Best. Story. Ever

Guys, I have a great story for you. Lets see if I can tell it to make it as funny as it was in the moment. I'm pretty good at telling stories in real life, you know when you have hand movements and facial expressions to make it awesome, but something seems to get lost in translation when I write out a story, but this one is good, so lets hope I can tell it well. Just imagine lots of dorky faces and large hand movements.

Also, I love seeing people's reactions. So, if you could please e-mail me a picture or maybe even a hand drawing of your reaction, that would be fantastico.

SO, Grant and Brittany are going to Haiti. (alright, not funny so far) They were supposed to leave today for Haiti and I really wanted to help donate supplies (which by the way they now aren't leaving for another week, so if you want to donate, you still have time!) I had the inspiration in the shower (where inspiration naturally should happen) to contact my relief society president and let her know about this. Anywho, I sent her an e-mail at like 11 pm on Monday night hoping that she would see it in time. Well, Tuesday morning before I even got to work to check my e-mail and see if she saw it the stake relief society president called me and said she saw my forwarded e-mail and would like to donate. I was so stoked that we were off to a good start!

That night we were over at my dad's house talking about his play and working out things before the auditions this weekend. He had a huge extra box lying around that he gave us so we could leave it by our door in case we weren't home and since it was supposed to snow. I even wrote Haiti Relief Supplies on the box so people would know. So we went off to the good old Costco to get supplies from us and from my dad. Hal wanted to get a huge cherry pie because "it's only $10 and it has no red food coloring" I felt bad for him since most red things do and let him get the pie. Well, his best friend calledas he often comes over after he gets off work and Hal told him to bring some whipped topping for the pie.

We got home and set up the box and bit later I heard a knock on our door (it's not on the front of the house). I said oh, it must be Sam since people don't usually come back there. Hal was so silly that night so he went and turned off all of the lights in the laundry room (that's where our front door is, and there are no windows on that side of the house, so it's pitch black if you turn off the lights). So he turned off the lights, went to the door and opened it just a crack to stick part of his head out and says "tiene la crema" (essentially, do you have the cream?) I hear mumbling and hear hal go, "oh sorry, I thought you were my friend." HAHA! It was a guy Hal home teaches who didn't see the box next to the door. Like a 40 year old dude. He was just like "what?" Greatest thing ever! Hal was so embarrassed.

A minute later we had another knock on the door and I was glad Hal didn't do it again because it was my visiting teacher who didn't see the box. Seriously people, the box was huge.

Oh, and I have another funny story from that same night! You guys are so lucky!

Hal came to bed really late that night and I woke up in the middle of the night and he was upside down in the bed with his bare feet too close to my face for comfort (SICK). I tried to wake him up, but he wouldn't wake up. I kept asking him why he was at the foot of the bed and he would mumble something. Then I patted him on the face and asked him again why he was at the foot of the bed, and he said "puppies"...'cause that makes so much sense. He finally woke up enough to move and laid sideways across the bed, squishing my legs. What the heck, Hal? It took me like 5 minutes to get him to lay in bed so I could actually go back to sleep.

He is definitely a sleep talker, and apparently it must rub off on me, he said the other night I woke him up by saying "we must sedate him." Guess I shouldn't watch Catch me if you can right before bed.

The Yams are in the oven

The yams are in the oven. How domesticated can it get, I was sewing all weekend and now I'm baking yams for burritos.

Alright, so I think you all have received the hint that I am not the best at making timely posts. Forgive me. This post is about something that we did almost a month ago. But seeing as I still haven't and maybe one day will post the stuff from our anniversary I'm doing pretty good at posting something this soon.

Actually, I have a reason this time. Sorta. Hal and I bought an underwater camera for our honeymoon and we never finished using it. I brought the camera with us this time and it seriously took so long to get the pictures back. Does it really take over a week to develop some film and put it on a CD? Do you not remember the days of 1 hour photo? There are so many places that don't even have photo centers now, and the ones that do have to send them out to someone else. Lame Sauce.

To make up for Hal's birthday a small group of us went up to Lava Hot Springs right around the end of the semester. It snowed so much that day. It had snowed that night before but the roads looked clear on the cameras of malad pass so we left. Oh man, the more north we drove the worse the snow got. There were pockets where we could actually see the road which was nice. Thankfully we all got there safely.

Hal didn't bring the right shoes. He brought ones that would get wet and since we walked to the restaurant there were spots where the snow was really deep. I am just the Hulks best wife ever and friggin piggy back carried him over the snow embankment there AND back.

