Mike and Molly

6 months!

2012-02-14T10:25:00.002-07:00

Happy 6 months to our handsome, sweet, wonderful and adorable baby boy! We love you!

Happy Baby

2012-02-07T17:05:00.002-07:00

Lately Milo has been so smiley, it's almost as if he can't contain all his happiness to just his face!

Christmas, New Years & (almost) 5 months!

2012-01-11T15:30:00.012-07:00

Wow - does time go by too fast, or what? I can't believe Christmas was two weeks ago. We had a really great Christmas this year. Christmas morning was spent at our house, "opening" gifts (we didn't really get around to wrapping many of them...) and being lazy. Then in the evening we went over to my parents house. They definitely spoiled us! Mike got a bunch of tools, a giftcard to Barnes & Noble, a cool Ship in a Bottle kit, and lots of other great stuff. I got tons of sewing gear, some counted cross stitches, a new tripod, and all of the stuff I need to take the level 1 cake decorating class at JoAnns. I'm very excited for that, but haven't been able to sign up yet due to scheduling conflicts. Hopefully soon they'll have a class I can actually make it to! Milo was also spoiled, with tons of new clothes, toys and books.

Showing off his Christmas pajamas

New Years was more relaxed. We didn't have any plans really, although I did learn a good lesson about why people with kids don't stay up late. It's not because they're old and boring - it's because even if I stay up until 2 AM, Milo is still going to want to eat at 3, and then be up for the day at 7! New Years Day was a little rough, I was exhausted!

I left him sitting near these wrapping scraps for a few minutes - came back and he had gotten ahold of them. I think he's going to love opening presents next year!

We also were able to go have a lunch out and see the new Mission Impossible (very enjoyable), take naps, eat way more food than we ever should have - all of that good stuff!

The last few years we haven't been great about making New Years Resolutions. But this year we decided to, and we came up with a bunch! I hate having too many, because some always get forgotten, but most of them are just things we should be doing anyways - eating healthier, keeping the house cleaner, spending more time reading and less time watching TV, etc. Hopefully they at least help us to make some progress.

These boys got to spend a lot of time together this holiday season!

Lazy day at home with dad, showing off his new PJs from Scott & Kenna

Now I guess we've come to the part of this blog post where I face up to the fact that Milo will be 5 months old in just a few days. Yikes! As I went to write this, I thought we had until next week, but really it's just a matter of days. We haven't started him on solid foods quite yet, but last night Mike put together the high chair, and today I keep finding myself staring at it, wondering how time has gone by so fast.

We also put together this activity center last night. Milo has been a little bit of a handful the last few days - he still doesn't usually take good naps, so he's been cranky and needing to be constantly entertained. It was making it a little difficult to get work done, so I hoped that being able to put him in here would keep him busy, and so far he seems to love it! I think he spends the most time trying to figure out which toys he can get in his mouth, and then settling for sucking on the seat cushion.

Some other photos of what he's up to...

Learning to grab his feet

Being Dad's good luck charm (apparently it's exhausting work!)

Being cute. Mike dressed him like this, and insisted he didn't need socks, even though we were leaving the house. Surprisingly, his feet stayed warm all day, so I guess he was right!

I am thinking about starting him on solid foods in a few weeks. He hasn't had a problem gaining weight, but he is still taking super short naps, and the only reason I can think of is that he's hungry. I started trying to make him eat more at each feeding, and he took all awesome naps... for about a week. And then he went back to all short naps. I'm hoping maybe getting something solid in him will help.

Speaking of not napping, sounds like he's awake again, so I better wrap this up. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season!

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-22T12:07:00.002-07:00

Aquarium, Concert & 4 month mark!

2011-12-19T21:45:00.007-07:00

We have had such a fun past couple of weeks! A little while ago, Mike was able to get free passes for a gift certificate of some kind through his work and Ken Garff. Most of the options were for restaurants, but we decided to choose passes to the Living Planet Aquarium, and last Saturday we were able to go use them. It was a lot of fun! It probably would have been more fun to go when their new location opens up, since it's going to be like twice the size, but we still had a good time. My favorite exhibit was the penguins. I'm pretty sure Mike's favorite thing was the flattened penny machine - he loves those. We've gotten them from almost every trip we've been on - and of course we have no idea where any of them currently are. :)

Cool spotted ray

Jellyfish

Threatening to throw Milo to the sting rays

Apparently he liked it. Love this photo!

Then this past Saturday we had Milo's 4 month checkup. His weight is up to 16 lbs, 10 oz (85th percentile) and 27.2 inches tall, which the Dr said is off the chart! A few things he's up to lately:

Loves to smile and laugh. Mike and I sometimes joke that Milo must think it's hilarious how all he has to do is act like he might smile and we bust out the funny faces and goofy noises

Went through a little phase of sticking out his tongue all the time. We thought it was pretty funny, but he hasn't done it much since

Loves to nurse, but basically refuses to eat from a bottle.

Still is taking short naps. I'm still hoping nap time will eventually go back to normal

Is finally starting to show an interest in toys.

Won't roll over anymore, he's getting pretty lazy!

Can sit up pretty well in the Bumbo, but he starts to get wobbly after a while. He also arches his back so much that he will almost fall out backwards.

Loves to be near us. I promise I'm not making that up! Whenever we're close by, he's always reaching out to keep his hand on us. He also sleeps tons better when we're next to him, but I'm trying not to let that one turn into a habit.

Then Saturday night, my dad had received tickets for the Jon Schmidt concert from a client and gave them to us. Free tickets, plus an offer to babysit - we were in! Our original plan was to go out to dinner, but so many places were packed that we ended up at a little burger shop, and decided to split a shake even though it was freezing outside - yum! Then we were off to the concert, and we had an awesome time. I'm not sure Mike enjoyed it as much as I did, it's really not his thing, but even he was laughing and enjoying parts of it. I hadn't been to one of his concerts in a long time, and he's added a cellist, base player, drummer, and a guy who seemed to play a variety of small instruments. It really added a lot of neat variety, but a part of me still loved the plain piano pieces the most.

One of our favorite parts was when he had a guy from the audience come up and play an improvised jazz duet with him. The guy was very talented, and managed to mix in a Christmas song, it was great!

I also made our own Christmas card this year - hopefully everyone who sent me their address should be getting theirs soon, and then I'll post it on here for anyone that I missed :)

Finished Projects!

2011-12-05T21:44:00.009-07:00

Woohoo - I actually finished a couple of projects! I have a few more that I'm working on that are Christmas related, so hopefully I get those done before Christmas comes and goes :) It should not be this difficult to just focus on one project and get it done, but for some reason it has been, so I am overly proud of myself for finishing, and I'm going to post pictures...

Paint chip art - I thought this turned out really well, and I think we're going to hang it on the wall above the entertainment center in our room. Mike suggested it, and that gave me the motivation to finish it!

Fabric wreath - I mostly liked this because it was easy and still turned out cute. Plus I'm hoping having a wreath on our door makes us seem less anti-holiday - our neighbors all decorate early and very thoroughly!

I did take a picture of the bookshelf Mike built, but the photo didn't turn out too well, so I'll have to try again later.

To catch up, the last few weeks have been fun. We had Thanksgiving at my parents house, my birthday a few days later, a birthday dinner the next day with Mike's dad, and now we're starting to feel a little frantic about getting ready for Christmas! I don't really have many photos of that, but we've had a lot of fun :)

And of course, I have to do my normal Milo updates and photos! He is doing so good. For the most part, he has been sleeping much better. We're still having trouble with short naps, but bedtime has gotten easier, and he has slept at least 7 or 8 hours straight the last 3 nights, plus gone back to sleep for 3 hours after he wakes up in the morning. Today I actually felt well rested, what a strange feeling! But tonight I put him to bed earlier, so I'm trying not to get my hopes up about a 4th night of good sleep.

Some days I just feel amazed at what a good kid he is! I don't say this to make other people feel bad - I know there are people who do everything right, and still have trouble with their kids eating or sleeping or whatever. I don't claim to have done anything right, I know we just lucked out. But nights when Milo seems wide awake and unwilling to sleep, so I leave him in his crib, figuring I'll let him cry for a few minutes and then come back - and he'll fall asleep without a peep, I just feel shocked. This definitely does not happen every night, or even every week, but I love when it does!

My sister got this winter outfit for him, and it just kills me how cute it is!

And of course, he's growing like crazy! The outfit in the picture above - my sister gave it to us on Halloween, and it looked way too big for him at the time. I figured by mid-winter it would fit. Well, good thing my mom suggested using it a few days ago, I don't think he'll fit in it much longer! He should have a dr's appointment in the next week or so, I'm anxious to find out how much bigger he has gotten

I think I'm going to get this printed and put in a frame for Mike for Christmas.

It's so fun to see the little changes that this guy goes through. Sometimes I forget that he's just a little baby, he seems to be growing up so fast.

Please ignore the blue pants and slightly different shade of blue socks in the picture above. Laundry isn't my highest priority right now, and there have been a few photos I haven't used just because of the ridiculous outfits he ends up in.

We are very excited for the upcoming Christmas holiday. Thanksgiving weekend went by way too fast, so I'm excited to have a few more days to spend relaxing and spending time with Mike and Milo. I've been trying lately to slow down a little, stress less, and remember to enjoy the present. I feel like I've been pretty good about reminding myself that the book I want to read or the show I want to watch can wait. I've noticed that I can read a book and let Milo sleep by himself, or I can let him stay cuddled up next to me and just enjoy it - time flies by either way, but the book, the show and the clean house will always be available later, and I can't say the same for our little man who seems to be changing by the second.

Thankful

2011-11-21T21:29:00.006-07:00

Tis the season to be thankful of course!

Truthfully, the last few days have been a little difficult. Not anything major, but for some reason, Milo's sleep schedule has gotten way off. He hasn't slept through the night in a couple weeks, and now his naps have gone from averaging an hour and a half, to 20-30 minutes. And he doesn't handle it well (neither do I!) so he gets cranky.

Today I started to feel a little desperate and was looking up tips to help him nap longer. So one of the things I thought I would try is giving him an earlier bedtime. He doesn't actually have a bed time right now - I feel awful even saying that. For a while it seemed like he set his own schedule, and it worked well for me. He was sleeping through the night, waking up around 6:30, easily went down for naps. But he slept a lot in the morning and early afternoon, and then not as much in the evening, so getting him to bed sometimes took until 11:00. I figured it was fine - he's happy when he's awake, seems like he's getting enough sleep, no big deal.

Tonight I figured I would start putting him to bed at 8. I put him in pajamas, sat down with him for a little while and attempted to hold him (not easy, he's been arching his back like crazy lately, anyone know what that's about??), and then put him to bed. He was fine for a little while, and then started crying. That quickly turned into screaming. After 15 minutes or so, I felt too guilty and went to hold him. I'm not sure if he was too worked up, or what, but nothing I did seemed to stop the screaming. So he basically screamed from 8:00 until just after 9, when he finally fell asleep. If this keeps up, I might dread bedtime more than he does!

But, even after all that, he's still pretty darn cute :)

Just as a note, he's wearing 9 month size clothes here, and they fit him pretty much perfectly. Oy, this boy grows fast! Also, ignore my legs and feet in the picture, it was the best shot I got of him smiling :)

Last week Mike and I both had to give talks in church on being thankful. One thing Mike mentioned more than once, is that we're often more blessed than we realize. It reminded me of a quote I saw recently - "Some people are so poor, all they have is money."

Our lives haven't been totally devoid of trials lately, but I know that I'm getting some help from somewhere, because when I look at our life, all I can see is blessings. I know it won't last forever, so I'm going to try and enjoy it while I can. Happy Thanksgiving!

Halloween & Photo Catch up

2011-11-12T10:45:00.018-07:00

I'm going to start making more of an effort to keep my blog posts shorter, so they don't get too boring! Plus, I have lots of photos to post - some of which are older, I finally remembered to get copies of all the photos my mom has taken, so that will probably be most of what this post is :) Enjoy!

An older photo - trying out the baby sling. Milo was NOT a fan! The second time I tried to use it, he started screaming right away, so it's never really gotten used.

We got a surprise storm, and I had no idea how to keep him warm while the heater kicked in!

Taking a nap with Grandpa

In an effort to get Mike to change a stinky diaper, I stripped Milo down (to increase the risk of leakage) and set him on the couch next to Mike. Then they looked so cute sitting there together, I had to take a picture!

So cute, love this boy!

Halloween - Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!

All dressed up for church, so handsome!

Halloween take 2 - Mike with his flying carpet

I had to put up a 2nd photo of Milo with my parents, we added whiskers on his face and I felt like it made the costume even cuter :)

This picture does have a story behind it. Lately Milo has a pretty set routine for napping. He starts to get fidgety and a little whiny, I wrap him up in a blanket and hold him in my arms, and he's usually asleep or ready to be put down in just a few minutes. As long as I can do that, getting him to sleep it normally so easy. But if I can't, he will stay awake as long as he can possibly handle it, and get progressively more fussy. This morning I put him on his play mat, and figured he had a while until he would be ready to nap, and could play there until he was ready. After a little while, I realized he hadn't made any noise recently. I looked over and saw this -

and just about had a heart attack. He was totally still. So I ran over there, only to find that he was totally passed out, asleep. I couldn't believe it!

Half an hour later (which is a very short nap for him) he woke back up and started playing again like nothing happened. What a cutie!

He loves the TV, I guess because of the light and noise? When I left him propped up on the couch and then saw he was right next to the remote, it was too funny. Looks like we'll have to start phasing TV out of our lives pretty soon!

Milo's also been babbling like crazy lately. I love it, it makes me laugh! I realized after I posted the videos in the last post, that our camera really takes bad video, especially since our apartment doesn't have great lighting. But I'm still hoping to get the babbling on video.

After next week, Mike has a whole week off for Thanksgiving. I'm pretty excited, it should be great! He has a great idea for a book, so I've been encouraging him to work on writing it, hopefully he listens :)

So Blessed

2011-10-25T22:25:00.008-06:00

One thing I have definitely noticed about Milo - besides the fact that he eats and poops a lot, is that he makes us realized how blessed we are. Every once in a while, Mike will just turn to me and say "We are so blessed." I always ask why, thinking something happened that made him say that, and he always replies that we're lucky to have Milo here and to have him healthy. I would have to agree! I've been thinking a lot lately about the fact that Milo chose to have us as his mom and dad, despite the fact that we aren't perfect and definitely make lots of mistakes. It's something that's amazing to think about, in my opinion.

Milo has started falling asleep like this, and I LOVE it. I could let him stay like that all day!

On October 8th, we were lucky enough to have family and friends join us while Mike gave Milo a sweet blessing at our church. After being to quite a few baby blessings, it felt so weird for it to be our turn, but it was a wonderful experience.

Our little family at the blessing

After church we had a get together at my parents house for family and friends. It was really great to get a chance to spend time talking to people. The day before had been super hectic trying to get everything ready, so it was nice to just relax and enjoy ourselves.

