Love is in the air!

Congratulations Jimmy and Laura! Nick's twin brother, Jimmy proposed to the love of his life, Laura on Friday at Marino's, their favorite Italian restaurant. Super exciting! Can't wait for all that the next year holds and to be back in Des Moines to enjoy every minute of it!

High Five Lucy!

CUTEST THING EVER! So I taught Lucy to give high fives...so so cute. Next is high tens!

Fashion Show

Earthbox

I know I have told everyone I can about how great the earthbox is. It is an amazing way to grow vegetables and herbs without actually having a garden. Perfect for anyone with a balcony! We have basil, cilantro and thyme growing out our ears. We tried it with peppers as well and it worked great.

CLICK HERE for more information...

The crowd goes wild...

Here's one more of the crowd. They say there are over 1,000 people at this park watching.

Liftoff!!

We saw the space shuttle launch!! I kept telling Nick we HAD to go see the May 31 launch. I tried getting tickets to go to the Kennedy S.C. Visitors Center, then to one onf their launch sites-but unfortunately within 3 weeks of the launch they don't ship tickets..so long story short, we couldn't do that option, but nothing was going to stop me from seeing the launch.

I researched places to go, called Kennedy and came up with the best solution: Titusville-across the water from the launch pad. The place is called Spaceview Park and is apparently the best place to see the launch pad-even better than the NASA viewing stations.

We left at about 11:30 AM on Saturday in an attempt to get there 3 hours early, like I read we should. After all the tolls and traffic hiccups, we arrived successfully thanks to my TomTom GPS. The only reason we knew we were there was because of the plethora of people carrying lawn chairs and coolers. We went and found a place on the point of Spaceview Park and were probably about 3 rows behind the front and set up our chairs. Keep in mind, this was 3 hours ahead of time. About 1 hour before the launch we were 6 or 7 rows to the back..thanks to all the disrespectful rednecks and their mullets/rat tails making their way to the front.

About 2 minutes before the launch, we made our way back up to the front-though little brats kept standing up in front of us and one huge ogre of a man with a camouflage hat stood and blocked everyone's view...so Nick and I actually sat on the rocks in front of the point-best seats in the house!!

We heard people yelling "20 seconds!!!" (they had the NASA radio feed in the park) And before we knew it there was a huge plume of smoke across the way. There it went. It is absolutely indescribable and so-so-so AMAZING. People were cheering as it made its way up-it seemed so frozen in time. We got incredible pictures on our video camera-which will be posted a bit later. You can clearly see the shuttle itself and we could definitely see the rocket boosters come off-though I'm not sure how well you can see it on the video.

Read more here:
Space Shuttle Discovery Launch