TA DA, Christmas!!!

Ever since I've started staying at work a little more in order to read during my lunch break, I've been worse at blogging. I've also been waiting till i finished my Christmas tree skirt so I could do one blog. I finished my Christmas tree skirt!!!! I put it up on our little baby tree complete with about ten ornaments. It's dinky and little but I think it's just the cutest thing ever! It's very fun having our first Christmas together :) I keep wondering what traditions we'll keep and what ones we'll start. I've been having a blast Christmas shopping for Brandon and everyone else... it's fun thinking of things Brandon will like, i got him some sweet presents... I hope he likes them :). We also got the most wonderful little nativity set from Jay and Sarah and I just LOVE it! It's so us :) Here are some pictures from our very first happy Christmas together.

Our Disney Land Honeymoon ornament

The cute little customizable ornament I found, I'm going to write our names on it

S for Streator, Could I get any  more lovey dovey ornaments??? :)

Hershey's kiss ornament, Brandon keeps wanting to eat them. I got a few more but I think I have enough pics of our ornaments

Our little nativity scene

Aren't those animals the cutest things you've ever seen?? I put them in the rafters :)

Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus with the animals in the rafter's watching over him :)

Our tree, ya it's about my height propped up in a stand, but hey it's fun

My Christmas tree skirt!! I'm so proud of it, i think it's very pretty

Trying to display it

Underneath the tree, i think it will be a good one that will go with any tree we decide to have. I'm very glad I made one, it was kind of hard but it will be fun later on to tell our kids I made it. So that's about all for our little Christmas. Other than that Brandon has been working a ton but hopefully it should end soon. I've been exhausting myself with little tasks all night to keep busy because I get sad when he's not here. I've been going to Kickboxing and Yoga on Tuesday nights and I LOVE it! I'm trying to start going to Zumba on Thursday nights but i keep having things come up on Thursdays. Brandon passed his GSEC test and I'm very proud of him! He's finally done with school for the semester so hopefully I can have him home at nights again very soon. Other than that we're very happy and well. I just can't believe how much fun being married to Brandon is. Everyone keeps saying that will change but I don't care/choose not to believe it, I think it's the best/most fun thing I've ever done and I hope it stays that way. Despite all the dishes, house cleaning, full time work, and all the crazy things that keep us busy I don't think I've ever been so happy. I love my job and I'm just so grateful for the Christmas season and all the many many blessings we have. I feel so lucky to have a good job, a happy little home, the love of Christ in my life, the gospel, my family and despite how  much I whine about it, I really do like my little nursery class. Watching them light up when they recognize a picture of Jesus and seeing them really start to actually sing the songs with us instead of just sit there is really fun. I still miss being able to go to relief society and gospel doctrine with Brandon but I'm starting to have fun in nursery. Last week one of the moms told us the only reason they came to church was because after the farewell they went to her little boy lit up and all he could say was "nursery? wanna go to nursery!" so they came late and everything and it made me realize that maybe this calling I have is pretty good after all. It usually takes me a little while to get going in callings that aren't playing the piano :) Oh I'm also in charge of planning a party at work... I hope I do well, don't want to get fired on my first one ;), we'll see how it goes on Friday :) That's about all for us, happy and well. Merry Christmas to everyone, I'll probably post some more pictures after Christmas.

thanksgiving/christmas time

we had a wonderful thanksgiving!!! We both took Friday off of work so we could spend Friday at my parents and thursday at Jay and Sarah's (PS Sarah, spell check tried to make me spell Sara but I know what's right). Both dinners were awesome and we had a ton of fun with family. I was telling Brandon how when I was younger I thought when holiday time came I would be very sad if we didn't get to spend it with my family or I wouldn't want to spend it with my in-laws at much but I realized that I was equally as excited to spend the holiday at either home :) It was a fun realization. Anyway thanks to both families for such a great holiday.

I put up our Christmas lights, so far I just have two connected strands up that go around the bathroom door and around the window. Ya, I know the bathroom door is not exactly the ideal place for Christmas decorations but when your entire house is the size of some people's living rooms and it's the only door frame besides the front door.... you take what you can get. I'm very excited to turn off all the lights, watch the snow out our huge window to the glow of our Christmas lights with a mug of hot chocolate snuggled up to my hubby.

I have started the inevitable never ending battle with Christmas music. I both hate and love Christmas music. I LOVE LOVE the classic Christmas music... like the original version of each one and only religious ones with a few ones that aren't religious. I really like Josh Groban Christmas, Mo-tab or just classics like silent night. I HATE HATE every awful remake of Christmas songs that they try to make cool by speeding it up and adding a few extra jingle bells here and there. Exhibit A "jingle ja jingle ja jingle jingle bells!!! Dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh blah blah oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh, (Rapid tempo increase) Jingle jingle jingle bells!!!!" and so on, you know the kind. Seriously people that's not music, just because it has a Christmas theme doesn't mean its good or music and should be listened to. Anyway enough of that. Since I'm super opinionated and I always think i'm right, here are some christmas songs I enjoy, and some just freaking sweet videos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szLmAPW39uE
I think maybe it's just because I love hard rock music so much I like this classical and rock mixture. Plus those Christmas lights are awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vNcGlM8O3I
This is just cool.
ok this one is pretty ridiculous. We used to listen to this in my highschool seminary class and then i found this ridiculous video to go with it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok5rOO2v2dU

This is my favorite christmas carol of all time! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtz75NoSsEc

So there are a few of my style Christmas music. Happy Christmas month to everyone, now that it's after thanksgiving I will stop being a Grinch about it. :) I'm excited to put up a christmas tree and I might bring my piano upstairs so I can play Christmas Carols like I always do at home. If we do get one up I'll try to put up pictures.

