some guy got knocked unconscious and had to had an ambulance come to the lake, i was feelin pretty nervous about all that cliff jumping.

but it was a beautiful place with perfect water temps, so we swam around. (a rare occurrence for me!) and then picnicked on more trader joe’s goodies: whole wheat bread, natural PB and fig butter. so good!

david thought it was funny when i told him the fourth of july is one of my top favorite holidays, right after thanksgiving. okay i like christmas too of course, but everybody likes that. but every year i stand by my statement: the fourth of july is the beeeest!

where: you meet the mouse doctor

yes, those tubs are all full of mice!

in preparation for applying to nutritional science master’s programs in december, david has been working in a medical research lab on campus. from the very beginning he’s told me so crazy tales of doing experiments on mice: cutting out their beating hearts, injecting them with fluids and measuring their blood pressure via their tails.

i don’t by any means like mice, but when i finally got to see the action firsthand on saturday, i felt sad for the little guys.

any time someone tells david he’s a meanie to those mice, he says, “tell me that again anytime you take advil or any medication tested on mice!” okay okay, it’s for a greater good. but i mean – just look at those pics!

but i really am impressed with his skills. lookin like a real deal doctor!…i just hope this isn’t top secret stuff i’m putting up on the internet.

where: the bonins move to town

sadly we had work and school all day when my sister kelli and her husband andrew moved into their new apartment downtown, but we did get their just in time for the real action: using a pulley system to bring a couch up six stories, over the balcony and through the sliding glass doors.

the couch wouldn’t fit through the front door, so this was the wild and crazy plan that andrew and his friend came up with. i thought it was funny that we had three of the most slim and slender gents trying to pull this thing up 6 stories…but they did it! they really did it! …but only after a half-way break for a waffle dinner provided by moi. so i’d like to think i was the biggest help in the whole affair.

we are glad to have the bonins move to our side of town from provo. they live one block away! and now we can make a better argument to have more of the family parties in SLC. yay for saving gas money!

where: such happy things happened

this weekend was action-packed with happy, life-altering events!

most of them happened to other people, but they are all my closest friends so it’s as good as if it happened to me. almost.

first off, i got a text saturday morning from brynne saying that baby morris frei had decided to come on down from heaven. so we headed straight over and visited at the hospital for almost 2 hours! what a sweet sweetie. we got some good newborn-holding practice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and now for the real parents! so glad they moved back to SLC just in time for this baby action.

after losing track of time at the hospital, we made a mad dash for the temple where natalie and greg were getting married. it warms my heart to see my best friends getting married – almost as good as getting married myself! not quite. but almost. i can stop trying to rack my brain about who i can set my single friends up with now. and we have more married friends to hang out with (who aren’t always busy planning a wedding!).

i looove weddings for the gathering of people and the tasty treats and the wedding cake and the dance floor. natalie’s wedding had all of it — plus some amazing views from the 10th floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial building!

Natalie has so many great friends that got married before we even got to know each other, so it was fun to see all of them and their pregnant bellies too.

and to see our long-lost friends dantzel and oliver! (they just moved to the far away land of monticello.)

where we: once were born

as i said in the last post, david and i have birthday’s just 2 days apart, so we get an action-packed three days of celebrations every year as we celebrate his birthday on may 10th, have a co-bday celebration on the 11th and celebrate my birthday on it’s own on the 12th. and this year my birthday fell on mother’s day! i’m not mad. happy to share the day with the lovely shelley brown.

david planned a picnic for sunday afternoon, so we packed up super tasty gourmet things like pugliese bread, brie, raspberries, cherry preserves, pesto, apples and sharp cheddar. yep, high class. then he took to me to a secret not-so-secret spot in the hills of the upper avenues where we live. magical! he knows my taste.

we spent a good couple hours there, laying in the shade of a blossoming tree, soaking up the sun and taking bad self-timer pictures, opening presents, and trying to decide if pesto + sharp cheddar on apples was the best combo, or if it was raspberries + brie on bread. or if it was actually just bread with fancy cherry jam. after trying each combo about 5 times, we were too full to remember.

where we: have a chilly pizza picnic

Brynne and Tanner came to town last weekend, and we consider ourselves lucky to have spend approximately 93 minutes with them!

The Freis came to town to see their new nephew Jack, but they squeezed in a dinner time with us, so we picked up the Friday special pizza at Whole Foods, went to Memory Grove for a picnic and then had to get outta there before it got unbearably cold. But we’ll take what we can get with our L.A. friends!

Sadly, our husbands hardly know each other, but we’re pumped for them to move back this summer and we can be married couple BFFs AND become the favorite friends of newborn baby Frei.

my urban woodworker

While he was on spring break last week, David busted out his shiny new power tools (from Christmas). It was a spontaneous vision. He dreamed it up while riding his bike, wrote up the plans and wham bam, we had a new coffee table. Well, it’s not done yet. But here’s a looksie. Workin’ hard in the back lot of our apartment building.