On Pet Peeves

Alright, pet peeve time.

I HATE when people who are exercising next to me on the ellipticals at the gym wear an obnoxious amount of perfume/cologne. It's already hard enough to breathe as it is, right? It just makes it even harder when my body has to struggle to pick the oxygen molecules out of the adulterated air. If you want to cover up the BO that comes with working out, wear deodorant. Honestly, I think I perfer smelling BO while I exercise over drowning in someone's smell-goods. Or rather smell-bads.

Earlier this week I was cursed with this experience. It wasn't the first time but definitely the worst time. Since I started my job a few weeks back I haven't been to the gym for a while. Which is sad. This week was my first time back so I was struggling a little more than usual, trying to suck in enough oxygen to properly sustain me. When all of a sudden, this awful musky stench filled my nostrils and suffocated my lungs and I almost fell over. I think the guy next to me had actually showered in cologne before he came to the gym. It was such a musty smell, like the smell that somehow makes you feel claustrophobic. I could tell that this scent might not have actually been so bad if the cologne brewers hadn't decided to dump a hearty barrel of mothballs into the vat before selling their product.

Needless to say, I spent a great deal of my workout with my head turned to the right to avoid catching whiffs of said man's stanky cologne. Which was awkward because it probably seemed like I kept staring at the person next to me.

Well, you win some, you lose some, right?

Worshington Life

I've discovered something about myself: As much as I like to think that I love to blog, I actually despise it. I mean, I like recording all of our happenings and such but honestly, uploading pictures is a pain in the butt (Blogger couldn't be any more difficult. Actually it could so nevermind), and when I haven't blogged in a while there's always this little tiny "blog! blog!" weight in the back of my mind that starts suffocating my brain until I cave and spend a ridiculous amount of time uploading pictures and yadda yadda yadda. And I still haven't even covered December yet! Maybe not even November! Oh well, those will happen. Eventually.

So for now, I'm just going to update what I can. And these are only the pictures off of my phone. There are still a bunch of pictures on my old camera, Dan's camera, and my new amazing Nikon D3000 that Dan and my parents got me for my birthday. So those will come. Maybe in a few months.

While we've been in Washington, we've been enjoying the lovely scenery.

And the biggest flock of birds known to mankind. This only pictures literally about 1/20 of the whole flock. It stretched for about a quarter of a mile and was on both sides of the road, in the parking lot where I was standing, and perched on top of the mall behind me.

For Valentine's Day, Dan got me chocolates and flowers and a card. I got Dan new shoelaces and....something else that I can't remember what....and made that lovely Gollum "Be My Precious" card for him. We didn't do anything fancy, just stayed home and ate mac & cheese and watched What Happens in Vegas.

Dan played a lot of church ball. They almost made it to the playoffs! He's the blue guy closest to the camera in case you couldn't tell.

One Sunday my hair decided to be the coolest, perfect ponytail so I had to photograph it. And it has never done it since. (I had my hair curled the day before, but I've still never been able to recreate this on any other day-after-curl day.)

We bought a new filing cabinet and Dan finally put to use the label maker my Aunt Cindy and cousin Ali got us for our wedding. I love that he made a folder for the notes I write him. I thought the hearts were cute and told him so, then he said, "I thought about putting an alligator around it, but decided I should use hearts instead." Hahahah. (Sorry if you follow my instagram and already have seen half these pictures.)

I hate seafood. I saw these weird chocolates that looked like fish at Walmart, so I thought it would be funny to get some for Easter and tell Dan that as a surprise, I would eat fish for dinner.

I also attempted these Easter bunny rolls that I saw on Pinterest but mine looked stupid.

Enjoying spring

We decided not to get cable (or basic cable) so everything we watch is via my computer hooked up to the TV. The only downside of this is that depending on the website, sometimes my computer will go to sleep in the middle of whatever we're watching so we have to get up and wiggle the mouse to get the picture to pop back up. This happened repeatedly during General Conference (which was fabulous) and one time I said to Dan, "Will you wiggle the mouse?" He replied, "Yes, I will wiggle a mouse." So I drew a picture of what popped into my head. (And he told me that's what he was going for.)

