Butterfields in Kentuckiana

A couple weeks ago my family came out and spent a few days with us. We had a lot of fun sightseeing and spending time together! My family loves to take pictures, so I'll just post some of the pictures they took and give you a running commentary. :)

We finally got a chance to celebrate some birthdays. Rory got some presents and we gave Megan her birthday present.

We visited the Louisville Slugger Museum. It was pretty cool to take a tour of the factory and see how they make their bats. The museum was also fun to walk through. They even gave us our own mini bat!

Here Nathan and Rory got to try out a real bat from a player in the league right now. I can't remember who's bat Nathan used.

Rory tired out David Ortiz's bat.

They had a cool little area in the museum where they had painted part of a locker room along the walls. You got to walk through a dugout and down some stairs to get there. It was fun to see.

An interesting piece of artwork we saw as we walked to the waterfront.

Nathan was a little ahead of us and this is where we found him sitting.

A cool statue on the waterfront. I think maybe he was one of the first explorers in our area, but I really can't remember. :)

Friday afternoon we took a drive out to the temple. I had never walked around it so it was kind of fun to see. I look like I have a basketball under my shirt here. :)

Saturday morning we went to Churchill Downs. You can't come to Louisville without visiting both the Slugger Museum and Churchill Downs. I have been to races here, but it was neat to see the museum and take the tour on the grounds.

We got to walk right up to the track.

This is Animal Kingdom, the Kentucky Derby winner from this year.

To get to the museum you got to walk through the starting gates. Kind of fun. :)

We had a blast with my family. My mom got to stay an extra day and do some maternity shopping with me. I finally got some jeans that fit! :) It was a lot of fun to have them out here. I was excited that they finally got to come see where we live now. It was fun to show them around our city and see what we've been up to. Next time my mom comes out hopefully we'll have a little baby on the way!

Baby Polar Bear

On Saturday Rory and I were out close to the zoo so we thought we'd stop by and check out the new addition! A few months ago a baby polar bear was brought to the zoo. We went by about a month ago, but he wasn't out for the public to see. I was pretty sad about it. But luckily when we went on Saturday he was out playing! So I thought I would post the cute pictures I got!

I know most of you probably don't care. But I'm going to narrate what the polar bear was doing as I was snapping pictures. :)

For a while he was playing with this huge trashcan and I could not get a picture of his face. Nice butt shot right?

Finally he accidentally pushed the can over the edge of the big step there.

Now he decides to find something new to play with since he can't reach the trashcan anymore.

So he walks around the other side of the pole and decides to play with the hay in his little kiddie pool. But it's a big drop and here he is beginning to fall over the side.

This is the end of his tumble as he rolls around with the hay stuff on the ground.

He's pretty cute isn't he? Thanks for humoring me! :)

While I was waiting for the polar bear to get rid of the trashcan so I could get a better view Rory decided to make room for the little kids and he went over to watch the grizzly bear swimming in the pool. When I was done with the polar bear I went over to join him. It was pretty entertaining watching him swim around.

It was just a quick trip to the zoo to finally see the baby polar bear, but it was a lot of fun! He's adorable!

Rory's Birthday!

Last Friday Rory turned 25! He's pretty excited he can rent a car now without extra fees. :)

To start out the day I made Rory chocolate chip waffles at 6 in the morning before he left to work. Then I drove him to work so he didn't have to ride the bus. He got off work at 3 so I went to pick him up. Little did he know that Mike and Polly had flown in and were there to surprise him as well! Mike had a business meeting in Louisville so it worked out perfectly that they could be there for Rory's birthday!

When I asked Rory what he wanted for his birthday he said he wanted to golf at The Ledges in St. George. Since that wasn't going to work Mike took him golfing out here. The course wasn't near as nice as The Ledges, but Rory was still happy to be golfing. While they golfed Polly and I made Rory's cake! It was layered devils food cake, with whip cream on two layers and chocolate frosting with nuts and coconut in the middle and on top.

Rory was pretty excited about his birdie shot.

For dinner we went to Red Lobster. Rory has been wanting to go there forever, but we'd been waiting for a special occasion. Neither of us had ever been there. Since they were doing the all you can eat shrimp special it was the perfect time to go! The meal was delicious and we stuffed ourselves on biscuits and shrimp! My favorite was the alfredo shrimp linguini and Rory really liked the sweet and spicy shrimp.