I found a great swimsuit company over the summer. Some of my friends got swimsuits from there too. I was sad that when we got back from California that you couldn't see it in any of the pictures. Here are the pictures from the underwater camera. Some of them are hard to see because they are underwater, and because it was really foggy from the heat and the freezing snow. The best part of the hot springs is to be in the hot water and have it snowing lightly on you so you don't get overheated.

Have you ever played the game signs? Well, it's awesome. Above is us playing signs. It was kind of hard to play because at times you couldn't see through the fog to see the people on the other side of the circle. Below, is meagan and I doing two signs.

This is my car on the way back from Lava. The roads were absolutely awful on the way back. It took us more than double the normal amount of time to get home in the snow. Luckily, I was driving Hal's volvo which has awesome snow tires on it and we plowed through the snowy roads. He-Sam's VW did not do so well on the other hand.

Right outside Logan he started sliding off the road and did a 360 and finally stopped in the median. Apparently he was right behind us when it happened and we didn't even see it. Luckily Hal was in the car, and we have AAA. Seriously, best thing ever. Just because Hal has AAA and was in the car they came and pulled the car out for free. How cool is that? His mud gaurd was torn off, but thankfully his car had no serious damage. They had to be pulled out on northbound lanes, so they had to wait until the next exit to get off the freeway and turn around to go south. Needless to say, it took them a long time to get home. I'm just glad that they were all alright. Especially because Dane was in the back seat and didn't have his seat belt on.

When we finally made it back we dropped Hal's car off, and took Monica's car down to Sandy. We all met up, a lot later than expected to exchange Christmas gifts. I think Hal finally made it down there around 10 p.m. It was a very very long tiring day, but it ended up being so much fun. AND my awesome friends gave me a granite rolling pin. It's dark granite and it's so pretty. I haven't used it yet. Maybe I need to make some more pies...

P.S. went in the kitchen to pull out the yams after an hour. They were sitting on the stove the whole time. Dinner was a bit late tonight.

Dear You

I am thinking of starting a little segment called dear you, where you can address one issue, or many, and rant or rave about something that has been bothering you or something that is going on in your life.

It goes a little something like this:

Dear car,

Why must you be so evil? Why why? You're paid off and so you decide to break down lots in a row. That's not very nice. What happened to common curtesy? I got everything fixed on you that I knew about so I could register you this month. I had your breaks and your blasted "deep pitting" roters replaced, and I even had my stinkin windshield replaced. Good thing I get free rock chip repairs for life now, I won't be putting that one off again. So after all of this car, you decide to be a jerk and eat up all my gas real quick and smell like gas inside my car. Lame sauce. I will take you in tomorrow since it's probably a gas leak and I don't want to blow up, but so help me if it's expensive I will kick you right in your big focus fanny.

Dear life,

Why did you have to be so harsh today? Is it because I had the day off yesterday. Would it help if I said I don't really care if I had the day off because I didn't even get paid for it? So help me if tomorrow is as crazy busy as today was I am going to pull out someone's hair. Not my own, because well, what if tomorrow is supposed to be a good hair day...then I need my hair, right?

Dear copy machine,

Why do you randomly spit some pages our further than others so I have to restack you constantly? That's just downright rude.

And on a brighter note...

Dear sourdough rolls,

We, and by we, I mean I used you to make sub sandwhiches for dinner tonight. You were delicious. You made my tummy happy.

Dear readers,

Please pray. I received a call from my sister today. They have been trying to adopt a little boy and a little girl from Haiti for a long time now. It's pretty corrupt over there and they wouldn't transfer the little girl to the right orphanage so she could adopt her. The little boy was already in the right orphanage, but the adoption process is lengthy, especially in a corrupt country. Well, the government has given some good news. If you're in the process of adoption then most likely with the current crisis over there you can bring your child home now.

She asked me to pray that her family would qualify and that she could find her social security card, so she didn't have to wait 2 weeks for a new one. So readers, please pray for my sister and the little boy she has been dying to take home for about a year now. I don't remember his name, and I couldn't get a hold of her to have her send me a picture. He looks like a Haitian version of my nephew with big droopy eyes and big ears that stick out. She said the moment she saw his picture he reminded her of my nephew Brayden and she just knew she had to have him. So, please pray, pray that what is supposed to work out will. She has been waiting for a long time for this addition to her family.

