Sleep Picture

Just thought I'd share this with you. If you'd like to see my picture from the sleep exhibit that I participated in, please visit Duston Todd's blog here. I'm third from the bottom. And make sure to look at all of the other pictures, some of them are really interesting.

Weekend's a bust

This weekend was strange. It was pretty much nothing that we had in mind for this weekend. Our weekend ended up changing so much over the course of the week and even the day. We had lots of things that didn't end up working out.
-Go camping with friends at Capitol Reef
-Go to Festival of Colors
-Do homework (on Hal's part, not mine)
-Do something other than play on pinterest all day (on my part, not Hal's)

So pretty much this weekend ended up being a bust. We did end up using one of our living social deals to go see The Adjustment Bureau.

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A lot of people compared this to Inception, and so they didn't like it. It's nothing like Inception. Think of it as a suspenseful love story, and then you'll love it. I loved it, but I pretty much have a girl crush on Emily Blunt, and who doesn't love Matt Damon? The ending was a little anti-climatic though. I wish they had shown them in the future like, him eventually becoming president or something like that, then it wouldn't just resolve and then end 2 seconds later. Either way though, I liked it. I always know I really like a movie if I watch it once and want to see it again the next day.

But the craziest part of the movie...was the couple sitting right by us. We were in a tiny theatre, and I mean tiny. There was a couple sitting at the end of our row (also known as 1 seat away from me) and in Hal's words "Match.com works" Yeah.... They were probably around 40, and were both larger people, and things just kept getting weirder. Like weirder as in "seriously, do you have any movie theatre etiquette" type of weird.

They were sitting all over each other. Like he had his arms around her, and his arms were linked...but they weren't little people. She had her boots off, and had her bare feet all over the movie theatre floor. EWWW! Seriously, Ew. I don't care if you take your shoes off in a movie, I really don't, but don't take them off if your feet have the possibility to stink, and don't take them off  if you don't have any socks on. So they were talking during the previews, no big deal, they're previews. But then the movie starts and they keep talking. And not a whisper so I can tell you're whispering, and trying to be quiet, but instead they full on talking. if I was trying to listen to them, I could understand what they were saying. And they were doing it non stop!

Then it gets better. His phone goes off. In the middle of the movie. And he pulls it out and looks at it. And then he shows his lady and talks to her about it. In the middle of the movie! After he put his phone away they kept talking. At one point, we couldn't hear the movie over them talking so Hal goes "Shhhhh" As I sink down in my seat since I'm in-between them. They guy totally turned and stared at Hal, but you better believe they didn't talk for the rest of the movie. Who does that? Who? Everyone talks at some point, but it's called a whisper, people, whisper.

Side note: A few weeks ago I won an awesome giveaway on Allison's blog. I won a CSN Gift card. I have NO idea what to get. It's hard to buy things when you have no idea if you'll be living in the country in 6 months. So...I need some advice, have you ever bought anything from CSN before? They sell pretty much everything so it's so hard to choose. I only have until the end of the month, so give me some advice to help narrow my search, quick!

Weekend Update

This weekend ended up being so much fun! And by weekend I mean Friday, because Hal worked all day Saturday so I spent the whole day messing around with my blog, which I'm much happier with, but it's not quite where I wanted it, but chances are it will stay like this for a little while since I'm not so savvy with design techy stuff.

This Friday was the opening of the art exhibit that had my picture in it! I was super excited for it. It opened as a part of Gallery Stroll. Gallery Stroll is amazing. A ton of art galleries around town open up and let people come see what exhibits they have going on. It's super low pressure since there are so many people in all of the galleries that you don't feel like they're staring at you, or that you have to buy something. Some of the galleries even serve hors d oeuvres.

It was the last day that my brother in law and sister in law were in town, so we had a yummy dinner with them, and then headed downtown for the gallery stroll. We went to Saans Photography studio, where Duston Todd's Sleep Is The Cousin To Death exhibit was hung. I'll share my picture with you when I have the approval, but in the meantime, here's a look.

The exhibit was beautiful. I thought it looked amazing in there, and it was so cool to see everyone else's picture. Duston was super nice and told me that he thought mine was the "prettiest" of all of them. And then he told me that the first picture that he took during our session was not so pretty. Well, thanks for not choosing that one! When I get the pictures from him I'll have to see just how awful sleepy it looks.

There were so many people in front of the studio! It was crazy town out there. There were other artists selling things on the street, and poets yelling their work. We ended up going into the antique shop just a few doors down. We walked in and Hal was with his mom and I, and his dad and his brother were around the other end of the counter. The guy that owned the shop asked if we were a family. When we told him yes he said that "they really favor each other" indicating Hal and someone else. My mother in law asked which guy he meant (his dad and his brother were standing together) The guy said "uh, the balding one" sad times, since he wasn't referring to Hal's Dad.

