Hermana Holmes is home!!!!

This past Wednesday (April 24th), at 6:20 pm, Elise flew into Salt Lake City from her amazing mission in Texas!

For the last couple of weeks, when we have received her letters, she has been freaking out a bit about coming home.  If it were up to her, she would have stayed on her mission forever.  She absolutely loved it.  So I know it was hard for her to come home.  And weird too.  I can't imagine how it would be to live a life solely dedicated to God for 18 months and then have to be shoved back into reality.  Must be a bit of a shock.  But I am oh so proud of her and the service she provided to the wonderful people of southern Texas!

So anyway, on Wednesday, I of course had to work late....  So I was not able to go to the airport with my family to pick her up.  So it was my parents, EJ, Josh, Brit and Glen, and my grandparents that were there waiting for her.  They made signs that said "Holmita" (a nickname she was given in Texas) and "Hermana Holmes."  Super cute.  So anyway, they were waiting for like 45 minutes after her plane had landed and they were like what the?!  My dad started to actually get concerned.  Then all of a sudden Elise appeared BEHIND them with a surprise!  Turns out she and 2 other missionaries that returned home that day decided to take their time getting off the plane...they were the last ones to get off, they used the bathroom, they went to a corner and said a prayer, then they snuck into the next terminal over so that they could surprise their families from behind.  I thought that was awesome!  I laughed my head off.  So Elise to do something like that.

After leaving the airport we all decided to meet up at Texas Roadhouse for dinner.  That's where I got to see her again for the first time.  I was so excited!  We gave each other the biggest hug.  She looks so good.  She is still herself, but so much more experienced in the world.  She is wiser, more mature in a way.  I am such a proud big sister!  She has grown up so much.  What an amazing woman she has become.  And her Spanish is awesome!  It was fun to hear her speak it so fluently.  I told her she should get a job here at the hospital with me as an interpreter.  She would rock it.

Then we headed back to my parents house so she could get released as a missionary.  All the way back, she rode with me and Jordan and was commenting on how "hilly" Utah is.  She had forgotten how many hills there were.  Texas is flat.  At least where she was.  And she was freezing!  I mean, I usually am too, but Texas is humid and hot just about all year long where she was living.  So she had not had to deal with Utah cold in a while!

When we got back to the house, we each shared some words for Elise, then she bore her testimony to us and it was so very special.  It was a neat moment.  She bawled like a baby the entire time the stake president was releasing her (we all did, really).  He made it very nice though, gave her words of advice, etc. before actually releasing her. She was so sad to not be a missionary anymore.  It was very hard for her to take off her badge and go by "Elise" again.  I know that it will take time for her to get back into the swing of things in the real world, but she will be just fine.  She is currently enrolled in school for summer semester at the University of Utah, plans to take zumba and self-defense classes, have slumber parties with her little brothers, continue her personal study of the scriptures, and just take life a day at a time.  I think it's great.

Once again, I'm just so proud of my little holmita!  It takes so much dedication, service, courage, patience, faith, and love to do what she just did for the last 18 months.  There's no way I could have done it myself, so I look up to and respect her so much for that.  She is going to be able to use this for the rest of her life and the experiences that will come along with it.  She is such a good example to her little brothers too.  Josh said he can't wait to go on his mission now.  I'm excited for him too someday.  So fun.  I can't believe it's already been 18 months.  Feels like I was just dropping her off at the MTC!  But we are SO excited to have Hermana Holmes home!!  Wahoo!!

Easter Surprise!

So Easter this year was full of lots of fun....and....excitement. haha  So the day before Easter, I'm running errands with my mom.  We went to Petco to pick up dog food and walking in with this man is the cutest dang puppy.  So I'm asking him about her and then he says, "She's actually here for the dog adoption going on today.  I'm just her foster home."  I'm like HOLY COW don't tell me that.  If you know me, you know that I can't resist these sweet little animals and when there are adoptions going on, I will turn and walk away because if I could, I would bring every single one of them home with me.  But I can't.  So I don't even look.  But with this one, it was too late.  I put her in my shopping cart and hauled her around the store with me while I thought through all of the reasons why I should or shouldn't keep her.  I was not planning on getting another dog.  Puppies are so much work, and dogs in general are a permanent responsibility as well.  Plus, I had a really good thing going.  Sadie is the best dog in the whole world.  She stays home for 10 hours a day while me and Jordan are at work, she doesn't destroy anything, she doesn't have accidents in the house and she's just an all around amazing dog.  So I didn't want to throw that off.  But this puppy!  For some reason I couldn't leave her.