This is something close to my heart, and not just because it's my sister. Hal went on his mission to the Dominican Republic. In case you didn't know, that shares an island with Haiti. Luckily, the DR is not a disaster zone right now like Haiti. Hal served with many Haitian people. The other night he talked about how he never really met a Haitian he didn't like. He said they were very sweet people. That is a lot coming from Hal because he had a really hard time with Dominican people and their culture. So not only pray for my sister, pray for all of the orphans, and all of the people there suffering.

I like this segment idea. Now, I'm not too savvy with html and linkages, so I will just start tagging my Dear You posts. If you would like to join in feel free! You can steal the little icon that I made, or you can make one for yourself.

Quotes

I'm in a bit of a crappy mood today and don't really feel like changing that right now so blah to that. Something I saw did make me happy though.

I love quotes, when I had time I used to make quote books, I would find a pretty book and write down my favorite quotes in it. I think I have two or three full notebooks. It seems a lot of time you end of reading the same quotes, but today, today I found a new one, and I fell in love with it and it made me happy.

Someday, someone will walk into your life and make you realize why it never worked out with anyone else.

I have no idea who it's by, but I found it from here. Love your blog by the way, if you ever see this.

via

via

Duston Todd

(Doesn't Hal's hand look black in this picture)

It's Thursday night and I just had a delicious dinner that my brother in law made. Mmm jamacian chicken is delicious. I just watched Amy Poehler date her real life husband on Community. It was pretty awesomely awkward. I may or may not secretly love Will Arnett.

I wrote the top half of this while I was at work and pretty stressed out, but looking through flickr pictures to find some really cute ones helped me start to feel better, and then coming home to a completely cleaned house when I had been dreading doing the dishes made me feel lots better. Then I looked through pictures from our beginning and it made me happy :) Aw, I know, super cheesy, but guess what...it's my blog so deal with it.

Alright, so I thought I was done with this blog post, but something just happened that made my day.

Hal has this buddha shirt that pretty much everyone hates, especially his mom and my sister. So was leaving to get me a surprise and I looked over at him and said "I don't really like that shirt" and then he did the most ridiculous thing ever. He rubbed the fake buddha's nipples. Yeah, Heather I said nipples. I made him wait so I could take a picture of him in his shirt.

So I will leave you with this, because now 30 Rock is on. "That girl has a name Jack, we call her Skankovitch."

Erin's Promise

I'm not really one to post and advertise for other things, but this one is important. My family is doing something pretty darn exciting, at least I think so anyway.

My dad is a writer. He has been writing on the side since I was little and has even had some books published. One was even in Desert Book stores. I don't been to brag, but well, I think it's pretty cool.

Anyway, when my family lived in Washington we put on one of his plays as a stake play. It was pretty successful, but it wasn't for profit or anything, but it was still awesome. It's been quite a few years since those days, and well, my dad has had the itching to put it on again. SO here comes the point of this post. I need your guys help. I know that this blog isn't amazingly popular or anything, but it's more popular than the blog we created for the play, and I know that some of the people who read it live right here in Utah.
We are putting on the play again...and we're going to take it around Utah. We are having open auditions for the play on January 29th from 6-9 and 30th from 12-5 at the Lehi Arts Center located at 685 North Center Street in Lehi, obviously. This is where your help comes in. We need help spreading the word. The play won't be successful if we don't have a good cast, and having a good cast means we need a lot of people to find out about this and come to the auditions. Well, I guess that isn't the only thing that makes it successful...but we'll get to that in a few months.

Do you think you could help? Spread the word? We're not looking for amazingly huge big shots, we want people who are good, and need a chance to show their talent, need a chance to start up, 'cause we're starting up too. We're looking for more than just singers, dancers, and actors, we're looking for stage crew, choreographers and basically anyone who wants to lend a helping hand. And if I'm not mistaken...I think that the leads get paid? What a better way to spend your summer than traveling around the state acting in a play and getting paid. I'm sure you could probably make more money doing something else, but would it be more fun? I think not!

Please help us spread the word, let everyone you think might be interested know about us. We have a blog and a website for more information. You can actually register for the auditions before hand by going the Erin's Promise website. Or if you are interested and still want more information, you can contact my dad directly at higheststar52@gmail.com

Our Holiday

Sorry I haven't been posting very much, but my sisters were in town and well, I'd rather spend time with them...so I am finally back.

Here are the pictures from Christmas, I know I'm really late posting them and if there wasn't something amazing to post, I probably just wouldn't have done it at all, because well, let's face it; I'm lazy.