Other things we have been up to since then:

Milo got his first set of immunizations a couple of weeks ago. It was very sad, and he just about had me in tears seeing his face so red! Luckily he didn't cry long, and slept for a long time afterwards. I'm already dreading the next set!
I've been trying to re-learn how to sew. I made a baby blanket for a shower I went to on Saturday (and forgot to take photos). It turns out OK, but I had to hand stitch some of it, and that did not turn out well. I didn't know how to do that, and trying to figure it out from a YouTube video at 1 in the morning just wasn't working for me!
Mike made a great new bookshelf for us. He came up with the design himself, and I think it turned out great. He also made a great desk a while ago, and I needed to post a photo of it :)
I've finally started "actually" working out again - sort of. I've gone back to the gym a few times, but haven't been great about it. Hopefully I'll start going more and more.
Milo learned to roll over a couple of weeks ago! I was so proud of him. I thought it would happen a long time ago, whenever I put him down on his tummy he would rock from side to side pretty well, so I kept thinking he'd make it all the way over. Today he finally succeeded, although I think he just tips his head sideways and lets gravity do the rest...
He has also been smiling more and more, and occasionally laughing too. It's so great, it makes my day! For some reason I can almost always get him to smile and laugh during diaper changes. Seems like such a random time to be so happy!
Lately Milo has become even more mellow, I love it. He does sleep a lot throughout the day, but most of the time when he's awake he's pretty relaxed. He's also a great sleeper. He almost always sleeps at least 6 hours at night, sometimes more.
Mike has been working hard to make school a great experience for his students. Two weeks ago they had a Nerf tournament at the school for all of his kids that were passing all their classes. It was right after Milo got his shots, so I decided not to go, but I hear they had a blast!
Milo is growing like crazy. At his last dr's appointment he weighed 12 lbs 14 oz and was 24 1/2 inches long. That put him in the 75th % for weight, and the 97th % for height! No wonder all his pajamas are getting too small. Yep, as of tonight we decided we can't really use any 3 month size pajamas for him anymore, he can't straighten his legs out all the way while he's wearing them. We don't have that many pairs of larger pajamas (especially considering how quickly babies run through clean clothes) - so it looks like we're going shopping this week!

I've decided that I am too far behind to put this all in one post, so I'm going to move on to another one, which probably won't be finished for a little while, but at least I can get this one posted before I forget!

One Month

2011-09-21T20:51:00.009-06:00

Truthfully Milo is more than a month old - but 5 1/2 weeks just didn't make as good of a title. I can't believe how fast time has gone by - I'm already supposed to start back at work next week! Part of me is excited to have some more structure to my day, and part of me is sad that I can't just spend hours staring at our adorable little boy, going on walks, and continuing to slack off on cleaning the house. Of course, I should probably stop slacking off on the cleaning, it's starting to look like a real disaster :)

Not a fan of his first bath!

So far, things are going good. For the most part, I'm starting to feel like I finally have a handle on things. Not well enough that I get everything done during the day, but I'm making progress. Milo is eating so much better, and quicker, so it doesn't take 45 minutes to feed him anymore, which is so nice. He's also sleeping longer during the night. Most nights now he will go 4 hours b

etween eating, which is fine by me. I still feel a little panicky when I wake up to him crying and see that it's been 4 or 4 1/2 hours, I have this moment where I wonder if he's been crying for hours and I've been starving him - but I know I couldn't sleep through him crying for that long! The first week or two after he was born, he wouldn't wake up on his own to eat, so I was constantly

setting my alarm for every 3 hours to make sure he ate, it's so nice not to be doing that anymore. Especially because it took so long to feed him, I'd be going to bed and setting my alarm to wake me up an hour or hour and a half later.

Much better all wrapped up in the towel

This past weekend was a definite test for us. Almost this entire year I had been getting periods of terrible back pain. It would come out of nowhere, last anywhere from a half hour to the longest episode of 9 hours, and was so intense I felt like I couldn't even breathe. As the months went on, the pain would also start making me nauseous and dizzy. I told both my doctors about it repeatedly about it, and both would say that back pain was normal during pregnancy, or that it must be from the baby moving. I figured I must be the biggest wuss on the planet if that

was normal pregnancy back pain! Eventually I had a horrible weekend where I was in pain almost the entire weekend, and that Monday I finally went in to the doctor just for that reason. They said I had a bladder infection and gave me some antibiotics. As the infection cleared up, the pain went away, so I figured they must be right - but it came back. At first the episodes were short again and I could sometimes get them to go away by forcing myself to relax and take deep breaths, but after Milo was born I had another weekend of being in pain for 3 days straight, so I went to a new doctor. I figured now that it couldn't be blamed on pregnancy, we might figure out what was actually wrong.

Luckily the doctor figured out on the first try that I probably had gallstones. He had an ultrasound set up, and a week later I was meeting with a surgeon. On Friday I went in to have my gallbladder removed. We were so lucky that my parents are close by and so willing to help out. My dad took me into the hospital Friday morning while my mom took the day off work to watch Milo. Then after the surgery, my mom took me back to their house and took care of both me and Milo for the rest of the day. As luck would have it, during the surgery they found that some stones had already gotten out of my gallbladder and were on their way to my stomach, so I had to go back on Sunday to have a different kind of a surgeon put a scope in through my

stomach and remove those stones. They also had to leave in a drain because of the 2nd surgery, so for a few days I was walking around holding that - SO attractive! Not to mention the fact that it leaked like crazy and was constantly soaking through all my clothes. The surgery Sunday didn't hurt, just left me completely worn out. Poor Mike took care of me and Milo most of the weekend, and kept Milo downstairs each night so that I could sleep upstairs in peace. At first I thought it was going to be a really long recovery - I was in a lot of pain for a few days, and it didn't seem to be getting any better. But Tuesday I went back to the surgeon to get the drain removed, and it turns out that the drain was the source of a lot of the pain, so I have been feeling much better ever since. I still have to go back for another procedure in 6 weeks to have a shunt removed that was left in during the 2nd surgery. All I can say is that I'm very grateful to have insurance!

Having surgery just a few weeks after having a baby wasn't really my favorite idea, but I think all in all, it worked out well. I was able to have it all done during maternity leave, so I didn't have to take more time off work. After the first surgery, they originally wanted me to be on a diet of clear liquids only until the 2nd surgery, which was originally supposed to be on Monday. 4 days - no way! I was really worried, since I knew that wouldn't give me enough calories to support nursing Milo. Luckily the 2nd surgeon said I could eat normal - I was so relieved! I did end up doing one day of only clear liquids and it was NOT fun, I'm so glad I didn't have to do 4 days.

I thought this photo of Mike holding Milo's hand while they slept was so sweet - until the next day when Mike told me he did it to keep Milo from pulling the binky out of his mouth, since he would pull it out over and over and wake himself up every time!

So right now I am feeling so grateful to be on the mend and feeling better! My back has been achy from the surgery, and sometimes when I feel it start to ache, I get a panicky feeling, since it feels the same as when my back would start to ache and then erupt into waves of pain - I have to keep reminding myself that isn't going to happen again.

One of my favorite photos so far. I found them sleeping this way, like father, like son!

Before I finish up, a few things I want to remember about Milo and his likes and dislikes right now:

He is growing so fast. At his last doctor's appointment he was 10lbs 13oz - basically 3 pounds above his birth weight. Can't believe I was worried he was eating too little!

Currently in the 90th percentile for height and 75th percentile for weight. At his 2 week checkup (really happened when he was 3 weeks) he was at the 90th and 50th, so his weight really has increased a lot!

Loves to be held and cuddled. After he spends time with my parents he comes home so spoiled and never wants to be put down

Absolutely hates diaper changes and being dressed. We've only made it through a few diaper changes without him crying the entire time

Seems confused about baths, but likes them as long as the water is warm enough!

Is doing so much better nursing. It's gone from being a challenging thing that I dreaded to being much more enjoyable

I absolutely love when he falls asleep in my arms. For some reason it makes me feel like I did something awesome, even if all I really did was rock him up and down for a few minutes

He fits in anything from newborn sized clothing to some 6 month clothing. I'm not sure how, I think it's because of his height. 6 month clothing fits his length almost perfectly, but is way too big around his legs and arms

He grunts and groans almost constantly. We had about a week where he would do this almost 24/7, even in his sleep. It was cute during the day, but at night it drove me nuts! Now he usually only does it periodically throughout the day

Toots like nobody's business! Last week we were walking through Costco and he was letting them rip so loud, people 10 feet away could hear him and probably thought it was me!

LOVES to stretch. Whenever he wakes up he will stretch for a good 5 minutes

Sometimes when he's tired and falling asleep, he'll smile and giggle. So cute!

He's known for a long time how to grab on to my hair, but lately he's learned to grab more things - shirt collars, blankets, stuff like that. He likes to pull the blankets up around his face, which has me constantly worried he'll suffocate himself!

He's also been doing other cute things with his hands - he loves to touch things around him. While I'm feeding him, he'll put his hands on my arm and just rub my arm. Or when I burp him, he'll grab on to my shoulder and rub his hands on my shirt. It sounds like a weird thing to want to remember, but it's such a neat feeling to know he recognizes that we're there

He also recognizes what we look and sound like. The other night Mike was walking back and forth, and Milo was just watching him the whole time.

He doesn't mind tummy time too much, depending on the day he can go 5 or 10 minutes before he starts to get fussy and frustrated. Which means I have no excuse for how rarely I make him do it. Mostly because I always forget, or I only think about it right after I feed him, and setting him down on a full tummy just seems like asking for trouble!

Just had his first major diaper explosion as I was writing this. I handed that one off to Mike (I'm such a great wife ;-) and from upstairs I heard "Oh, that's not so cute!" At least we've cleared up the fact that not everything he does is cute!

A few days ago we had one of our first rough nights in quite a while. Milo had been fed, changed, burped, rocked - everything I could think of. He would fall asleep for anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour, and then wake up and immediately start screaming. Finally around 2 am I decided there was nothing more I could do, and I put him in his crib and let him cry it out. He didn't cry that long before he fell asleep (and stayed asleep!) but the next morning I still felt pretty awful!

We have basically no schedule. I know I probably should get him on a schedule, and that in the long run it would make things easier on all of us, but for some reason I never do. I think part of it is because I know that would require keeping him awake after he eats around 6 or 6:30, and honestly when it's that early, I just want to go back to bed!

Well I guess I've rambled on enough. Just feeling blessed to have this little guy in our lives!

Baby Milo

2011-08-23T11:57:00.007-06:00

After a very long and at the same time very short 10 months, baby Milo is finally here! He was born August 14th at 9:42 - 7lbs 14oz and 21 1/2 inches long. I wanted to write down the whole story somewhere, so this might be long and boring, but I'm mostly doing it for us. It's been years since I've written in a journal or anything like that, and I don't want to forget any of the story. I'll post photos and stuff about having him with us the past week at the end if you want to just skip to there :)

My due date was the 12th, and all along I had thought he would come early. Both my sister and I were born early, plus by my 2nd doctor's appointment, he was already growing a little ahead of schedule. After our 20 week ultrasound the doctor said they could update his due date to the 10th, but since it was so close, they would leave it at the 12th. So when the whole two weeks before his due date came and went without much more than an occasional crampy feeling or short lived pain, I was surprised. I was partially relieved because I felt like I still had so much to do, but mostly bummed. We were getting into a tight timeline - Mike started back to work full time on the 18th, but my mom had to leave the 14th for a training meeting in New Jersey, and wouldn't be back until late the night of the 16th. I wanted as much time with Mike around as possible, but I also wanted my mom to be able to be there, and once he went past his due date, we were basically out of options.

The doctor originally told me that the hospital wouldn't let him induce me until I was a week past my due date. At this point I was very uncomfortable, and an extra week sounded awful! But at my appointment on my actual due date, my doctor was out of town, so I had to see a different doctor - and when he looked at my file and saw that I was delivering at Jordan Valley, he said they were much more lenient with inducing people. The original plan was to induce me on Tuesday - I figured that would work - it would probably take a long time, and my mom would be getting home that night, and might be just in time to see him. Then when the doctor wrote down the date and said "Okay, so Tuesday the 16th" I realized it was our anniversary. When I mentioned that, he suggested we pick a different day. I wouldn't mind Milo being born on our anniversary, but the doctor suggested that since we were choosing the day anyways, we might want to make it a different day, so that his birthday and our anniversary could always be events on separate days. So he suggested Monday - but when the nurse called the hospital, they were all booked for Monday, and we'd probably end up getting pushed to Tuesday anyways. I started thinking that maybe I could convince them to do it that night (Friday) or Saturday, so that he could be here before my mom left. But the doctor who was on call for those days wouldn't let us schedule it - she had a patient being checked in to Riverton Hospital on Friday night, and would need to be there a lot to monitor her on Saturday, and didn't feel comfortable having us at another hospital and also needing her there. So we had to choose Sunday. They assigned us a time of 7am - and my mom would have to leave by 8:30 to make her flight. She spent lots of time and effort trying to get a later flight, but the airlines were being difficult and wanted to charge her almost twice the cost of the original ticket to switch to a later flight. She ended up keeping her early flight, and it's a good thing she did - the later flight ended up being over booked, and even if she had taken that flight, she still would have missed the birth. I know she felt awful not being there, and I felt awful that I couldn't pick a date that would work better - but I think in the end, we all made the only choice we could.

So early Sunday morning we headed off to the hospital. We checked in just after 7, and they had us in a room and had me hooked up to the IV and Pitocin by about 7:30. Soon after that, the doctor came in to break my water. He had some trouble getting it to break, so that was a little painful. Nothing too bad - the kind of pain doctors always try to pass of as "uncomfortable" - but really it's pain. The nurses told me that since I was being induced, I could get the epidural whenever I wanted, I didn't have to wait until I was dilated to a certain point. For the first couple of hours, I wasn't feeling much. When I first started feeling the contractions, it wasn't too big of a deal. But after a while it started getting uncomfortable. Based on the advice people had given me, I figured I should just ask for the epidural then, but for some reason I still didn't want to - I felt like I was being too much of a wuss. I realize now that was silly - no one else could know how much pain I was in, they were in no position to decide I should have waited longer! Luckily, the nurse came in and told me that the anesthesiologist was going to need to go assist with a c-section, so I could either get the epidural right then, or wait a hour or two until he was then. That gave me a perfect opportunity to choose to get it right then! I wasn't too nervous about getting the epidural, and it really wasn't that bad. Probably the worst part to me, was that since I had to sit up, turn sideways and lean forward, my water that had been broken went from leaking to gushing. I felt so disgusting and honestly, I swear the gushing noise was audible to people around me, even though no one said anything! But the actual pain from the epidural wasn't bad. It made me nervous that everyone kept reassuring me so much, and they had Mike stand there and hold my hands in case I needed to squeeze them. There were a few moments that were a little painful, but not bad - and I would definitely rather have those few moments instead of feeling the pain of all the contractions!

After that I felt fine, just tired, so we all relaxed and just talked and watched TV. Mike fell asleep 3 or 4 times that day, so I think he was sleeping for most of this. For most of the day, it was just slow. The dilation progressed very slowly, and it was pretty boring for all of us. Sometime in the afternoon, I started to feel an uncomfortable feeling on my right side. It mostly felt like back pain, and the nurses told me it was probably just from the bed. But it kept getting worse and worse, until we realized something had gone wrong with the epidural, and I was feeling the contractions on my right side. It was awful. Part of me is glad I experienced it, because I will remember that if anyone ever tries to convince me to not get an epidural. I barely had to handle the pain for an hour or two, there's no way I could have handled feeling that all day! At first the anesthesiologist thought it was unlikely that something was wrong with the epidural, so he gave me a shot of the epidural medication straight into the tube and had me lay on my right side to try and get the medication to settle on my right side. This didn't help at all, so after a while he tried again with a stronger medication. That still did nothing, so he took out the epidural and redid it. That time it worked wonderfully! It seemed like this one was a lot more accurate, because with the first one, I could move my legs and they didn't feel numb unless I poked myself and realized I couldn't feel it - they felt more tingly, like they were waking up. But this time, they were totally numb, I couldn't move them at all, and the pain went away quickly. Although my poor left leg definitely got the full effect of those extra shots he gave me before he redid the epidural, and that leg took much longer to recover!