After looking all around the store we ended up at the front counter talking to the owner again. He was talking to Hal when Hal said "my wife and I' The guy stopped him short and said "You're Wife?! I thought you were 16!" Hahahah! How awesome is that? In Hal's defense, he had shaved that morning, and whenever he shaves he looks so much younger. But still, that was awesome. The guy then told me I was robbing the cradle.

After the antique shop we went into the shop next door. I wasn't really sure what was going on in there, but I saw this big dress form covered in these strips of cloth. It had a note on it that said something like "write three words to describe your life philosophy"

 

 Do you see that little girl in the corner of the picture? When I came in she was there with what I guessed were her parents, but after I was standing there a while they weren't there anymore and that little girl handed me a sharpie and helped me pick out which piece of cloth to write on. People kept coming up to me and commenting about her...like they thought she was mine.  I felt bad leaving her, but I assumed that her parents were in there somewhere. She didn't seem lost.

This is what I wrote. Explore. Find. Love. This is my I'm trying to be awesome and write in all caps, but it makes my handwriting look really ugly writing.

After the gallery stroll I went to a bar downtown with my mother in law. It's called Keys on Main. It's a piano bar. The funny thing is, of the 4 people who were going, 3 of us don't drink. I did enjoy myself a virgin strawberry daiquiri though. We had fun singing along to the songs and watching people get kicked off the stage for going up there and dancing too much. 

The best part of the night was this super drunk older lady who got kicked off the stage more than once walked over and handed this young guy a note. I watched him read it, and watched his face get more and more red and more embarrassed looking. It was awesome, because as everyone at his table red it, they all just started laughing. Not too much later his group left, and then the drunk old lady left. Maybe she chased him down. My mother in law's friend went over to the table after they left, but she couldn't find the note. I wanted to know what it said!

Utah Wedding Photographer: Johnathan Hickerson

I was talking to a friend who just recently got engaged a little while ago about wedding photographers, and I realized that I have been really lucky to interact with a few fantastic wedding photographs more than maybe the average person. When I was getting married I was SO picky about wedding photographers. It took me a long time to find one that I just loved, because a wedding is such a special time, and pictures are the main thing you have after the wedding day; so in my opinion, they're worth spending more, for a photographer whos work you absolutely love. In talking to her about this I thought maybe this would be a good thing to blog about, wedding photographers that I've had to opportunity to meet, see in action, and see their fabulous work. Hopefully it will help someone here locally find an amazing photographer.

Utah is the land of weddings, and so there are a lot of photographers here, and a lot of them that take the same exact picture and don't shoot for originality, and that makes me sad. So here is the first of 4 wedding photographers who I absolutely love their work.

Meet Jonathan Hickerson.

He shot my friend's wedding back in December and man, I was impressed. He hung out with us all day while we set up the reception, and came to the rehearsal dinner, and was so much fun to talk to! I love it when people are interesting, unique, and easy to talk to, and he was definitely one of them. He also shot my friend's new brother-in-law's wedding a month before theirs, out on Catalina Island.

And then he did an even more fabulous job on my friend's wedding. I had never seen his work before, and I was really impressed by the photos that he took! I think his work speaks for itself.

Their wedding was so much fun! In that last picture my hair was falling out, but it's funny because we are talking about how to get those black marks out of shoes, so her shoe is in her hand. That cute little girl was following me around and dancing with me all night. I have no idea who she was, but I had fun dancing with her. I like this picture because I'm talking to the bride, and Hal is in the background talking to the groom. It's wonderful when a good photographer can catch little moments like these.

So, if you're interesting in booking Jonathan Hickerson, here is a link to his website, and a link to his photography facebook page, where you can look at many more pictures of his fabulous work.

What would you say?

What would you say if I showed you pictures like this:

Or even like this:

Or perhaps even this one:

Would you guess that these photos were taken a week ago? While some people are experiencing blossoms and warmth from the sun, we're getting slammed with freak snow storms that drop almost a foot in a few hours. It literally snowed for hours and hours, non stop, and didn't let up for the longest time. Luckily, I live in an area very prepared to handle this and so it didn't put a damper on our plans. We did pass 8 snow plows in a row heading down I-15 which is always quite the sight. Luckily, it warmed up this weekend, and we hit 60 yesterday!

So hopefully soon, we'll be getting some of this:

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But who knows with Utah spring weather? Remember last year? We don't usually seem blossoms until May, so I'm hoping for an early, and a very long spring. I'm ready for sunshine, but not for 100 degrees.

Saying Goodbye Can Be Hard To Do

Some months ago, my family had to say goodbye to this guy

This is my little brother, and he had made the amazing decision to serve a mission for our church was off to do some training with a ton of other missionaries for a few weeks before he headed off to Washington. But then something bad happened....he got sick, real sick, and had to come home. They did a non invasive surgery and he was able to finally make it to Washington. Everyone was so excited for him. I was so proud that he had made the decision and worked so hard to be able to serve for his church. So we all said goodbye once again.

