RIP Molly

A few weeks ago the family cat, Molly, passed away. She had dropped to four pounds and the vet thought she had cancer and was blind in one eye. 

Molly joined our family in the fall of 1999. She was a wild cat that had been caught by the humane society. I still can't imagine how they caught her because she was so fast. She was nicknamed 'spit fire' at the shelter because she hissed at anyone that came near her cage. We brought her home and loved her, and she hissed and bit in return unless we caught her right after a nap, then she purred and loved us. She may have been a mean old cat, but she was our mean old cat. 

I have many memories of Molly: One time she jumped out of my lap and her back claw cut my face from my chin to my eye. She may have been mean a lot, but when I was sick she would come lay by me. She used to run from the top of the stairs to the window in the living room and back. She hissed whenever she saw Ryan and one time he gave her some treats and she wanted to eat them but also needed to growl/hiss and she ended up sounding like she was saying 'yum, yum, yum'. If you were holding her while she heard bath water she would cling on and yelp because she didn't like the water. 

It's crazy to think that we had her for more than half of my life. Cody says that she is probably hissing and biting Heavenly Father's hand right now- that's probably true :)

Bowling and Site Seeing

Cody has made it half way through the semester! And his Monday and Tuesday night classes are over! And he has the next week off for spring break! Unfortunately, I still have a full week of work next week :( So we decided to make the most out of our weekend and do things after I get off work next week. 

 

Cody's spring break started with a trip to the Mall of America to see the cast of the Hunger Games. Sadly I was at work :( There was a book signing and a Q&A session, but Cody said the line was too long for him to make it up to the front. Instead, he found out that the book signing was in the Microsoft store and pretended that he was shopping so that he could get a look at the cast. It was a success and I am successfully jealous. 

 

Friday night we went bowling with our friends Michael and Vanessa (Michael is in the program with Cody).

Cody and I did not plan to match. I wore my outfit to work and when Cody came to pick me up he was wearing a blue and white stripe shirt too!

We are obviously true blue BYU cougs :)

 

Saturday was gorgeous outside so we decided to visit the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis. There was a guy playing the accordion and walking across the bridge made me feel like I was in Paris.  

Our next stop was the ruins of an mill that are on one end of the Stone Arch Bridge.

 

I can picture the Phantom of the Opera behind those doors.

 

 We have officially arrived in Minnesota. Since we weren't able to stop and take a picture at the 'Welcome to Minnesota' sign, we thought this could take its place :)

Our last stop was the famous spoonbridge and cherry

On a side note... we ordered a phone part from China and received this card along with our purchase. 

Cody read it to me in his Chinese voice- made my day :)

Como Zoo

Thanks to a snow day and parent-teacher conferences I did not have to work on Wednesday or Friday of this week. Hooray! I was able to get a lot of things done around the house that I have been meaning to do for a while. Cody had a ridiculous amount of homework this week, but he was able to finish by Saturday afternoon so we headed off to Como Zoo. 

The Polar Bear

Cody's Buffalo

Zebra

Giraffe

Cody and the BYU Cougar

Katie and the Brighton Bengal (high school mascot)

Cody playing with a monkey. Cody would move his head one way and the monkey would do the same. 

 These were my favorite animals of the day. It was strange to see these monkeys walk around, they have some human mannerisms. I was mesmerized and we spent quite a while watching these monkeys. 

The Como Zoo is close to our house and the biggest perk is that it is free! We were really impressed by this zoo; I'm not going to lie, my expectations were pretty low when I heard it was free. They also have a conservatory that Cody and I plan on visiting soon. Can't have enough free, indoor activities in the winter!

On a side note, Cody told me that we need to buy bigger steaks...

I think he's crazy :)

Spoil Katie Week

Valentines and my birthday happen to fall in the same week, so I get spoiled every year from the 14th to the 20th of February. 

The Valentine's Day flowers that Cody sent to me at work. I work at a K-12 school and I was in the lunchroom with the Kindergarten and 1st grade students when they brought in the flowers. All of the students wanted to know who they were from and why I got them. It reminded me of when I was in 1st or 2nd grade and my mom came in to do reading groups with my class. On Valentines my dad paid a quartet of singers to come to my school and serenade my mom. I was the most popular student in school that day because everyone heard about the singers and my mom :)

 Some of the valentines that I got from the kids in the 1st grade. They don't celebrate Valentines Day, so a lot of them drew pictures that day and passed them out.

The strawberry cookie heart that I made for Valentines Day. It is a sugar cookie base with cream cheese and almond frosting with strawberries on top. Yummy!

My birthday celebration began on Sunday, Feb. 19 with my family via skype. My favorite game to play with my family before we moved to MN was Ticket to Ride. The game consists of a board that is a map of the US with several destinations labeled on the map. The object of the game is to build trains to connect destinations. I have been wanting to play this game lately and we figured out how to play it via skype. We positioned our skype cameras on our individual boards and made sure to place trains from each end on our own boards. Kinda confusing, but it worked out great! We then lit my birthday cake in MN and my mom and Ryan lit their pie in UT and I blew out the candles :)

My delicious birthday cake. A white cake with almond frosting. Can you tell that I like almond flavoring?

My birthday breakfast- eggs benedict made by my wonderful husband Cody

I spend the rest of my birthday relaxing and painting these St. Patrick's day crafts. It was a great, stress free birthday!

Valentines

Valentines has exploded at our house! 

These are hearts made out of melted crayons and they glow when the light shines in through our window. 

Decorations my mom and I bought last year when we were still in Utah. 

When we were in Utah for Christmas I told my mom that we needed to go to the wood connection and get some crafts for me. I had just endured a month of Cody doing homework until 10 at night and was desperate for something to do. These hearts are one of the many projects we picked up, more to come soon!

This was definitely the most ambitions Valentine's project. I won't say that it was worth the time, but I am pleased with the way my tissue paper heart turned out :)

Swords, Sushi, and Symphony

Cody's dad bought a sword at a garage sale 20 years ago. This sword has since been passed down to Cody (against his fathers will, with the explicit instructions not to sell it). So when we saw that Treasure Hunters was coming to St. Paul we knew exactly what we were going to take in. We ended up in the lobby of a Best Western lined with hillbillies. We noticed that among the group they probably has a grand total of 33 teeth. We made our way to the front of the line and found out that our treasure was an 1880s French bayonet used by the communists to fight the government. The appraisal value was.....

$50.

So we promptly sold it to fund Cody's education. 

J/K that wouldn't even make a dent ;)

Next on our list of Saturday festivities was to join our friends Vanessa and Michael for a date night. Michael and Cody go to school together and they both planned our night out on the town. We began with sushi at Sakura.

After a delicious dinner of sushi and tempura, we ventured across Rice Park in the freezing cold (-10 with wind chill) to the Ordway Theater.

The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra played pieces by Upsahw, Dennehy, and Beethoven. The piece by Dennehy was the world premire, but I wasn't too thrilled about it. I enjoyed Beethoven the most, probably because it was the most familiar. 

All in all it was a successful Saturday full of swords, sushi, and symphony.

Minnehaha Falls

It isn't every day that you get to see a frozen waterfall. 

Apparently there is a yummy seafood restaurant right by the falls that is only open in the summer. Hopefully we'll have time to come back again this summer!