I have been on a SMOOTHIE kick lately. Green smoothies. I freaking love Jamba Juice, an addiction I formed thanks to my friend Travis Birch when I lived in AZ. Between the fact that the closest Jamba is about 5 miles away (I've been so spoiled!! In AZ there were 2 Jambas within like 3 miles of my house and there were 2 Jambas on BYU campus with one more that was so close it may as well have been on campus!!) and going there multiple times a week adds up, I needed to find a substitute. And I knew, thanks to the huge green smoothie fad, that green smoothies are quite healthy. So I've been cutting  up fruit and kale and freezing it so I can blend it with Greek yogurt EVERY SINGLE DAY. And it is SO GOOD.

I got a job!! Finally! I'm going to be a receptionist at a company called Supervalu, a worldwide grocery distributor. I'll be working in Tacoma. Starting Monday. Dan wanted to see where I work so we drove down and discovered that in addition to the one warehouse I knew was at this branch, there were also 2 other ones and a massive Supervalu building. Kind of intimidated me. But I'm excited. Anyways, my work is right by the port and right in the middle of a huge cargo area. So we drove around and followed some signs to a view point, which led us to a tall tower where we had these amazing views!

Last Saturday Dan and I went to the spring fair in Puyallup. It is so important here that the website is literally thefair.com . It must be really important if the Puyallup fair is THE FAIR in the whole world. Did that make sense?

Anyways, I made a lot of animal friends there and tried not to think about the food they would soon become.

Here's Wilbur. Look at how adorable and perfect his snout is!!! Almost as cute as Scruffy's.

And this is me, obviously not becoming food**:

Goaty 1:

Goaty 2:

I found out I am a goat whisperer! Whenever I'd walk to the fence the goats would flock to me!

The oldest cow Dan and I have ever seen, which is saying something given that Dan's dad has raised cows his whole life. This cow is 24 years old (older than both Dan and I!) and her name was Jessica. I am morally opposed to naming animals human names, but I'll let this one slide since she's probably a great-great-great-great-great-great grandma.

Lamby:

All the animals liked to poke their noses out and sniff my bag for some reason.

There was a reptile section and a bunch of kids were in line to hold this gator. Being the creeper that I am, I took this photo of this random child A) to see the gator and B) because he had the funniest face on the whole time.

Dan and I sharing our oh-so-delicious funnel cake.

We went into a building at the fair where they had a ton of booths. Some nice lady with a babooshka accent somehow (kindly) trapped me into taking a stress test, which involved holding onto two short metal pipes and having me answer a series of questions while monitoring a scale thing. It was weird and highly inaccurate. Anyways, while I was being sidetracked, Dan disappeared. And then I found him.

At the fair I also got to witness my first demolition derby! It was so cool. And super smelly. Burnt rubber is not one of my favorites. So many tires literally melted off of the wheels, it was crazy.

And the night ended with fireworks! Fireworks that were so close that police had to direct us where to walk to avoid getting firework-rained upon, even though that didn't completely prevent it.

We didn't go on either of these.

Lacey's birthday is this Saturday and I crocheted her some mushroom oven mitts. So hopefully she doens't read this post before they arrive to her, but if she does....Surprise Lacey!

And today, a lovely butterfly landed on our screen door and chilled there for half an hour.

Well, that's it for now. So long.

**On our first date back in December 2010, Dan took a picture of me and I was (and still am) convinced that I looked like a camel in the picture. There have been several photographs of me since then where I have appeared camelesque. Dan told me I should take a picture of the camel and send it to my dad with the caption: "I had a self-portrait done today." Which I did. Dan and my dad have a running joke any time I am in a picture about, "Oh no! Do you look like a camel?" Or any number of other things I think I look like (which include a dog, Play-Doh, a man, a squid, the Grinch [Jim Carrey version], the hooka-smoking caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland, a squat barrel cactus, and sometimes my nose looks like an alien wearing a pencil skirt). Anyways, said camel picture from first date:

