Happy Birthday Brandon!

Happy Happy Birthday Brandon Dear!

Brandon's birthday was on January 6th, but he had to fly to San Francisco for a few days for work, so we celebrated the big 31 when he got back. I made loads of Chinese food, which I was scrambling to finish when the guests started to arrive! Brandon says I take too much on, and I would have to agree! Everything turned out good for our 15 dinner guests (yeah our little place definitely filled up, we even had 2 of our friends stop by with 3 of their nieces and nephews just to say "hi" for a minute, so our little place was packed to the gills!) Then after some cake and ice cream we went to Wise Guys Comedy Cafe for some good laughs.

Our friends Liz and Marcelo. Liz was in our old ward and Marcelo works with Brandon.

From left to right, Kelly, one of Brandon's bestest old high school buddies, Traci, my old roommate, and Brandon's little brother David.

From left to right, Jon, Jeremy, and Kyle and ladies they are single!

If Liz and Kristi only knew who was behind them! Watch out!

All of the friends at Wise Guys Comedy Cafe. The headliner was a ventriloquist and not all that funny. But the one of the opening comedians had us all laughing so hard! It was worth it for that guy! Is Brandon closing his eyes here? Yep.


We did a little family party for Brandon and my niece Katelyn at my mom and dad's house. This is Brandon and Katelyn giving each other five for blowing out the candles.

When you start talking about Katelyn's eyes, which are really big brown ones, she likes to cross them to be funny. So we caught it with our camera. She also says that because her eyes are big, she can see farther than other people with small eyes. Maybe it's true? I don't know, because I have small eyes. She's a kindergartner who says she doesn't need to go to kindergarten because she already knows everything. She's a sassy one, to be sure! Kinda like her Aunt Anne!

In other news, Brandon and I just spent a really nice 3 day weekend with his family down in Hurricane and St. George. We drove down Friday and just relaxed in the much warmer and clear sunshiney weather. It was nice to get out of the smog we've had here all week.
We brought our mountain bikes down with us and went on a 12 mile ride along some country roads in Hurricane, where we got chased by 2 big white shaggy sheep dogs who were, I guess, trying to protect their sheep from us. At first they were just chasing us along the fenceline, acting fierce and loping along like "wolves" as Brandon describes it, jumping over ditches and growling at us, until one of them found a way out of the field and got right behind Brandon. Brandon yelled "Get outta here!" really loud and wouldn't you know, that big dog slowed down and stopped, and then turned around and left us alone. So pretty adventurous.
I tried out the new heart rate monitor that Brandon gave me for Christmas. It is pretty cool, it can measure all kinds of things, and it even as a GPS! I burned nearly 600 calories and Brandon burned 1200! That's amazing! It just felt so nice to be doing stuff outside and not freezing. We are eager to get back down there and do more riding. Brandon is planning on doing a big bike race in St. George in April. Go Brandon!