Halloween Extravaganza

Well, For Halloween we were granted a complimentary photo shoot with our extremely talented and dear friend Anna Pew-Harrison. (She's the superstar who took our wedding pictures as seen above). She had the brilliant idea of doing a Halloween photo shoot and without even asking what we were going to be, she invited us to come along...

Her Pictures turned out great...and the costumes were awesome...

Anna and Buck

The gorgeous Leah being her Peacock self!
Mandy the Lion about to get her meal.
I'm pretty sure she should be a super model. Then there comes the naked blue man..Oh wait..that's my Avatarian husband...

then I attempted to be an avatar too. However I opted for more clothes...I ended up being the frumpy avatar.

Things got Ugly...

...and steamy

...yet awkward.

Mid photo-shoot he turned into a caveman

We then got hungry so we headed to Denny's. They let him in Loin cloth and all.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

My Birthday...

...was nearly a month ago however I will write about it anyway. It started with homemade I heart you pancakes in bed!! Delicious!Most of the day was spent watching General Conference from the comfort of our living room.

Then we had a present opening party, Max spoiled me with house stuff which thrills me to no end. We got matching hot cocoa mugs...getting ready for the Winter!

Then, it was somehow arranged without my knowing for a couple of friends to come over. It started with a surprise accordian greeting from leah at my doorstep!

Then Anna and Buck showed up with surprise dessert and Sparklers.

Max got his turn pumping out a tune.

Maybe I'm lame but I'm so excited about these cannisters. I wanted them real bad for my birthday!

Later in the evening I didn't have my camera but Max left for the Priesthood session of general conference and I went on a shopping date with Leah. It was successful!

Then when the men were done with Priesthood we went and ate at Chiles! Yum!

Oh and then we went to the hot springs with some friends.

When we were done it was the wee hours of the morning so we called it a night! It was a good birthday.

Time for catching up!

I'm working on my list from a couple posts ago and this is the Ironic Moped Story...ahem, now that we are on the same page...

So nearly 2 months ago Max went to the DMV to get his Motorcycle endorsement so he could legally drive the moped.

Before we get too deep into the story, let me introduce my safety conscious husband, when he drives the moped he wears a full on motorcycle helmet, (I've seen very few if any people on campus wearing helmets while driving mopeds), he drives the speed limit in any vehicle, he has great insurance, he studied the DMV manually very thoroughly etc...you may be thinking that these are common neccessary safety procedures, however; in Utah, driver saftey is really not too common...Anyway point being (and i still don't know if this has much to do with the story) that Max is an incredibly good driver and very cautious and safe! I love him for that!

So he has been diving the moped for months with a permit and he does just fine. This one Thursday he goes into the DMV to do a driving test for his endorsement and he crashes and flies off the Moped. But here's the thing...he still passes....Only in utah can you crash your driver's test and still pass.

Thank you Utah for Putting safe drivers on the road!

The reason he did crash was because the DMV tester asked him to drive as fast as we could and when he got to a mark on the road he needed to swerve around it. This is when he fell off. The Tester must have just felt bad. We are happy he passed but seriously...

Our house!

Welcome to our home! We have lived in a handful of different places during our 1.5 years of marriage but we decided that this one has been our best. We want to give our far away family members a tour...
We'll start the tour with the horses. Our house would just not feel like a home without horses.

I know what your thinking...this is much smaller than our last house...but don't worry, that was just the Harry Potter Closet...

This here is our crafting room. No I'm not crafty but if I want to start i'll need a specific room to do so.

Our grand staircase...

Just a small gathering room.

Our upstairs kitchen...sorry about the clutter, we were in the middle of a party when this was taken.

The informal dining room.

Just a food storage place...yes, just this area is twice the size of our apartment last year!

We need to keep our guests entertained while they visit

I hope drums, airhockey, foosball, and rock band will keep them occupied for a night.

There are plenty of guest rooms for visitors.

We can cook out on the patio.

Then walk right in to our movie theater.

There are no bad seats in the house...

Movies!!

Ok, if you didn't catch on by now this isn't really our house nor will we ever have a house like this. We went up to our friend Shane-o's house in Logan area to celebrate our lovely friend Leah's birthday. (Both from the fabulous Armenia-Yerevan Mission, woot woot) So Max pranced around and took pictures with the idea of sending them to our family to show them our new house. He's so funny!! Anywho, the real story is...

Leah was turning 24 yesterday!! She is one of our favorite people so we got to be part of a small group that celebrated with her. On Saturday Afternoon we drove up to Logan with Buck and Anna (Pew) Harrison, and Leah. First we stopped at Anna's aunts house and took some handpicked delicious grapes. Mmmmm.. Then we took Leah to the surprise restaurant....Texas Roadhouse. This is Max's new favorite restaurant too! We ate like Ravenous Carnivores!

Leah got to sit on a saddle and be sung to.
Yes, those are fries covered in a mountain of cheese with bacon...

It was a successful celebration and we want to thank Shano and his parents for sharing their mansion.

Justin's Baptism

The weekend of September 24-26 Max and I made a mad dash to Portland. On friday after school we started driving. Max didn't get out of class until nearly six oclock so we were starting out on a long night of driving. Max is always really worn out at the end of a strenuous Fire Academy day so I was just expecting to drive the whole night. Max actually drove a bunch but we switched off almost every hundred miles and eventually pulled over and took an hour long nap. We arrived in Portland around 7 am Pacific Standard time! 14 hours of driving! We crashed at Max's uncle Jay's house for a couple hours then woke up at noon to go out to a birthday lunch with my Grandma. We were celebrating my dad's, max's, and my birthday! My little monkey brothers came along too! I was glad we got to see so many people in such a short amount of time! I wish I took a picture! Anywho, after lunch we headed toward the baptism taking a short stop at my Green Grandma's house. Then off to the church,. The font was full! It seems that it is always empty when you need it full so that was good. When everyone arrived we took these great pictures...

Yeah Justin!!

So let me clarify, Justin is Max's cousin who was recently adopted as his brother. Justin has known about the church a long time because he's always been a visitor in the Baertlein household but it was recently that he became interested in reading the scriptures and taking the missionary discussions. He decided that he wanted to be baptized and he asked Max to baptize him. We were thrilled to make the trip and be there for him.The Baertlein family!! minus some...

This was the baptism gift from Max and me.

We are so proud of you Justin!!

After the afterparty (Chuck E. Cheese) we headed to Mum-z's house for the pizza party, then after the after after party We headed to Red Grandma's house to watch Saturday Night Live with her and then sleep.

The next morning we went to Sacrement meeting and then drove back to Provo. buh

disclaimer: I'm half asleep as I write this.

undetailed updates

I haven't really had any blog time during this strenuous semester so instead of writing about things we're doing, I'm just going to make a list of things I would write about if I had time...Make sense? Not really...but it helps me remember.

~Justin's Baptism
~Quick trip to Portland
~Ectopic Prego
~My Conference birthday
~Lost and found Sale
~Good bye to Ruby
~Ironic Moped accident
~House pictures
~Alien Dance

I guess life is filled with so many adventures that we just can't write them all down...but I'm going to try and start right now...