we heart steak

one more day of love has come and gone, and with it, an opportunity to blog. this makes amber and my third valentines together, and i fear i am already losing the flair for the romance. lucky for me, amber is not.

i suppose cupid's weekend for us began when amber got home from work saturday afternoon. awaiting her were a dozen yellow roses. being the studly casanova that i am, i was drooling and snoring away in bed when she got home, so amber came in and woke me the best way possible - with a soft kiss and a whispered "i love you."

it took me a bit to get up and going, but when i did, i found amber being very secretive on the computer. i figured it was a surprise, so i didn't try to be too nosey, but amber is thankfully like me and can't keep a secret. she caved and told me she was looking up how to cook a steak without the use of a grill. amber and i both love a good chunk of beef, but neither of us have ever donned the goofy looking white hat and claimed the title of master chef. we had no idea how to cook a steak, but amber was going to try sunday evening, just for me. isn't she wonderful? :)

well i was off to work and amber was off to bed, or so i thought. when i returned home twelve hours later, i was welcomed by a living room decorated in hearts, with a giant valentines card adorned with candy sitting on the coffee table. oh how i grinned. my cheeks hurt now while i write this. made me feel a bit bad that all i did was buy her some cheap flowers. i guess i have to let her win some years. :) she definitely did this year.
after church and my nap, i arose and amber let me help her cook the steaks. after looking through a million different recipes and hearing thousands of tips and ideas, we decided to broil our sirloins. what an adventure! neither of us were even quite sure what a broiler was, and definitely not how to work one. we weren't even entirely sure where it was on our oven, but after a little exploring, we discovered it way down under the oven, basically on the floor.
well we rubbed our raw meat with our chosen spices and did a quick searing job to keep the juices in, or so we're told. we then plopped our steaks on the broiler pan and laid on the floor to keep a close eye on the cooking process because we hear that broiling can cause meat to periodically burst into flames! it's just not real cooking unless your life is at risk! well we experienced no flash fires, backdrafts, or random fireballs (to my slight disappointment), and a few minutes later we had our candle lit table ready for a romantic meal. we probably cooked our steaks a little long, but i thought it was delicious. and we definitely appreciated the short time it took to cook such a great meal.

to cap off our valentines weekend, we went to olive garden the next evening for another romantic meal together. i do love good food. but even more than that, i do love my good wife. valentines is not the biggest holiday for us, but it is nice to stop and celebrate our love for each other in a slightly more special way than we normally do. it's funny to think this is the last valentines day for us that won't involve a booster chair or a kid's menu. :)

Our Cool New Blog Book

So this is our cool new blog book. :)

When we started our blog, I worried a little bit about what would happen to all of our blogs when or if we stopped or had to quit writing them. I wouldn't want our memories and stories to just be erased. So when our friend showed us her cool blog book, we decided that was exactly what we wanted to do! It's a very neat web site (Blurb.com) that lets you upload all your blogs and pictures, put together your book, and then they print it out for you and send it your way. Others can order the book too, it's so cool! :) We actually like the idea of doing a book every year that we blog. I'm not much of a scrapbooker, and it's actually cheaper than having to get all the supplies you need for scrapbooking. Cool, huh? :) Now we just have to blog enough during the year to make it book worthy...:)

Other news...we just had our 16 week doctor appointment yesterday. We heard the heart beat again and he said everything sounds good, he just told me to gain more weight. Funny, hearing a doctor tell you not to worry about eating too much fat at this point, but to just gain weight. He said eat healthy of course, but don't worry about counting calories and everything (not that I ever did that before). He seemed to be under the impression that I must not want to get bigger...boy is he wrong! I can't wait to feel and look more pregnant! I've heard from some people that for their first, the belly didn't come until the 6th or 7th month, but I have other friends that started showing already. I hope my belly comes sooner rather than later! :)

Also, remember our shelf we painted and put up on our wall a few months ago? We've had a few different displays since then, but here is a picture of our latest, Valentines display. :)

gathering blue - lois lowry

this book comes with the tag "a companion to 'the giver'." growing up, 'the giver' was one of the few books (if not only one) i can say i read and thoroughly enjoyed, and when i reread it a couple years ago, i was not disappointed in the least. it still held the intrigue and magic that i once experienced so many years ago. so it was with great expectations that i took up 'gathering blue'. i can't say that i didn't enjoy it or was let down, but it definitely paled in comparison to its "companion". a nice, easy read, perfect for young readers, that showed me a new world and led me to some new, interesting ideas.