After dinner we hurried home to watch the BYU vs. Utah State football game. We were hoping BYU could pull out a win and give Rory a good birthday present! The game wasn't looking so good until they finally pulled out the quarterback!!!!! We were so excited to see Riley Nelson come in to play. And what do you know? Nelson had better stats in a quarter and a half than Heaps did in 2 and a half quarters. And Riley brought us from behind to win the game at the end!! I think we might have woken some people up cheering. :)

During half time Rory opened up his presents. He was pretty excited about the Ninja Turtle actions figures I got for him. He can't wait to play with his little boy!

We had cake during the game as well. It was delicious!

Rhett and Julie gave Rory some waterproof cards that float. They're pretty sweet! We had to give them a try. :)

All in all I think Rory had a great birthday!

Yesterday afternoon Rory and I went to the doctor to have my first ultrasound! We've been waiting for ever to find out what our little baby is. We were so excited to find out we're having a baby boy! It all seems so much more real now! I think it just made waiting 4 more months even harder! We can't wait to welcome this little guy into the world!

Isn't that the coolest picture?! We hadn't expected to see the baby that clearly. First we just had the normal ultrasound as she looked at the baby from all sorts of angles to take measurements and make sure everything is all right. Then at the end she switched to this view. It was pretty amazing to actually see the baby as he really looks right now and not just through the obscure ultrasound pictures. He likes to move his hands and arms around. :)

After hearing this wonderful news we celebrated by going to Disney on Ice!

Sorry the picture isn't very good. I took my camera, but turns out the battery was dead. So this was taken with my phone... :) It was a lot of fun! Even if we were the only ones without little kids with us. :) But soon we'll have our own little one! 4 more months!

BYU vs. Ole Miss

Labor Day weekend was a blast! Besides the hours spent in the car driving. :) Rory and I had been looking forward to this weekend for a long time! Finally the start of college football was here!

I picked up Rory at work around 11:30 in the morning and we were off to Mississippi. About 2 and a half hours later we were in Nashville. We stopped by the airport to pick up Rory's parents and then we went for a treat. :) They have this really good popsicle place that we'd been wanting to try out since the last time we were in Nashville. They were delicious! Then we stopped by McDonald's to pick up lunch since we thought we should get some real food. :) Once we got our food we hit the road again. Just under 4 hours later we finally arrived in Tupelo, Mississippi.

We quickly checked in to our hotel and changed into Sunday clothes and headed to the BYU football team fireside. We arrived about 5 minutes before the meeting was supposed to start. We were unprepared for the crowd we met. The whole church building was packed. We were told later that the church has about a 700 person capacity and there were over 1100 packed in it. Every seat was taken in every room and hall in the building. So we made our way to one of the front doors into the chapel. Polly asked if we could come in and sit on the floor. After getting permission from someone else we were told that we could. So we ended up sitting on the ground right in front of the pulpit. Front row seats! :) Not the most comfortable, but we were just glad to be in the chapel. The meeting was great and we really enjoyed it.

Afterwards we met Carter (In case you don't know his last name is Mees and he's number 15 on defense. He plays safety and is on special teams.) and talked to him for a while. He and Rory are like brothers so it was good to see him and talk to him since we haven't seen him in forever. We also saw a few other players who are from St. George that the Housley's know. As we were walking out of the building with Carter someone yelled from behind us, "Hey football player!" He turned around and they asked him to autograph their football. It was pretty funny. She said she didn't know how else to get his attention. :)

After the fireside we were starving so we tried to find a BBQ place to try out. You can't go to the south and not have BBQ right? Well we tried a couple places, but both were closed. So we headed to Outback instead. After all the talk about BBQ I had to get their ribs to satisfy my craving. :) Rory got a really good steak and fish plate. The meal was delicious! Afterward we shared a chocolate brownie with ice cream for Mike's birthday treat.

Saturday morning we headed down to breakfast and were met by a lot of BYU fans. They weren't hard to spot since everyone was dressed in BYU attire for the big game! We actually ran in to a group that had come down from New Albany, Indiana. They go to the other ward that shares our same church building! And Mike and Polly knew one of the couples because they used to be in their ward in St. George. What a small world?!

We had a few hours to kill before driving to the game so we took advantage and headed over to see where Elvis Presley was born. I learned on this trip that Tupelo, Mississippi is where Elvis was born. We visited the two bedroom house he was born in and lived for a few years. We visited the church Elvis used to attend. They also had a small museum about him we walked through. It was kind of fun to see where he began his life and love of music.