In a last random note, i finished my scrapbook!!!! i have shown everyone i can possibly think of and I'm super proud of it. :)

scrapbooking mania!

Our dining room table has looked like this since Veterans day... and that picture is a cleaned up version. As you can tell by the title and maybe by the picture I have become a scrapbooker, well at least until this wedding album is done and then probably won't be again until the next big event. I'm awful at dealing with pictures and I'm even worse at decorating so try and put those two together onto one page and its usually disastrous. My usual photo albums (ok I haven't had one sine i was like 14 so i guess I can't really say usual) consisted of 4 pictures to a page with some scribbles describing the picture. About two years ago I had this little revelation that I needed to start a photo album... I took Jenny to the store because she knows about these things, became incredibly overwhelmed and ignored the revelation flat out. Well On Veterans day that same little prompting hit me again... you need to make a scrapbook album with your wedding pictures. I know I'm such a nerd thinking the Lord wants me to make a scrapbook album but it's important and who knows, I may need it one day. On Veterans day we had the day off of work but Brandon still had to go to school so I had most of the day to myself. I thought about inviting some of the scrapbooking experts in my family/friends but I knew I had to go it alone if I was going to get anything done. Armed with a whole lot of will power, several veterans day coupons, a paper cut out of a 4 by 6 picture and a 5 by 7 picture so i could test them against the papers i headed off to the stores. Oh boy was I in for it! I once again found myself staring in wonder like a little lost child... I mean does anyone actually know what all those tools do?  Do you seriously need to choose from 30 different types of sticky glue dots?? I just chose the prettiest purple looking one. If it had been the sewing isle i think i would have understood, i know what all those tools do but this scrapbooking stuff is total mystery. I only knew one thing... I wanted something simple, something i could put on an end table, and it had to be something that someone with NO scrapbooking skills could do. A ridiculous amount of money (which I will not disclose because its very embarrassing) and 3 stores later i went home to start my wonderful scrapbook. Next problem, i had about 300 pictures (narrowed down from 3,000) to go through and choose which ones I wanted. I felt like the Lord  was driving me all day though because I got all of the supplies, went through all the pictures and completed 6 pages all in a just a few hours. I stayed motivated all day and I was so proud of myself. For someone who would be just as happy putting pictures in a pile on the end table and calling it a day it was like something had come over me, things were just popping out to me and i knew exactly what to get and how i was going to put this sucker together. I even went home and proudly told Brandon what a good scrapbooker I was and how excited I was and that I thought I was really good at this whole scrapbooking thing. He was very gracious and looked at everything I had bought and told me that of course I am an excellent scrapbooker :) Well about 6 pages in I realized I was out of ideas, my inspiration was lost and lets face it, I didn't magically get mad scrapbooking skills. Regardless I've been going at it an hour or so a night ever since then. Yes, I only can do 8 by 8 pages because thats about all my creativity can handle. Yes, almost all of my pages look the same, and yes, each page has like one thing fancy about it but I'm dang proud of it :). I am almost done and probably have about 30 pages left which will then probably be the last time I do this until we have a baby or something. I will post pictures when its done, until then, wish this hopeless scrapbooker a lot of luck and creativity.

because we're awesome like that

Brandon and I are big fat dorks sometimes. Ok lets face it most of the time. Often times we act like 10 year olds. ok lets face it, its often me and its most of the time. Last weekend we decided we had to get our butts of the couch and stop watching that stupid show and do something. So we went to dinner and then to Hobby Lobby to search out a craft to do. And hour and a half later we left hobby lobby with no craft in hand. The only reason we left that soon was because they were closing. We perused the same isles over and over again trying to find some little hobby/craft to do. We didn't want something too expensive and it had to be able to include Michelle because unbeknown to her we were planning on including her in this little adventure. After Hobby Lobby we went to walmart and with a severely smaller collection to choose from, we each chose a craft in under 20 minutes. I proudly walked out with a make your own eraser kit out of molding clay/eraser clay stuff and Brandon walked out with 1,000 popsicle sticks, a hot glue gun and 100 glue sticks. We informed Michelle of our plan and went to Brandon's parent's house to watch the Jazz game with them and start our crafts. I made tons of little eraser things which by the way do not erase and brandon made a little random platform thing. we then had the genius idea to each make a boat and see who's floated/raced the best in the bathtub. We spent a good hour or so before we finally had to put a time limit on brandons and went and floated them. My had a leak and sank pretty much right away but Michelles and Brandon's floated pretty well. Here are pictures from Fridays boat making (yes there is another day of boat making)

