Summer 2013 is Here!

Hooray! Love the summertime! We know it is official when the pool is open and by Sunday night we are both exhausted. No joke we were in bed watching a movie before 10pm last night, the sun was still shining. After a full weekend of biking, weekend warrior projects around the house and swimming we were tired. Laying by the pool is exhausting.
End of May was fun we made it back to MN for a wedding shower and got to spend lots of time with family. Lots of family from both Brendan's side were in town and my family had a belated birthday get together as well. I will try uploading some more pictures up here from the weekend. It went fast and next thing we knew we were back home in Utah.
Brendan got his birthday present a little bit early this year and got himself a road bike as well. Our weekends and some week nights have been taking our bikes out for rides. We have a great nice flat ride by our house that is just short of 12 miles, perfect for a quick ride. Hopefully as the summer goes on we will keep finding more great trails.
One of my hobbies for 2013 was gardening and so far it is a semi success. I can't tell quite yet but I am maybe starting to get some tomatoes and strawberries. Certain plants are thriving in the front of the house and others not so much. Its tough because of our higher elevation I think that even plants that are only partial sun and only get partial sun can't handle the strength of the sun for the shorter period of time. I might just have to buy full sun for everything. All is well and summer is divine!

Love,
Alyssa and Brendan

May Flowers!

April was epic! Absolutely, wonderful 30th birthday. We had a fantastic Prom themed party for both Andy and myself since we both turned the dirty thirty in April. I have uploaded some pictures below where you could see the awesome outfits. I had to laugh because the dress I found at the thrift shop was seriously my little girl version dream dress of a Barbie or Saved by the Bell prom. The actual weekend of my birthday was awesome because one of my best friend's Kelly came to town from MN. We had so much fun, did hot yoga, had high tea, got pedicures, went on hikes, went to sushi, did some shopping and saw Park City. I love Utah but I so wish my MN friends lived closer and we could hang out like this all the time. It was awesome with gorgeous weather as well. We also celebrated with family at Original Pancake house last weekend as well, I love their dutch baby pancake!
My birthday gift was a new road bike. Another new hobby for 2013 will be road biking. Hopefully Brendan will get a bike soon and join me in this hobby for this summer. There are some great rides near our house.
May is going great so far, lots of gorgeous weather and plants popping up! Although we did get one random kicker snowfall that managed to kill a few blooms, lesson learned don't buy flower before memorial day. Excited to head back to MN this month for Tommy and Brandy's wedding shower back home. Lots of family will be there and we will also be celebrating with my awesome family all the April/May birthdays too.

Love,
Alyssa and Brendan White

Enjoy the pics below!

Saturday Mornings

Love Saturday mornings. Usually at least once every weekend Brendan and I spend a super lazy morning in bed usually drinking coffee, sometimes being bad and having some treats in bed. Usually we play on our ipads, read, make fun of Oscar's wrinkles and just enjoy. We don't let our animals on the bed at night because we would be conquered and not have enough room but in the morning we will let them come up and cuddle. I love it. I hope someday in the future we have little kids coming up to snuggle up in bed and watch Saturday cartoons. I figure until then we should be as lazy as possible and enjoy this simple tradition.
My birthday month has been good, very busy with some work events but a great month. We have not had the lovely weather we had in March and have had some more snow but summer will be here soon enough. Brendan cleaned out the garage yesterday and switched our activities so all the skis and snowboards are away and the mountain biking equipment is ready. Can't wait for my birthday weekend one of my best friends Kelly is coming to visit from MN and I think Andy (who turns 30 the weekend before me) and I might throw a prom themed party. Tuxedo Tshirts and prom dresses, screams good time. I hope Everett May can keep it under control though he has the tendency to drink too much, cry a little and pass out, its awesome! Here are some pics from the last month:

Saturday morning snuggle session

wrinkles on his face

I have been stress baking a bunch lately, these are the delicious scones I made last weekend. They were divine!

My lovely friend Steve and I went to see Balanchine's Jewel ballet this week by Ballet West. It was fantastic and might now be one of my favorite ballets, it was a well needed night out.

Love,

Alyssa and Brendan

Pictures from 2013 so far...

I just wanted to share some pictures from this past winter and spring. We have been good, it was nice having lots of family and friends in town again. Now the snow is melting, we are going to be celebrating Easter soon and mountain biking can't be far behind. Enjoy the pics!

This is in Seattle with Emily and Brian!

Allison and I after skiing!

I love this picture, just the guys hanging out including Baby E

The girls finally being able to all drink together!

I love this picture I had 11 people at my kitchen table! Love entertaining and family!

Love,

Brendan and Alyssa

P.S April commences my Birthday month, yes I claim a whole month as mine! Bring on the sparkles, cupcakes and champagne!

Smells like Spring Outside...

Its a gorgeous day out there today! March 2nd, fifty degrees with the sun shining and snow melting. I love going for walks in the spring when you can hear all the water run down the sidewalks and just take in the sunshine. Brendan is out doing back country skiing with our friend Chris who is in town this weekend. We had a good week my Dad was also in Utah for work and was able to come over and help us break in the new kitchen table for dinner. More family and friends in town in the next two weeks as well, so I am sure we will be putting the new table to good use.

 I just wanted to share some recent pictures we took.  The one of the moon was this last full moon, it was just such a great view from the backyard I had to share.

