Neon Vibe

A few months ago, I started working weekends for a company called Neon Vibe that does 5k races all over the country.  It has been so fun!  So far, I have done races in Dayton, OH, Peoria, IL (both of those with Brian) Oak Ridge, TN, Huntsville, AL (Dean came on that race too), and Corpus Christi, TX.  Here's just a few pics from some of the races.  I didn't take pics at all of them - we just get so busy sometimes.
 

Pumpkin Carving

For the FHE before Halloween, we carved pumpkins.

This year, we decide to do Mike and Sully from Monsters, Inc.

I was in Utah for Halloween, but Brian said our pumpkins got lots of compliments from the trick-or-treaters.

True Ohio Residents

I'm not a huge football fan.  I can usually get through about a quarter before I get bored.  Brian, on the other hand, could sit though several games in a row and have it be the best day of his life.  So, when he got Ohio State football tickets at work, he was really excited.  I was wishing we could fly out some family member to go with him so I didn't have to.  Brian convinced me that going to a game in the Horseshoe was bucket list material and it made us true Ohio residents, so I went.

The Horseshoe was crazy - Ohio is nuts about their football.  The marching band was really cool - they actually did a formation of Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk!  It was freezing and I was promised hot chocolate, but unfortunately they only sell coffee at the 'Shoe.  But despite the cold and the lack of hot chocolate, it was pretty fun.  And we can now apparently, according to Brian, boast of being true Ohio residents!

Rascal Flatts. . . And Some Golf Stuff

One of the first things I did when we got to Ohio was talk Brian into buying Rascal Flatt tickets.  They were scheduled to perform about a month later as a featured act at the Opening Ceremonies for the President's Cup in Dublin.  Seemed like a win/win - I would get to see Rascal Flatts and Brian would get to see Tiger Woods.  So we bought tickets.

 The golf part of the night was a little long, but I managed to get through it. The concert was amazing! It seems like the highlight of any event for us is some type of food and this wasn't an exception.  We had our first Jenni's ice-cream (they are famous here in Ohio) and it was SOOOO good!  Overall, it was a good night and we both had a lot of fun!

Our First Visitors

So we have been in Ohio for two months now (in our house for two and a half weeks) and this last week we had our first visitors.  Brian's parents came to stay with us for a few days!  The first day they were here, Brian was supposed to have the day off of work but ended up having to go into the office for a few hours in the morning.  After he was done there, we headed up north to see Kirtland.

 We were hoping to see a few more church sites like the John Johnson Farm and to do a few things in Cleveland, but because we left so late that morning, we didn't make it.  We did make a quick stop to see Lake Eerie though.  My phone died so I was only able to take this one picture but there was a sailing club or something and it was pretty awesome.  There were like 25 sailing boats just going back and forth in a big group.  There was also several homeless people fishing, which was also pretty interesting.

On Thursday and Friday, Brian and I both had to work so we were pretty boring.  Lance and Jan made themselves pretty busy with a trip to the temple and working on some stuff around our house. 

Our first big project was hanging this microwave. When we moved in, there was a really ugly hood above our range.  We had a really hard time finding a microwave that was going to fit in this space, but I'm so much happier with having this hung than it taking up a ton of counter space.  Thanks, Lance!

The other project we started was painting all the trim on our main floor white.  We got most of it sanded and primed.  We are really excited to get it all done, we think it's going to look much better.  Thanks, Jan!








On Saturday, Lance and Jan's last day in Ohio, we went into Columbus for the day.  We started off at the zoo and then went downtown for dinner at a gourmet hot dog place called Dirty Franks.  We also took a walk by the river downtown.

 

The downtown Columbus skyline!

We are learning to love our new city.  We loved hosting Brian's parents on their trip and getting to show them around our new hometown.  We can't wait for our next visitors!

A Trip to Peoria, IL

We have some friends in Utah that just started a company that does 5k races all over the country.  It's called Neon Vibe and it's a night time race with glow in the dark chalk that everyone throws all over each other and it's pretty much just a big party! They asked Brian and me to help out with one of their races in Ohio a while back and we had so much fun.  So when they asked us to fly to Peoria, IL to help with another one, we were really excited!  It's a lot of work, long days, but it's a blast!

Our flight left Columbus really early in the morning.  We were getting ready to leave and Brian got a call from the airline saying our flight was seriously delayed.  Luckily, Brian was able to get us on another flight that ended up being a shorter flight anyway.

We got to Peoria and went straight to work. We spent Friday doing packet pick up and then we went to dinner at a really nice steak house downtown with the Neon Vibe team.  The next day we did the race.  After we finished at about 2 am, we hit up a Steak N Shake with the team.

On Sunday, we didn't have to be to the airport until pretty late that evening so we went to the Peoria zoo with Collin and Addi.

 

Then it was home again!  Our flight got in around midnight.  Brian had to be at work the next morning which made for a little bit of a rough start to our week, but it was definitely worth it.  I'm actually going to be helping out with the rest of the races for the year!  Brian can't take work off to do anymore so I will be flying solo on the rest of them, but I'm super excited to do some traveling!  I'm heading to Oak Ridge, TN this weekend so look for a post about that soon!

The Big Move!!!

On Aug 30, after 6 weeks, we finally made the move from from this little hotel room -

To our new home!!!!

 We were going to wait to take pictures after we had unpacked all of our stuff and got settled.  But then we started some remodeling projects and decided we needed some before pictures.  So don't mind the mess in all of the pics, we are in the middle of painting right now.

We ordered a table for our dining room but they delivered the wrong one, so we are still table-less.

The kitchen - When we moved in, there was a hideous hood over the stove. We had some trouble finding a microwave that fit in the space, but we finally did and are super happy with it!

This front room is going to be my office since I am working from home now.

 The master bedroom and closet.

The master bathroom and guest bathroom.

 
With our other 2 bedrooms, we made one a guest room and the other one will eventually be a nursery.  For now it's going to be my craft room though.









The house also has an unfinished basement.  Right now it's just the laundry room and some extra storage.  Maybe someday though we want to make it a play area and another bedroom.

 This is the back of the house. We are really excited about his patio.  We might make it a little bigger, but we haven't decided yet.

We are super happy with our new place! We got a lot of projects in the works and are really excited to see how everything turns out.