Weekend of Firsts

Hal and I had a crazy weekend. It was so jam packed, and so many crazy things happened that I have dubbed it our "Weekend of Firsts". We tried a lot of things for the first time. Remember how I wanted to branch out and do new things? Well, this weekend we definitely held up this new goal.

First time going to crab fest:

If you look in the mirror you can see how many lights away we are from the mirrors. I surprised Hal with lunch at MarketStreet for Crabfest. Sadly we were not impressed at all. It was overpriced and none of us loved our food, and the service was awful. But, they do have amazing desserts, so go there for dessert, not for lunch. We didn't let that get us down though, and went on to another first.

First time staying at a B&B

We had such a lovely time there, we stated at Wildflowers b&b It was the cutest old house, and the two women who run it were so nice. One of them is an artist, so there is original art all over the house. And they had two dogs that I got to pet! Our room was beautifully decorated, and they made such a lovely breakfast for us. Oh, and it was my first time in a claw footed bath tub. Heck Yes!

It was also our first time double dating with my dad. It definitely wasn't as weird as I thought it would be.

The next day, it was my first time snowboarding, and Hal's first time teaching someone to snowboard.

 

I'll admit, I was a wimp. I misunderstood something Hal said about getting off of the ski lift, I made it about 2 feet off of the ski lift and then biffed it, hard core, like landed with my face in the snow, and have a swollen bruised knee to prove it. It took me forever to make it down the bunny hill(which is way bigger than a hill). By then Hal said his feet hurt so he wanted to go inside for a bit. This is when I wimped out and didn't want to go back out. Hal went back out for a little while and then we both wimped out. What? We were tired! Check this out though, we borrowed some snowpants from a friend's family...they were children's size 12 and I fit in them with layers underneath! Haha, I guess that's why I still fit in the child seat of the grocery shopping cart.

And lastly, On the way home we had our First time driving home in an unexpected blizzard. We got stuck in the resort parking lot, and thought the drive down the mountain was bad. We thought we were safe when we got to the base of the mountain and it was only raining. Uhhh a mere 15 minutes later, and on a very dark freeway we realized we were in the midst of a blizzard. It was blowing so hard, and the snow was so wet, and it was so dark. Both of us were on an adrenaline rush pretty much until we got home.

All in all, we had a fabulous weekend, and did so many new things, that I felt very adventurous. Now we just need to keep coming up with new things for us to try. Any suggestions?

Huntsville BBQ Company

Hal had a fabulous weekend and I'll be sure to tell you all about it, but first I have to tell you about this awesome BBQ place that we tried a few weekends ago. It was actually a week that I was really sick, but I wanted to try it really bad because we had head wonderful things about it, so I took some DayQuil and sucked it up for the hour long drive to Huntsville to try out the Hunstville Barbecue Company

Lets just say this place did not disappoint. We ordered a big plate of different meats and they had a huge collection of sauces that we tried pretty much all of. The food was yummy, and their decor was even better. It used to be the Hunstville Post Office, so it's a cute little small building, and the owner even came out to talk to us while we were there. They have an awesome calendar where people mark where they are from. There were so many pins in the calendar from all over the US, and even some on the side marking other countries, it was really cool.

 They had ice skates there that you could rent for $2! There is a park right across the street where they have an "ice skating rink" which was really just a place where they cleared off the snow and flooded the grass and let it freeze over. If it wasn't seriously ill I would have insisted on ice skating, I was tempted even though the medicine was starting to wear off. We drove by it, and it was really like what you would imagine an ice skating rink in little town in the 1950s would look like. It was fabulous. I was seriously bummed that we couldn't go, but on the way home we saw a beautiful sight in the canyon.

 

 The waterfall looked frozen at first look, but it was actually still flowing. It was so beautiful. We also noticed while we were pulled off looking at the waterfall that across the canyon there were people in bathrobes, and that there are natural hot springs up there. Heck yeah, I can't wait to go back and find the hot springs!

We have a kitty, yes we do, we have a kitty, how about you?

I haven't talked about it much on this blog, but Hal and I have a kitty. My family has had her since she was 6 weeks old, and I've been her owner since then. I brought her to live with us when I got married, and she was very happy about that...since she doesn't like other cats, especially when they do like her. She's so soft and snuggly, and very spry for being 10 years old. Last summer she brought home a bird and tried to bring a still alive mouse into the house. She's 10, she's not supposed to bring that stuff home anymore. Poor guys.