After Elvis, it was back in the car and time to go to University, Mississippi for the big game! It was about an hour or so away. When we arrived we had a lot of fun driving around trying to find parking. There were so many people! Mostly people wearing red, but we were surprised to see more BYU fans than we expected. We finally found a place to park and then we made our way to the stadium. We were a couple hours early but we were so excited to get our tickets and see the stadium. We went to the Will Call for BYU players friends and family and got the tickets that Carter had gotten for us and we were inside! We met up with Carter's Dad at the gate who was even more excited than we were! :)

We had amazing seats right next to where the BYU team came out and on the 13th row! We got some lunch and sat watching the teams warm up. I'd never been to a football game that early before and it was fun to watch. Luckily it was overcast all day because the day before had been SUPER hot and humid. It was still humid, but without the sun beating on us it was bearable. I didn't have to worry about heat stroke. :)

Carter is the one standing in the middle.

Just before 4 the game finally got underway! We were so excited to see how our team looks this year. We were sorely disappointed as the first half ended. We'd had such high expectations and things were not looking very good. We were only down 3 to end the half and neither team had played well, but that did not make us feel any better. To begin the 3rd quarter we hoped for a turnaround and were again disappointed. When BYU QB Heaps threw a pick on the 3 yard line only to have Ole Miss run 97 yards to return it for a touchdown we thought it couldn't get any worse. Then on the next drive we blew it again when we missed what should have been an easy field goal. We were still only down 10-0, but it felt like so much more.

Carter playing on special teams.

The 4th quarter began and we were quickly losing hope. We'd come so far to see such a disappointing game. Less then a minute in and Ole Miss got another field goal which put them up 13-0. Luckily they didn't get a touchdown off that drive. We were sure that would have been too much for BYU to overcome. After all the disappointment, BYU finally put together a long drive ending with a touchdown! We couldn't believe it! We jumped for joy! We had hope again!

I think there was about 8 minutes left at this point and we knew BYU had to hold Ole Miss in order for them to get a chance at winning. After multiple penalties and bad play, there was 5 minutes left and Ole Miss was on their own 21 facing a 3rd and 27 attempt. We were screaming so hard! We had to hold them! Then BYU could get the ball back with over 4 minutes to try for another touchdown. Out of nowhere Van Noy got into the backfield and forced the Ole Miss QB to fumble. The ball bounced around a little before Van Noy was able to grab it and run it into the end zone for a touchdown! We were stunned! The entire BYU section exploded into cheering and jumping up and down. The rest of the stadium was silent as they realized what had just happened. They thought they had the game. They had been winning the whole second half. And just like that BYU pulled ahead 14-13. We couldn't believe it! The rest of the game we were on the edge of our seat hoping BYU could pull it out. When the clock finally hit 0:00 we cheered some more! The game was horrible until about the last 10 minutes, but it made it all worth it!

Carter is #15. This was the team coming over to cheer with their fans after the game.

We got to see Carter again after the game. It was great to see him after a win and not a disappointing loss. At some point in the first half someone stepped on Carter's too and dislocated it. He said when he took his shoe off at halftime it was sticking straight up. They popped it back in and numbed it up and he was out playing again. It was nasty looking! All black and blue! I hope it heals up quick!

Polly made Rory a Mees jersey so of course Rory had to get it signed!

After the game we decided to not face the traffic leaving the city and we stopped for some dinner at Chili's. After dinner we drove about 40 minutes or so to a little city where we were staying for the night. There are no big cities around Ole Miss so all the hotels were sold out for quite a ways. But this just gave us a head start on our way to Memphis the next day.

Sunday we dropped Rory's parents off at the airport and began our long trip back home. We had thought about sticking around in Memphis and going home Monday, but after hearing about Tropical Storm Lee we thought we should head out before the storms rolled in. Little did we know we were going to drive through a lot of nasty rain anyway. Multiple times we could barely see the road because of the sheets of rain coming down, but we made it home safe and sound! It was nice to be home and done with all the driving. :)

We had a great weekend! BYU's win made it all worth it! We're now making plans to go to the BYU vs. TCU game in Texas in October and can't wait!

Phillies vs. Reds

Last Saturday we realized that the Phillies were coming to Cincinnati this week to play the Reds so naturally we had to look into getting tickets for one of the games. :) We found cheap tickets on the 5th row a little past 1st base and we couldn't pass them up. So Monday night I picked Rory up from work at 4 and we headed off to Cincinnati. Here we are just driving up to the city.

Outside of the baseball stadium.

Howard stretching.

Rory got a great picture of Hamels and Ruiz walking by. Hamels pitched 6 innings and they only scored one run on him.

Phillips is a Reds player, but he's pretty cool. He's really popular with the fans. Before the game he came out and took some pictures and signed some autographs.

We got a kick out of the rookie pitcher walking by. :)

This was our view of the game. We had amazing seats! We had a great view of the jumbo tron. We had a few foul balls come our way. We were so close to the field!

We had a blast at the game! Hopefully we can make it back out there next year when the Phillies come to visit again!