I called Jordan and he wouldn't even come down to the store to see her.  (He knew he would fall in love with her too.)  And told me he didn't want another dog and that I needed to really think it through.  Long story short, I ended up bringing her home.  Jordan was not thrilled.  I promised him that I would do all of the training and work of raising a puppy and another dog.  For the first week, I heard nothing but how horrible it was having another puppy in the house and that Sadie was miserable.  (Both were exaggerations of course, but I did bring her home against his will.)  So I just gutted it out.  Many times I thought, WHAT WAS I THINKING?!  But I just couldn't bring myself to not keep her.  I've had opportunities to adopt before and I turned them down, but this time was different for some reason.

So because I have to work everyday, I LUCKILY have this amazing brother who comes to my house every single day for 4 hours to let her out of her kennel and play and go potty and such so she doesn't have to be stuck in there for 8-10 hours a day.  He is also helping me train her, which is most helpful since I can't be there all the time.  I was so lucky with Sadie because I was able to bring her to work with me while she was a puppy.  So I was with her all of the time.  But this time around it's different.  I'm so grateful for EJ!!!

Anyway, this time around is a whole different experience, not only because of EJ's help, but because this puppy actually sleeps through the night in her kennel.  Wow does that make a difference.  With Sadie, I was up every hour during the night, then had to work full time and take care of her full time.  I did not enjoy Sadie's puppy months near as much as I should have.  I was just so tired I couldn't even cope.  So it's super nice that I'm not feeling like I'm going to keel over and die everyday like last time.  Plus I have Sadie to help too.  At first Sadie wasn't too thrilled about this new thing in our house, but now they play together and Sadie is a good big sister teaching her how to be a good dog.  Now for pictures. :)

Meet Dixie, 8 week old pointer mix.

The next day, on Easter Sunday we carted the girls over to my parents house for dinner and a small Easter egg hunt.  It was a lot of fun!

It was nice to come home with exhausted doggies too!

Now that we have had her for 2 weeks, she is finally starting to learn her name and getting better at potty training- yay!  She is still sleeping through the night, even bigger yay!  Last night we went on our first walk with both the doggies.  It went perfectly!  Dixie learned to walk with Sadie and it was so cute.  I'm so happy that it's finally the weekend so I can spend even more time with both my cute girls!

St. Patrick's Day Weekend!

I love St. Patrick's Day!  I look forward to it every year.  I just think it's a fun holiday.  I love doing the crafts with the kids at work, fun with friends and family, but most of all the food.  Oh yes, I love the food.  My entire life I've grown up eating a big St. Patrick's Day feast and I've continued it on in my own household as well.  Jordan had never had a big St. Patrick's Day meal until he met me, and now he looks forward to it every year as well. :)

But let me back up, before my fantastic feast, I decided it was that time of year to do something new and fun with my hair!  I usually get the itch for change at least once a year.  I had a picture in my head almost immediately of what I wanted.  So I found a picture as close as possible on the internet and took it to Brit's work so she could create it. :)  And it turned out exactly how I wanted it!  I love love love it!

After getting my hair done, me, Jordan and EJ spontaneously decided to go to Red Robin for dinner.  The weather was so nice and I was loving my new hair, so we thought we should have a fun night out for a bit.  PLUS, Red Robin has a gluten free menu, so I can now add it to the list of places I can eat!  Wahoo! :)

Sunday, for St. Patrick's Day, I made my fantastic corned beef, cabbage, and carrots with a Key Lime cake from scratch!  It was DE-LI-CIOUS.  I seriously look forward to my corned beef dinner every single year.  And so does Jordan.  We absolutely love it.  In fact, I can't wait to get home and eat the left overs! :)

This year was the first year I made the Key Lime cake.  I usually make my mom's famous pistachio cake, but this year I wanted to try this new recipe I had found.  It's not as good as my mom's pistachio cake, but it was super yummy just the same!

If you are interested, here are the recipes for my corned beef and key lime cake.

After dinner and dessert, we ended the night with a movie we hadn't seen yet.

If you haven't seen this movie yet, you should.  It's a cute one.

