New addition to the family...

Bahahaha... you thought I was pregnant didn't you?? Nope! :)

Meet Martin! The newest addition to our family aka Dave's early Christmas present. He is an English Setter. Dave had been contemplating a hunting dog for a while. Yes, Avery is a lab so she goes hunting too but she isn't really trained for it. Dave just takes her and lets her instincts do the hunting. Anyway, he wanted a dog to train from puppyhood to be his hunting companion. And we kind of wanted a buddy for Avery. Thus... Martin came to be part of the Van Orden clan! He is super cuddly and adorable. Him and Avery are still feeling each other out but I think they will be great companions! :)

I guess we are officially dog people! :)

P.S. Don't you love his name!! :) We think it is pretty perfect.

Kalai, Avery and mince meat...

For my birthday last month, Dave and I went to Salt Lake and I got to go shopping and we went to a concert. It was an awesome way to spend my b-day weekend... well, Saturday anyway. Here are some pics from our mini-adventure...

Um, this is not from our mini-adventure and I'm not sure how it got on here but it is funny nonetheless. I took this picture with my phone at WinCo and sent it to my sister and mom and asked them if they wanted some mince meat. Apparently it is the stuff you use to make mince meat pie but it looks like just about the grossest thing ever. It is in the bulk food section. Can you imagine scooping that nastiness out and putting in a bag? Barf. It looks like ground poop. :)

Anyway, these are picture from the concert since my pictures are backwards for some reason. We went to see Kalai who is pretty much amazing in concert. It was an awesome show! Plus, Dave bought a Kalai shirt that he looks really good in... bonus b-day present for me! :)

The quality of the next four pictures are due to the fact that Dave could not handle the brightness of the flash from the camera on my phone and subsequently could not hold still for a normal looking picture. There are four of them because I thought it was hilarious so I kept making him try to be normal.

I believe this is the "trying really hard to keep my eyes open by not looking at the camera" look.

I think this is the first one and he was in mid sentence telling me that the flash was insanely bright... haha...

This is at a soccer field by my sister's house after shopping before the concert. We let Avery out to get some exercise with a little fetch and run some energy out of her since she had been in the back of the truck all day. It's a pretty sweet view if you ask me.

My three babies... my hubby, my dog and my truck... :)

WARNING: Pointless blogging ahead

So I have been neglecting our blog as I'm sure you have noticed. Or maybe you haven't but thats okay too. Its just that nothing has really been going on that is all that exciting. We did go to a couple concerts but we didn't take pictures. We went to Jonah Smith and then the next week we went to David Gray. They were both pretty good. Although, to be honest, I was more entertained by David Gray's opener than him. Lisa Hannigan opened for him and her and her little band played some cool instruments and I just like her music. The fact that I was entertained more by his opener could have partly been due to the fact that the concert was on a Monday and I had just had two nights of clinicals (as in from 7pm to 7am on Saturday and Sunday night) and so I may or may not have been (but definitely was) falling asleep during David Gray's portion of the concert. Yep, I'm that cool. I actually would fall asleep during the song and wake up to applause. Haha.. oh well. ANYWAY, so Dave was giving me crap about neglecting the blog so I thought I would at least say a little something. At least now I know he cares about it, right? :)
There is a new little song that we posted on the side ( over there somewhere---> ) It is a new John Butler Trio song and Dave requested that it be posted on our blog. You have to click play to listen to it. Dave said that it reminded him of this time when we had just started dating. I went Peru for a month when we had been dating about 2-ish months. And we would email back and forth. Apparently one day he got an email from me just before he left work. Upon leaving work, he turned the wrong way up a one way street due to the fact that he was so twitterpated over me. :) (hence the reason for the song reminding him of us) Then when he got home... still in dreamland thinking of me :)... he parked his car and got out, went up to his front door to unlock it and go inside, and he realized that his keys were still in his car and his car was still running. Haha... I love him.
So, I will be graduating in a few weeks from ISU... yep, for the second time. It would have been ideal if I would have known what I wanted to do in the first place but whatever. I will be graduating in Nursing. So basically I have been a bit stressed lately which has also contributed to my lack of blogging.
Welp, I commend you if you have made it this far in reading because I'm not sure that I would even read through this. I guess if you did, you are a true friend. Congratulations!

