Riley's Birthday

Happy birthday to my freaking awesome husband whom I love. This post is dedicated to you, Riley. (Also I will share a little about our weekend away for his birthday.)


Okay I am just going to brag about all the wonderful things that I love about Riley Banks:

- I love that you love to cook. I am so happy when you say you want to make pasta for dinner this weekend, or, "let's smoke some ribs tomorrow night," or even, "I want to try something different with some salmon tonight." Most women would shirk at the thought of their husband attempting to prepare a meal but I am lucky enough to have found a man that not only enjoys cooking but is VERY good at it.

(yummy smoked salmon on cedar plank)

- I love that you are so darn funny and goofy. I know I am pretty good at holding a poker face when you crack a wise one but usually I am dying inside. You have a rare talent of being speedily witty and just altogether random. I am often caught off guard at how quickly you process information at a moments notice and are already spurting out hilarity for all to enjoy before we are even ready for it. Please never stop with the jokes. (Except the jokes that involve you jumping out to scare me. You can stop those kind.)

- I love how youthful you are. You are so energetic when you are around little kids especially our nieces and nephews. You are also this way with your best friends and co-workers and I love how playful you are. It is so refreshing when you are in a goofy mood. It makes life so much more exciting.

- I love how attractive you are. (Of course I thought of this one right after posting that awesome 80's picture of you... hehehe) I am so glad that I am married to a man who is a handsome beast.  You take care of how you look and always look so nice and put together. I wish I had some of your wardrobing abilities. You have an eye for tasteful male fashion and look smoking hot in business clothes. I am glad that you care about appearance but also not too much as to seem narcissistic. (I am obviously overlooking your Beatle's hooded "mank")

seriously, smoking hot

- I love that you are passionate about BYU sports. Honestly it is a little hard for me to admit that because I fear the stretch "Y" logo may take over the interior decor in every room of our home but I like that you have something that you care so much about. It is so important to have something aside from family and work and church that you can just lose yourself in. I am glad however that you can and do include your family and church and work in your passion. Go Cougars!

The Y has already taken over our backyard.

- I love that you are very intelligent. It is nice to know that our kids will have someone to go to when they have a question about the world. Modern technology has made information so readily available but it is a rare occasion that you even need to look something up for validation. I love that you have a constant desire to acquire more information. You have quite the memory and I am hoping those genes get passed on to our little ones. It's no wonder helmets are so tight on your head. Big head=big brain. ;-)

- I love that you always take care of me. You work hard to earn money to provide for us and pay for things which is so wonderful and selfless. But you also have been so sweet to me in running silly errands to the store to buy vegetables when I had morning sickness so bad, or random yogurtland cravings I had, or running to pick up my prescriptions from the pharmacy when I was out of commission. I love that you always offer to crack my back first thing when you get home and hug me. You always acknowledge my efforts after preparing a meal even if all I did that night was throw some rice in the rice cooker. You always are making sure that I have a jacket on before I leave if it is cold out. You always force me to wear a helmet on our motorcycle rides. You even shared your tiramisu with me the other night! Now that is true love.

- I love that you are a worthy Priesthood holder. It has been such a comfort knowing that I have that protection at all times that I am with you. I love that you are there to offer Priesthood blessings to me the many times I have needed them. I love being in the temple with you. I am so happy that we are sealed together for eternity.

There really are countless other things that I love about you and many things I discover new about you every day but I wanted to just let you and the world know how much you mean to me. I love you and happy 32nd birthday!


So for Riley's birthday I planned a weekend golf getaway to Las Vegas. Oh yea, p.s. I also love that Riley is good at golf and even takes me with him! Anyway, it all went down like this:

The week before I went into Riley's work and informed his co-workers that he would not be coming into work Monday, March 18th which was his birthday. I made Riley think that I just wanted him to take it off so that we would have the day to spend together but in actuality I had already made some calls and arranged for us to be golfing at some amazing courses in Las Vegas on both Saturday afternoon and then again on Monday morning (Thanks to Dix Jarman for the hook-ups!). Friday while Riley was at work I packed up his suitcase leaving only his bathroom stuff and golf clubs out just so he wouldn't notice something was up. I went to the store and bought all his favorite treats and put them in a cooler to cheer him up in the car when he found out he would be stuck sitting in it for 5.5 hours. That night after he came home from a BYU dinner/auction he was invited to, I snuck out in the garage and loaded up his and my golf clubs. Saturday morning I went and got some donuts for breakfast so as not to leave a mess in the kitchen and told him that I had made some birthday plans for him that day and he was to shower and get dressed in golf clothes. I told him I had a tee time scheduled and therefore we needed to be on the road by 9:00 to make it in time. I almost blew the cover by having packed his favorite golf shirt already as well as his golf pants. But I informed him to wear shorts as it was going to be a super nice day out (in the mid 80's in Vegas) and helped him select the next best golf shirt to wear. He also noticed that a pair of his shoes were missing and then he asked me where they were since he had just pulled them out the day before. I told him that I had packed them in the car along with his golfing shoes. He didn't ask anymore questions. Phew. Then he began inquiring where we would be golfing and if it was a place he had been to before or not. I informed him that perhaps he might have been there long ago but to my knowledge I have never known of him golfing there. He guessed we were going to Hobble Creek Golf Course in Springville. So when we got on the freeway headed South on I-15 and I merged over towards the Springville exit he thought he had guessed it. Until I drove on to the next exit for Spanish Fork. He then guessed that we were going to Spanish Oaks but was confused because we have been there together a couple times. We drove past that exit and then he asked if we were going to some golf course in Payson that I honestly had never heard of. I just laughed. When we passed Payson he asked, "Are we going to VEGAS?!" Again I laughed and then asked if he had ever golfed at TPC Las Vegas before. He hadn't. Phew. I didn't lie. I disclosed the weekends adventures to him and we enjoyed a wonderful time in the warm sun golfing, going to a show, eating lots of yummy food and just relaxing. Here are some awesome pictures from our weekend.


                                                                Golfing at TPC Las Vegas

Beautiful conditions and a gorgeous course with awesome mansions all around. 

Then after Riley's last putt on hole 18 there was a massive bird crossing right across the green where he had just been.

My mom and dad bought some little chicks so we had fun watching them jump all over one another and listening to them chirp all day long. 

 

Then, on Monday morning we golfed at Badlands in Summerlin. Also great course and beautiful conditions all day.

There were hundreds of these little bunnies on both courses. They would get so close to you. Riley had to dodge several little baby bunnies that didn't understand the rules of a cart path and the potential consequences of an approaching cart. 

We ended our trip Monday afternoon by eating at a delicious restaurant called Honey Salt. We both enjoyed it very much after our long morning golfing out in the sun. If you ever decide to go there, I don't care if you are too full, GET THE SALTED CARAMEL ICE CREAM! Heaven in my mouth. So yummy.

 And that about sums up Riley's birthday this year! I had a blast planning it and surprising him with it. I just hope in the future I will be able to live up the standard I have set. Haha. He deserves it. He is great.

Nursery Update!

Well folks I have some pictures finally of our nursery. Now don't get your hopes too high because there is still literally nothing in the room. We had one of the walls spruced up a bit as well as our office so I will go ahead and post those too. We are both very happy with the results.

Here is what the wall looked like before in the nursery:

Okay yea pretty boring. 

Here is the finished wall!

 So I imagine that will be the wall that we put the crib up against. The window wall will have the glider/recliner up against it and then on the opposite wall of the fancy one we will put the changing table/dresser thing. So far, we have purchased the crib but it is being shipped into the store hopefully this week thus why it isn't set up yet. We purchased a super fancy stroller that I honestly had little to no decision in buying. Riley is quite the researcher when shopping for new things. He likes to price match/compare, read rating reports, customer reviews, watch videos, etc. before he makes a semi-large to large purchase. I did have the final say of course in whether we were going to get it or not but lets just say that he was a pretty persistent salesman in convincing me to join the "Origami Stroller" bandwagon. Click on this link for a little video of the fancy shmancy thing. Origami Stroller Demo

And here is the glider chair that we found at the Liquidation Team store for a smoking deal. I am on the lookout for some cute fabric or for a cute pillow to go on it so let me know if you know of something. (colors we are thinking about are grey and dark blue but we are open to other suggestions)

Okay so now to show the before and after of our office. The walls in this room are grey although the lighting makes it look several different colors.

And here is the finished product:

Oh we also had two accent can lights put in to highlight the beautiful painting on the wall. We LOVE how all of it turned out. I have to give praises to Riley's friend Bart Dallin who did it all for us in a VERY short amount of time (it only took about 2 days for these two rooms to be completely done and painted) and for an extremely reasonable price. Let me know if you need a contractor to do some projects around your house. He is a perfectionist (which we love about him) and also very talented at what he does. Also he is just a great guy.