Only to have him come home a month later because the non-invasive surgery didn't hold. He has surgery scheduled for tomorrow. Lets hope that his works, because I know he's dying to get back out there and serve.

Well, in the mean time some other goodbyes needed to be said. Hal's little brother made the same amazing decision to serve a mission. He's going a little further away from home though, he'll be in Latvia after his training. He left the same time my little brother had to come home, so it was a happy/sad time for Hal and I and both of them. We had such a fun last night with him and Hal's family that came into town. And were so blessed to be able to go down and say goodbye before he had to go.

Don't ask me why Hal was wearing shorts that day...Maybe it is something like how he lost his wedding ring again, and one day I came home to him wearing shorts in the middle of winter, and then a few days later he was wearing those same shorts, and found his wedding ring in the pocket. How could he have worn them and not noticed it a few days earlier? How?! Oh well, he's silly, and that's why I married him.

So with recovery time for my brother, both of our little brothers will get home from serving their missions around the same time. Even though it made for a lot of goodbyes, it will make for a very joyous homecoming time!

Oh, and please send your prayers my little brother's way, and hopefully his surgery will go great, and he will heal quickly.

Trying new things: Sushi Edition

I've been pretty good about sticking to my goal of trying new things. In less than a week I tried something new twice. Do you hear that! twice. You know what I tried for the very first time in my life? Sushi.

I hate fish. The End. End of story, I hate fish. But everyone seemed to just rave about sushi, and I'm being open, so I thought I would give it a try. We gave my brother in law a groupon for a sushi place for his birthday, and since he was going away, and this was his last weekend to play, he was generous enough to take us out to sushi, so off to Park City we went. The wait was a while, so we went to a candy store up the street. Man was it amazing inside.

It was such a cute shop! I'm sorry, but I don't remember the name, because I'm dumb and think I will get the pictures off my phone before they go away, but I always forget, so I lost the picture of the sign, and all of the pictures of what rolls we ate, except for this one.

Yeah, that's right, we ordered fried shrimp heads. But there were only two, so I let the boys have them...either that or I had no intention of ever eating them. We got three different rolls, we ordered the Haloe roll, the Tempura Shrimp, and one called the Rob's Special. We also ordered some chicken in case I chickened out...pun not intended.

You know, I had had one piece of sushi before, and it had eel in it, because they told me eel wasn't fishy, but the texture of eel was awful. This time, I was much more impressed with the sushi. It was a cool restaurant too, it was called Flying Sumo. And you know, everything automatically fancy if it's in Park City. I didn't mind the shimp tempura, or the coconut shrimp, even though I hate shredded coconut, but I didn't enjoy the Rob's Special. It had raw tuna on top and that was just a little too much for me. But overall it was pretty good. Good enough to get me to agree to go to sushi a few days later.

At the request of my brother in law we went to Ichiban. Mon - Wed nights they do Happy Hour where their rolls are like $5-6, so off we went. Sadly, I lost the picture of the sushi rolls, but it was a sight to see, we ordered at least 10 plates. We did order a lot of the Vegas roll, which is my favorite sushi roll, at least from there. It's deep fried, and has creme cheese in it, so you can't even taste the salmon. We had our own little private Japanese style booth thing, and the restaurant was just beautiful.

I really liked both sushi places! Minus the roll I tried I think it was called the pink power....oh man, it didn't have fish on top, and the fish inside was cooked, so I thought I was safe until I started chewing and pop pop pop....fish eggs! EWWW! I gagged and almost spit it out, but I was trying new things, so I finished it and then didn't eat another one of those. Well, if you go to Ichiban, my two favorite were the fried ones, the vegas, and the x96 roll. Mmm, those were good, I even got my sister in law, who also hates fish to try those two!

Hal and I agreed, the best part about sushi, is how it leaves you feeling. You know how some types of food are just so heavy and so you feel heavy after eating? Well, sushi leaves you feeling satisfied, and I never seemed to get over-full, it was just content and comfortable after eating there, your body just feels good.

So I think it was a success, and I'd be willing to try more sushi in the future!

Adventures in Babysitting

I have some good news! I figured out one of the computers at work has a mini SD reader in it, I slipped in my SD card, and wallah, my pictures from my phone were still there, at least the ones that hadn't gone black yet. I was pretty excited about this. And luckily, because of this they figured out, the problem is with my phone and they're sending me a new one, yay!