25 Before I'm 25

Well, my birthday was Saturday and I turned 24. I'm getting too old bleh. Dan and I went to breakfast (in the afternoon of course, gotta sleep in on your birthday) at Denny's for a free grand slam. Then we went to Seattle to go on the underground tour. It was way cool. When Seattle was first founded, it was built about 15 feet lower than it is now. Since it's right on the edge of the tide, they had a lot of problems with sewage draining since it was all dependent on gravity. Sometimes (and this totally grossed me out so I apologize ahead) the sewage would be coming down the one and only 6"x6" pipe for the whole town, and the tide would basically block the other end of the pipe and sometimes travel up the pipe. So there were forces coming from both directions. When this happened, if someone flushed their "crapper" a geiser of sewage would shoot up out of the toilet about 4 to 6 feet high. Freaking gross. So between that and a huge fire, they decided to rebuild the city 15 feet above where it originally was. They didn't tear down the old city or anything, just built right on top of it. Some of it still remains so that's what we toured. It was a little creepy but cool. Then we went to the 35th floor of the Smith building for a lookout. I got to practice using my new camera a lot so that was nice. Pictures to come. (Lauren--it's a Nikon D3000.) Then we finished the day with Red Robin and The Office. One of my favorite birthdays.

Our talks went pretty well yesterday and we're glad they're over. A couple in our ward (we knew them from over the summer) invited us over for dinner last night, so we went and it was really fun. They're at least 10 years older than us so I was worried I would seem lame and childish but we had a great time. They are expecting their first baby after a very long wait, so they are so excited and we're really happy for them.

Well, I warned Lauren that I'd probably be stealing her # before I'm # idea because I really like it, and it'll give me some fun goals to keep myself busy with. So here's a list of 25 things I'd like to do before I turn 25. (I can't believe that's the next age I have to turn, that's halfway to 50!!!)

1. Get good enough at photography to do paid sessions. And do a few.
2. Since we live near Seattle and the west coast, learn to like seafood (or at least try it a few times).
3. Read more. At least one book per month.
4. Write my life history up to this point.
5. Lose 20 pounds.
6. Run a 5K.
7. Be more diligent about temple attendance and go at least twice per month.
8. Take voice lessons.
9. Crochet something awesome.
10. Start and complete a sewing project.
11. Come up with a better system to organize food (we have very little storage space in the kitchen).
12. Go on at least five hikes (not the biggest hiking fan but we live so close to so many hiking spots).
13. Do better about sharing the gospel. Step out of my comfort zone and invite someone to church.
14. Put more of an effort into doing my hair, or cut it.
15. Don't complain as much--be more positive.
16. Keep our bedroom tidy. (I love that word!)
17. Make new friends.
18. Plant something as close as I can to a garden on our porch.
19. Do better budgeting.
20. Do family indexing at least twice a month.
21. This goal I'm not posting yet in case I can't finish it within a year. Haha.
22. Write more frequently in my journal--at least once per month (I know, it's bad).
23. Stay diligent in my scripture study.
24. Do fun and/or productive things on Saturdays.
25. Brush up on my Spanish and maybe take a refresher course. Especially brush up my gospel-related vocabulary since there're so many new members/investigators that are Hispanic in our ward. Start reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish and get through Mosiah. (I know that's not hefty but it's hard for me to read the BoM in Spanish! Takes forever haha)

We're Still Alive

I would have blogged sooner if my stupid (awesome) new smart phone would let me type in blogger without closing down the whole internet. Which it doesn't. So I'm just getting around to our blog now after our (my) long hiatus.

Well we made it safe and sound to Washington, me driving by myself in my Accord and Dan driving by himself in a 16-foot moving truck, pulling his Civic on a trailer behind and all! We both had the thought while we were on the road, "Wow. All of our belongings in the world are in these two vehicles. And we're moving. And don't really know what to expect. And all of our possessions are right here, on the road. And basically our whole life is in these two vehicles." It made me feel very small in the world! Not in a bad way though.