So as she's gotten older, she's become very very snuggly, especially now that it's been cold. If you have a blanket out, she's there! I've gotten some great photos of her lately in all of her snuggle glory.

It's been really cold in our apartment lately so she has to cuddle up when she can. I'm sorry this picture is terrible, but I had to factory reboot my phone because of software issues, part of that being the camera, so I lost the good picture of this.

She snuggled up with him not only because he had a blanket, but because he had the space heater on him as well. A little while after kitty left I looked over and found this.

Poor guy. Homework's a beast. I had some videos of our kitty playing, but once again, lost those too. I'll have to take some more, because it's pretty funny when she comes over and plops her big self down on Hal's books and starts batting at his pencil because she wants to play. Oh, and I'll go ahead and throw this one in there for good measure

 

haha! We're such mean pet owners! I swear she's not that fat, that shirt was just small. It's like what they say on what not to wear, you have to dress your size now, well, that shirt was not her size.

Why I love my Valentine

I know everyone is doing valentine's day posts today, and that probably sucks if you don't have someone special in your life. I remember those days. Well, I'm really lucky enough to have someone very special in my life. I also know a lot of people hate the commercialism of valentine's day, but why not use any excuse to celebrate with your someone special? And excuse is a good excuse, right? Maybe don't wait around for commercial holidays, do it everyday, AND on holidays.

Hal is so special to me, so I thought I'd share a story that happened that really reminds me of what I love about Hal so much.

Our Niece's Lily's birthday is close to Thanksgiving, so we were lucky enough to have her in town for her birthday. I picked out the cutest little sweater for her and asked Hal to wrap it for me since he had time. He was so nice and brought the present to the party for me and added a little unknown surprise in there for Lily. Ours was the last present that she opened and she pulled the sweater out with the tissue paper and didn't even notice it. She then looked back in there to find Hal's little surprise. Now look at the picture below. Hal knew exactly what was coming, but her reaction was even better than any of us could have expected.

 

 He put a red potato in the bottom of the bag. I wish we had a video of this because lily literally jumped up and down and screamed pink potato.Who would anyone put a red potato in with a child's present? Hal would, that's who. Who knew it would end up being her favorite present of the night and she had to carry it around and even sleep with it? Apparently Hal did.

He is the silliest person that I know, and I love him even more for it. Oh, and check out that awesome jaw line he has...that doesn't hurt either.

I need some Valentine's day help! We had plans to go out of town, but those are squashed now, but we rearranged our schedules to go out of town, so we want to go somewhere, especially since it was going to be our valentine's vacation celebration. We can't decide where to go though, probably not somewhere too spendy, maybe if we could get a cheap flight or drive there. SO Where should we go? Any ideas?

Oh, and this song reminds me of when Hal and I met, so enjoy

These can only improve your life

Kitchen gadgets!

Seriously, have you ever looked at what kind of kitchen gadgets are out there? There are some really cool kitchen gadgets out there. A torch for making creme brulee? Ok, so maybe that isn't as useful as say a sweet rice cooker, but if you were making creme brulee it would be awesome.

When we first got married I could not cook. I'm not joking. I hadn't really made anything that wasn't super easy to make, came in a package, or wasn't a cookie. I think cookies and cakes were about the only thing I knew how to make from scratch. Well, in the last two years I'd say my kitchen skills have dramatically improved thanks to cooking blogs and youtube. Did you know that you can even look up how to mince garlic on youtube...pretty sure I did that when I was first learning how to cook. Well, as my skills have improved so has my lust for certain kitchen gadgets.

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A garlic press! I'm so bad at cutting up garlic into little tiny amounts. It seems when I'm holding it they start to stick to my fingers and then the slices get bigger and bigger as I cut. This handy dandy garlic press would sure save me a whole lot of time.

 

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Do you know what these bad boys are for? No, they're not for fighting futuristic criminals...even if that's what they make me think of. They're onion goggles! They help prevent this:

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Last night I cried twice and had to blow my nose three times just while cutting up half of a very potent onion. Wouldn't that be so awesome to be immune to all of that? Man, those goggles would make you feel like a superhero. I'm totally asking for these for my birthday.

Now I'll move on from the more practical to the little more ridiculous, but still stinking awesome.