Last weekend we had another first. We had our first babysitting sleepover at our house. It was my sister's birthday, so we took her youngest, and another sister took her older 2. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, considering this kid's nickname is "the destroyer" and he was on his 3rd week being potty trained. I think Hal and I were both surprised by how well things went. My sister dropped him off, and Hal decided to teach him how to play a wii game demo that he downloaded called "Max and the Magic Marker" He was able to get a hold of the holding the jump button and the joystick to the right, but it was a little rough to use both hands to do stuff. We asked if he wanted to play the dance game, since that's the first thing he asked when he came over, but apparently jumping and constantly falling in the water was more fun than that.

Then we played with the kitty for a while, with the toy she's obsessed with, which may have been a bad idea, seeing as the next day, he tried to play with the kitty and the toy by himself, and ended up getting a big scratch on his hand. But it wasn't anything a band-aid that he just took off 10 minutes later couldn't fix. I felt bad he got scratched, but my sister didn't care. She said he's used to it from their cat, and was just glad he was dressed when she came to pick him up. And seeing as my other nephew shoved her daughter into a fridge for "asking to borrow his stool," it wasn't the worst injury her kids endured that weekend

We took him over to my in-laws, because I haven't met a kid that doesn't love going over to their house. All of my nieces and nephews love to go over there. He was a little nervous at first and stayed by me, but he soon warmed up and spent a large part of the night, shutting himself in the toy cupboard under the TV and then kicking the doors open. I love it when kids entertain themselves.

That night he went to bed so well. He got up once to get his train, and knocked things over in the process, so we heard him. He jumped right back in bed, and 10 minutes later we heard a cupboard closing, and Hal went out there to check on him, but he was dead asleep. The next morning at 8 on the dot we heard him talking, so Hal went out there to have him go to the bathroom, and we accidentally ended up waking him up, because he had been talking in his sleep! Since I'm lazy in the mornings we had some fun times lying in our bed doing this:

 He didn't like the flash on my phone so he was making this face in every single picture. Then we lazed around the living room, and he spent an hour playing with his train on any flat surface he could find. Once i looked over and saw this:

How cute is this picture? I turned on Scooby Doo for him, and I think this might have been the only time he actually was watching it. Please excuse our messy house...we had a kid over, that's an excuse, right? It definitely wasn't as bad as I thought it might be! It's nice to just babysit one kid who can walk and talk, and tell you what he needs. Don't worry, this didn't make me baby hungry. I think for now I'll definitely just stick with babysitting!

After he left we both needed a little of this:

Fill In The Blank Friday

Well, it's Friday, and sitting at home watching Hal do calculus homework isn't as interesting as it sounds, so I thought while I had time I'd participate in Lauren's Fill In The Blank Friday. In case you haven't heard of this, each week Lauren asks a few questions and then everyone answers them on their blogs and then links up at Lauren's blog. It's gotten such a big following!

1.   The phrase or punctuation I overuse most is      There are quite a few. I used to invent my own sayings, like freak shanoli...don't ask. But now I say "I know, right" or "For Real, Right?" I just like to make people feel validated! haha, that's not really why, I just go through phrases a lot. .

2.  Today I am thankful for    my family, and the opportunities I have to spend time with them, and to be apart of the big things that they are going through.   .

3.  My best friend is    My Mr. because he's there for me, even when I feel like no one in the world is there.      .

4.  A quirky thing about me is     Oh gosh, I feel like I'm one big quirk ball, if that were a real thing. I always carry Burts Bees regular chapstick in my right pocket. If I forget it, I'm usually in for a rough day, and come home with dry lips because I can't stop licking them. 

5.  This weekend I     am going to give sushi another try. Have any recommendations on what type of rolls to get?   

6.  Something that worries me is        is waiting. I hate waiting. Hal and I are waiting to hear back on some big news, and it's going to take even longer now that I changed my last name and have to re-fill out legal forms .

7.  On my night stand you would find       My Scriptures, essential oils, my jewelry box, and the book that I am currently reading "A Girl Named Zippy", oh, and a lamp.     .

Unfriendable

Oh my cell phone woes! I had the best pictures to post from this last weekend where we babysat my nephew overnight, and then blast! SD card damaged, please format it....this is exactly what happened back in December. They best be fixing this problem real quick, but chances are that I lost the pictures, even the cute ones that I took of him in bed with Hal and I in the morning. Boo.

On a lighter note have you heard of the website unfriendable? It's like Failbook, but even better because it includes yahoo answers, twitter, and facebook. Amazing! I think my favorite are the yahoo answers. You just read them and think, "Really? Really?!"

Sadly enough, I can totally see people actually doing this.

Haha, I love that last one, because that's something I would totally do as a joke to someone, not knowing that they wouldn't ever be able to change it back. Then when you're applying for a job whoever is hiring you can google you and see the name of your facebook page. Brilliant! Amazing things like that can only happen by accident.

Some of the newer unfriendables seem a little fake to me, so go to the very last page, when it first started, and they're real good!