Around 7:00 the nurse came and checked me and said I was dilated to an 8. Things were moving more quickly, but it still had taken 12 hours to get that far, and I thought we still had a while. My dad decided to go home and my sister said she was going to go get a bowl of oatmeal from the dietary room. All day I had felt warm - I was fine with just a sheet over me, while everyone else had been cold in the room. Mike even had to ask for blankets. That honestly was one of the weirdest pregnancy experiences to me, was being warm when everyone else was cold. Normally I'm freezing when other people are in t-shirts and feeling fine! But around 7:30 I started to feel cold, then I started shaking. No one had told me to expect this, or what it might mean, so I just figured it was no big deal, and that I'd mention it to the nurse the next time she came in. I asked Mike to bring me one of his blankets, so he did, and then since he was up, he decided to get out of the room for a little bit and go read out in one of the waiting areas. Well, just a few minutes after he left, the monitor showed that Milo's heart rate dropped dramatically, and two nurses came running in. Both of the nurses I'd had earlier in the day were so sweet and helpful - and right before this had happened, their shifts had changed. My new nurse was nice, but younger and not as motherly towards us. So when she came running in with the other nurse, they had me put on an oxygen mask and kept shifting me onto my sides, trying to get his heartbeat back up, but neither of them were talking to me at all, or telling me what was going on, which made it seem so much worse. Finally they got his heartbeat back up, and they said it was just because of his position, and that I was ready to go and would need to start pushing. I couldn't believe this had happened right after Mike left! So I tried calling him, and of course his phone was still in the room. Thinking that my sister was still in the hospital (it had been quite a while since she left to get oatmeal, but she hadn't said anything about leaving) I sent her a text asking her to find Mike for me. She wrote back and said that she wasn't there, she had left to go home and check on her dog. I knew it had been a long and boring day, but I couldn't believe everyone had left just as we were finally getting close to the baby coming! I ended up having to have one of the nurses go look for Mike. Unfortunately I couldn't remember what color shirt he was wearing, so I had to tell her to look for someone reading a really big, bright red book. He couldn't believe that was all I could tell her, but at least it worked! I was really starting to get worried that he wouldn't make it back, but she found him and they were able to have me start pushing. I couldn't really feel anything, which did make it difficult. I also was feeling constant pain in my stomach and ribs - I guess from contractions, because it would get worse with each contraction, but never totally went away. This made it a lot harder for me, because I never felt like I got a real rest between pushes, since I was still in so much pain.

The doctor, nurses and Mike were all really patient with me, which was nice. I was so exhausted that I could barely handle the first push in each set, and usually ended the 2nd one early and could barely even get myself to start the 3rd push. They kept telling me that I just had to get his head out from under my pelvic bone, and that it was all down hill from there - unfortunately his head did not want to come out! At one point the doctor told me he thought it would only take 2 or 3 more sets of pushes - unfortunately he wasn't even close. An hour later I was still pushing, and his head still wasn't past the bone. The doctor mentioned once or twice that he could use the vacuum thing to get him out if I got too exhausted, but I was "so close" - well I didn't feel that close, and I really wanted to ask him to use the vacuum, but again, felt like too much of a wuss. I guess at this point the doctor decided to cut me to help get him out. He didn't tell me he was going to do that, and I didn't notice, but I think he scared Mike a little! But after that is apparently when we started making more progress, and soon enough I was amazed to see this seemingly huge baby being lifted up where I could see him. Afterwards he seemed so tiny, but as I saw him for the first time, he seemed so big! Mike cut the umbilical cord, despite not really wanting to, and the nurse laid him on my chest while she started cleaning him up. Then they took him to weigh and measure him while the doctor started stitching me up. Despite not knowing about the cut he had made, I figured something had happened when he was stitching me up for what seemed like forever. After they had Milo cleaned up and measured, they decided he had a little too much fluid in his lungs, more than normal, and they had nurses from the NICU come check him out. They decided to take him down to the NICU for a few hours to keep an eye on him, so they let Mike and I both take turns holding him before they took him away. My sister was also able to come in and see him for a while.

When they took Milo to the NICU, Mike went with him while the nurses helped get me into a new room. It was definitely a weird feeling to barely be able to move my legs and still be trying to get into a wheelchair! After I got settled in the new room, I was able to get something to eat and just relax until Mike and Milo could come back. We spent Monday and most of Tuesday in this hospital and were able to head home Tuesday afternoon.

The first week with Milo home kind of felt like we were just trying to survive. Not that it was so bad - he's a pretty happy baby, and sleeps a lot - but we still weren't getting a ton of sleep, I had to wake Milo up to eat, which made feeding him take a lot longer than normal. Plus for the first few days I was using a feeding tube with some formula because he seemed to get frustrated nursing and give up - and the formula/tube combo took a long time to get set up and could be frustrating to work with. We've still had some problems with nursing, but they seem to be slowly getting resolved, which is a relief.

I'm so grateful I've been able to be home with Milo. Even in the first week I can see him changing and learning new things - I wish Mike and I could both be home to experience it, but the thought of neither of us seeing these things makes me so sad, that it's hard to think about going back to work - so I'm going to try not to worry about that for a while. The most obvious thing he's been learning about is his arms and legs. After a day or two he started pulling his fists up to his face more (as well as punching himself in the face and poking himself in the eye, so we've had to constantly keep mittens on him), and then after that he started pushing them up behind his head every time he stretched. And the last couple of days he's been learning to move his legs all over and kick. This is all cute, except when he uses his hands and feet to push against me when I try to feed him, even though his mouth and head are reaching towards me. That part is frustrating! He's also grabbing my hair already, although he hasn't managed to get a good grip yet, thank goodness! He also seems to be very strong - especially in his neck. It seems like when he was just two or three days old he could lift his head out of our hands.

He also makes tons of faces. Mike and I love him so much - we can just sit and watch him forever, and be endlessly entertained. A few days ago Mike put together the vibrating bouncer chair that his family got for us, and we just about died. We put Milo in, and he wasn't so sure he liked it, so Mike turned on the vibrations, and his face went from upset to surprised to content in just a few seconds, and as soon as Mike turned the vibrations back off, Milo started to get upset again. It was adorable!

It's fun to see how entertained we are just by the fact that he's cute. Before he was born, Mike asked me to please never get all crazy about dressing him up, matching outfits, etc. Then one of the first days he was home, I had him in a onesie that someone had given us, and a hat and mittens to keep him warm, and Mike teased me saying I was already dressing him up. He didn't say much about it after that. But then yesterday I gave him his first bath, and apparently didn't have the water warm enough, because after I got him dried off, he was cold and upset. So I figured I would dress him in a little outfit - we had some newborn sized pants that I knew wouldn't fit for too much longer, and I wanted to make sure to use them. And when Mike got home, this is what he said... "Aww, he looks so cute all dressed up!" - so I don't think I have to worry about that anymore! :)

We have had a lot of fun this past week. We've also had some great friends who came to visit or bring meals, and we really appreciate it! My mom has also been so wonderful - she is always willing to do whatever she can to help, and spent a day and a half with us, just helping with advice, cleaning, and taking care of Milo so I could sleep. I finally feel like I'm starting to get used to the amount of sleep - enough to be functional. But having Milo around is so fun that most of the time I don't get anything done, I just hang out with him! Today he slept on my chest for over an hour, and I could have just laid there all day if he had stayed asleep.

Mike is such a good dad. He's had to get up so early for work every morning that I try to take care of Milo all night so that he doesn't have to get up. But he's much better at getting Milo calmed down and back to sleep than I am! He loves to just lay and cuddle Milo - I've pretty much lost my spot on the couch next to him, but he'll always make room for the baby! It's sweet, but sometimes I still want my spot back :)

This video cracks me up. Sometimes when Mike tickles Milo while he is sleeping, he'll have this major reaction, and completely sleep through it. He is a big twitcher too, but nothing seems to wake him up!

He's such a sweet boy, and we feel so incredibly lucky to have him.

Other recent happenings - Mike got a job for the school year at East Hollywood High School - it's a high school focusing on film. He's teaching special ed there, and we're hoping it's a great fit for him. He's also going to be working part time for a virtual academy, where he can do the work mostly from home, setting up classwork for online classes, monitoring and interacting with students. He also wants to stay on limited part time at Costco - he can specify that he only wants to work one day a week, and if they need him, they will schedule him. That will allow us to keep our membership, and allow him to keep a backup plan in case he ever needs to work there full time, so we're hoping it can work out without exhausting him too much.

Mike has also been working hard on some projects. I got him some woodworking equipment for his birthday, and my parents contributed by getting him an electric sander, so he has made some neat stuff for us. He used some scrap wood to make us a big spice rack and a lid holder for all our pot and pan lids. Then he made a hanging shelf for the kitchen (I'll have to take a picture, it's hard to explain). The biggest project he's been working on is a new desk. He's building a double desk, so we can set two computers up side by side, and make it easier for me to do work at home. I'm going to try doing some part time work from home while I'm still on leave, and see how it works out. He has designed all the plans for these projects himself, and they're so creative. I love seeing what he comes up with! He also has plans for a hanging chess board and a cute toy box for Milo. I'll have to post more photos soon!

Changes

2011-04-08T18:25:00.002-06:00

So I go back and forth. Should I write on this blog anymore? I don't have any real issues with it, except that I'm bad at keeping up with it, and don't really feel motivated to anymore! I guess we'll see.

Anyways. On to new things! Life has been pretty exciting the past few months. After moving, starting new jobs, etc - we decided to add a baby to the mix. And we just found out that we're having a boy! Mike is thrilled to be finally getting the kids he's wanted forever. I'm thrilled too, just nervous at the same time! Although I am very excited that we're having a boy. I won't lie, it's what I was hoping for! We had a boys name picked out that we both liked, whereas we only had a few girls names and couldn't seem to agree on any of them. And I really like the idea of all the rest of our kids having a big brother. Although I guess most people who grew up with big brothers will say that's not so great, but I don't have any experience there, so I can't say :)

It's been quite an adventure so far, and I can't really say I'm enjoying all the changes that my poor body is going through, but I know that once August gets here we will be so happy with our new little guy! It still doesn't really seem real, and while trying to start a baby registry the other night, I was completely overwhelmed with all of the "stuff" available. Trying to determine what would be actually helpful was harder than I thought. After a while I felt myself losing all common sense! So I'm sure that list will go through some refining over the next few months, but it felt good to get a start on it.

Gaining weight has always been a big fear for me. I gained weight after I got married anyways, so you would think it wouldn't be such a big deal anymore, but it still is. Getting dressed every morning feels like a constant battle with my closet to figure out what still fits! But I've already decided that once the baby is born, my goal won't be to get back to "pre baby" weight. It's going to be pre wedding weight. I feel like that will make me a lot healthier and happier! When I first started getting morning sickness (morning? more like 24/7) I was so sick all the time that I lost about 7 pounds. What a difference it made! I'm hoping I can hang on to that feeling for later, and use it to help motivate me. Although I don't think I'll be taking the same approach to losing the weight, since having no appetite and throwing up all the time are definitely not enjoyable!

So that's our biggest news for now. I'm not sure what could be bigger! We also have some fun events coming up in the next few weeks - maybe a little trip while Mike's off work for Spring Break, and then in May we'll be doing a trip to Cedar for graduation. I'm so proud of Mike and all the hard work he's done. Every semester at SUU he took more credits than I even knew was possible, and did great in his classes - I'm so excited to see him graduate! He's definitely earned it.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-02T20:04:00.002-07:00

Okay yes, I haven't disappeared off the face of the planet. Just been busy!

We have been living up north since September (I guess a little longer for Mike) and we are liking it. There are still a lot of things we both miss about Cedar though! Sometimes I miss being able to walk to the park, the gas station, etc - a lot of the time I miss the small town feel - and sometimes I just miss the one of a kind, yummy places to eat! But living up here has been fun too. There are a few parks within walking distance, although not much else. We do live really close to a lot of fun shops and restaurants though. Down the street there is a little section of old houses that have been turned into boutique type shops - my mom and I went and browsed through them a few weeks ago and had a lot of fun. We couldn't exactly find anything in our budget, but it was fun to look :)

There have also been a lot of weird differences here. Since we live in a basement apartment, we aren't exactly on an equal income level with most of the neighborhood (or anywhere near equal) - as a result, it's been interesting dealing with a ward who thinks the fact that I have to go to work every day is basically appalling. I literally had a woman say she couldn't be my visiting teaching partner because I wasn't available during the day. What a life she must lead, huh? Haha. But we are still liking it, although truthfully I don't love living beneath people, or feeling like I live in someone else's home, but we also don't really want to move until we can afford to buy a house, so we'll see how that goes.

Mike has been teaching at Jr. High in Orem - he only teaches 9th graders, which has been a bit challenging. They also have him teaching geography, something he didn't major in and wasn't certified in, so finding inspiration for fun and unique ideas has been difficult. But at the same time, he loves it, and says it's the only job he's ever had where he doesn't care how much he's paid, and doesn't feel like he's counting how many hours he puts into it. We're hoping next year he can find a good school to teach at, and one where he can teach history or special ed, something he excels at even more!

I have also been loving my job. I work for a company called Clearlink, they are a marketing company and I have been building websites for them. It was a bit of an adjustment, since the websites are more based on quickly getting across a few bits of information, instead of the detailed and time consuming sites I was used to building - but the company has been so great, the people I work with are great, and I've learned a lot. Plus they are very flexible with what hours you work, which has been great for my "too lazy to get out of bed in time" attitude! It didn't take me very long there to see why everyone around me loved their job. The company offers so many great benefits - heavily discounted gym memberships, health programs, health care (and after you've been there a year, they cover 100% of your insurance costs! Definitely looking forward to that) - quarterly profit sharing, plenty of company parties and free meals - they really try to make each employee feel important. The last lunch out that I went to was with a small group of new people from my department, a couple of people higher up in the department, and the CFO of the company - because he wanted to get to know all the new people. It was a neat experience!

It was also neat this year to be so close to my family for the holidays. Luckily Mike's parents also came into town, and we were able to see them as well! We had a great Christmas and a fairly lazy New Year, which I enjoyed.

A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to catch up with an old friend, and I jokingly said something about how Mike and I must be lazy or something - we have friends up here (okay, not a ton, but a few!) but we don't ever try to really make plans with them. Usually it goes something like this - if they call us and want to do something, we'll probably go if we can, but we almost never call them. And I feel bad about it, because I don't want any of them to think we don't like them or don't want to see them. But she made the remark that isn't it great that you don't feel the need to constantly surround yourself with other people - that Mike and I are each others best friends, and we don't feel like we have to always be in a group to have fun. Maybe I just liked what she said because it justified my lack of ambition to make plans, but I also felt like it was true, and that really is something I love. Today in church, so many people mentioned how they were glad to see 2010 go, and how they had high hopes for 2011. No offense to them, and I do hope their year goes well - but does it seem like no one ever says they had a great year and feel sorry to see it go? Well, I think we had a great year. Sure we moved twice, dealt with crazy landlords (our landlord in Cedar still never sent back our deposit, even after he said he would), spent more time apart than we ever had while Mike was in Spain - but I feel like we had a great year. We got to move together, we both have jobs that we love, we got the experience of having WAY too many pets at once (we had to give them all up when we moved, but truthfully I miss those rabbits like crazy!), we've been able to see family more often, and so many other great things. I am grateful for 2010, and I hope 2011 is even more fun!

Well, sorry for rambling on (and for no photos. For some reason I seem to have abandoned my camera, I have no recent photos at all) - I will try to get back on track with more consistent (and shorter!) posts from now on :) I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas, and a great New Year!

And the news is...

2010-08-23T18:46:00.002-06:00

Ok, I'm not sure this is exciting anymore, since most people who read my last post just went and asked me about it - and I told all of them! Ah! I suck at keeping secrets! Although I have to say I'm surprised how many people voted baby. Apparently you've never heard Mike's rant about how he thinks I never want kids. Don't worry, we will have kids someday, but that is not the news I have right now. I did however get a job in Salt Lake!

I'm very excited about it. The company seems great, they were very friendly, and as I looked into their company, they have won awards for how well they treat their employees. I start there September 13th, so I only have a few weeks to get our entire apartment packed up, find us a new apartment and everything else!