My erasers

My star fish friends and Michelle's little girl eraser

Our boats

Our boats in action. mines the one sinking with the symphony bar wrapper on it, brandon's has the little dude sticking out of it and michelle's has the lego man on it. We then decided that night that it was so much fun we were going to have a competition party tomorrow to make the best boat and float it down the canal right by our house. at 3 on Saturday Michelle, Chelsea and Adam and Brandon and I commenced round two of boat making. Here are the results. I think its funny how each boat and the way they made them kind of matched the makers personality

Everyone thought mine looked like a coffin so i put a little dead man and did one of those lame halloween decoration jokes and labeled it RIP here lies Can E. Float, may he have a safe journey... like I said, ten year old...

Floating down the canal

The moment that allowed me to technically win because everyone's got stuck but there were several different categories, fastest, floatability, style etc etc. Just kidding we ended up not really caring and just chucking them down the canal and seeing how they did. All in all it was very fun and highly recommended. I say up next, winter popsicle sleds to throw down old main hill ;).

threefer

1. We made a mistake and started watching season 2 of prison break.... once again we are doing nothing but this stupid show.
2. During the summer our house had tons and tons of crickets, they went away for a while, now they are back :( I have a legit reason for hating them. At my home home we have all sorts of woodland creatures that run both in and outside of our house. Yep you name it we've probably had it run through our house, mice, pack rats (not gross city rats these guys are actually pretty cute, look them up), squirrels, bats, chipmunks, raccoons, ermines, birds etc etc. One time a raccoon even got into our kitchen and trashed the place like the camping scene in the old parent trap. He used my box of cocoa puffs as a seat while he picked the honey bunches out of the honey bunches of oats. Anyway back to the reason why I hate grasshoppers... they remind me of these:

The worst part is they like dark moist places so yes that means you find these scary little buggers in the bath tub, dishes, sinks, anywhere you don't want to find a hoppy disgusting bug with 3 inch long antennae at a minimum. Hopefully the snow will fall and all those grasshoppers will go away. 3. On a lighter note we had a fun Halloween. We met up with our friends Jenny and Jordan (the ones that pretty much introduced us and talked us into dating) and went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner, carved pumpkins and made caramel apples. I didn't even have to beg Brandon to dress up, he actually volunteered pretty well. Here are some pictures

I'm a 50's girl and Brandon is a 50's guy. You can't really tell but Brandon has this awesome part down the middle of his hair that makes him look old fashioned. You can probably guess which pumpkins mine... everyone else was just getting started and I had finished mine. They all had patterns and i hastly drew a few ideas on the newspaper we had under the pumpkins, grabbed a pen and transferred such said idea (i know very original :) onto pumpkin and hacked away at it completing the process in under 15 minutes. Similar to the way I decorate my house... I don't :)  Thats all the updates for now

Let it stop!

This is the reason I'm exhausted. This is the reason why I can barely function at work. This is the reason why brandon and I have vegged on the couch every night for the last three days. This is why we have eaten dinner, asked how each others day was and then fixated ourselves on the TV. Its awful! I'm so tired but we can't stop watching it! We have both decided there is no way we can watch the 2nd season because this is unhealthy. It reminds me of when we were first "not dating" and we would stay up until 3, 4 one night 5 in the morning because we didn't want to leave. I've never been so tired in my life, I actually fell asleep sitting up when I was teaching a class I was so exhausted. Then we decided we were probably going to die of sleep deprivation and forced ourselves to go home at like 1 in the morning, i know not much better but still.... Well this hasn't gotten that extreme, but only because i know i have to perform well at work and because Brandon knows what happens to me when I get tired... its not pretty. Please i wish this season would just end already so I could get back to a normal schedule, alas we still have 11 more episodes. See that caption on the picture? Thats just what i feel like, getting into the show was easy but you can't get out!!!

baking adventures

I love to cook and bake. When I have spare time I make everything from scratch and try to cook really healthy good meals. Since I've been working full time I haven't had as much time to cook as well and healthy as I'd like but I'm still trying. After not cooking for like a week straight (birthdays created lots of leftovers and i was being lazy) I decided to start making meals again. In Brandon's family they have this tradition of eating SPAM fried rice. Despite the fact I know my mother in law is reading this I have to say when I first heard they were eating SPAM fried rice I thought it was a joke. I honestly thought no one bought SPAM and if you did it was for a joke. I didn't think anyone actually ate it. I was very skeptical when I first went to try it for myself... Its actually pretty good. I pick out 95% of the SPAM and give it to Brandon but it does add a nice flavor. Since I hadn't cooked for a week I hadn't gone shopping either so for lack of food I decided to try my hand at spam fried rice with the fixings we had gotten for our wedding (we got several meals worth of SPAM fried rice makings for our wedding from Brandon's extended family) I must say its a little scary to make something your mother in law makes thats a tradition, i mean what if its not as good and your husband pops out the dreaded "it's not quite like my moms" ACK! Anyway it was a success and even if Brandon was thinking it he at least didn't say it. However, half way through cutting the spam i realized my face hadn't stopped grimacing since i started. I've never touched the stuff in my life so I was quite nervous and lets face it, its pretty gross sliding out of that can when it retains the can shape and has bits of goopy stuff on it.