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Check this out! This is a milk jug that tells you if you're milk is going sour! Isn't that so awesome? I'm pretty sure the worst thing in the world is to pour milk into your cereal and take a bite only to have the worst taste in the world because your milk has gone sour. My sister in law could totally use this! She can't tell if it's sour and just ends up with a stomach ache, Jessi, I know what I'm getting you for Christmas. But seriously sour milk is so nasty and I never think to smell the carton before I pour, honestly that grosses me out for some weird reason. But this, this is the solution to never having a ruined breakfast again!

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This...this one takes the cake. I had no idea how many smart fridges there are out there. I really think this is pretty much the best one though. This fridge knows what is in your fridge and can make a recipe from it's contents! I know! It has a touchscreen panel and will display recipes based on what you have in your fridge. The lame thing is, is that you have to enter in the ingredients of what's in your fridge, but then it makes up recipes for you. Of course, usually you have recipes in mind when you go shopping, but when it gets down to the wire and you're stretching out the time between grocery shopping trips because it's the bane of your existence, this would be nice. When you come home, "oh man, we have nothing to eat"....oh, well this little awesome gadget will tell you what there is to eat. Awesome!

Viral Videos

The Superbowl was this weekend and I'm sure that most of you have had an overload of video watching if you missed the commercials. I was "watching" aka playing games on my husband's phone so I actually ended up missing most of them. Today I played catch up with a lot of the commercials, because well, they're so dang funny. Just in case you missed this one, I'll share it with you. It was made by some local guys here in Utah.



Love it! And here's a non Superbowl commercial video. They were talking about this on the radio this morning so I knew I had to share this. It's seriously hilarious. Just watch the guy behind the news anchor.

Why would they do a news story in a bar? Maybe it's a Scottish thing? If it is, that's awesome because everything Scottish is awesome. That guy is so cool! Who has the guts to do that on live TV? Especially when his wife is pulling him away. Man, I need to meet this guy and become his friend. My favorite part is when he starts dancing. I'm seriously flabbergasted that she had no idea that he was there. It seems she she would have seen him in her peripheral vision, he gets so close to her and the camera, how did she not know?!

Did you watch the Superbowl Commercials? Because let's face it, that's really what most people watch for. What was your favorite commercial?

Getting to know you

*sorry if you saw this post already in google reader, apparently I'm really bad at trying out scheduled posts, as you've seen this notice at the top of the page all of the 2 times that I've tried it.

Everyone has their own strange little habits or quirks about themselves that make them an individual, and that help to make them different from everyone else and hopefully more interesting. From reading a blog you begin to hear tid bits of these things, but not too often does someone lay out their weird quirks. I'm going to attempt to do this. Everyone should join in and make a post about their own personal quirks today and it will be a quirky blogger, growing closer day! I think it helps me feel closer to someone when we do some of the same weird things.

So here are some of my weirdo things that I do:

1- I won't use public restrooms unless I'm about to explode
2- If I do use a public restroom I always carry with me, toilet covers and lysol spray...and I still hover.
3- I get the hiccups at least once a week
4. I randomly hiccup at least once a day. Just one, loud hiccup, sometimes two.
5. I have to take a children's dosage of sleepy cold medicine because it effects me too strongly.
6. I always have socks, tights, or footies  covering my feet.
7. I have a crazy good memory.
8. I hate to be woken up, before I have to get up in the morning...I am not a morning person.
9. I turn pretty much everything into a routine, that's how I remember things in the morning.
10. I hate to breathe out of my mouth. When someone plugs my nose my first instinct is to not breathe out of my mouth.

I know, I'm a weirdo, but that's what makes me, me, right? Now I want to hear what makes you, you!

Books to read

I'm a big reader. Ever since I graduated I've been reading all of the book that I wasn't able to read when I was in school. A few months ago my mother-in-law gave me a stack of like 10+ books to read and unfortunately, I've now read all of them. I really enjoyed most of them, especially:

And right now I'm currently reading this book:

And today I'm going to finish this book. I've been reading like crazy because I woke up sick on Sunday and need something to occupy my mind since I haven't done anything other than just going to work. So, I'm at a loss. What should I read next? What are some of your favorites that you have read before? I know I'm going to finish this book tonight and need another one to read, so please give me your recommendations. I enjoy pretty much any genre of book, with sci-fi probably being my least favorite, but I'll pretty much read anything, so give me your suggestions of where I should go next. I do get some recommendations from Good Reads, but I want some from you guys, what have you read and loved? What have you read and hated? What are you reading right now? And let me know if you want any recommendations, and we can swap book stories.