To be honest though, today was rough. I couldn't break the news last time I blogged because I didn't have an exact start date, so I hadn't given notice to my current job. So today I found out a start date, and decided I'd tell my boss today so they could have as much time as possible to start finding someone new. Well we apparently have different opinions on what good timing is, since she seemed angry, and felt like it came out of the blue and left her with no notice. It was frustrating because I told her my reasons, the things I had thought about - and she seemed so skeptical, it was like she didn't believe me. When I finished telling her how Mike was going to be there for a year (which she already knew), and how I wanted to be there with him, be near my family, and how on top of all that, the last time I went to the eye doctor he said that living in Cedar is one of the worst things for my eyes because of how dry and windy it always is. So after I tell her all these genuine reasons, she asks "Is that really why, or was it a problem with your job here?" What?!? Yes. My husband is gone, but I couldn't care less. What really made me want to move was the fact that you made me fill out some extra forms this morning... ?!? Am I missing something? Ah well. She is normally a very sweet lady, so I'm going to try and give her the benefit of the doubt and figure maybe she was having a bad day.

But overall I'm very excited. Excited to be able to be near Mike in a few weeks, to be working back at a job that actually uses my degree, be near my parents, etc. So one challenge off the list! The next will be getting out of our lease here and finding an affordable apartment up north. The best areas for us to be in in order for both of us to have equal commutes would be like Draper or Riverton. But apartments there are insane! Maybe we just lucked out in Cedar. Right now we live in a condo that has 2 huge bedrooms, a backyard, washer and dryer included along with most utilities, and we pay $500 a month. All the apartments I've seen in Draper, Riverton, or any of the other surrounding areas are at least $850 a month (some over $1000) plus all utilities for a very small apartment. Small as in "the only room our bed will fit in is the living room" kind of small. Yikes! But so far things have worked out well, and I have high hopes for things to come :)

Teaser...

2010-08-20T13:37:00.001-06:00

I have exciting news! But I can't share yet ;-) Check back in a few days!

2 years

2010-08-18T15:06:00.004-06:00

Monday was our 2 year anniversary. Mike had to stay up north for meetings, which was a bummer, but luckily we had a very fun weekend! Friday morning we drove up to Sandy, and on the way we were able to stop and see the school that Mike is going to be teaching at. It was really neat to see where he will be working starting Monday! Then Friday night we went to the Waking Ashland concert downtown. The concert was at Kilby Court, which it turns out is nothing more than an old garage turned into a stage! We had a lot of fun though. The show was a reunion show for Waking Ashland, and it also featured a few other local bands, some of which were actually pretty good (others not so much!).

Saturday afternoon we went to a carnival at my grandma's assisted living place. We had fun. And we even took photos, but after looking at them, I look so awful in all of them that I'm not posting any :) Did I mentioned I should really start working out? Yikes. But we had fun eating our fill of popcorn, cotton candy, snowcones (Okay really I'm the only one that ate and I ate all 3!), playing games and hanging out. Then that night Mike and I headed off to see Toy Story 3 and Despicable Me and the drive in. Both movies were cute, but I have so much trouble staying up late and drifted off a few times during Despicable Me. But I'm sure it's a great movie, I enjoyed what I saw :)

Then Sunday we went with Mom and Dad to the Olympic Park in Park City. They had passes to do the zip lines and the Alpine slide, so Mike and I took pictures for them, walked around, watched the skiiers practicing their jumps, and then we all went home! It was very difficult for me to leave that evening knowing Mike had to stay. I've had so many people tell me how they were in similar situations, being apart from their spouse, and they all made it, etc. But I think what it comes down to, is that I don't have to be here. It isn't necessary for us to be apart. So I'm continuing my search to find a job up there! I actually interviewed with a company Friday, and so far it seems promising, so keep your fingers crossed on that one!

The other exciting news is that Mike finished our bookshelf last week! I'm very exciting. I do have photos of it, but they didn't turn out very well, so I will have to try and take new ones. I know that he worked so hard on it, and we love it. When I talked to him Monday he was already at IKEA looking for new ideas for things he could build. We've started thinking that for Christmas each year, we'll try and do just one gift for each other, something that's more of an investment than a trinket. So saws and other woodworking stuff would be on that list, and hopefully we'll be able to make many great things in the future!

Finally updating!

2010-08-07T14:56:00.005-06:00

Ok, I know it's been forever. Really I have an excuse. I wanted to put up pictures of all the crafty type stuff I did while Mike was gone. The only problem is, most of it was half finished when he got home, so I kept waiting. But... they're still half finished, so I gave in to updating anyways. One or two small things are done, but I still want to do one big post to make me feel like I got a lot done :)

I'm guessing the crafting will pick back up soon. Next weekend we are going to Salt Lake for the weekend to see a concert, and after that Mike will stay up there to begin his internship, and will only be home on weekends. The plan right now is that hopefully I can get a job soon, we can find a place to live, and we can move. But I don't think it'll happen right away. I'm hoping it will happen soon, and we won't have to be in the long distance / major commute every weekend situation for too long. But as of right now my work thinks I am staying (technically this is the truth as of right now) and I think if I can say I gave it a chance, but hated being alone and away from Mike all the time, it'll go over smoother when I leave! Plus we would have to give some notice to our landlords and try to get out of our contract. I have applied for one job so far, one I'd really like to get, but I have a list of other ones I want to apply for as well.

Which leads me to the one big thing I have finished so far! I finally got a portfolio website up. It's nothing too amazing, but I am awful at making anything for myself and then still liking it a week later. So I had to start looking at it as a temporary solution. It needs to be improved eventuallly, but it was never going to be perfect in time for me to apply for jobs. But, if you'd like to take a look, it's here! http://www.mollycampbelldesign.com/

Other exciting news. I found a great website called Knock Off Wood (http://www.knock-offwood.com/) where the woman running the website sees furniture she likes in magazines, figures out how to make it, and posts the plans for it online. I found an awesome bookcase that I love, and Mike has been making it for me. It isn't finished yet, but the final product will look like this:

Now if only I can get our decorations to look as nice as theirs :) But I am very excited about it. We chose to do it in a dark mahogany, which we realized later doesn't match any furniture we already own, but this thing is so great I'm tempted to just start redoing all the rest of our furniture to match! Or most likely we'll leave it all as is and just continue to look like the poor starving mis-matched furniture owning newlyweds that we are! anyways. I really love the Knock Off Wood website, if anyone is thinking about building (or buying) any new furniture, I'd say take a look there first! The website usability isn't great (that's probably a generous statement) but I love the idea.

As for the rest of our lives, things are going good. We made a temporary effort to start getting in shape, eating healthier - Mike was going running during the day and then we'd walk a few miles every night. But we haven't gone walking for a few days and one of our recent shopping trips included 10 pints of Ben and Jerrys (they were on sale. It was a bad coincidence that we saw them!) so I have a feeling we need to start over. But I have loved going on walks all the time. Even though I know it doesn't actually do much to get me in better shape, I feel good for doing it, and it's nice to just walk and talk while it's still warm at night.

I can't believe how fast summer has flown by. It doesn't mean as much to me now that I'm not in school anymore. I just end up being jealous of Mike and the time he has off! But it does seem like it's gone by fast, and I can't believe how soon his internship is starting. I think I'm just in denial again! Here's hoping we get things worked out soon and don't have to spend the next 9 or 10 months apart!

Tomorrow

2010-07-01T22:52:00.008-06:00

Mike comes home tomorrow. Holy cow am I ever glad. To be completely honest, in some ways the time has seemed to go by fast. And in some ways it has seemed to never end! I'll think about something that happened, and about how it feels like it's been so long since it happened - and realize Mike wasn't there for it! I do however want to thank all of my friends and family that have been so great with helping me stay busy. Hopefully after this weekend I can take a picture of all the stuff I've been working on and post them up, I've got a few neat things to show off! But some of them are gifts for Mike's birthday, so no photos of those for now :)

Something funny happened tonight. Since Mike took our camera with him to Spain, I borrowed back an older camera that I had given to my dad. Tonight I realized that I had better get all of my photos off the memory card so I could give it back to him - and I had this feeling of urgency, because of course the photos must be very important to me. Then as I thought about it, I realized. Every single photo I took is of the bunnies. I'm not a total nut, there aren't that many photos. But those little critters are pretty darn cute! So I figured since my last few posts haven't had photos, I'd post a few, along with a photo of the rabbit cage I made, which was one my major projects this past month. It definitely took longer than anything else.

The long awaited cage. I ended up making it 3 levels to keep them all separated once the boys started getting territorial!

I ended up buying a second one of these rainbow bridge things because all of the bunnies act like it's the best thing in the world

Skiddy's favorite spot to hang out is in his litterbox. Kinda gross if you ask me!

Grisie is by far the most adventurous. She has learned to climb everything- including chicken wire, the stairs, and apparently bookshelves!

So as you can see, my life has been very exciting ;-) - However thanks to some motivation from Dawn, who always keeps her apartment incredibly immaculate, I did start spending some time cleaning every night, and our apartment looks great! Except for the man room. I'll leave that up to Mike... :) But once we get back to Cedar I should also be able to post photos of that. I'm not very good at decorating, but I do think this place has turned out pretty cute so far.

Halfway mark, and my first experience at a laundromat

2010-06-15T19:56:00.000-06:00

We are officially half way through Mike's visit to Spain. Woohoo! I'm pretty excited. I started a countdown clock on my computer at work (yes I have too much time on my hands) and started calender-ing out all the things I have left that I need or want to get done. Somehow I am SO busy every night, and yet don't seem to make any progress on anything! Probably because I spent half my night taking care of our animals. Although one of our chickens did die today, which was sad. I'm not sure what happened to him - he was fine when I checked on them at lunch, and I think fine when I got home from work (I could see him laying down out there, but his head was up, which it definitely was not later) and by the time I got home from the laundromat, he was an unmoving mass in the corner of the cage. I'm not going to lie, that was pretty gross. I'm currently very thankful for the pair of gardening gloves that are now upstairs in the washer.

So one of the things left on my to do list was to go to the laundromat to wash our comforter that is too large for normal washing machines. That was quite the experience. There are definitely some interesting people in a laundromat, and I'm not looking to repeat the adventure! Although I may have to, since their largest washing machine was out of order, so I used the slightly smaller one, but the comforter barely fit, I'm not sure how good of a wash it got.

Most of the other things left on my to do list are cleaning and organizing the apartment (insert laughing here. We'll see if that gets done) and a bunch of crafting. I bought a bunch of supplies right when Mike left, but I have stayed so busy I've hardly had time for them. So I'm going to try and accomplish a little of both goals with what is left of the night. Hopefully I can get some of the upstairs cleaned up (maybe someday the place will be cleaned up enough to post pictures!) and get started on a glass etching project I am eager to try. And of course have enough time to do some reading, and watch an episode of 24. We'll see if I can pack that all in before bedtime tonight :)

Week 1

2010-06-08T21:41:00.000-06:00

Well Mike has been gone just over a week. Of course during this week I found out that the "month" of June is actually 5 weeks. How did that happen? And why did it have to happen for the month he's going to be gone? Kind of a bummer.

I guess I have technically survived the first week. Of course it has felt like much much longer. Luckily Mike bought an international phone card and has been able to call and email basically every day. I'm sure that has helped a LOT - I'm not actually sure because I don't have anything to compare it to. What's been interesting is that I knew I would miss him. He's my best friend, and there's no one else I would rather spend time with. So I figured that would be the main issue. I'd be bored. So I founds lot of craft ideas and activities to keep me busy. I can't say that hasn't helped, but one of the things I've missed the most is just being able to talk. If an issue comes up, or something is bothering me, - I always talk to Mike. But when he calls, I don't want to waste his phone card minutes with boring stuff like that, and it's hard to seriously keep a single focus conversation going through email, especially since he usually only gets a chance to email once a day because of the huge time difference. So that is driving me crazy. I miss him for many reasons, but that has been the most noticeable, along with the fact that our apartment seems so empty and lifeless! I have been overly obsessed with the health of our rabbits (two of them have been sneezing like crazy) because they are basically the only life in our apartment. I guess I should count the guinea pig in, but he barely moves unless you pull him out of his cave - then he runs back. I felt about ready for a breakdown on Saturday because I was so tired of trying to figure everything out on my own. Luckily my mom came to my rescue and knew just what to do to help - she's pretty amazing like that!

So that's about it for the first week. My friend Dawn came over tonight to try and help me get our apartment organized - in an hour and a half we got a box emptied and a small bookshelf cleaned off. I always though cleaning our apartment took abnormally long, and I still don't know why, but at least I know it's not just me! Haha.

I have kept myself pretty busy, which was my plan - although it doesn't make the apartment seem any less empty. I'm struggling to see how I'm going to make it through these next 4 weeks. Obviously I'm not going to literally keel over and die or anything, but it just gets tougher all the time. I guess because it's such a huge blessing to be as close as we are, that there just isn't anything that can fill the gap of having him gone! The only way I wouldn't care is if we weren't close. That thought just came to me, so I'll have to remember it!

Before Mike left, he was working in the computer lab on campus one day, and when I walked in to meet him for lunch he had been telling a few people about how he was leaving. One lady looked at me and said she couldn't believe I was letting him leave. I remarked that I knew it was going to be hard, I would miss him and it would be difficult to have him gone for that long. She replied "Oh, I wouldn't care if my husband was gone. He's gone all the time anyways. I would just care that he was getting to go somewhere neat and I wasn't!" - to me that was just sad. Of course I wish we could experience such a neat trip together, but I care a lot more about him being gone than where he is!

Anyways. I guess I've rambled enough - this was just one more thing to fill my time tonight! Thanks to anyone who read the whole thing, you're either really caring or really bored! ;-)

Proud of my husband

2010-05-23T17:50:00.001-06:00

A lot has been happening lately. Most exciting and interesting is that Mike has been offered an internship to teach at a Jr. High school in Orem. The school is being nationally noticed for their high test scores, and we're really excited for him to be able to teach there. The internship will take the place of student teaching - so instead of teaching someone else's lessons for a couple of months, and being done and unemployed in the middle of a school semester, he will get to have his own classroom for an entire year. To me, it seems to be a huge honor to Mike, since the school did not want any students from UVU or BYU coming to teach there, but they offered Mike the job the first day they met him.

As exciting as this news has been, it has also meant a lot of big decisions for us - none of which have really been made yet. I just started a new job in Cedar, and we just moved into a new apartment. Do we try to get out of our lease, find a job for me up there, and move up north to brave the tremendously more expensive rent? Or do I stay here and work, while Mike stays up in Orem during the week, just to come home on weekends? I'm not really a fan of the 2nd option, but there are a lot of things that have to fall into place in order for us both to move. Which has been frustrating right now, since it's really too early for me to look for jobs, but we can't make any decisions until we know if I'll have a job or not. I'm hoping that the worst case scenario is that I'll stay here until December, when our lease is up, and that will be one less thing we have to worry about, and we can officially just move up there. However - Mike is also worried that the school won't hire him on as a full paid teacher next year, and that we'll end up moving again. Plus I'm not sure we'd want to live in Orem or Provo - since everywhere I've seen for rent wants to charge a small fortune for an old dump, since it's "conveniently close" to either UVU or BYU. Decisions, decisions!

Mike is also preparing to leave for Spain to do a study abroad program. He'll be gone for a month... I'm pretty sure the only way I've been handling this is by being in denial! But now, since he is leaving Sunday, and currently booking last minute flights to get from Madrid to Grenada, where he'll actually be studying (of course we found out we could have gotten these flights for 1/3 the cost if we had booked them a few days earlier!) - I think reality is setting in. So come Monday (and for the next 4 weeks after) I will be one bored and lonely girl!

We also recently made some new additions to our family. After buying 2 baby chicks, and then realizing they were cute, but not so fun to hold - Mike surprised me with 2 rabbits and a guinea pig. The next day we ventured to the pet store to try and find cages, and ended up with no cages, but one new rabbit! We now are the crazy rabbit people - luckily those little guys are so darn cute, and fun to watch.

Grisie

Skiddy

Loppy

I don't have a picture of the guinea pig (Piggy) but he's pretty cute too. Whenever you hold him he makes constant noises, little squeaks and purrs.

I guess that about sums up our exciting lives! I have been meaning to update our blog for a long long time - I will try and be better about it!