i must admit i was not a huge fan of the story's ending, but it seems lowry has an affinity for unique endings. 'the giver' at least left me with some type of closure. whether you believed the young man and baby survived in the end or not, at least something of worth was accomplished. 'gathering blue' left me with the feeling that nothing had changed in the end and, quite possibly, not even a lesson was learned. our heroine had gained some new knowledge and insight, but she seemed content to do nothing about it. i believe very little is worse than knowledge unheeded and ignored.

Guess what'll be here July 28th?!!!

So, it's official! I finally feel like it's safe to announce that...We're pregnant! :) Or, I guess just I am...Scott has been having a lot of sympathy pains though. ;) So far, everything's looking good. We heard the heart beat last week and I have to say, it was the coolest sound ever. The nurse worried me a bit, when she couldn't find it very quickly, but as soon as she did find it, it was music to my ears. :)
I've felt pretty good the last few weeks which is good and bad...I mean, it's good, cuz I haven't dealt with too much nausea, which I don't mind at all. On the other hand though, I haven't felt pregnant at all and have been driving Scott crazy with all my worries and wondering whether there really is a baby inside me?! He's such a good sport though, and so patient. He even humored me and went with me to buy another (our 5th) pregnancy test to confirm that we really were pregnant!
I am about 13 weeks along now and I really haven't gained that much weight, but tonight after eating a big dinner, I really did feel pregnant so we busted out the camera and took our first pregnant belly shots. :) I really don't know how much of that belly is food and how much is baby...:)
We're so excited for this new chapter in our lives. We are excited to become parents. As scary and overwhelming as it is also, I am totally up for it. Baby Bryson is due July 28th!

make like a Christmas tree, and get lost 2009

another year has passed us by, and with the closing of 2009 comes reviews and remembrances of the past year and resolutions for the year to come. amber has bestowed upon my shoulders the awesome, yet daunting task of recapping our wonderful holiday season, as well as very briefly looking back at the entire past year. i accept this great responsibility with honor, yet also with trepidation. i only hope i can do '09 the justice it deserves. i thank amber for the opportunity to serve. she is such a good delegater. :)

as we stated in a previous entry, we have been looking forward to this Christmas season since well before thanksgiving. Christmas has always been the best time of year. we loved the december ensign and the lessons we learned from it. Christmas is a thinning of the veil. it's a peek at what heaven could be like. it is an on-going remembrance of Christ and thus goodwill towards others naturally ensues. and the fact that presents are involved definitely doesn't hurt the joyous season. :) i have found that in my old age the most joy comes from the giving of presents though. it was definitely true this year. in my extreme ocdness and complete nerdiness, i had everything i wanted to get for amber exactly planned out shortly after halloween, and had it all bought in the few days following thanksgiving. this left me a long and tortuous month of trying not to convince amber to just open all her presents early. i'm just one of those people who should never buy presents early and should actually wait till the last minute.
the month was a good one though, full of Christmas movies, carols, going to find the perfect tree in the middle of a blizzard, hanging lights and decorating. all of our neighbors in our little apartment complex took off for the holidays, leaving the place all to ourselves, free to blast alvin and the chipmunks singing "Christmas don't be late", wailing along at the top of our lungs. Christmas eve unfortunately found us a little under the weather, both of us having spent some time in recent days bent over our porcelain throne. so we spent the evening alone, watched "it's a wonderful life", read luke chapter 2, then crashed early so that santa could pay us a visit. we awoke with childlike jubilation as we ran out to raid our stockings for candy and tear open our once beautifully wrapped presents. santa was good to us (i guess amber's merits over the past year earned me a place on the 'nice list' too), bringing us new dvd's, books, games, a hoody for scott, and an slr camera for amber (which she will use to take awesome football pictures of scott).
we then headed over to scott's brother's house for the bryson family gift exchange, where amber got a camera bag to go with her new camera and scott got new football gloves, and they both got a brand new wii! it was then off to amber's parents' house for a wonderful Christmas dinner, games, visiting and the mcclellan family gift exchange, where we got a new game invented and crafted completely by amber's brother daniel. after a long day of celebrating with family, we hurried home to play with some of our new toys, amber with her camera and me with the wii.
new year's eve found us in a slightly tough situation, us wanting to celebrate the moment with friends and a kiss at midnight, but amber having to work early in the morning. we headed up to our friends' the rasmussen's house, who were hosting a big party. we ate, played games and had a great time there til 10:30, then headed over to the maughan's place to quickly catch the ball drop, drink a little sparkling cider, and start the year off right with a kiss, before heading straight home to bed.
what a year 2009 has been. our first full year as husband and wife. crazy if you stop and think about it and the many wild adventures we took. we got to see my little brother get married, took a trip down to texas for a bryson reunion, attended the mcclellan reunion in colorado, traveled over to northern california for my grandma's 90th birthday, and saw 4 nieces and nephews born into the family. now a new year begins, full of endless opportunities. our resolutions have been set and we are ready to be better people.