The other picture is of me with Mr. May, love this baby so much! He is such a sweet, easy little boy as well. I have been enjoying going over and getting to snuggle him.

Without facebook crack I have been reading more again which is nice. I finished a book the other day that I would put in in my all time favorite top 5, it is called the Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. It is somewhere between a well written fiction story and a fairy tale but I simply loved it. My next read is going to be Circle of Friends for my awesome book club. I am in one of the greatest book clubs ever, we are all working women (in the medical field) who can either read the book or watch the movie. Every book we pick has to have a movie too. It is such a dynamic, group of smart women that we always seem to have a lot of fun and drink lots of wine together.
March is here and spring is in the air.
Love,
Alyssa

Valentines Day and Lent

Another great month in 2013. I think I love this time of year because during the bluesy winter months it is always when we seem to get an abundance of family and friends in town to ski. I like that tradeoff. After my awesome best friend Al and her cool husband Ben were here we followed it up with Brendan's parents and Aunt and Uncle Laura and Mike in town staying with us. I still pinch myself that we as home owners have a house big enough to fit all of these people and plus some.

When everyone was here we also had an engagement party for Tommy and Brandy, 2013 is going to be a great year with their wedding coming up in August. We made burgers and survived the winter storm that always seems to grace us when we decide to have a "party". I think I may quit calling it "parties" so mother nature decides not to add her embellishments.

We had a great time and enjoyed some good skiing at both Solitude and Canyons. I love snowboarding and just sharing in a good activity with family. This has been a monumental snowboarding year for me because I have family been to different places besides PCMR! Both Solitude and Snowbird are fantastic and to be enjoyed. Brendan and I also had a back country outing by Alta yesterday that was great in the sunshine.

Other big news was Baby Mayhem arrived, our friends Andy and Lexi had their gorgeous baby boy Everett Andrew May a little over a week ago. He could not be a cuter, sweeter baby boy! They make it all look so easy, last night they had all our friends over. It was neat watching everyone love this sweet little boy and just reminded me how lucky we are to have the amazing friends here. I hope the next few years ushers in more babies and this new changes in all of our lives.

We also are in the season of Lent again, as Catholics I think Brendan I both try hard every year to pay attention to God and refocus our busy lives on the renewing of Easter. We actually both gave up Facebook for Lent this year. I know this sounds lame but for both of us this was a challenge to cut some technology out. I would find myself checking facebook way too often on my phone and just feeling too connected. It is refreshing to disconnect and not care. Unfortunately I did not get a chance to host my Fat Tuesday party again this year prior to Ash Wednesday as it was the same day everyone left and I was tired. Maybe I will have a post Lent cocktail party.

For Valentines day we had our annual terrible card competition. Brendan smoked me with a Justin Bieber card that not only sang Baby but lit up with the words inside that lit up saying "listen" the front of the card asked if it was love at first sight or love at first listen in the inside. It was bad....
More guests in town soon, my house tulips, daffodils and Hyacinths are about to bloom and I can feel spring in the air!

Love,
Alyssa and Brendan

2013

2013 is upon us, which is crazy to think about! So far 2013 has been a good year and has just included a lot of travel. Christmas in Minnesota this year was excellent, we had so much fun. I think one of our favorite days was our annual do something fun with all the nephews prior to Christmas. We have done different things every year and this year we decorated ginger bread cookies and just had an afternoon of everyone hanging out. It was so much fun and relaxing, it is neat to see all of the nephews get to an age where they really enjoy playing with eachother. Some of both of our best memories are playing with our cousins around the holidays. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were also a lot of fun the only problem was everyone was getting sick. The flu made its rounds both at the Breckes and at the Whites, we are just lucky that now in late January everyone seems to finally feel better!

Our New Years was spent in Florida and it was such a wonderful, memorable trip. We spent five days in Englewood Florida and then went down to Florida Keys for the birthday celebration. The heat and just relaxing was such a nice vacation for both of us. The best part of the trip was Tommy and Brandy got engaged! It was pretty neat to be there that night popping champagne and celebrating with them. The best way I can describe the whole weekend was that it was a celebration from beginning to end. We were down there to celebrate Brendan's grandpa Bud's 80th birthday, they had a really spectacular dinner the last night we were there that just made me feel so happy to be apart of such a great family.

As if Florida wasn't enough both Brendan and I also made some trips as well. I made it to Seattle to visit my friends Kurt and Emily and meet their gorgeous new baby Madeline. I had so much fun in their gorgeous catalog harbor town that they live in. I miss Washington and all the year round greenery and our good friends there. I think a second trip getting Brendan to come along is in the cards for this year as well. The same weekend I went to Seattle, Brendan went to Las Vegas for his work's annual conference. The vacation seemed to continue when my best friend Allison and her lovely husband Ben came to town this last weekend. We skied a lot; one day at Park City and another at Snowbird. Brendan and I just felt like we were on vacation with all the good meals, drinks and laughing. We both love having friends come visit and see why we live here.

February should continue to be a good time as we have more family coming to town and engagement party for Tommy and Brandy. I think my new hobby for 2013 is to get better at back country skiing and also to learn to use my sewing machine. Brendan is hoping to learn either woodwork or leather work. It will be good, as always!

Love,
Alyssa and Brendan