Yep pretty sure that was my face for most of this adventure. Last night I decided I wanted to make butternut squash soup. My bro-in law loves it so I invited them over to make some home made soup, plus i wanted to try out my new immersion blender that my sister in law talked me into keeping (by the way good call). We made some delicious soup which come to find out Chelsea and Brandon don't like... they ate captain crunch and Adam and I feasted on delicious soup. This isn't the one I made but I'm too lazy to get the picture off my camera so this looks similar to what we ate

Then today I had grand intentions to make a cake out of a box of halloween funfetti cake. I had the wonderful idea that I would make a yummy cake and home made frosting and decorate it something to the effect of this. Then Brandon told me he didn't want cake so I ended up taking the box of cake and making cookies out of it which were going to be decorated like pumpkins. Well after burning the first batch because our oven is about the size of a large toaster oven and it tends to burn things easily I made a good batch but seriously lacked in the decorating skills.... I got this. Oh well hopefully they will taste yummy.

So those are my latest baking adventures.... really not that exciting. I used to make these grand cakes and cookies. I would spend hours baking them and decorating them and making my own little masterpieces. I thought when I graduated I'd magically have time but I seem to have infinitely less time than when I was in school and studying all the time. Oh well, I'll just keep thinking I'll have more time when i get to the next stage of life and then when I retire I might actually have the time I've been wanting for hobbies like baking, sewing and music playing.

Halloween

My mother is the best costume maker. She can come up with anything out of nothing and make it look awesome. When I was a little girl I was often more of a victim of this than beneficiary (or so I thought). Examples: when all the other little girls were princesses, I was a bat (i made her sew sequins on the front so it wasn't boyish) a stuffed fat pumpkin, a scarecrow, and the all time big one... Miss piggy. Yes my mother zipped me in this fluffy dress, stuffed pink tights with batting so I'd have fat piggy legs, plastered on these blue fake eyelashes, a horrible yellow wig and gasp: a pig nose. The worst part is I think I was actually excited to be all of these things. Then I'd get to school and inevitably some little girl had a coveted princess costume from the Disney store in Fashion Place mall and I was seriously wishing I could take back the moment I ever said "ya mom miss piggy, that'll be great!" When ever it was dress up day I was always the most decked out... sometimes the only one (4th grade cowboy day) It was traumatic to a young girl. In high school my mother still dressed me up to the nines for any day that required some form of costume. I was old enough to say no yet for some reason I still went along with it! I was an awesome old time photographer (only required one prop... ya I had an ENTIRE outfit) harriet beecher stowe, disco queen. I'm not kidding when I say these costumes were amazing... they were straight up legit. Then I got to college and apparently inherited my mothers love of costume making, I went all out every halloween and sewed myself an awesome costume. Ok so I did make myself a snow white costume in high school... apparently I didn't mind embracing the fact that I'm a dork. I made both of these

I have a plethora of other ones I've made including some for jenny. Whether its actually sewing the or just coming up with them from a conglomeration I love making costumes. This will be the first year I'm not making a Halloween costume :( Lack of motivation and time I guess... but one year I made two so I think I'll just use one of the ones I only wore to work. When I made my Snow White costume it was about 4 days before halloween.... I called my grandma and asked her for help and if I could use her machine and she said "you mean for next year right?" Who knows maybe I'll go crazy and whip something up last minute. Problem is we don't know what to do for Halloween. Whats the point of having a costume with nowhere to go? I don't think anyone at work will dress up.. whatever shall I do?

What happened

I finished my last chocolate today... wah! Anyway this blog is about crying. What happens to girls when they hit 20. I never had this problem until I got to college. I always wondered why my mom cried at everything and it has now happened to me. Today I cried twice listening to country western songs. It said something about his grandaddy in the war and i burst into tears, then the other song talked about cancer and I burst into tears. Its just a song for crying out loud (no pun intended)! I'm going to share an embarrassing story of when I first realized this was happening to me. One time my cousin, myself, my sister, and her husband were all having dinner together. Somehow we got on the conversation of Dumbo and the part where the mom rocks the baby elephant in her trunk when she's in the cage and sings the song baby mine. For some reason we got about this far into the song when this happened "baby mine sniff sniff WAH!!!!" All three of us were bawling our eyes out while a very stunned Adam sat staring dumbfounded wondering what in the he** just happened. I too often wonder why this happens. To this day neither Chelsea or I can get about 2 seconds into this story without crying. Just in case you want to see if this happens to you I have attached the video. Maybe when you grow up you realize how important everything is and how precious life is and it just makes you cry. I don't know why but its kind of emberrasing and leaves our husbands wondering what has happened to the wives they know! I shouldn't have watched that video because I burst into tears again.