3 day weekends

2010-04-03T09:37:00.000-06:00

Since I have started my new job, we have had two 3 day weekends. One because of Good Friday / Easter, and one because of some construction going on at the school that was causing them to shut the electricity off. This weekend we are being lazy and barely leaving the house, but a couple weeks ago we made a weekend trip to Carlsbad Caverns. It was about a 14 hour drive, way too long for a weekend trip, but we had a blast! We did sleep the first night in the car though, so that explains the way I look in all the pictures...

The path down into the caves

After we left the caves, we decided we would drive to Albuqerque and stay the night there so that our drive the next morning wouldn't be as long. Unforunately we got stuck in an awful snow storm. We found out the roads were so slick the semi trucks couldn't get up the hills, so everyone behind them was stuck. We were at a stand still so long that Mike decided to get out and make a snowman!

On the way home we also stopped at the National Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. There was a lot of neat stuff to see, we went on a couple short hikes and ended up spending so much time there that we didn't have time to stop at any of the other places we had planned!

The week after that was spring break for Mike, which was really nice. He took care of a bunch of stuff around the house that we had been putting off forever, and he made lunch most days! The one day I came home and he wasn't there, he told me to look in the fridge, and I found this, which totally made my day!

"I luff you" spelled out in cookie dough

New Job

2010-03-08T17:33:00.001-07:00

So today was my first day at my new job - so far so good!

I am working at SUU in the Provost's office, which I think will be a good job. I am an Administrative Assistant, but I help a lot with newletters, brochures, the catalog and the website, so there is still some design aspect to it, which is nice!

Everyone in the office seems really nice, and I have my own little office which is cool. Mike came in today and set up an origami jungle on the ledge under the window, so I'll have to take a picture of it :)

Other than that, it wasn't the most exciting first day! It was pretty slow - the girl who had the position before me has already started her job elsewhere on campus so I had to try and learn everything by reading a binder full of information that doesn't make a lot of sense yet, but hopefully will soon.

The rest of our lives have been good too - we got a Beta fish last week, his name is Almost Fishy, or Alfie for short. I've never thought of fish as being an animal with much personality, but he likes to hide under the plastic rocks at the bottom of his tank, which is pretty funny. Saturday night we discovered the best pizza place in Cedar (and probably some of the best pizza I've ever had) so don't be surprised if we start gaining massive amounts of weight - we're probably having pizza for dinner again tonight! We also bought a ton of cactus plants and flower bulbs for our apartment, and it has been really fun to see them start to grow! Something else I'll have to take pictures of later :)

Goals

2010-01-29T15:27:00.001-07:00

So, I may be worrying about this a little too early but I have been making a list of things to do while Mike is gone. Things that I want to do or should do but never get done because I'd rather just hang out with him. I realize some of these are weird or kind of pathetic (especially the "goals" aimed towards watching TV!) but I wanted to write them down now so I don't forget!

Make fish tacos (The only kind of fish I really like, and coincidentally the only kind Mike really doesn't like)
Work on my cross stitch that's been sitting there, untouched for months.
Learn javascript (Apparently I lucked out getting the job I have without knowing it. Looking for a new job has left me realizing I'm never going to find one until I learn it!)
Watch every season of Gilmore girls. I don't really know why I want to do this. I guess just because I like the show but have only really seen one or two seasons. It would be much easier if I owned them, but thank goodness you can find just about anything online.
Watch every season of Lost. Or at least seasons 3 and 4. I fell asleep during a lot of the episodes in 3 and 4, so by the end of season 4 I was thoroughly confused about a few things. We finally have season 5 on Netflix, but I want to rewatch at least 3 and 4 first so I understand what's going on.
Work on making more books. Or finishing all the ones I've started...
Make more picture frames. Just because their fun and quick enough that I don't lose interest and never finish them.
Maybe watch the new season of 24.... I'm iffy on this one. I've always waited for them to come out on DVD. But the seasons are expensive and I only watch them once, so watching online might be a better alternative.

I also keep thinking about the idea of redecorating some of our living room since it's got stuff everywhere and it's cluttered... but that probably won't happen. I just keep telling myself we'll do a better job decorating in the next place we live!

If you think of any more ideas for me, feel free to send them my way! :)

p.s. - what are the chances I'll actually do these things, instead of just reading books or watching movies every night? For most of them... slim to none. But at least I'll try!

Catching Up - Again!

2010-01-22T21:42:00.000-07:00

Yet another catch up post! At least I've been busy enough to say I haven't had time :) Well our trip to Argentina was lots of fun - I won't write a lot about it, even though with my terrible memory I probably should before I forget everything!

We did a lot of great things there, went to the zoo, Japanese gardens, the Presidential Palace, saw a lot of the city (did a LOT of walking!), rode in old subway cars from 1920 that were all wooden inside - and of course did a lot of eating and napping!

I'm not a huge fan of photo collages, but I didn't want to make a huge post with all the photos, so I made one collage slideshow type thing with a few photos in it.

Make a Smilebox collage

One of the hardest parts was the flights. Flying standby can be really nice, we got much cheaper tickets and got to fly business class from Atlanta to Argentina and back. But we never knew if we were going to get on the flight, which was awful! Mom and Dad missed the first flight out, luckily they got on the next day. And we all almost missed our flight back home because of the terrible airport setup in Argentina. By the time we got on the plane, we were all so excited just to be going home! And then of course we had a horrible time getting back from Atlanta to Salt Lake. We ended up flying to Vegas and finally getting on the 2nd flight out of Vegas. We spent more then 24 hours straight either on airplanes or in airports.

After getting back, we stayed in Salt Lake for a few days and spent Christmas with my family. It was nice to be there and spend more time with them. A couple days after Christmas we headed back to Cedar and spent the rest of our break relaxing at home!

Since we've been back, we've been trying our hand at New Years resolutions - mostly just eating healthier and exercising, trying to lose weight! I think it's been working, but I'm too scared to step on a scale and find out! It's been an interesting change though. We ate all of our crappy boxed, frozen pre made food to get it out of the house and have been buying fresh food and cooking most nights. It's been an interesting experience, since not all our meals turn out that well, and a couple of nights ago we were basically out of anything fresh and and we ended up eating what can only really be described as scrambled omelettes for dinner.

We've also had to make some big decisions lately. Mike has decided to spend a month in Spain this summer doing study abroad. It will be good in the long run, because it will make it so he finishes school a semester early, and will be student teaching this fall. But since we're one of those weird couple who's only spent one or two days apart the entire time we've known each other, I'm not too excited about him being gone! I'm handling it better than I was, but I think it might just be because I'm not thinking about it! But I am determined to try and stay busy while he's gone, so I'm looking for new craft ideas I can try, and I'll also be looking for more work to do while he's gone, so if you know anyone who needs anything designed for them, let me know! Work is way better at distracting me than crafting.

So because Mike will be finishing up early, we've been trying to decide where to move when he's done student teaching. It's a tough decision because he'll finish student teaching in the middle of the school year, so our best hope might be to try and find a school that will hire him between the semesters. We were originally thinking we wanted to move to Colorado, but he called a school district there and they said the entire state has had such severe budget cuts, they won't be hiring many people. So now we are thinking about Washington or maybe North Carolina. Both sound like good options to me, so if anyone has any experience living in either area, we'd love to hear it! We're also open to suggestions, since nothing's been decided and we don't really have too many reasons behind picking the states we did.

And just as a last note - to you guys who read into my last post enough to think I was hinting there might be more than 2 people in our family sometime this year, that wasn't really what I was trying to say. However, Mike is pretty baby crazy and he brings it up all the time, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see!

Thanksgiving Break

2009-12-10T16:55:00.000-07:00

We are leaving tomorrow night to drive to Salt Lake so we can fly out Saturday morning to Argentina (we had a small change of plans, but the new trip is going to be really fun!). I have about 2 dozen things to get done tonight and no time to do them, but I figured I better update our blog real quick about Thanksgiving time so that when we come back I can write about our trip!

Thanksgiving was fantastic, it was a much needed break from work! And we had a great time. We spent a ton of time shopping, which was exhausting, but we found some great deals on stuff which was nice!

Dinner on Thanksgiving was a little more packed than usual - we had a couple extra guests, but it was fun!

My sweet parents who cooked SO much food!

After eating so much it hurt, going back for 2nds, and being in pain again, I spent most of the night trying to find places I could lay down and sleep, but it was still a fun night!

Then Friday was my birthday (#25 - yikes, I'm getting too old!) and I decided I really wanted to go to the zoo. So we headed up there Friday morning. It was freezing, but we had a great time! Things had changed a long time since the last time I was there, and for the most part I think the changes were for the worst. A bunch of animals were gone, which was a big disappointment. I also remember when I was little, there was an area of the playground kind of hidden back in the forest, it had little hiking trails and giant birds nests on springs you could rock back and forth on, and a big tree slide - that was all gone! The petting zoo was also gone, along with the flamingo pond.

It's a tradition to get a picture drinking from the Lion fountains, and they were all covered up!

One of the new additions, a giant elephant that made noises and music

My favorite photo of the day :)

Payback for the turtle picture...

After the zoo Mike and I headed off to a Thanksgiving get together with his old mission president - and I was surprised we actually had a really good time! It was fun to get to know some of the former missionaries and their wives.

Later that night we went back home and had pizza and relaxed for maybe half an hour before we decided to do a little more shopping! By the time we headed home Sunday I was exhausted and glad to get back to Cedar, but we definitely had a great time!

I thought about sending out Christmas cards this year - we didn't do it last year because we had spent so much money just sending out wedding invitations and thank you cards - and then this year I couldn't decide if it was weird to send out Christmas cards when it's just the 2 of us. So for this year I think I'm just going to post our card on here, and plan to send one out next year! Happy Holidays everyone!

Catch up

2009-11-21T12:04:00.000-07:00

Not a lot has been going on lately, so there hasn't been too much to write about! I have been starting to panic a little about finding Christmas presents - we'll be gone from December 12 to the 22nd in Peru, so all my Christmas shopping definitely needs to be done before we leave, and I am very short on ideas! Any good ideas anyone can think of for what I can get Mike are welcome! Just don't say books... I know he'd love any book but we are totally, 100% out of room for them. He's started stacking them up on the bookshelves in front of the books already on the shelves!

Other than that, I am so excited for Thanksgiving break next week. 3 days off work sounds like heaven to me! I've been so burned out I've been just living for the weekends and wishing for every week to go by fast. I'm hoping a good break will help!

That's about all that's going on! I hope everyone has a great thanksgiving!

Wedding Video

2009-10-02T17:12:00.000-06:00

Mike found our wedding video on his computer the other night, so we decided it would be fun to post on here. Enjoy!

You can see a larger version here - http://s38.photobucket.com/albums/e146/molls2714/?action=view¤t=Slideshow.flv

One Year!

2009-08-20T16:49:00.000-06:00

Sunday was our one year anniversary - yay! This year really did go by fast, it makes me a little scared for how fast our entire lives will go by!

We debated between quite a few things to do for the weekend, originally we thought about going to Arches on Friday and then Mesa Verde on Saturday, but it was going to be way too much driving. Then we thought about Bryce Canyon, especially since they were having free entrance on Saturday - in the end Mike ended up secretly changing our plans and setting up some fun stuff for us to do, and things that we can do as a tradition every year!

Friday afternoon he left - supposedly to go get food for camping that night, but he actually went out hiking and set up a picnic/campfire spot for us to hike to that night. I wish I had a picture of the mountain side he hiked up to get to the spot because it was crazy! We took a different route that night, but I am not much of a hiker and it took us forever! It was a lot of fun though, we made a fire and ate sub sandwiches and smores!

On top of not being much of a hiker, I'm incredibly out of shape and wasn't making it through the hike well, so there were parts where Mike literally pushed me up the hill to keep me going - I'm sure I'll never live that down!

The nice thing about having our picnic so close to home was that we were able to go home that night and get cleaned up so we didn't have to smell like campfire the rest of the weekend!

Then Saturday afternoon we went bowling, which I loved! I hadn't been bowling in so long, and I kicked Mike's butt at one of the games! And lost miserably at the other... lol

After bowling we headed out to Parowan - Mike had made us reservations at a little Bed and Breakfast. Last year my parents friends Steve and Becky gave us the awesome gift of a night at the Castle Inn in Sandy, and we had a blast. So we thought it would be fun to do again this year, closer to Cedar. The B&B in Parowan wasn't quite the same, but we still had fun!

We stayed in the "Cowboy Room" and they actually had a couple cats and dogs living on the property. The dogs were fun, but I'm not a fan of cats!

We spent some of our time there relaxing and watching a movie in the loft, and we also went out to Parowan Gap to see the petroglyphs, which was neat! It was nice to spend so much time relaxing and reading, instead of wearing ourselves out driving everywhere! We felt like we were really far away from Cedar, but then Sunday it was only a 15 minute drive home!

I've always wondered why so many people like to say that the first year of marriage is the hardest, and to be honest, I'm not sure it was or ever will be. We've always gotten along great and I'm grateful for that! Here's keeping my fingers crossed for many many more great years! :)

Mike's Birthday and more

2009-07-01T19:38:00.001-06:00

Well I finally have something interesting to write about and new pictures!

First off Mike had been working really hard to dig a BBQ area into the hill behind our apartment. Memorial Day Jodi and her friends were coming through Cedar on their way back to Salt Lake so we told them we'd have them over for a BBQ - we just had to finish digging it! So Mike and I spent a while out there Monday morning finishing it up, and it turned out great!

The view from the BBQ area

The bench we dug out of the hill - just to the right of this is a ledge for the grill, and then a fire pit

It was a lot of fun! A little cold, since it started raining in the afternoon and the weather was still cool by the time we started cooking, but we still had fun!

Then last week was Mike's birthday - we were able to celebrate a few days before with my family while they were in St. George.

Mike also chose that night to have my dye his hair - he's promised to cut it before family pictures next month, so we figured since we had a box of black dye laying around, we'd see what it looked like, and then it'd have time to grow out enough that when he cuts it all the black will be gone.

Before

During - Yikes!

After

I'll admit that I was a little scared during the process, it looked so dark! But it looked fine once the dye was out - we decided not to let it sit in the full time, just in case, so now it's actually fading pretty fast!

Then Thursday for Mike's actual birthday, I decided to "fix" him a fancy dinner - I didn't actually have time to cook anything, so I set up our table to look all nice and just picked up sushi! He loves sushi but I hate it, so he hardly ever eats it, so I figured this would be a nice treat for him.

Cindy I'm posting this photo for you, so you can see that we have used our China, like I promised you I would! :)

For one of Mike's gifts, I got him tickets to see Phantom of the Opera in Vegas - I know it sounds weird, but it's something he's been talking about for a long time. I didn't know anything about it - I'd never seen the play, or the movie, or read the book. I ended up watching the movie the next night just so I would know the story line! So Saturday we drove down to Vegas to see the show, and it was great! The theater is build just for that show, which makes it so cool.

The "audience" that's built into the theater

The chandelier - it starts out in pieces and then slides together and rises to the ceiling as the show starts - then it crashes back down into the audience during the play

The stage area

We had a lot of fun, even though we got back really really late that night!

This weekend we are off to Vegas again (3rd weekend in a row for me. I'm tired of it!) for Jeff Dunham, which should be awesome! I'm really excited.

Catching Up

2009-05-06T19:37:00.000-06:00

Not a lot has been happening lately, so I don't have too much to write about, but I thought I'd post a quick list of what we've been up to!

Mike finished school last week, and it has been really nice to have him home this whole week! Especially since he's been cooking breakfast and lunch for me every day - what a good guy! Today he even brought me breakfast while I was still in bed, AND made fajitas for lunch, which were excellent!

We've both been supposedly trying to lose weight for a while now, but apparently just thinking about, doesn't do the trick. Go figure. So Mike decided to make a goal to not eat after 6:00 in the evening, and he asked me to help him out by making sure he stuck with it. I decided the best way to support him was to do it along with him. The first few nights felt like torture, but we've found that we go to bed earlier so we can sleep through the urges to eat, and in the first 3 days I lost 6 pounds and he lost 7 - so we'll see how it goes when we weigh ourselves again tomorrow!

