Valentines Day and the Long Weekend

Happy early Valentines Day! 

This year, Valentines Day fell on a Friday that just so happened to be the day that we planned a trip up to Idaho. So, we celebrated a day early. We decided to eat at Red Robin, a restaurant both of us love but rarely go to. We gathered up our date night money and splurged on what may be our best Valentines Day date yet! I'm thinking that we may just have to make it a tradition.

I got the A-1 Peppercorn Burger. Yum! 

Josh ordered a new burger, the Prime Chophouse. 

I think I ate more of Josh's fries than Josh did. Good thing they
were bottomless! 

We had planned to go to Nickel City, an arcade, after dinner, but I wasn't feeling well, so Josh offered to go home and clean the house for me instead. How lucky am I?! All in all, it was a great day and we are still as in love as ever. Happy Valentines Day to us!

Josh and I set the goal once we got married that we would save up the money and drive up to Idaho once a month to see both of our families and so far, we have done just that. But with babies on the way, we know travel will become much more difficult and with my pregnancy coming to an end, it is getting unsafe for me to be more than a certain distance away from the hospital and my doctor. So, this past weekend was our last official drive up to Idaho with just the two of us. We picked the long President's Day weekend, divided up the time between both of our families as evenly as we could, and headed out on the open road. We left on Valentines day around noon and stopped in Roy for some lunch.

The Burger Bar menu

To quote J.B., "That grease is part of my DNA."
It will most likely become part of our DNA as well. 

The Burger Bar. We had heard a lot about the Burger Bar from Josh's friend, fellow young men's leader and current professor, J.B. Haws, so we just had to stop and try it for ourselves. All of the hype and excitement proved to be true. It was delicious! Josh got what we now call the Haws burger (the Big Ben) with old fashioned french fries, I got a regular hamburger with a large order of onion rings and we split a decadent Raspberry milkshake. This stop will most likely become a tradition on all of our drives up to Idaho from here on out. Luckily it is a stop between Mesa and Idaho Falls!

We pulled into the Murphy home around 5:00 p.m., took all of our luggage in, and headed out to a Valentines Day dinner with the whole family to none other than Red Robin. It is a rare occasion when Josh and I eat out at Red Robin, but twice in two days was just a treat!

A yummy crepe bar with fresh berries with homemade mousses
and creams, chocolate covered Strawberries, and candy!

Charlie was very helpful at opening gifts. 

On Saturday morning, Jamie had planned a family baby shower that started at 10 and went until 12. She had the whole kitchen decorated with baby blue and had gone all out with the refreshments. It was beautiful!

The turn out was great! It was so much fun to
visit with family.

Nikki at 9 months, me at 28 weeks. 

On Sunday morning we headed to my family's house and hung out with mom, dad and Tyler all day long. We did some fun crafts with Tyler and Josh showed him how to make the perfect "Egg n' Bagel" on Dad's new Panini Press. We will miss going home once a month, but it was a great trip to end on. I'm hoping the babies give our families more of an incentive to visit us, and maybe, just maybe, it will be as often as once a month! 

Date Night for the Murphys!

We love date nights! On Thursday night, Josh looked at me and said, "Let's go on a date tomorrow." Now, usually when he says that, we talk about things that would be fun and things we have been wanting to do and come to a mutual agreement on a fun date. But Josh surprised me and had the whole thing planned! What a sweetie :).

So on Friday night, at 5:15, he got home from school and we headed out. Our first stop was the Museum of Art on BYU campus. It was full of paintings of Christ painted by the famous artist Carl Bloch. It was phenomenal. We spent about an hour and a half talking about what we liked and disliked about each painting and I learned new stories from the Bible. After walking through the whole exhibit, we went through it again and picked our top four favorites. Josh let me pick four because I have the hardest time making decisions.. 

We both agreed that Bloch captured some amazing emotion in his paintings of Christ. 

After the museum, we headed out to dinner. Now, Josh knows I have a special place in my heart for Peru, so he took me to "Se Llama Peru", the best Peruvian food in Provo. Josh ordered Bistec a lo Pobre and I got Lomo Saltado. When they brought out Josh's plate he smiled and said, "It is kind of ironic that we are going out to dinner and I ordered a hot dog and rice". Thank goodness there was more to it than that! His plate had a hot dog, steak, rice, fried Bananas, and french fries. Mine had rice with steak, onions and french fries covered in a delicious sauce. The Lomo Saltado was definitely our favorite. Josh ended up trying a hot sauce that was probably hotter than anything either of us had ever tasted! 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, we love date nights! I think the only thing that would have topped the night is if we had really gone to Peru. Maybe one day :)