Birthday

I made delicious honey glazed salmon tonight, it was wonderful. Thats not really what this blog is about though. I also made this cute little hat for my friend at work for her new baby she's having (please ignore Brandons creepy as all get out eye in the corner, i was too lazy to edit out his silliness) I'm excited to give it to her, the picture doesn't show it very well but thats not really what this blog is about either

This blog is about my Birthday which is tomorrow. It will be 10/10/10 and I will be 23. I have been excited about my birthday since the beginning of October, ok so maybe more but thats what I'm telling you. I love Birthdays for 3 reasons. 1. I get to have cake and hang out with my family(s now) and we all get to do something fun together. 2. its an entire day to celebrate yourself. I mean seriously what other holiday do you get that says congratulations you were born yay... really we should celebrate our parents because i sure didn't do anything to make that happen. anyway the 3rd reason is this

My glorious box of birthday chocolates from my sweet grandma and grandpa. One entire box of sees candy all to myself. We get one for every christmas and birthday. The birthday box however is the most special because you only get the ones of your choosing. Christmas time we get just a standard pre-made one by the lovely see's ladies but the birthday box is one all of your own. It's gotten even better since I live on my own because when we were little we sort of had to share it because everyone saw your yummy chocolate box and wanted some and of course you had to give everyone a bite. But now there's no one to fend off but roommates and now husband. I have already made it quite clear he is not allowed to have any unless I offer it to him. I know its so rude but really its my special box :) Luckily he doesn't like any of the ones i do anyway so it works out well. By the way taking a bite of a chocolate and putting it back is completely acceptable in my family. If you don't like it you do not waste it by throwing it away or something horrid like that.... no no you put it back in case someone else would like it. Yes I would say we all have some kind of chocolate mania.... it's terrible. We hoard them, we covet them, we even fight over them if someone even so much as thinks about taking a bite of your most precious favorite one, i even wrote on my box on more than one occasion "eat this and die"  with a picture of a skull an crossbones so my roommates wouldn't touch them. I look forward to this every year. It's the only thing that I can eat all to myself and sometimes i even have 3 or 4 in one day. Oh the glory of walking in here

and then getting to choose from all this

Sometimes it's just too much to even handle thinking of the endless possibilities you could have in your special box. You want some now don't you..... ya I thought so.... So i'm going to go get one from my box right now, and enjoy it for you.... :)

sometimes, i just hate holiday seasons

I have a theory (spin off of proverbs) when it comes to sports and other activities. Here it is, everything in its season, and everything in its place. This means there is no reason to go camping in the winter (yes boy scouts your ice cave/snow fort adventures are stupid) if you want to go climbing, just do it in the summer (ice climbing??? Yikes) if its too cold to run a river/go boating in march, don't buy dry suits and crazy warm water gear (yes both father and father in law are the culprits of this :), love you both though!) just wait till it's summer time. Anyway i think you get the point. So that is why i sometimes hate holidays... not the holiday themselves, but all of the two months before it happens starting decorating and getting ready to celebrate type things. I heard on the radio two commercials for Christmas, both saying something to the effect of "too early to start thinking about Christmas?" I wanted to scream yes at the radio, rip it from the wall and smash it. I know i'm kind of violent in my head sometimes, i won't ever do it though don't worry. I hate how we can't even enjoy the holidays we're in because of Christmas, it takes over our lives every year. I love thanksgiving, probably my favorite holiday, yet it gets bypassed by all of the Christmas fanatics out there. If you are one of those people in my immediate or extended family or blog reader, please know i have nothing against you and still love you very much! Its all the others that go crazy that I don't like. Can we not just enjoy Halloween and thanksgiving without having to listen to crappy holiday music in november???? can I just enjoy my fall months without having to hear Christmas ads on October 1st????? IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK????? Please can we remember what all of these holidays are about and just enjoy them, not have to run around frantically buying presents and listening to horrible music and all of the obnoxious things that happen with Christmas in November (Please note all of the above is 100% acceptable in mid December, just not in October or November). Last year when Brandon and I were still in our awkward we're not REALLY dating phase decided we didn't know what to do for Christmas for each other. I borrowed an idea that my brother and his in-law siblings do, they get an angel tree and buy gifts for that and go shopping together and dinner and that's how they give each other presents. I decided that we would do this with Jenny and her boyfriend and it was seriously so fun! Do you know how liberating it was to not have to stress about gifts and just worry about helping a little boy, your shopping list is done because they just tell you what they want, much easier. Plus we got to just spend time together and make cookies and have fun. We still talk about how much fun it was to buy our little 7th grade boy science kits and experiments, shoes and a book. I got him Redwall which I thought was special to share my favorite child hood book with him. That's what Christmas is about. Not buying your christmas cards in October (Radio!), not frantically buying gifts that people may or may not want...  just spending time together and enjoying your family and how everyone is happy. So i know this won't change anyone's mind or change the commercialization of holidays but it sure makes me feel better to rant about it :) Sorry my blog is always ranting!