Lastly, on March 14th my Sadie girl turned 4 years old!  I can't believe she is getting so big.  Seems like just yesterday she was still a puppy.  Now she's my big girl.  Love her to the moon and back!  Happy birthday woofie!

Joshie's a teenager!

Yesterday my youngest brother Josh turned 13.  OMG.  He is a teenager.  And I feel old.

Happy birthday Joshie!!

And I must apologize for my pretty much horrible appearance.  It was one heck of a week at work and to top it off, I've had a nasty cold all week.  Ick.  But I love my family, so of course we had to take pictures!! :)



Valentines

This year's Valentines was super chill.  We both worked that day, plus we had just gotten back from our big Disneyland adventure, so the day of Valentines I just made us a nice dinner and we watched a movie.  It was a delicious dinner of Lemon Chicken and Rice.  I absolutely loved it.  I took a chance on a new recipe I had found on Pinterest and it was fabulous.  I will definitely be making it again.  (If you'd like the recipe, click here for the link to the recipe on my tasty food blog!)

Over the weekend following Valentines Day is when we decided to actually celebrate it by doing something fun.  We made a day of it that following Saturday.  We started by doing a little bit of shopping, where I ended up buying a hoodie and t-shirt at Aeropostale for a total of $5.32.  They were having a sale and I made out well!!

Then we headed over to the District to see the movie Warm Bodies.



Did I mention that I loved it!?  Even Jordan liked it, which is saying something.  It was a refreshing twist to a "love story" if you want to call it that.  I had a mix of emotions from sad, happy, scared, frustrated, back to happy and seriously was giggling throughout the whole thing.  It was funny.  I will own this movie when it comes out!

We ended the night out by eating dinner at our favorite nice restaurant, Market Street Grill.

So sorry for the lack of pictures, not 100% sure why I didn't take any, but I didn't.  Shame on me.  But it was a very fun day!  Happy Valentines!

Disneyland Day 3- Happy Chinese New Year!

Day three!  Ready, set, go!  This day we spent a good chunk of the day in California Adventures because we had not even ventured that way yet during this trip.  PLUS, it had a ton of new stuff since the last time we were in that park, which was the first year it opened.  So we were excited to get on some new rides, espcecially Cars Land.

Jordan is super excited.

Heading towards Toy Story.

This was super cool- we got to celebrate the Chinese New Year in the park this year!  They had a bunch of free activities and face painting for the kids.  It was fun.

Since the we got to the park a little early, we headed straight to Tower of Terror (after getting our fast passes for Cars of course).  It was a first for both of us so we were so excited!

And because we were there so early, there were no lines for this ride yet, so we went on it a couple of times in a row.  Not my best idea...I was a bit sick afterwards haha!  But it was super fun and we got an awesome picture.

During the afternoon, we had a chance to run over to Disneyland and meet up with some close friends of ours that just happened to be there as well!  (I kid you not, I always, without fail, run into at least one person I know whenever I am at D-Land)  That was so much fun to see them!!  We went on a few rides with them and their cute kids before we had to split and head towards Indiana Jones to use our fast passes.  I'm so sad I didn't get any pictures with them!

After Indiana, we headed over to watch the Captain EO show.  The ORIGINAL 3D show at Disneyland with Michael Jackson.  Any other Disneyland lovers that grew up watching this show??  For a long time they had Hunny I Shrunk the Audience, but the show I grew up seeing was Captain EO.  And it rocks.

The last ride that we went on for the day was Cars.  Because this is the newest and greatest popular ride right now, the line was like 3 hours long.  We knew that it would be, so we got fast passes that morning at 9 am.  We weren't able to use them until 7 pm that night and they sold out of fast passes within an hour of us being there.  That's how crazy popular this ride is right now.  And now I can see why.  It's FUN.  Anyway, so we ended our day with this awesome new Cars ride and had a blast.

Cars Land!!

We ran back over to Disneyland for some last minute shopping.  I got a very cute sweatshirt and matching bottoms.  Then me and Jordan got our profiles cut out of black paper (with Mickey too) and framed them to take home and hang up in our den.  It was so fun to see that they still do that because I haven't had it done since I was four years old.  So that was neat.  The guy that does them is so talented.  He just cuts them out free-hand.  So cool!  I'll have to take a picture of it sometime, next to the one I did when I was four. :)

We ate dinner on Main Street again while they did a firework show by the castle and then sulkily walked back to the hotel.  It's always so hard for me to say goodbye to the Happiest Place on Earth.  Because it really is!  I absolutely love it there and I live just far enough away that I'm not able to go as often as I did when I was a kid.  So sad.  But it was seriously the greatest, best gift my husband could have given me!  It was absolutely wonderful!  It was a birthday and vacation that I will remember forever. :)  I have the best husband ever- how did I get so lucky??

