Costco

There are a few places/services I think are incredible. One of them is Costco's photo shop, especially online. Lots of places let you download photos and have them printed, then you go pick them up later...but I love Costco's extras. This past 2 weeks I've spent a lot of time (and by that I mean a LOT) making a really cool photo book. Ken and I recently passed our 20th anniversary and I wanted to do something really fun to remember our first 20 years together. This photo book is perfect...every favorite picture we've got is going to be included. You get 20-100 pages for the same price, so you can believe I'll use exactly 100 pages! You can choose to make your own book jacket, too, designed by you with photos or just words, etc. I'm not putting a lot of words or explanations in the book (my gosh that would take forever), I'm just marking the dates and sometimes saying a few words.

I'm so excited to see the finished product! It will easily represent over 100 hours of work, including finding, scanning, and photoshopping pictures to clean them up. You have to try it!

Valentine's

I'm usually not all that into Valentine's Day. It just seems to me that if someone isn't good to their sweetheart all year long, what good does it do to go all out on one day of the year? And how disappointing is it if they don't?? However, this year I've been gone a lot and Ken did some very sweet things for me...all day! Clearly he'd put a lot of thought and time into doing nice things for me. So ok...I'm thinking maybe it's not such a horrible day after all. And it didn't stop on Saturday; Sunday he made me a chocolate-shaped heart cake with fondant icing and pink decorations! How fun is that?!

I really appreciate Ken and all the things he does. He's a very selfless person who is willing to use his abilities, talents, and time to do things for other people. He's always supportive (I've never once had to plead my case for something I wanted to do). He's a great Valentine, husband, friend, and more. It's very typical for him to do something to surprise me when I go out of town. This time he cleaned up our office and made a big, L-shaped desk for our office! At first I wasn't sure if I liked it (I'm awfully picky about styles) but I really love the work space we have now. I also love how thoughtful it was of him to do this for his family.

Exciting times...

Well, our first-born, Josh, will be reporting to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, to begin his 2 year church mission to the Hungary, Budapest mission on May 20th. He will have to learn the Hungarian language and culture. He will be teaching people there about what our church teaches and he will also be serving the people in any way he can. We are going to miss him a lot but are already planning on taking a trip to go pick him up in May of 2011. It's a really exciting time in his life and I'm so jealous he gets to spend 2 years in Europe! Not as a tourist but living there among the people and learning so much about the country. We will learn through him and are looking forward to the whole thing!