"I want that"

I want one of those! That's the puppy picture and above is the adult picture. Brandons parent's have one named Ivory and I want one too. Here's the problem, I don't really like dogs other than the way I like babies.... when they are someone elses. For some reason though I want one.... Here's the other problem. They live for 10-15 years, thats a BIG commitment! I need something that lives for 10-15 days... like a fish ya know, no REAL commitment to that. Still I really want one, I don't know what's come over me I only wanted a dog if my kids forced me to have one. These little Westies though don't shed, they are really hardy so they are small princess dogs but they also can be out doors dogs, they are really sweet and mild tempered and they are everything I could ever want in a puppy. HMPH what to do... We'll keep you posted if we decide to go crazy and blow a whole bunch of money on a little doggie :)

yes you should be jealous of my great finding

You know what is so great about marriage and relationships?? You can find someone just as weird as you are! Everyone, ok not everyone, most people can act normal at work or out in public but as soon as you get home most of the time all of our weird traits come out. Anyway the point is its good we have families or significant others to share in our weirdness. There is this couple i see occasionally and I kept thinking they looked so familiar. One day I received the GLORIOUS revelation as to who they reminded me of. Are you ready for it?? Please scroll down

But Whitney you say, those are muppets.... I know, and thats just what is so fantastic about it! Just entertain the wonderful idea that those muppets are actually real live people and you will know exactly who I see. My family loves muppets more than anything and I thoroughly enjoy finding anything that reminds me of muppets, but this is not even one of those instances. I'm pretty sure these characters were based off of these people. It made me pretty happy :).

And I thought I loved you then

Yesterday we went to SLC to celebrate my sisters birthday. We went and saw the wildest dream at the imax and it was awesome. Then we went up to my parents house and had yummy home made pizza and fresh raspberry and marzipan and peach and marzipan pie. YUMMY! We left pretty late because we were having so much fun so needless to say we were pretty tired on the way home. To keep Brandon awake I started being silly and telling him the story of a girl and a boy who fell in love surprisingly and got married. This was of course us but it was goofy and kept us awake. Did you know that we started out just cuddle buddies then make out buddies? Yep for a good 3 or so months we spent every minute together but refused to say we were dating. I think we were in such shock because we had no idea what the other was really like. We had some pretty misconstrued conceptions about each other because we had only hung out occasionally in big groups for 4 or so years. Secretly I think I always kind of liked Brandon but as I did for months before we got engaged I didn't admit it or believe it. We thought we were so different than we actually are and had no idea how much we had in common. Isn't it funny how all things happen in the right time and place. We had known each other for four years and all this heart ache and dating other people and the one I wanted more than anything was right there in front of me and I never would have even thought about it. If we had dated earlier though I'm not sure it would have worked out. The Lord definitely prepares you for the right time. I just want to say that marrying Brandon was the best decision I've ever made. I know its only been two months but I can't believe how wonderful it is. You know that Brad Paisley song "Then?" I just love the lyrics, "now your my whole life, now your my whole world, I just can't believe that I could ever love you more, but I've said that before" come on that's just good stuff :). Usually I don't like songs like that but I LOVE this one. It's so true how it just gets better and better and you're constantly surprised that you can keep finding things to love about them. Sorry about this cheesy post but I just can't help it. Brandon is my everything and I couldn't be happier with it. Thanks for allowing me a girly giddy newly wed moment :)

music

I have this very embarrassing thing about me which I am about to share. Despite growing up on classical/opera from the dad and bluegrass/classic country from the mom I LOVE LOVE LOVE hard rock music. I'd even go so far as to say I like metal, occasionally I could even throw in death metal but rarely. I'm the only one in my family that strayed from bluegrass (though i still enjoy it). The only thing I like more than hard rock is cleaning with hard rock music on. Tonight Brandon had a group meeting and I had a glorious hour of cleaning to breaking benjamin, rise against, three days grace and a few others thrown in there (yes i know its friday night but i guess thats what happens when your married ha ha). Despite previous posts, I actually like cleaning (when i want to do it). My freshman year I would wake up every saturday, clean the house, and go grocery shopping before any of my roommates would wake up. I loved it. I even cleaned at an old folks home for a spell. If you've never rocked out while cleaning, you should really try it, its quite fun. This is a pointless post, sorry :)

hair

I cut my hair!!! Sadly I have lost my camera presently so there will be no pictures. She cut off seven inches and it looks something like this. I totally look that drop dead gorgeous with it too ;) Just kidding!. I love it though, it feels so much better and it looks clean and nice. No one at work noticed, then when one of our co workers came in with like half an inch cut off his hair everyone noticed. How does that happen? I like it a lot, the end