In all honesty, I really did not enjoy my time in Washington over the summer. This time is a whole lot better. I think it has to do with not living with a random woman we had never met and being able to have our own space, living in a much nicer apartment, and not living in the middle of a gloomy, dark forest. We love our apartment. The complex we live in was in our ward over the summer, but it was recently switched to a different ward. A different stake even. I really wanted to be in our old ward, and I do miss the people there, but I am so grateful we are in the ward we are in. Heavenly Father knows exactly what we need! Our ward is a bit on the lower-income side and is greatly composed of apartments, so there's a lot of people that come and go and a LOT of baptisms. It is awesome. The missionary work here is insane. There have been multiple confirmations in sacrament meeting for 3 or 4 weeks straight. Dan regularly goes on splits with the missionaries, and both of us have been asked by the missionaries to go with them to do a building tour for investigators (though my appointment fell through).

Dan's been called as an elders' quorum instructor and I've been called as a ward organist. I will also probably be called as the choir pianist in the near future. I've already played the piano and/or organ at a funeral and a baptism, and am playing the organ this Sunday, as well as giving a talk in sacrament meeting (Dan's giving one too!). So we're pretty busy!

Dan's really liking his job. They gave him a huge project that was already behind schedule and he has been doing a great job catching up. Extra blessing, the deadline was moved from May to September. So things are going well for him. I'm still looking for a job unfortunately. But that's okay, I've been keeping busy with cleaning/organizing the apartment, grocery shopping, laundry, errand-running, and Netflix/Hulu. Haha. And of course applying to more jobs than I can remember. Hopefully something works out soon.

I haven't uploaded any pictures and feel super lazy, so pictures will have to wait.

Speaking of pictures, my birthday is on Saturday and Dan got me a NEW CAMERA!!! Like an awesome professional-type one! And my parents chipped in too! I am really excited. I'm hoping to maybe start a small photo business to bring in some extra dough. First I need to learn all of the gadgets and buttons and settings though.

Well, that's about it for now. I'll try to update more regularly but no guarantees....heh.

News

The Bad
-My grandma gave me her laptop because she no longer used it. This was wonderful as, like I've mentioned, my laptop had completely dysfunctional hinges. However, a few nights ago my grandma's computer CRASHED. I took it to a very tech-savvy friend and he, to my dismay, confirmed that there is no hope remaining for my hard drive. As such, I lost all of my pictures. Boo. Always need to back up pictures. Lesson learned. Thankfully I have a lot of pictures on this blog. But the month of November has basically disappeared. I have always had such a ridiculously hard time bringing myself to delete pictures off my camera's memory card (I never know when I'll need access to a picture!), so it's finally a blessing and I still have a few of my favorites. But everything else is gone.

-Since my computer is dead and Dan is renting his computer (and returning it within a week), I may not blog for quite a while.

The Good
-I still have my old dumb-hinged computer, my friend said I could take that hard drive out and put it in my Grandma's computer. So hopefully I won't be computerless for too long.

The Good
-Dan got a job offer from Boeing. So we will be MOVING to Washington next week! I'm much more excited this time around.

The Bad
-We decided to move into a nice apartment complex that was in the same ward we were in over the summer. However, we just found out that the complex is not even in the same stake anymore. And we (I) really want to move back into that ward.

The Good
-We found a fourplex that is in the ward boundaries and one of the units is available. So we are applying.

-This unit has two rooms (the complex we were going to move into had one), and rent is $50 cheaper. It also has a dishwasher and washer/dryer hookups. From the pictures on craigslist it looks pretty good. We're hoping it doesn't turn out otherwise.

The Bad
-Since we're moving to Washington, that means I will no longer be at my middle school. That means there will be no more entertainment from the young'uns. I will miss them dearly!!

The Good
-I do have a few more hilarious stories to post about them.

The Bad
-Upon accepting the job with Boeing, Dan needed to provide proof of graduation. Since we had previously been told there were no jobs available with Boeing, we decided Dan didn't need to stress to finish his Independent Study class before the December graduation deadline. Needless to say, Dan has been working with great intensity to finish that class over the last few weeks so that he could have completed transcripts.