Until we meet again Disneyland!!

Disneyland Day 2- it's raining it's pouring!

And we are ready for Day 2 of Disneyland!!  I love Disneyland, much better than California Adventures even, so the first two days of our trip were spent in Disneyland alone.  Here we are on the balcony of our hotel room getting ready to head out.  At this time it had not started raining yet, but by the time we left, it was pouring.  I wasn't going to let that stop us from having a blast!  So we took a cab over to the park and went straight to buying us some super cool Disneyland ponchos.

It would rain off and on all day, so sometimes we had our ponchos on, sometimes we didn't.  I bought an awesome Nightmare Before Christmas bag to hold them while we ran around.  The longest we had to wait for a ride this day was like 15 minutes.  It was epic.  Day 2 was also awesome because we were able to get on rides that Jordan has never even been on before.  Everytime I have brought him to Disneyland he has missed out on them for one reason or another.  So this day he got to experience Space Mountain, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Alice and Wonderland, and Star Tours for the very first time.  Jordan also enjoyed a famous Disneyland churro for the both of us since this is the first time I wasn't able to enjoy that lovely goodness myself.

We always have fun in Toon Town. :)

I think we went on Haunted Mansion like 5 times because I love it so much.

We hung out at the Golden Horseshoe for lunch and watched the show to get out of the rain for a bit.

We got our fortunes from the all knowing Pirate.

Kicked butt on the Buzz Lightyear ride again so we could get a picture.



Sleeping Beauty's Castle

We ate dinner at a Cafe on Main Street, took some awesome pictures of the castle and rockets on a rainy night then headed back to the hotel.



What a super fun day 2!

Updating Blog

Hello all!

I don't know who even still reads this blog or not, but if you do, I just wanted to give you a heads up that I'm re-doing my blog.  It is still going to be private however, so if you would like me to send you an invite to my new blog, please leave me a comment below!

Thanks much!
Rachelle :)

Disneyland Day 1- Best birthday EVER!

So if you read my previous post, you know that Jordan surprised me with the information about my birthday plans on Halloween Oct 2012.  He said, "We're going to Disneyland!!"  Some of the most beautiful words that could ever be said.  :)  I thought it was going to take forever for my birthday to come, having to wait several months for it, but time just flew by!  The next thing I know, I'm one year older and on a plane to Anaheim.

We flew into Orange County on my birthday day around noon.  So of course, we headed straight to the park as soon as our bags hit the floor of our hotel room.  We were able to get 3 day park hopper passes and just really enjoy the full experience.  As soon as we entered the park, Jordan to me over to City Hall where they gave me a birthday pin.  (I didn't even know they did this, and I've been going my whole life!)  It was so awesome because then everyone I passed was wishing me a happy birthday!  Jordan told me to keep it on the whole weekend, so I did.  It was great.

We jumped on as many rides as we could.  On my birthday, the park really wasn't too busy, so we were able to get on just about everything we wanted to that first day, which is awesome!!  That meant the rest of the trip we could just do whatever we wanted to.  It was really fun because as we were heading to get on the Buzz Lightyear ride that you see below, we actually ran into some good family friends of ours, the Calls!  I swear, everytime I go there, I run into at least one person I know.  It's nuts.  But it was so super fun to give hugs and say hello to these wonderful friends of ours!!

For dinner, Jordan had made reservations at the Blue Bayou (a restaurant in the Pirates of the Carribean ride- if you are unfamiliar with the park).  It was fantastic.  I enjoyed lobster and steak (all gluten free, thanks to the chef!) and a super fun drink.

Since it was a week night, the park closes a little earlier than usual, so we watched the Disney parade on main street and then headed back to the hotel for the night.  What an amazing birthday!  It was seriously a dream day.  Everyone was saying happy birthday and super friendly, Jordan was amazing and made the day all about me.  I love him so much, thank you Jordan for the best birthday present ever!!