I haven't gotten my hair cut (or dyed) since August. It needs some help bad. I'm still thinking about cutting it shorter so any suggestions are welcome.

Mike starts back to work at Costco on Monday - Boo. I'm worried he'll have a miserable summer because he got so sick of working there before - and he'll probably stay at least one or two nights a week in St. George without me, which I hate!

I've been lucky enough to have quite a bit of freelance work coming in, which has been fun, but at least a few one or two days a week I'll work from 9 in the morning until 11 at night, with maybe an hour or two break. It's getting old but at the same time I love having project that are different.

We're going to see Brian Regan at Tuachan on Thursday. I'm excited!

Well I think that's about it - other than that I'm just looking forward to Memorial Day for a day off work! :)

Awesome Weekend

2009-04-14T19:11:00.001-06:00

So, after deciding to try and get a new blog template set up, setting it up and then trying to modify it (it didn't have a background color behind the text. I hate that! Too hard to read.), then considering making my own background image, not succeeding, going back to editing the template, accidentally deleting all the stuff on the sidebar, getting it back (Thank you Google Cache!) and then eventually getting everything set up, I am FINALLY ready to write about this past weekend! Whew! Of course now all our pictures are semi-transparent, but we're just going to ignore that since I don't know how to fix it!

Well Mike and I had been talking about doing a weekend trip sometime, but it kept getting pushed aside because of work or homework or whatever. Then when he said he wanted to go see Jeff Dunham, I figured he'd looked into a weekend away, and decided to plan it for July. I suggested we still do something last weekend, since he had school off for Easter, and he said we could probably go to St. George. So I worked some extra hours during the week so I could leave early on Friday, I was so excited to take a break! Even just a weekend in St. George sounded awesome, I didn't care what we did, as long as it was a weekend away from work and school and worrying about cleaning the apartment.

So Friday afternoon we get in the car to leave and Mike tells me to get some papers for him out of his backpack. I pull everything out and it turns out he had planned an awesome weekend away for us, with tons of fun stuff to do!

First we went out to dinner Friday night in St. George... Texas Roadhouse so of course we stuffed ourselves into sickness! Then we had tickets to see Jim Brickman at Tuacahn, and it was really great! The only musical concerts I have been to like that before have been Jon Schmidt concerts, which I have always loved, so I was interested to see how this one would compare! Jim Brickman didn't have as entertaining of a personality, but his music was still nice. Mike and I both said our favorite song was Escape.

One of the other things that was cool about the concert was that he had a guy named Tracy Silverman come play with him, and he played the Electric Violin, which despite how it sounds, was really cool! I found this video on YouTube - but it's actually from the same concert that we were at.

Not the most attractive picture!

We didn't have any real cameras, only our phones, so this is the best picture I have!

They also had a girl singing on some of the songs, and she was from northern Utah, and she did a really great job! We were really impressed.

Then Saturday morning we got up semi-early (We tried to get up early. Didn't make it!) and headed off to Valley of Fire. It was so cool to see some of the petroglyphs (is that the right word? I already forgot) and learn some of the interesting history that went with the park.

Mike riding the "wave" of rock

You have no idea what we went through to get this picture! Mike had himself propped up there the whole time waiting while I got the camera set up, the timer set up, and then found out the memory card was full. Deleted a picture, got it all set up again, memory card still full. Finally we got the picture!

We spent most of the day in Valley of Fire, which was awesome, except for the rain! After a while I was soaked, and cold, and not appreciating Mike's enthusiasm for wanting to stop at every point on the map! But all in all I'm glad we did see everything, it was too neat to miss out on!

After Valley of Fire we headed to Hoover Dam. This was also really cool, but man do they ever make their money off the tourists! You have to pay for the tours, $30 for the long tour, $11 for the short tour. And if you don't want to take a tour? $8 just to get in the visitors center. Is that even allowed? Sheesh.

Anyways - it was still really interesting. We got to go down into the power plant and see the turbines, and learn a lot about the history behind the dam and all the resources and time it took to build it.

Then that night we went into Las Vegas and went and saw Everclear in concert. Neither of us are exactly die-hard fans, I think I knew 3 songs, but it was still fun, and something we had fun doing together!

After that we just slept in Sunday morning and headed back to Cedar! It was so nice to have a weekend away, I loved it!

Full of Surprises

2009-04-08T18:58:00.000-06:00

So I've gotten pretty used to not having anything to write about, and not having anything exciting going on. We're pretty simple, we pretty much do the same thing every night, so it doesn't leave much to write about! Which is ironic since just a few months ago I was venting to Mike about how whenever I try and get in touch with one of my friends, and ask her what's new, or what's been going on, she always says "Nothing". And it bugged me because I said no matter how boring we'd been, I felt like I could always at least come up with one semi-interesting thing to say! Not so much any more :)

But then Mike has been pulling out surprises all over the place lately! We've been wanting to do a little trip or something, just go away for a weekend, so he said we could probably go somewhere this weekend, I think he has some school off for Easter or something. Then he came home the other night and said as he was looking into something to do this weekend, he found out Jeff Dunham is doing a show in Vegas on the 4th of July, so we're going to go to that! I'm really excited - we haven't bought the tickets yet, we're trying to figure out how to make it work since Mike will be working back at Costco by then, and he'll definitely be scheduled to work on the 4th. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Because of the cost of the tickets, we decided it would be better to do something small this weekend, so we're planning on going to St. George and probably going to Zions, which should be fun!

Then last night, after I got done with work I noticed that there was something sitting on my pillow, and when I went over to look at it, Mike had bought tickets for us to go see Brian Regan in St. George next month! I'm pretty excited about that one too! :)

So it looks like hopefully in the next couple months I should actually have some stories to tell and pictures to show! Yay!

Sickness

2009-04-04T21:50:00.000-06:00

Yep - I've had what I think is the flu this past week, and man have I been just a bundle of fun! I'm slowly starting to feel better, but it has been such a miserable week! I'm falling way behind on all the freelance projects I have right now because I start getting lightheaded and dizzy if I'm standing or sitting up too long, which has made it difficult to get things done! Yuck! Thursday was definitely the worst, and the only day I took off work, but I think my decision to work Friday was a bad one - I was so sick the whole day, by 5:00 I just gave up, clocked out and went to bed and fell asleep for almost 2 hours!

But on the other hand, there actually has been some fun stuff going on the past few weeks. We got to go up north and spend a weekend with my family a few weeks ago, and then the next weekend my parents and cousins were down south, so we all met up for dinner in St. George. It's been good to see people, sometimes I feel like I don't hear about a lot of stuff that's going on in my family because I don't live that close to them. My parents were in St. George again this weekend, and we had to go down there for Mike to clear up something on his records at Costco, so we got to stop by the house and see them for a while today too, which was nice.

I still feel like the things I'm saying aren't quite making sense, so if this post seems really weird and random, that's why. :)

We also talked to my parents today about the possibility of taking a trip with them in a couple years - but we have to decide where! I think Spain sounds really fun, but I also like the idea of going to Germany, or Switzerland, or pretty much anywhere! I definitely think somewhere in Europe sounds fun (Mike's voting for somewhere in South America) - but if anyone has any good suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Why We're So Boring

2009-02-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

We never do much anymore! At least not anything worth blogging about. School has been a lot harder on Mike this semester, so he always has lots of homework to do, and he's been working out a lot trying to get in shape (I claim I'm also trying to lose weight, but really all I do is eat a little less and do a light workout once or twice a week. If that!) so by the time he gets home, we're lucky if we squeeze in time to watch a movie or episode of CSI together (our latest show we've gotten into) and then he gets a little homework done and the whole night's gone!

I've been so busy with work that the days just fly by. I didn't actually realize today was Thursday until sometime this afternoon - I really thought it was Wednesday. I'm not sure why things have been so crazy, but normally by the end of the day I probably 90% of my work done or more. The last two weeks, I'm luckily if I finish the day with less than 20 emails in my inbox.

But yeah - that's why we don't blog anymore. I don't have much to write about! It's snowy and yucky and I don't really want to go outside, so I'm good with staying home every night!

I'm also just getting around to getting my name changed on everything - I got a new social security card a month or two ago, but I already can't find it. I don't know what it is about me and those cards, I always lose them! It's ok though. It's got to be in the house somewhere. Anyways. So I went to the DMV today to get a new drivers license, and I thought they could just use the same picture I had on my last license. Turns out they have a new rule, if the picture's over a year old you have to get a new one. What a mess! I was not at all presentable. I don't think I even had makeup on. And it doesn't expire for almost two years.... nice.

MSN Video

2009-01-12T11:36:00.001-07:00

So we saw this video the other day and thought it was really cool - thought I'd post it up here for anyone who's interested! It's about wireless electricity - how TVs, cell phones, laptops, even stuff like kitchen appliances can be powered without any cords. You have to ignore the trashy looking girls in the picture... they really have no relevance and are in the clip for about 5 seconds.

CES 2009 -- Wireless electricity

Camping

2009-01-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

So to celebrate both of us having some time off, we decided we'd do some kind of trip the weekend after New Years - at first we were planning on going to Vegas for a night, but we decided that it would cost way too much to see any of the shows that were actually worth seeing, so we ended up going camping instead. We were both really excited - we got a lot of great camping stuff as wedding gifts but never had time to go - and since we'd heard it wasn't that cold right now in Zion's, we figured it'd be a good place to go.

Well... it probably wasn't cold in Zion's. Until we got there. We froze!!! I should have taken the hint when I noticed that all the other people camping in the camp site were hardcore campers with all their professional gear and whatnot.

At first it wasn't bad - as you can see, Mike doesn't even have a jacket on as he's setting up the tent. And that night wasn't even bad either while we were sitting by the fire. But once we got in the tent, we realized how cold it was - and then it started to rain, which didn't help! We originally had 2 sleeping bags zipped together, but we decided that was too cold, so we tried fitting both of us into one sleeping bag - a little too snug! We finally ended up getting a few fleece blankets out of the car to put a little more padding between us and the ground, but it was still not a very comfortable night! Although we did have an awesome sunset.
So once it started to rain, I made a trip out to grab the camera we'd left on the table, another trip to get our shoes from in front of the tent, and Mike made a trip to the car to get blankets, we were both exhausted, freezing, and unwilling to go pack up the rest of the stuff we'd left out in the rain. I honestly expected to wake up that morning to everything soaking wet - my plan was to wrap it all up in some blankets, throw it in the car and get out of there - I was SO tired of being cold! But somehow when we woke up, we found that both our firewood and the paper we brought as kindling had somehow been covered by things that had blown on top of them - I think we were the only people in the campsite who managed to get a fire going that morning, and I'm so grateful we did!

After getting most of camp packed up, we went driving around Zions to see the tunnel, and then braved the weather to go on the Overlook hike.
Despite the near sleepless night, we still had fun, I just don't think we'll do any more camping in the winter!

One other thing happened this past weekend - Mike and I realized it's been a year since we met. We met on one of our friend's birthday - which makes it easier to remember! I know I'll be saying the same thing on our one year anniversary - but man, does time go by fast! So I thought in honor of that I'd post one of the pictures from when we first started hanging out :)

Christmas Time

2008-12-29T16:31:00.000-07:00

We were able to go spend this past week with Mike's family in California - it was a lot of fun, but a HUGE change from what I'm used to at Christmas time! For as long as I can remember, Christmas was barely sleeping until 8:00, then going into Mom & Dads room to pester them until they got up so we could go downstairs and open gifts - I was nothing short of shocked this year when we were still laying around at 10:00 waiting for the little kids to wake up! I guess they're still too little to understand what's going on, but it was still a surprise! Then of course there was the huge difference of having almost 30 people around all day for Christmas, where I've always been used to my little family of 4 :) It was fun to be around little kids and see they react to everything going on, and it was a good trip!

One of the neatest thing in my opinion was being able to get a picture of the entire family - although since Jen is pregnant, the picture will be out of date in just a couple months!

It was fun to be able to spend time with everyone - but at the same time I'm glad to be home! We drove back yesterday after spending Saturday in San Francisco with some of the family.

I also have to say - one of my favorite things this Christmas (besides our sad little fake tree. I didn't take a picture. It was just too sad) was keeping up the family tradition of hanging up Christmas cards on the back of the front door. I'm not sure why this is such a big deal to me, but I remember always wanting to be the first one home from school so I could see how many new Christmas cards we got, and choose which ones I wanted to hang up on the door. Of course since we were gone all last week, most of the cards we received got here while we were gone - but of course I was enough of a dork to still hang them all up today, mostly just so I could take this picture.

Hopefully next year we will be putting out cards of our own - but after sending out wedding invitations and thank you cards this year, I just couldn't stand the thought of buying any more stamps! Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

Update

2008-12-17T17:34:00.000-07:00

Okay, Cindy was right... I haven't updated our blog in just about forever. Sorry - I've been busy during the day, which is definitely a new thing for me! I don't think I've ever updated this thing at home before - it used to be all I had to do at work to keep me entertained!

Things have died down a little, one of the companies I've been working for is kind of hit and miss on whether or not they have work for me, which is ok - I wasn't really liking working 10 or 12 hour days! The other job is going well - considering I basically knew nothing about putting together websites when I started, I feel like I've learned a ton, although I'm still struggling a little to keep up with their pace! But I'm liking it a lot. I like working at home - I thought it would be hard because I get all cabin-feverish when I stay home all weekend or anything, but it's been fine. I like my routine of rolling out of bed, fixing some hot chocolate, and staying in my pajamas until about noon (or lately, until about 5. Work's been busy!).

This week has been really nice because Mike's off school and has been able to help me out a little bit with laundry and stuff like that, which has been great!

Other than that, not much else has happened lately! We went up north for Thanksgiving to spend some time with my family, and went and took family pictures for the Christmas cards.

Lately things have just been relaxed, which has been nice. The apartment's looking better than it ever has... one of these days I might even get around to taking pictures! And we've been able to just spending time hanging out or inviting friends over - we've kind of gotten back into playing card games, which I love!

Saturday we're leaving to go spend Christmas in California with Mike's family - we're planning on staying for 2 weeks, so it should be a lot of fun! I guess I'll just be working the most of the time, but it'll still be nice to be there.

Hopefully I'll have something more exciting to write about someday, but right now I'm just enjoying life being mellow! :)

New Job

2008-11-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

Well I definitely want to say thank you so much to all you guys - luckily I only went a week without a job, but it was still kind of scary and everyone was so great to cheer me on and help me look on the bright side!

Yesterday one of my friends offered to see if her brother's web design company was hiring, and it turns out they were in desperate need of help - so they hired me right away, and so far it's working out really nice because I'm able to work from home and make more than I was before. I also might be doing some work for another company in the next few weeks, depending on how well their business takes off. Right now things are going great - it is a little weird when Mike comes home at 2 or 3 in the afternoon and I can't hang out with him, I have to keep working! AND our office is the biggest disaster known to mankind - it's been more of a storage room than an office, so anytime I've needed to find anything the last two days I end up tossing piles of stuff around trying to find it - that's going to have to change soon! Hopefully I can get it cleaned up this weekend!

Right now I can't believe how relieved and lucky I feel. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that if the second company comes through, Mike might be able to quit his job at Costco, which I know he has really been wanting to do. We had just started feeling like it might really be the best thing for him to do, and 2 days later I found out I didn't have a job anymore!