The Good
-He finished! And got a good grade! He has completed transcripts!

The Bad
-The advisors told Dan that he would not officially receive his degree until April since he finished his class a little later than the graduation deadline, but that he could still have completed transcripts and a personal letter saying he'd met all of the graduation requirements. Two people from Boeing said this would be alright, but we still have been nervous about it not working out for some reason.

The Good
-Dan just found out today that somehow, his Independent Study grade posted on the Fall Semester transcript, so he officially graduate in December! No more stress about official proof.


So, until I get the computer situation figured out, my posts may be sparse(er than usual).

In other news, my parents are driving to Provo as we speak to enter the MTC! They report on the 14th but are coming up early to visit with family and friends. I can't remember if I posted it or not but they are going to Little Rock, Arkansas and it's a 6-month mission, so they will be back before Travis gets back from his mission.

The end.

October

Quick overview of October...

Dan and I set each other's eye as our phone background

 Love these little leaf bugs I sometimes see around Provo

 During my middle school's fall break, Ashley, Dan and I made a quick trip down to AZ.

Hung out with Celesta and Becca (forgot to take a pic before Becca left!)

 Grandma was living with Mom and Dad. Since Mom and Dad are going on a mission and Aunt Donna is unable to take care of Grandma while she's teaching full-time, we put Grandma into an assisted living facility that is run by LDS people. She really likes it there. Anyways, while she lived with my parents we did a lot of puzzles!

This chihuahua Dan is holding is my Grandma's little yipee dog, Leo (or as she often calls him, Louie. She has dementia and can be pretty forgetful sometimes). Leo snarls and snarls and barks and growls and sometimes even bites when a new person comes around, especially a man. But once he realizes you are not there to kill him or his family, he's really sweet and cuddly. A lady at my dad's work found him abandoned with broken hips. We think he was abused and his owner (probably a man because he HATES most men) kicked him. Poor dog. My grandma was really lonely so my mom and aunt decided she needed a little pet, so the lady offered to let us have the chihuahua. He has been great company for Grandma.

Scruffy!!! :]

Sad story--Dan and I are currently at the Grand Canyon on our way back to Utah from Arizona. This last week we were there (and a few weeks previous), Scruffy has been drinking water like a mad-man. Tons of water. I googled something along the lines of "why is my dog all of a sudden drinking a ton of water" and none of the results were good. Most said that this is often the sign of a serious disease, usually either diabetes, kidney or liver failure, or Addison's or Cushing's disease (both of which have to do with the adrenal gland).  Scruffy has several fatty tumors. Not cancerous just huge fat deposits. One is on his upper chest right by his neck, where his adrenal gland is, and one is in his pelvic area by his kidneys. So things don't look super good :[ I talked to my mom about this yesterday and she said she'd been worried about it and had been planning on taking him to the vet before they head to the MTC (they report Jan 14 but are heading up on the 9th). She said that if he does have one of these diseases, she doesn't want to burden Donna with handling it while they're gone (she was going to watch Scruffy) so there's a 50-50 chance that my parents will have to put Scruffy down within the next week or so. :[ I am so sad and had a long, long, looonng cry yesterday hah. But there's still a 50-50 chance he'll be okay for the 6 months they're on their mission (in Little Rock, Arkansas). The end.

Ashley (and I) waiting in the car while Dan was in Discount Tire figuring out tires. One of my front tires was really balding, so much so that there was almost no tread left in the middle. Before we drove down to AZ Dan looked at it and said he thought it was fine but decided we needed to change it before we headed back up. Long story short, we're very blessed we didn't have a blow out on the way down, and we delayed leaving back to UT for an hour or so to get 2 new tires put on the car.

Dan and I outside Discount Tire with a happy birthday sign for Travis Birch on his mission (his dad compiled pictures of all his friends wishing him a happy birthday). We are really hardcore. :]

Pit stop at McDonald's. Dan really wanted to win the Monopoly game. 

And now a ton of fall pictures.

City of Provo