the theater

Brandon and I went to the theater tonight... properly pronounced the thee-eat-awr in case you were wondering. Brandon's informing me that doesn't look like i'm saying it so just imagine a haughty British person taking you out to the theater. ANYWAY we went to see the Scarlet Pimpernel. When I was a kid, my best friend and I loved this play/movie/book. We always quoted it and watched the movie etc. I loved it. When I saw an ad for it outside my work I immediately bought tickets.  There are 2 types of people that go to the cache county ellen eccles theater, those that want to be there and purchase tickets that are closer up and more expensive, and those that have to be there, usually students in the USU class who purchase the worst seats or get stuck with the more expensive ones because they bought them too late.Since we get a student discount I bought the more expensive closer up ones because we wanted to be there. However, that also means we were sitting with the geriatrics and the few random young people. I love old people that go to the theater, they dress up in their best and enjoy it so much. I think that when I'm old I would like to be a theater goer, they look like they enjoy it so much and they have so many friends there. The old man sitting next to me smelled like very strong aftershave and he would fall asleep almost every number, wake up for the last few moments of the song and exclaim how wonderful the number was. It was quite entertaining. I think he genuinely meant it was wonderful, he just couldn't stay awake. Overall it was very fun and just happened to fall on our two month marriage anniversary. Sadly Brandon has a ton of homework so he was a little sad at how much he had waiting for him. It was so wonderful and I loved it. The main actors were incredible and I love the music from it. I'm very glad we went. Someday, I'm going to go when I'm old, and I'm going to get an awesome theater hat to wear in then take it off until after, you know like the kind that people wore to the theater back in the day..... something like this one. Ya, its gonna be great.

babies

You know how some girls love kids, I mean Love them? That's never really been me. Despite the fact that I've worked with kids for 8 years of my life in various jobs I like them but I'm not one of those girls that just love them. I love kids that I know and since I've gotten older I've liked them more and more, especially now that I have 2 nieces and 1 nephew. These are them, somewhere over on the left side of the page because i can never get my pictures to work out right... Anyway I love all of them so much, they are so great.  Seriously aren't they freaking cute?? Sorry I stole them off of your blogs sister in laws. So last weekend we went to the lake and Friday night to Saturday morning it was just Brandon, Jared, Kinley, Jay and I. Saturday morning I woke up pretty early with Kinley and I figured I'd hang out with her for a bit till the rest woke up. Side note, i'm pretty good with 4 and up year old kids but I don't have a lot of experience with younger because they weren't old enough to ski or go to school. So since it was morning I figured, she must need her diaper changed, don't all 2 and a half year olds pee at night? Well it wasn't really wet but I thought, I change my underwear every morning and it will probably be nice to have a fresh diaper and she might have only peed a little bit so I thought better get a new one... ya like I said, not a lot of experience, looking back this didn't seem to be the best choice. So I haven't actually changed a diaper in a really long time but I don't know how to tell a 2.5 year old her new aunt can't REALLY change diapers. I thought to my little self, it can't be that bad, just strap em in right? I put it on pretty tight because i didn't want any of that poop getting out and luckily i had the wherewithal to ask her how it felt when she eeked out, "its really tight." OOPS I just didn't want it falling off or anything so I adjusted accordingly, got her dressed in a really cute outfit and felt pretty proud of myself. I thought this isn't so bad, I can do this. Well about ten minutes later she peed which was probably when I should have changed the diaper the first time. So I got her out of her cute little outfit and went for round two, thinking it'll only be easier this time right? Well that's when I realized I put her diaper on backwards the first time. I didn't unwrap the whole thing before I took the old one off and didn't properly switch them out but miraculously she got into the thing, wiped off, not too tight or backwards and back into her cute little outfit. (Kayleen hopefully if you read this you're thinking how funny and not never come near my children again please :) That's when I thought (and think that lots of times), wow we'd really better wait a while to have kids because I kind of suck. Then later that day the rest of the crew arrived and I was holding Addy (the littlest girl) when she started falling asleep. I decided to take her up and put her on the bed to lay down. She looked up at me and giggled and smiled and sleepily closed her little eyes and it was the greatest moment. It made me think how great it will be to have that in my own little one to do that with and how cute it will be. But then again i just called my future baby it so I probably shouldn't have kids. I hope I miraculously learn all these things about kids and babies like no sunscreen until they're old enough, no this no that, seriously when do you learn all these things? I'm scared to death! It's a good thing we've decided to wait a while for children. In the mean time I guess I'll just have to keep loving my nieces and nephew and hope when the time comes for me to have children, I'll know.

I need one of those cleaning robots, do they exist?/ can I please whine!

You know how there are those women who's houses sparkle they are so clean? (probably because they hire a maid or they spend way to much time on it but either way more power to them) Our house was not like that, but it was darn well clean. We did a full clean once a week and we were not allowed to go to bed until our barbies were picked up even if we did intend to play with them the next day. We also could barely even walk away from the dinner table to go to the bathroom lest it appeared we were trying to get out of dishes which were always done instantly after dinner. I swear you were eating your last bite before your plate was whisked away to the sink and expected to be washed. Ok so total exaggeration but the point is we were taught to clean and do it well which I am very grateful for now. HOWEVER, I can not seem to keep up on it! By most people's standards they would laugh at me when I say my house feels messy but really it does and I have high standards for how I should and want to keep the house. Maybe its because I've never had my own house but it seems like every time I clean one thing something else gets messy and it never ends! I constantly find myself saying "I JUST cleaned that how is it dirty again??" I usually have to tell myself "you work full time and are very busy, its ok if your house is not spotless" but I still get sad. I think another part of the problem is my entire house is about the size of some peoples living rooms so its pretty hard to keep things clean when everything you bring into the house looks like clutter (also easier to clean because its small... its a conundrum) Oh sigh, the other sad thing is I know this will never go away, I will have to clean house the rest of my life... yikes! On the bright side at least Brandon is a pretty good helper. He at least does his part to try and keep it picked up and cleanish.