Well I just wanted to share the good news really quick - thank you again to everyone! :)

Staying Home

2008-11-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

So staying home because you have a day off work is fun. Staying home because you called in sick and aren't too sick (or not really so sick at all) is also fun. Staying home because your boss decided he didn't have time to deal with the company you work for and find work for you to do, as it turns out, is not so fun. My boss had told me there was a chance he'd be shutting down the company, he's been spending most of his time in California running one of his client's companies, and he's going to do that for the next year, but he kept saying he was going to try and keep our company open. He told me that every day for almost a week - then Wednesday he had me busy all day working on everything he could find, and as soon as it was all done he said oh by the way we're going to have to let you go. I'm a little bitter to say the least - he was very misleading about his intentions to keep the company open, and he flat out told me that he'd had people approach him about design work they needed done, but he just didn't feel like making new contacts - in spite of the fact that none of the current clients had any money to spend on design work. Basically I shouldn't have expected more from him - he's always been an idiot, and if there were lots of jobs out there, I would have been excited - I've hated that job for a while now. But there isn't much out there! Trust me. I've been looking for like 4 months and only applied for 3 jobs - of course at the time I was deciding what was worth quitting my current job for. Now I'm just looking for anything that will get us by! BUT thanks to the rules of unemployment insurance, I'm also still being careful what jobs I apply for (right now. Give it a week or two and I'll be applying for anything!) because if I turn down a single job offer, I don't qualify for unemployment anymore. I see their logic behind that but at the same time it really kind of sucks!

So, now I have quite a bit of time that I've been able to devote to job hunting, but I haven't yet gone out and physically walked into places and asked if they're hiring - I mostly just look online. I know actually visiting places could be a big help - so I'm going to start doing that soon. I do have one or two prospects I'm keeping my fingers crossed for, but basically I'm not really qualified for either of them!

But on the bright side, I've had the time I've been wanting to work on getting the house organized, and Mike and I have been able to spend a lot more time together - sometimes when I get bored I go hang out with him at work, and next weekend he only has to work Friday, so we get to spend a Saturday together, which hasn't really happened in a long time! So far our big plans include going to see a movie and making cookies... but if it were warmer we'd totally be hiking or camping or something! Mike's been really great about it too - I know he's got to be as anxious (if not more anxious) for me to find a job, but he doesn't say much about it - instead he gave me some of my birthday presents a little early to try and cheer me up and give me something to do! So now we spend every night trying to beat each other at Mario Kart :) I guess there's an upside to almost any situation!

Life as of late...

2008-10-29T09:52:00.000-06:00

So I have been wanting to post for a while - but my crazy need to try and be organized side was taking over, so I felt like I couldn't post until I posted the photo post that Jenny had tagged me to do - and I was never at home to get the picture! So I kept waiting to post... haha :)

Life has been so busy lately - not that that's much of a change! Two weekends ago my mom came down to St. George for the weekend - she had gotten tickets for her and my dad to see Les Mis, but then he had to do inventory at work and couldn't go, so I said I'd go with her - and while she was there she was a HUGE help in throwing a baby shower for my friend Julie.

I don't know what I would have done without her help! I think I have a tendancy to just not think things through, and if my mom hadn't been there I would have had no decorations, no real plans, would have had people sitting on the lovesac instead of chairs, and probably wouldn't have provided much food! My mom is amazing and pulling things together!

Also recently I convinced Mike that we should go up the canyon to take pictures with the fall leaves - unfortunately we went a little too early and it was hard to find any good leaves! We ended up just going to the park and walking up the walking trail - but it was still fun to spend time outside before the weather gets too cold!

Last of all, last night we were able to go carve pumpkins with our neighbors Analee & Josh - and it was so much fun! I had been wanting to do that, but figured it wouldn't be as much fun if it was just the 2 of us. Mike had been feeling sick that morning and decided his pumpkin should reflect that... I started out with a pattern and gave up after about 10 minutes, so I had to make the beginnings of what had been a spider/spider web work as a face. Let's just say I've made better pumpkins!

Mystery Bug

2008-10-29T09:47:00.000-06:00

So this past weekend in St. George I was unloading stuff from the car, and as I got the last load I noticed it felt like I was stepping on something - I looked down and at first I almost thought it was a packing peanut or something like that - then I realized it was moving! It was some kind of weird worm/caterpillar type thing - but I'd never seen anything so weird looking! At least not outside of a museum or something. So I had to take pictures (and post them) because it just was so interesting looking!

Photo Tag

2008-10-29T09:41:00.000-06:00

Okay I guess since Jen did the post I tagged her for, I should do this one! The rules: Go to your photos- post the picture that is the 4th picture in the 4th album!

This is from our first hike up Kanarraville Falls - apparently the hike that Mike was using to scope out a good spot to propose, but it took us so long to get going in the morning that we didn't get very far up the hike - although that gave him a good reason to suggest going back! :)

8 things...

2008-10-16T10:27:00.000-06:00

I was tagged on this one, and it looked fun!

8 TV Shows I Love to Watch
1. The Office
2. Heroes
3. Friends
4. House
5. 24
6. Law & Order SVU
7. Gilmore Girls (at least while it was still on TV!)
8. Scrubs (That one's for Mike, it's one of his favorite shows. I don't mind it but I'd usually pick something else instead)

8 Things that Happened Today - it's still pretty early today so I'll do this for yesterday
1. I worked more on the book I've been making
2. Mike wanted to go to a lecture on anthropology, so I used his laptop to watch Heroes while the guy talked. He seemed pretty boring.
3. I read some of my book
4. Tried to park in the "Customers Only" parking spot for a store we had no intention of going into - but as soon as we parked there the store manager came out and basically escorted us into the store! I guess that's how they enforce the "Customers Only" thing.
5. Started trying to get RSVPs for Julie's baby shower
6. We ordered WAY too much pizza from Papa Murphy's and spent the night feeling sick!
7. Tim and Erik stopped by on their way to Vegas
8. Went to the dollar store to buy cheap candles to use in our candle maker

8 Favorite Places to Eat
1. Cafe Rio/ Costa Vida (yes, I still say they taste the same)
2. Jimmy Johns!
3. Bombay House - probably my favorite restaurant
4. Arbys
5. Mongolian BBQ
6. Jack in the Box (only for the strawberry shakes. Yum!)
7. Chin Wah
8. Iggys

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To
1. The weekend!
2. Mike being done with his crazy 26 credit semester
3. Thanksgiving
4. My birthday - mostly because Mike keeps trying to give me presents early and it's killing me!
5. Seeing my mom this weekend
6. Mike not having to work at Costco anymore so that spending a weekend in St. George will be for fun and vacation, not because he has to work. Also so he won't dread weekends anymore. I always feel so bad that he has to work.
7. Having time off work - whenever that is and for whatever reason, I'll take it!
8. Going to the park today - if we can stand the weather!

8 Things on My Wish List
1. Lasik surgery
2. To have my car paid off
3. To work from home as a freelancer (and to have the skills/knowledge to do so!)
4. A new cell phone - this one's basically kicked the bucket
5. Time to go on vacations and go hiking and stuff like that
6. The desire/motivation to be constantly improving myself. And to get in shape.
7. More good books to read! We have about a billion books in the apartment but so many of them are Mike's history books, they don't seem very appealing to me!
8. To live somewhere that has a garage or storage room for all our stuff! And a fireplace! :)

8 People I Tag (If you've never been tagged before you just use the headings and answer them for yourself in a new posting)
1.Cate
2.Jenny & Rob
3.John & Alysha
4.Josh & Analee
5.Lindsey & Jake
6.The Gottschalks
7.The Parrys
8. The Ziters

Heroes...

2008-10-06T15:48:00.001-06:00

So we started watching Heroes out of boredom, and thanks to Netflix we watched every episode in like a week and a half. We were such lazy bums, but it was so much fun! However, now that we're all caught up to the current episode, we have no idea what to do with our evenings! Any other good shows you'd recommend? :)

We also saw a preview for the season of 24 that's coming up. I am so excited! Mike thinks it's stupid so he won't watch it with me, but you can bet I'll be watching every episode online!

Also recently I saw a design contest on Minted.com where you could submit wedding invitation designs - they had to be done in all green and white. I only found out a few days before the submissions were due, so everything I did was kind of rushed, but it's all up on my portfolio site if you want to take a look at it (yes, I updated the portfolio site. That hasn't been done in almost a year.) I know they're not great, but any feedback is appreciated! :) I'm also looking to get more into doing freelance work, so if you guys know of anyone who needs any design work done, or if you have any tips for getting started in freelancing, please let me know!

Haircut Time!

2008-09-26T15:01:00.000-06:00

One day a couple months ago, Mike came home with a set of hair clippers he had bought and announced that after the wedding, he wouldn't be worried about impressing anyone, so he was going to have me cut his hair for him. In all fairness, I tried to warn him this wasn't a good idea, but he wouldn't listen! So last night was the first test - I didn't realize how long his hair had gotten until it was piled all over the floor! So, I have before and after pictures - not that I could get him to make a normal face! The after picture looks scary, but I promise the hair cut looks ok! Alright he did like half of it himself. And I messed something up. I'm not even sure what - it doesn't look bad to me but he was laughing at me - good thing it'll grow out in a couple weeks! :) He did offer to cut my hair in return, but I don't think I'll be taking him up on that!

Before...

And after... this picture scares me...

Well the other thing that's been going on is that I'm trying to learn how to make handmade books. I think we learned how to do this in school, but I must have missed that day... Anyways I've only made one so far, but I thought it turned out pretty good! Something is a little wrong with the stitching, so it won't close completely flat - but it was fun and I want to keep trying to make more!

Well, that's about it! I'm very relieved it's Friday, but I think I'll be spending a good part of the weekend writing thank you cards... sigh... :)

Clarification

2008-09-22T13:06:00.000-06:00

Just to clarify - I'm not really super stressed like everyone seems to think I am :) Didn't mean for it to sound that way... It's just that I'm stuck in an office all by myself all day long, so it's either type out a blog or talk to myself... I guess sometimes my random thoughts come out more pessamistic than they're supposed to sound! Thanks for all the advice on the name changing everyone! :)

The Name Change Game

2008-09-19T13:24:00.001-06:00

So I found this really cool site (alphabetsandarchitecture.com) where they have probably a hundred or more photos of architectural elements or other random things that form the shapes of letters - you can spell out anything and get it printed and framed - BUT it was a little expensive so I decided just to take a screen shot of what ours would look like, I thought it was pretty cool!

I thought I was waiting for the copy of our marriage license to get here so that I could start changing my name, but now that it's here and I take a second look at the forms, they are so confusing! Apparently to get a new social security card I need something that shows both my old last name and my new last name - but I thought getting a new social security card was the first step to getting everything else changed, so I don't have anything with my new name on it! And of course calling the social security office is a joke. After spending like 10 minutes on the phone with the main number (100% automated. I couldn't find an option to speak to a real person) I called the St. George office, and their either perpetually out to lunch, or just not answering their phones. I'm hoping maybe I can get my drivers license changed and then send that in with it? Mike had asked the DMV about getting it changed and they said all I had to do was come in and ask... yeah like anything is ever really THAT easy ;)

I do really need to get started on this though - not that it's been an absurd amount of time or anything, but since nothing I have says Campbell on it, I never sign that name. Since no one knows me by that name, I never call myself that. So it doesn't seem like my name has changed at all - guess I'll just keep working on it!

New Table and Wedding Pictures

2008-09-16T14:03:00.000-06:00

So it's a good thing I have all these pictures I need to put up, because in general our lives are pretty boring! Not that we can do much about it. Mike works 7 days a week and is taking 26 credits, so we never really get to go do anything. Once I found out how many classes he signed up for, I could have killed him! I thought we'd never even see each other. But it hasn't been that bad. One of his jobs ia a lab assistant on campus, so he basically gets paid to do his homework, so he gets as much done as he can during the day, and hardly ever studies at home. And then we spend every weekend in St. George while he works down there - I spend the whole weekend being a giant bum and doing absolutely nothing (seriously. It's pretty pathetic.) and when he gets off work he's exhausted so we usually just watch a movie. I'll be glad when we can go out and do something again some day :)

Well, so as of today (or last Saturday, depending on how you look at it) we've officially been married a month! It's gone by so fast, but it's been fun! Unfortunately no real plans for tonight - Mike doesn't seem to be too interested in anniversaries so I decided not to bug him about it.

Anyways - so here is a picture of our new table :) I love it. I guess it usually sells for like $600 and we got it brand new for $250. It even has a little leaf in it, which I don't know when we'll use it, but I still think it's a nice feature! Gotta love craigslist - I know there's a lot of crap on there, but sometimes you find some good stuff!

Also, the wedding pictures that my cousin Holly took at the Utah reception turned out a lot better than the pictures from California, so I decide to delete the pictures I posted earlier and make a slideshow of some from both receptions. I would have added more but the website kept freezing my internet...

I should be able to do the same thing with DC pictures too - my mom found our missing camera case at their house, so that memory stick is on the way - and now I can't find the other one! So frustrating! I'm hoping it's in St. George, but really I have no idea!

Back to Real Life

2008-09-11T09:36:00.000-06:00

Well now that we've been back for a couple weeks, things are finally starting to settle down a little. The apartment's getting more put together, although we did have to return our kitchen table yesterday, but we're getting a new one this weekend (long story - basically the table was defective and the stupid place we bought it from had no return policy and we had to fight them forever to return it, and then they kept a 15% "restocking" fee. Stupid.) I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that we'll get it all cleaned up someday! I had to start picking just one room to clean each night - otherwise I wander around aimlessly and pick up random things, I can clean for hours and nothing looks any better!

We've also been spending a lot of time at the park the last couple of days, trying to squeeze in as much time as we can before it gets too cold! Actually I think Mike just suggests it because he knows I hate being stuck in the apartment all the time! He has tons of studying to do (26 credits this semester. If he lives through it I'll be surprised) so he has to study the whole time, but I just take a book with me. It's fun because we can stick to our tradition of walking to the gas station to get fountain drinks, and then there's a middle school right across the street so we walk there to read. But for some unexplained reason, the weather will be so nice all day long, and the second we set foot in the park, the wind picks up and it gets so cold! So I usually read about 2 pages before I end up just huddled up under the blanket! Yesterday I wrapped myself in a "blanket cave" and kept reading - Mike thought that was pretty funny!

I still want to post up pictures of DC, but one of our memory cards is in the camera case... which we haven't been able to find. No idea where it is. I hope we find it because it has at least half our pictures on there! So I keep holding out, hoping I can find it, but we started cleaning the office last night, which is most likely where it is, and still never found it! It's definitely starting to worry me!

We're Back!

2008-09-02T09:55:00.000-06:00

Okay so we've actually been back for about a week. But things have been busy! Our apartment is looking better than I thought it could, and we were able to get some neat stuff in St. George this weekend to help get the place better organized. I'm still promising I'll put pictures up soon!

The wedding was so great. I don't think Oakland is exactly a place I'd want to live, but the Oakland temple is beautiful. The morning of the wedding was a little stressful - luckily our sealing wasn't until 1:00 so I didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn, but I was still up around 7, which is way too early for me! Of course it didn't matter since I only slept from like midnight until 4, and then just woke up and layed there until the alarm went off! The morning was a little hectic, we left basically on time but since neither Mike or I had eaten much breakfast, we decided to stop at In & Out on the way - which would have been fine, but they took so long that we were almost late for our own wedding! We also missed our freeway exit - needless to say between the stress and the nerves, I'm glad Mike put up with me that morning! Haha.

Eventually we got there in time and everything was great. We spent quite a while taking pictures outside the temple, and then headed back to Mike's parents house for the reception. Then the next morning we left for D.C! We had a great time and saw a lot of cool stuff. The White House tour was totally not worth the effort it took to get tickets! It's not even a guided tour, there's no one there to answer any questions, you just walk through like 4 rooms and you're done. But we did get to do a lot of fun stuff. I have about 4 billion pictures of the trip, so I still need to sort through them and find some good ones to post! I do have some proofs from the wedding and Cali reception though so I'll put those up. After we got back from D.C. we had a reception in Sandy which was a lot of fun! It was good to see so many family and friends, I had a really good time!

Everything turned out great and I feel so lucky to have married such an amazing guy!

Half Hour

2008-08-12T16:33:00.000-06:00

I'm happy to say that I have a half hour left until I can leave work today, and then we can leave for our trip! Hopefully it'll be even less than a half hour by the time I finish this... :)

Unfortunately I don't really have anything left to work on today, so the next half an hour might go by pretty slow. I SHOULD just ask if I can leave early, but seeing as how I'm taking the next week and a half off work, I don't want to push my luck!