Hal and I had a secret planned for our families and it went off smashingly. My family on Christmas Eve opens Secret Santa presents and then we open Christmas pajamas and everyone changes into them. We didn't change into ours because we still had to go over to Hal's parents since everyone stays the night over there on Christmas Eve. Well, we finally changed into ours and surprised everyone with these bad boys.

Yeah that's right, Footie pajamas! I was so excited when Hal said that we could get them as our Christmas pjs. Really, he's saving money, maybe he agreed because he knew I would buy them anyway, so this way I didn't have to buy another set of them. He also may kill me for posting the picture below of his brother mike picking him up. Just think Jessie, this could be you guys with your baby (I decided it's a boy) in like 23 years.

We kind of had three Christmases. The Morgan Christmas at his family's house, my family christmas and our family Christmas...so the pictures are kind of split up into those categories, so here are some from the Morgan House

We gave two snuggies for Christmas, because I think they are awesome and wanted to give them to people. This isn't one that we gave, but Beck also got one. We did give one to Hal's dad who you can see in the background of the picture.

Hal received an external frame backpack from his parents. He loved it lots. We even put Lily, our niece in it, but for some reason she didn't really like it. I got a sewing machine from Hal's parents and these amazing gingher plaid sewing scissors from Beck. How awesome is that?

Here is Christmas at my dad's house. Don't you just want to eat up the little boy in the picture below. This is Kaleb, our nephew who I have talked about before on here. Recently his personality has really come out, and he's hilarious. He seems to have taken a liking to Hal. This is them playing on Christmas morning.

Doesn't my little brother look like he's 10 feet tall in his snuggie? and the picture isn't even of his whole body.

Here is our Christmas. We finally made it home late that night to open our presents and have our own little family Christmas. This is the vest that we got free from my work. I knew I would never wear a vest, so I ordered one for Hal instead. He loves it and has basically stopped wearing his awesome pea coat I got for him last year and just wears this with a sweat shirt, everyday. Seriously, he even had it on like 10 minutes ago.

Umm, can you say amazing? Hal had like no time to do things for Christmas because of that class he was taking, so for the most part I had to do it on my own and because of that I thought he hadn't thought much about Christmas for me. Boy, I was wrong. I wanted this hat so bad, and it was mega on sale at Urban Outfitters, but it was $40 in the store. Well, he went into the store and they gave him the online price. Yay! I had no idea that he got me this, so it made me really happy. I saw a little box under the tree and I thought it was jewlery which made me kind of sad because I'm not a big jewlery person. I was also wrong, it was one of the new very cute and little Ipod shuffles. That was a huge surprise, since I've never had anything like that.

The next day was Hal's little brother's birthday and we were also taking family pictures. My sister is a photographer and took the pictures. Hal got up that morning and shaved for the pictures, when he came out he looked like this...

And in case you were wondering....yes, he did use my mascara to make it look darker. That tube of mascara was promptly thrown away, which was ok because it was rather old anyway. His mom thought he seriously wanted to keep it for the pictures. So while his brother Beck was doing my makeup Hal shaved it off.

Hal's family has a tradition where they go to the mall and draw names and you have to buy a present for that person for $5. We didn't do it last year, so I was excited to do it this year. Dane was bummed that we were doing it on his birthday, since we didn't have time before Christmas. So someone came up with the idea that we all buy for Dane instead of each other. It was a big surprise for him.

We mixed up his birthday and Christmas presents, so he got his Christmas present on his birthday. He got some sweet bad boy dinosaur footie pjs! His parents bought him luggae for his 18th birthday, how amazing is that!

I am so lucky, my brother in law is a makeup artist for Mac, and he's amazing. You would think that I would actually know how to put on makeup, and be good at it, or actually wear it regularly, but I don't. I was excited he offered to do mine and my sister in law's makeup for the family pictures. That night after we had a lovely fondue dinner for dane's birthday we got to go through his leftover makeup from the last collection. Seriously, how lucky am I? Everyone kept telling me I look good in lipstick, what do you think?

Beck had this funny dark purple lipgloss that we all put on for fun.

We had a lovely holiday season, and I can't believe that it is already over. Weird. We had a pretty low key new years, some friends came over to my dad's and we played games with my sister who was in town. I hate how New Years Eve has an expectation with it to be at some hoppin party, 'cause I'm pretty sure that I'm the furthest thing from hoppin there is.
I hope you all had a lovely holiday season!