What's that you say? If you spent the time cleaning you did writing this post you could have cleaned quite a bit (well at least thats what my mother would say after she gave me lots of sympathy about how hard I work and everything is ok :) Thanks mom) Well don't worry, I did all the dishes, took out the trash, cleaned all the cardboard boxes from the hall from our vacuum and other various items, put away our camping gear and unpacked from our lake trip last weekend (found a dead mouse skull in our basement which was rather upsetting even though I've caught more mice in traps in a month (when i lived at home) than most people have in their entire lives i still was super grossed out) put away some groceries, and looked at the bed and refused to make it (i hate making beds for some reason). So I'm trying, but the problem is it just keeps coming back. Oh well, thanks for listening/reading.... yes you, all three of my readers :)

PS: I went 18 years of my life with no diswasher, then we got one.... Now we don't have one and I hate it. Thanks to my awesome sister in law giving us a tip, we bought one of those pre-fill soap sponges which has worked wonders... still not the funnest especially with only one small sink.

4 for 1

This will be like 4 different posts in one... Lets see last weekend we went to Yellowstone as our first real camping trip because Brandon got lots of new camping gear!! it was a blast. The first day we went to Lake (where I worked and saw the few random hot pots along the way to Tower. Its amazing that if you even go two feet of the main path or walk the entire boardwalk loop how there are no people. Its sad how much people miss because they won't walk the extra bit to see cool stuff. That night we got skunked on camping sites so we had to drive out of the park to cooke city where every campground along the way was only for RVS so finally we found a "camp ground" that was basically just national forest land where you could pitch a tent and build a fire, no toilets or camp sites or anything. It ended up being way nice because it was quite and peaceful. The next day we drove through the park and saw Norris, Canyon and Tower and camped at Norris. Then we spent Monday going to Old Faithful and the few in between and driving home. Oh i have to tell about the most delicious Mexican Restaurant we found in Afton on the way up. It was called the Agave and we totally just took a leap that it would be good and boy were we right. The Molé was so good I bypassed the chips and food for the sauce and just started drinking the sauce with a spoon.... I love sauce by the way and this was just wonderful. We loved it so much we starved ourselves all day Monday so that we could eat it again on the way home YUMMY!

Ok next part of the post: My sister got me a cookbook from Kitchen Kneads which is this awesome specialty kitchen store in Logan, its one of my happy places. Since I got like 4 of the same cookbook I decided to take it back so I could get some fun stuff. I also decided I wanted to get whatever I wanted (Brandon got the home depot gift cards so I thought it was fair) so I got this!!!
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Is that not the cutest thing ever? To make it even better, its mini, like 4 inches long. I know its so useless but it said you can use it for small pastries or ravioli or i thought just for small things... I don't know but I'll find somewhere to use it you just watch! I also got a pretty blue snow flake cookie cutter, a pink spoon and a recipe book stand. I'm stoked

Part 3: I got some exciting things at the store tonight, i got some stuff at the case lot sale and 3 cartons of the good ice cream that was on super sale and grapes and cantelope and all kinds of yummy things which made me happy which leads to part 4

Part 4: Why can't anyone bag!!! Isn't that their job? Seriously how hard is it. Case: I brought my own bags which often means you will be walking with them and therefore need sturdier bags... this was my situation. The bag man decided to put both gallons of milk, lettuce, grapes, peaches, two things of meat and pickles all in one bag which was so heavy I could barely pick it up. In the other bag he put my cantelope and a thing of juice, SERIOUSLY??? I just don't understand why every time I go to the store they either put like one item per bag, pack them stupidly and just be plain annoying. I think they should have bagging training because no one can do it. Ok the end

Trying not to suck at pictures

On our honeymoon by the thunder mountain railroad

zoo day, the lady didn;t get the baby elephant in the picture as intended

our disneyland treats

Yes we are that nerdy, but too cheap to buy the actual thing

My favorite souvenier from Disneyland, I couldn't put him down, once again yes I'm that nerdy

proudly displaying my first garden tomatoe, its supposed to be that small

not happy about my fish splashing me

but very happy to have caught my first

the red panda my favorite at the zoo who is going away :(

so I took a picture to remember it since i told myself i wasn't allowed to buy any stuffed animals

In the Pirates of the Carribean cage in Disneyland

As promised I'm trying to do better with pictures, so here are a few, I can't get my blog to put them in order and I'm kind of too lazy to try so they're all out of order. BUT, at least I am getting them off my camera, thats a big step for me :)