So everything's coming to an end (or a beginning, depending on how you look at it). I've made tons of lists; to do lists, packing lists, "don't forget this!" lists, grocery lists, basically anything I could think of, despite Mike's suggestion of packing a few days worth of clothes and calling it good! But it seems like everything I've been working on in the past 4 months is winding up this next week or two, which seems crazy!

Mike's been a big help getting the apartment put together the last couple of days - I really wanted to have everything put together and put away when we left so we wouldn't come back to a messy apartment. It isn't perfect, but it's so much better! AND our bedroom has curtains now so I won't be getting woken up at 6:30 every morning by the sun!

I'm hoping this trip will be busy enough that I won't be thinking about all the work that's going to be waiting for me when I get back to Cedar... I'm sure we will be! Well, I guess I'll be back in a week and a half, and I'll have pictures! :)

Countdown

2008-08-06T08:47:00.001-06:00

So I realize the countdown thing is a little cheesey. But I'm getting excited and I wanted it there :)

Well we're almost down to a single digit countdown! It probably would have been cooler to wait until I could write that it actually is down to single digits, but that's ok!

This is my last full week of work before the wedding - we're leaving Cedar right after I get off work Tuesday to drive up to Salt Lake, and flying out to California on Wednesday morning. As weird as this is, I'm looking forward to the drive and the flight as much as anything else right now! It feels like I hardly ever get to see Mike - he moved out of his apartment on Friday so he's been living with his sister, who wants him there by 9:00 every night. I realize she's just trying to help, but at the moment it feels like we're being babysat! It's also making it really hard to get the apartment cleaned up and get Mike to unpack his stuff, when he's only there for a couple hours each night. I'm still hoping we can get everything done as much as possible before we leave so we won't have to come back to a messy apartment! I hate that!

So this kind of sucked...I had asked my boss months ago, when we first planned all the dates for the wedding, if I could work extra hours to make up for some of the time we were gone, since I didn't have enough vacation time left to cover it. He said he would figure out a solution and then never said anything else about it. So just today he tells me since I don't have enough time left to make up the hours, I should probably just take the days without pay. That kind of made me mad since I wanted to make up the hours but he never told me I could!

Anyways. This past weekend I was up in Salt Lake for a shower and to take bridal pictures... luckily my dress got in at like 6:30 Friday night, so just in time to take pictures Saturday! The photographer who took the pictures was really fun, but I felt so awkward being the only one with my picture taken, so looking at the pictures I think I have this goofy awkward smile in a lot of them! Oh well. These were some of my favorites...

Happy Birthday Dad!

2008-08-01T16:33:00.002-06:00

So today is my dad's birthday, and he is the sweetest dad I could have ever asked for. He is always willing to help, and always able to make me laugh. As I write this, he is spending his birthday sitting in a wedding dress shop in Provo, being, as he puts it, "as obnoxious as possible" in hopes that we will finally be able to pick up my wedding dress that was supposed to be here 3 weeks ago.

My dad has taught me a lot in my life, like how to ride a bike, how to shoot a layup the real way, and how to dye ugly Easter eggs (intentionally). He also has taught me a lot of other things like how to help people, how to tie flies for fishing, and how to sneeze at an alarmingly loud noise level (which I do unfortunately well!) :) I'm always amazed at how fast my dad makes friends and how we can never EVER go anywhere without running into someone he knows! I love him very much and hope he has an excellent birthday!

Cedar Breaks Trip

2008-07-28T08:41:00.000-06:00

So Thursday we went hiking in Cedar Breaks, and it was so much fun! I'd never really been past the entrance part of the park, but we went on a little hike (I'm sure Mike would have wanted to go on a longer one but I was dying! I am WAY too out of shape!) and had a picnic up there. It was so good to get out of the apartment for a while and not worry about unpacking and cleaning and finding a place for everything!

The view from one of the lookout points on the hike

A 1600 year old tree

The rest of the weekend was great as well. Mike was so sweet - he brougth me flowers on Saturday, and cleaned the whole apartment last night. He definitely makes me feel like the luckiest girl in the world!

We've also been totally hooked on watching The Office lately. I'd never seen more than one or two episodes, but Mike had burned copies of Season 2 that he'd never watched, and when all our movies were still packed we started watching it and got hooked! We've been ordering the seasons from Netflix so we decided to have an Office marathon after church yesterday and watched like 3 discs (I know what you're thinking. What a great use of time. I thought so too! Haha).

It was tough coming back to work this morning - I don't have curtains up over the window in the bedroom yet so the sun usually wakes me up way before my alarm - I can always tell I'm tired when I actually wake up to the alarm! Which I did this morning. And then reset it for a half hour later... I'm not sure if that helps or hurts, but I'm already thinking I need another nap during lunch!

Vacation Time

2008-07-23T11:42:00.000-06:00

So I just found out this morning that I have Thursday and Friday off work this week - I am so excited!! Mike has those days off school too, so I'm hoping we can do something fun Thursday (I'm shooting for going to Capitol Reef or something - he has to do a field trip to a national park for one of his classes) but hopefully I should also have some time to finish unpacking and can finally get some pictures up! Hope everyone has a fun 24th!

Moving Update

2008-07-15T14:16:00.000-06:00

Well we started moving into the apartment last night... what a day! Mike started taking loads over around 2:00, our friend Dawn started helping him around 4:00, luckily she was able to borrow a truck from a friend to help us get all our furniture over there! I joined in around 5:00 - and we all got done about midnight. That isn't the best part - we only stopped when we got all our big, "need a truck to move it" furniture into the apartment. We still have Mike's desk to take over, and a whole lot of stuff left at our apartments. And everything needs to be unpacked, which is why I'm not putting up any pictures yet - the place is pretty messy right now! I don't know how Mike and Dawn did it - I was the last to join in and by the time we stopped I could hardly walk! I am definitely exhausted and in pain today! Amazingly Dawn said she was feeling fine (we owe her about a million thank you's for helping so much!). I hate to think what this move would have been like if it weren't for Becky letting us store a bunch of stuff at her house, giving us a bunch of furniture, and Dawn helping out and borrowing the truck! It would have been such a mess without all their help. Which by the way is why we better not move again for a LONG time!

Well I had such a hard time getting up this morning that I was running a little late for work - so I walk in and my boss is standing there waiting for me - and the first thing he says to me is "Your shirt's on inside out." I just barely bought this shirt and I remember it had weird stitching on the shoulder that made it look inside out-ish - so I immediately said back, "No it's not!" and then later realized it actually was! I had been so tired when I left the apartment that I didn't even notice! So I went in the bathroom, turned it right side out, and slipped on a jacket hoping that would keep him from noticing that I switched it!

Also this past weekend I was up in Salt Lake for a couple bridal showers - I was supposed to do bridal pictures as well but my dress didn't show up! We were able to change the appointment to the next time I'll be up there, so hopefully it comes in soon!

Anyways - the showers were a lot of fun. It was so good to see so many family members and friends again - it had been a while! I will have to put pictures up as soon as I get them! Thanks to everyone who came and who helped out!

And So It Begins...

2008-07-08T13:44:00.000-06:00

So I am supposed to be moving into our new apartment next week, and a couple weeks ago when we started getting together boxes and all of that stuff, I was actually excited to do some packing. There's always a few good things about packing. You find stuff you've been missing. You realize how much junk you have (and hopefully manage to get rid of some of it!), and everything gets a little more organized. At least at first. By the end I'm always just throwing stuff into boxes that get labeled "Random Crap" - those are also usually the boxes that I never want to unpack, since I have no idea what to do with the stuff inside them.

Well after I packed about two boxes, I wasn't quite as excited anymore. I started realizing we have a lot of big things, like bookshelves and a dresser and pieces of our bed that all need to be moved. And once they get moved in - all our furniture needs to be assembled. Good thing I don't actually have to be out of my current apartment until the 24th - I think I'll still be sleeping there for a while! I'm not so crazy about the idea of staying at the new apartment by myself anyways. At first it sounded fun, then I remembered that I'm a wuss and get scared easily when I'm by myself!

Not all of these boxes are full, but most of them are...

And it hasn't seemed to even make a dent in the amount of stuff I have in my room! The only place you can even tell is the bookshelf.

The more I pack the more I wonder if we are actually going to have room for all of our stuff! At first I thought it would be great - a two bedroom apartment, that's got to have a lot more room than our place now, right? Then I remember that we both store a LOT of stuff in our bedrooms, so that's all going to have to go somewhere else, along with tons of books (I blame Mike for those!), the ugly glider chair, computers (we each have a laptop and a desktop. I'm pretty sure that's unnecessary, but I don't think we'll be getting rid of any of them!).

I'm also trying to figure out what to do with all the decorations and stuff that were fine to hang in my bedroom, but that we wouldn't actually want up in our apartment. Some of the things were gifts from friends our souveniers from trips - things I definitely don't want to get rid of, but what do I do with them? I guess I should just be glad it isn't just a one bedroom apartment! Yikes!

Over The Hill

2008-06-27T09:28:00.000-06:00

So Wednesday was Mike's birthday, which he had been "reminding" me of for about a month - apparently he has no confidence in my ability to remember! Haha. Since I have been taking crap for being older than him since we met, I decided him turning 23 was a great chance to get some payback. So I ordered black balloons, bought black crepe paper (which I never actually put up) and bought an "Over The Hill" cake. It was hard to plan anything fun since it was the middle of the week and I had to work all day, but I tried to do what I could.

So old...

I left work around lunch time, went and picked up his 2 dozen black balloons (good thing I didn't order any more - it was already fun getting them in and out of my car!) and his favorite Papa Murphy's pizza. I had told him I was going to cook him lunch, and he was pretty nervous about that, so he probably was glad when I didn't do any actual cooking! Unfortunately one of the gifts I had ordered for him hadn't shown up yet, but I left him open the one that had - tickets to see Les Miserables at Tuacahn the next night.

After work we went out to dinner and ice cream with Becky and her kids -

I had planned on having a game night and ice cream cake that night, but we both felt a little sick from eating too much, so we put candles on the cake long enough to blow them out, and then headed to go see a movie!

So Thursday his other gift finally showed up - the only thing he would tell me he wanted for his birthday was a typewriter, so that's what I got! If only it had showed up one day earlier!

Then Thursday night we went to St. George to go to dinner at Texas Road House - my parents think Mike's obsession with it is hilarious, so they sent him a gift card for his birthday, and then we went to the play. We also got sucked into listening to a half hour speech on MyComfort mattresses - which was okay because we got free seat cushions which came in handy at the play!

Attempting to line dance at Texas Road House

The play was good, but I was glad I'd seen the movie before since that helped me understand the play a lot more. The only bad part was that we got back to Cedar around 1 in the morning, which is way past my bed time! Haha.

Bridal Shower and New Apartment

2008-06-22T12:28:00.000-06:00

Things have been going really well lately. Last weekend Becky and Julie were nice enough to have a bridal shower for me, and we had a lot of fun! I don't have any pictures yet, but maybe soon :) We had lots of yummy food and desserts, and it was so good to just hang out and chat! Plus after that I was able to get a ride down to St. George with Julie and TR, so after Mike got off work we hung out and played games - Mike had just bought a game called Pass the Pigs, which basically consists of some pig shaped dice - at first I thought it was going to be really dumb, but it was strangely addictive!

Then this past week a couple great things happened - first of all we found an apartment we want to live in! Yay! We're signing papers for it on Monday, and I'll be moving in July 15th. I'm not exactly looking forward to moving again, but I am excited about the new apartment. This building is a little bit older than the other buildings that the landlord owns, but it's still in great condition, has 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom, and it's only $550 a month - so you can't really argue with that! I don't have any pictures of it, but I'm sure I'll be taking a lot after we move in! However when we went shopping for a dining table, Mike insisted on buying an ugly old man glider chair. Looks kinda like this.

Ugly Old Man Glider Chair

I will admit that it's very comfortable to sit in, but it's ugly (the one we actually got it uglier than the one in the picture) and when he sits in it he looks like an old man. And he's so excited about it, he insists it's going to be the very first thing moved into the new apartment. Sigh... at least I'm getting a good idea of what I'm getting myself into! ;-)

Other good news - Mike found out he should be able to get residency pretty easily before we get married. We thought when we got married he'd be able to get residency, and therefore get in-state tuition, but since we will get back from the whole wedding trip the day before school starts, I was worried he would have already been charged out of state tuition before we got back. But he found out if he registers his car here, gets a new drivers license and registers to vote, he should be able to get residency (no one at the school seems to have any idea what it actually takes. What they tell you is totally different from what the brochures say, and they're always changing their minds). So he's a little upset that his car is now sporting Utah license plates, but I think it'll be worth it when it saves us $4,000 a semester! Also, we were in St. George this weekend and I found someone who will resize my ring for a decemt price (everyone else has been quoting us $300) so it should be done in a few days, and I'll be excited to have it back - it feels weird to not be wearing it!

Well, that's about it for now - although Mike's birthday is Wednesday, so I'm sure I'll soon have lots of pictures and stories about his transition into the ripe old age of 23 ;-)

Getting Up To Date

2008-06-13T14:12:00.000-06:00

So I decided to start a blog. Mostly because I have too much time on my hands, and also because I like to pretend that people are more interested in our lives than they really are :)

The last month or so has been kind of crazy, a lot has been going on.

We got engaged on April 26th, which was of course very exciting! We went hiking at Kanarraville Falls and Mike had planned out a very elaborate proposal full of inside jokes and things that meant a lot to both of us :)

Kanarraville Falls Hike

When we got back to Cedar, I went into my bedroom to find it COVERED in flowers - it was amazing!

Then that night we had a game night with some friends to celebrate, which was so fun!

The weekend after that was Graduation – I’ve decided that SUU really should have a graduation every semester, because it didn’t feel as exciting when I had actually already been done with school for 4 months. But at the same time it was good to see my friends from class that I hadn’t seen in a long time!

This is definitely not the best picture of us! But we all had to be together to witness the end of the kiss board ;)

And there it goes… Mike was cleaning his apartment during all of this, since he was supposed to move out that day, but he was a little upset when I showed him what he missed – he reallywanted to help destroy the kiss board!

Well then right after graduation (well actually like 6 hours after. Cleaning Mike’s apartment took forever!) we headed up to Salt Lake – Mike’s sister Megan was blessing her baby that Sunday in Springville. We were pretty tired after getting into Salt Lake at 2 in the morning and needing to be in Springville by 11, but it was fun to be there for the baby blessing and get to meet more of Mike’s family.

Then we were back up north for Memorial Day Weekend – Saturday we went to Eureka and took engagement pictures, which was a lot of fun! It was freezing cold most of the time, and started to rain, but we still had a lot of fun!
There were a bunch of great pictures, so I decided to make a slideshow instead of posting each picture that I liked!

If you can't see the slideshow, you can see all the pictures here

Sunday we went to church with Jenny and Rob, had a BBQ with my family, and then went back to Jen’s to play games with her and Rob, as well as Sarah, Kev and David. The guys were big cheaters! And yet the girls still beat them :)

Monday was another busy day – we went furniture shopping since all the stores were having Memorial Day Sales – we were able to buy a nice bedroom set for a really good deal, which was great!

We also went and got Mike and my dad fitted for tuxes and had lunch at the Cotton Bottom, which was hardly worth it since the burgers seem to have gone downhill a lot – they weren’t even that good.

That night on our way back to Cedar we stopped in Springville to visit Megan and Trevor, which was really fun, except that we stayed too late and had a lot of trouble getting back to Cedar since we were both so tired!

Luckily things have calmed down a little bit since that weekend – Mike switched his work schedule so he is only working weekends, instead of commuting every day, so we’ve been able to hang out more during the week and have been spending most of our weekends in St. George, since he has to work there every day anyways. Last night we spent most of our time hanging out at the park and going to see the fireworks for the opening of the Utah Summer Games – I’m glad things have slowed down a little bit!