the three musketeers - alexandre dumas

quick blog to end the year. positives - loved the action of the book. good, exciting story. negatives - way too much time spent on the financial worries of the musketeers. horrible morals of most of the musketeers, with the lone exception being athos, who rocks. in review, i have to say i enjoyed the book even more than i did dumas' other great work, the count of monte cristo. i know most critics may disagree, but the musketeers just had so much more excitement. anyways, happy new years!

dearest day of turkey and other stuff,

we must offer our apologies to you, monsieur thanksgiving. we have not treated you as you so richly deserve. in days of yore, you touched our hearts and we looked forward to you with eager anticipation. but this year, for some reason, our thoughts have raced past you and on to your holiday cousin, Christmas. we have unjustly treated you, our friend, and for that we are deeply sorry. we are sorry that we took no pictures of you this year, and thus this boring and bland blog. we are sorry that we almost didn't even blog about you at all. we know we haven't treated you right, but we hope you can forgive us. we'll change! please take us back!

in our defense, it hadn't seemed like the holiday season had begun yet. neither amber nor i had any change in our work schedules (the extra holiday pay will most definitely make us merry, but that's a whole two weeks away). also, my parents were going through a complete remodeling of their store down in texas, and it was hard not to stress long distance with them. and in addition to that, we were suffering through our own tragedy - our neighbors and friends, jake and katie maughan, were moving, leaving us for the company of dead people. could i possibly be any more boring that the conversation of a corpse is preferred to mine?! sad. we only jest. kinda. we are happy for our friends and their rent-free apartment located over a mortuary, but we are definitely sad to see them go.

well since i, scott, am the one writing about our thanksgiving adventures, i must bore you with what i consider one of the best and most essential parts of thanksgiving - turkey bowl football! the saturday before thanksgiving, the above mentioned jake maughan organized the second annual turkey tourney, an eight team, double elimination, flag football tournament. if you know me at all, you could expect a recap of every play of each and every game, but i'll spare you the agony and keep it brief - we won. we repeated as champions and once again took home the five foot tall trophy, a trophy once used to recognize the wonderful dancing prowess of a young girl, now meant to signify that we just rock.

now i hope you didn't misunderstand my rantings earlier and think we had a bad thanksgiving. while amber and i hardly felt we were in the holiday spirit, we definitely had a great day with food and family. the day started at amber's parents' house for a wonderful turkey dinner. we then played games and visited while more and more family trickled in for the festivities. from there it was over to my brother's house for dessert, more games, and more visiting. then home for a long night of trying not to explode from our overindulgence. a very, very good day. really our only complaint is that it was over much too quickly. the next day it was sadly back to business as usual.

senor thanksgiving, we are sorry how we treated you and we want you to know we love you, but you have to realize that Christmas is what the people pay to see. you're the appetizer, the undercard fight, barney rubble, the "ah ah ah...". Christmas is the entree, the main event, fred flintstone, the "...choooo!!!". there's nothing wrong with being who you are. you're still very special. you just have to accept it and be happy with your lot in life. now if you'll excuse me, i've got some lights to hang. :)