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!

where we: end wedding season

we’ve been to a whole lot of weddings this summer — but on friday we went to the last one on our calendar! i was sad because i looove weddings, and david was sad because he likes the free meal and tasty treats, ha.

the wedding on friday was of my friend jelissa. they had their reception at log haven restaurant up milcreek canyon and it was so very magical. i loved this venue and thought it would be a great spot for a wedding redo — even though i loved where we had ours, i always think about what dress i would wear if we could relive our wedding day, what flowers i would want, etc.

i also love weddings cause you get to see so many friends all together in one spot — a rare occurrence these days, with friends moving here and there and always being busy. at this wedding we got some quality time with the freis and baby morris. he’s the cutest, even though he doesn’t give me enough eye contact to make me feel like we’re having quality time. he’s a little over a month old, so i’ll give him a break. by 2 months i hope he’s gotten that mastered.

david’s still learning what to do with babies.

but he always knows what to do with a super fancy buffet table. seconds and thirds, please.

so i forgot to get a shot of the bride and groom, whoops. they were in high demand all night. but congrats, jelissa and kevin!

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 get VIP treatment

saturday we had more quality time with the swindles, who invited us to the old crow medicine show concert at red butte gardens. we originally told them we couldn’t go because it was too expensive – $50 tickets! – but then they clarified that they were inviting us because they had free VIP tickets they wanted us to use! bonus.

old crow medicine show is a bluegrass band from oklahoma with a whole lot of hillbilly music, so it was a fun group to see live. they were hoopin and hollerin and running around the stage the whole time, and we danced so hard we had to rest for awhile in the middle of the concert in our VIP lawn chairs (everyone else in the venue sat on blankets).

we brought a picnic dinner and snacked on tasty treats the whole night, danced hard and then the encore song brought in the thunder and lightning and rain – just in time for us to leave! it really brought the summer magic. and inspired us to work on our banjo/violin duo some more.

where: you see the fourth of july, continued

the magic continued on the fourth of july when we came home that night to have a BBQ with our ward friends the Swindles and Obas. We like them a lot. Since David spends so much time studying, we usually spend our limited hangout time with my old roommates or our family, but we love making new friends! i think we’ve really become the ward socialites lately, so we feel pretty cool. jk.

after the BBQ at the Swindles house, we went up to 11th Avenue park and watched the fireworks over the whole valley. David brought is banjo so we could still have some musical accompaniment to the fireworks. some all-american music, at that.

while we were at the park, a european man whom we overheard saying, “now what is independence day, exactly?” asked david to play the american national anthem on the banjo. that thing got a lot of attention! i think maybe he should give up school and start a music career.

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: they wedded on a tuesday

my old roommate lauren got married on tuesday to our old ward friend kyle patton. they were friends for three years before they finally dated! lauren loved kyle all along, but he took awhile to come around. ah, love.

although i wasn’t crazy about the stress and pressure of planning my own wedding…when it comes to other people’s weddings — i can’t get enough! i love weddings. even stranger’s weddings. so i was extra happy when lauren asked me to help with hers. i made her wooden peg doll cake toppers and filmed her wedding video. i was so busy filming that i forgot to take pictures of my own! so most of these are stills from the video footage.

david and i didnt even get a picture together, and i didnt get a picture with all of the long lost friends we saw there. sad. but it was so good to see them all. weddings bring people together! and i loved filming the wedding so much, maybe i’ll have a new side job/hobby. i have a nice camera, but the filming skills are quite amateur at this point. still time to perfect my skills though.

it sure seemed like it took foreeeever for my turn to get married, but looking back on it, i had 5 close friends get married before me and (so far) five close friends get married after me. i was right smack dab in the middle. i guess it’s not so bad. only a couple friends left! good thing i have at least 3 more sisters’ weddings to help plan.

where: we get antsy for summer

it’s happened about three times and we should definitely know better by now, but when warm weather rolls around it makes perfect sense in my mind to get a-hikin in the mountains. but it turns out the snow takes a looong time to melt. so i get excited, pick a hike, we get there and realize it will be a tedious trip in the hard-packed snow. it really probably won’t be nice and dry in the higher areas of the canyons until july. mental note for 2014!

on monday we were going to hike mt. olympus, but then woke up late. then we wanted to do a hike to three lakes called mary, martha catherine. but we got up near brighton ski resort and realized that hike was a no-go. so we improvised and picked a random hike on our way back down big cottonwood canyon, ending up on a 7-mile trail run/hike to desolation lake. it’s nice to get out and exercise in different settings.

the trail was mostly snow-free. hooray!

but then we came upon the snow.

but why can’t we swim??

oh, that’s why. maybe we’ll come back in the summer and break the no-swim rule. (even though i don’t like getting wet.)

it was an oh-so-lovely day that even ended with a super fancy car wash that the owner gave us for FREE for no reason! if he only knew how much it made the super-tight-budgeting newlyweds’ day.

and yes, it was real tough to go back to work on tuesday :-/. thanks for the memories, memorial day!

where: we see les mis with our favorite friend

on saturday we got a last-minute call from our friends the jensens asking if we wanted to take their son matt to see les mis at the pioneer theater that night.

they had come down sick and needed someone to take matt (and their $50-per-seat tickets) off their hands. nooo prob! we love hanging out with matt and he is the number one fan of les mis, so we were excited to go.

matt knows every word to every song and was telling us more about the characters than we even knew — it was david’s first time seeing it, though he did see the movie at christmas. we were a little surprise matt resisted the urge to sing along to every song, but he did poke us on the arm every few minutes to make sure we were as excited as he was anytime marius was on stage.

on the walk to the car we belted out “do you hear the people sing?” so well that matt said we should both try out for the play ourselves. he does good things for our egos.

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.