...26.2...

We had a blast this weekend! Dave's parents, my parents, Hailey (my youngest sister), and Dave and I went down to St. George for the marathon. We stayed at the Inn at Entrada, which is where Dave and I stayed for a couple nights after we got married and it was awesome. It was so great having our parents and Hailey there with us!
The marathon went really well. We reached our (secondary) goal of finishing under 4 hours. Our times were 3:55:40 (me) and 3:55:44 (Dave). We definitely are feeling the consequences of not training as good as we should have though. We are still sore today. Getting out of bed and taking those first few steps on Sunday morning were pretty much torture. Also, even though we are very proud of what we did, we feel like if we would have stuck to our training program we could have had much better times. I guess we will just have to do another one! :)

These first pictures are at the Inn at Entrada. We ended up buying stuff to make spaghetti back at our room the night before the marathon because every restaurant in town was packed! We were glad that we had a kitchen to cook in.

Dave and his mama cookin' away...
Me and Hailey...

My mom and pop....

Dave's padre...

So our little cheering crew was at mile 7 and then at the end. The next four pics are at mile 7.

I think I look a bit crazed in the next picture...

I am in the black top and green shorts. Dave has on a blue top and black shorts.

And I love the sign that guy on the right of the picture is holding! I think I need a shirt that says that on it. (If you can't read it, it says, "That's not sweat... it's your fat cells crying!!)

This picture is just to show how many runners there were. You can't really tell unless you make it bigger but there is just a mass of people all the way up the hill. There were 7200 runners registered and about 5700 finished the race. (some people probably just didn't show up and some probably didn't finish)

This is coming up to the finish.

Post-race, back at our room... In front of our little casita :)... Just before heading home...

Overall, it was a great way to spend a weekend! And we loved having our cheering crew that came along!

I have a feeling we may be doing at least one more marathon to see how well we can really do!

Cutest thing ever?

I think so!

My niece Hope (Lindsey's babe) had a sleepover with us last night. We made a nice bed on the floor and she fell asleep watching Wall-E. I went downstairs to get ready for bed and when I came back up, this is what I found. Couldn't help myself... had to take a picture...

San Francisco!!

Dave and I got to go to San Francisco this past week. Dave had a class he took for some software he uses at work and so I just went with him. It was a blast!! Even if now I am feeling completely overwhelmed with things I didn't do while I was gone, it was worth it. :) We went to a Giants-Rockies game, did a little sightseeing, went to a Ben Harper concert, and pretty much just had a great time!

This is Dave before we even left our house. He was a little excited. :)

I totally want to learn to windsurf or kitesurf now!!

Yes, those are surfers, and yes those are giant, jagged rocks that they are riding the waves into... super smart.

I told him to make a crazy pose and this is what I got. Whoa. Don't hurt yourself.

This is McCovey Cove. It is just outside the Giant's ballpark. People wait in their kayaks/other floatation devices for homerun balls to be hit into the water. There have been 50 homeruns hit into the water since they built the park.

Our sad faces after the game because the Giants lost. It was a heartbreaker, lost it in the bottom of the ninth.

The amazing Ben Harper... so good!

The concert was at the Fox Theatre in Oakland. That place is amazing! You should probably go there for a concert if you ever have a chance.

Anyway, that was our fun week. Next post will probably be about our marathon... yikes!! Pray for us. By the way, our "qualifying for Boston" goal is out the window. Our new goals: Plan A- to finish under 4 hours, Plan B- to finish period.

Sisters...

So, my sisters and I went to the Trace Adkins/Toby Keith concert last weekend. It was fun! There were some very drunk people there just as there are at every concert and probably one of the most intoxicated and obnoxious of the drunkards was sitting right next to us. Awesome. We think her group must have had some sort of intervention with her about half way through the concert though because one of them took her away at one point. Apparently they were sober enough to realize what she was not... constantly yelling in a stranger's (my sister) face in not really that cool. And I got to practice my defensive (or maybe a little aggressive :) ) driving skills as we left the concert. Hey, there were people who were stumbling to their cars nearing pooping themselves from drunkeness, I was just trying to get out of there before they killed us! :)
Anyway, I love having sisters!! They are my best friends, along with Dave of course! :)