Pizza, Canoeing, and my Niece!

Last night, at 5:33pm I received a text message from my brother, Stephen, saying: "Scarlett is here. Both she and Nini are resting. Talk to you tomorrow. Love you." I was so stinkin' excited! I kind of screamed it at my roommate (Amber)! For the next hour or more I was incredibly hyper and excited! It ended up being quite hilarious because I had a date that night and I kept hitting my face to make music because I was so excited! I'll talk more about the date in a second. But I wanted to express how excited I am for Scarlett to be here!! She is beautiful!

Born at 2:05; weighs 6lbs. 9oz. and is 19 in. long

Last night I also had a date, as I mentioned above. My dates name is Sam. I went in a group consisting of my roommate, Amber; and her date, Nate; Stephanie, who was Amber's mission companion; and Tucker, Stephanie's boyfriend. We started off at my apartment where we made Chicken Cordon Bleu Pizza. It was delicious! We went to the Porter Park to eat, which proved to be quite funny. We ended up people watching and we saw people sword fighting in one part of the park and other people learning how to dance in another area. We ended up playing Tunnel Tag. It's freeze tag, but when you freeze you have to keep your feet far enough apart so that people can run under your legs to unfreeze you. It was hilarious. We started off individually at first, but then we ended up hooking arms with our dates and having to run together. Unfortunately for Sam I used most of my energy and speed during the singles, so when we were linked I wasn't nearly as fast as he was. But, that's okay. Amber and Nate were pretty much the champions! Holy cow, they got everybody within a few seconds of being it! It was crazy!

After we played at the park we went back to my apartment to make "Pizzookies". They're Pizza Cookies. They're crazy easy too! You make sugar cookies (or you can buy pre-made, non-frosted cookies), put the homemade frosting on, and then add whatever fruit you'd like! We did blueberries and strawberries. They were really good!

After our dessert we ended up blindfolding Nate and Sam so that they couldn't see where we were going. We went to Warm Slough (a river) to go night canoeing. We wanted it to be a surprise for them; the surprise ended up being on Amber and I when we got lost! It was quite funny! We were lost for, probably close to an hour. We took a few turns that we shouldn't have and we weren't quite sure where we were. Tucker and Stephanie had gone ahead because they knew where we were going and they had the canoes. One street we turned down and something got caught in Amber's front passenger side wheel. We all jumped out to try and find what it was, but we couldn't find it. After several minutes Amber put her vehicle into reverse and the awful noise it was making was gone. It was weird, but I'm glad her car is alright.

After a while we finally met up with Tucker and Stephanie at the Shell station so that we could follow them to our destination. We felt kind of bad, but it was okay. When we got there I felt so excited! I've never gone night canoeing before! Sam and I grabbed our canoe and we headed out! It was hard for me to balance myself for a few minutes, but I got it eventually. It was so peaceful and so tranquil there! The moon was out and that in it of itself was gorgeous! Tucker suggested just letting the canoe float, so we didn't have to paddle that much. We would if we got too close to the shore or if we wanted to back-track, but other than that we just floated. It was a lot of fun to get to know Sam better during that ride. I know I was kind of quiet when there was a big group of us, but when it was just the two of us it was really nice. We were able to have a really nice conversation!

Warm Slough; picture via

Warm Slough; picture via

After we canoed we went home. It was such a great date! Honestly, one of (if not the best) date I've ever been on. Amber and I were talking about it when we got home and we think it's because it was a really well-rounded date. There were activities where we were working together as a whole (making the pizza), then we had activities where we were in smaller groups helping one another (tag), and then one-on-one (canoeing). Seriously, such a fantastic night! I loved it!