Weekend Update

I know I'm late posting about our weekend. But I was at a birth for 12 hours on Sunday so there was no way I was coherent enough on Monday morning to write a post.

Our friends are house sitting for some family up in Park City, and invited us up to stay the night.

AND PLAY WITH 3 WEEK OLD PUPPIES!

My phone died right after this or else you would be inundated with puppy pictures. Hal didn't understand my need for puppy pictures and denied me access to his phone. But come on, tiny 3 week old golden doodles? SO CUTE! On Saturday I held one until it fell asleep in my arms, slowly drooping it's head backwards. As soon as I set her down in the pen she peed. Dodged a bullet!

Have you ever played the Settlers sea farer's version? I don't think I can ever go back to regular Settlers anymore.

And then we went for a midnight hot tub run, on a beautiful clear night surrounded by snow.

My second client went into birth on a Sunday so I didn't even have to take off work.

I'd call that a weekend success story.

And since google are jerks and getting rid of google reader:

Easter Weekend pt 2

Here is part 2 of what we did over Easter weekend. On Saturday morning we had our traditional Easter Egg Hunt for the grandkids. I love playing with my nieces and nephews, so it was fun to hide the eggs and watch them find them. Crazy enough, they all found 13 eggs except for one of them. It worked out perfectly.

And yes, those are easter eggs in my nieces hair. My sister does her hair in the most creative ways all the time. I have no idea how she comes up with them.

After the hunt I was talking to my sister who recently got chickens about how Hal wouldn't let me get a duck. She saw the same problem I did. SO I did the craziest thing I've done in a while. I bought a baby duck. I told Hal I was doing it, he just didn't believe me, so that's his own fault, right? My sister told me I could keep it at her house, with her chickens. I think she might have loved him/her as much as I do. Her boys and her husband all wanted to get another one, but they're trying out my duck to see how much they like it, to see if they want to get another one. I think it's a she, but it's a boy in my mind, so I'm thinking of calling him Fitzwilliam. He just seems so regal. So please, without further ado, let me introduce Sir. Fitzwilliam Duck.

When we fist put him in the cage, they kind of ran away from him, so we took out two of the chickens and left him in there with just one of them, and soon enough they all got along swimmingly! Last night as he was falling asleep he tucked his arm under his wing, snuggled in the wood chips and made the cutest little noises with each breath. So cute. Are you ready to throw up because this is so cute?

It you look you can see his beak tucked into the cutest little tiny wings. I just can't get over this little guy, he's SO cute. I hope he doesn't go through that "awkward" phase that chickens do when they're getting their hard feathers.

Easter Weekend pt 1

Hal and I had a very eventful weekend, but not eventful in the way that Easter is usually eventful. This weekend started on Thursday with a huge wind storm. It knocked over a huge tree in my in-law's back yard. They were so lucky that it was the tree that is inside their chicken run, and is probably the furthest away from the house. As it fell just the tip of the tree brushed the house. No damage done, except to the fence in the chicken run. Hal went over there to help out on Thursday night. On Friday we went back to help out, since they had to go to Idaho for the weekend for a wedding we decided to get to work in their backyard.

 

I am standing at the back door in this picture, so you can see how big the tree is. And this is after a few hours with a chain saw cutting down most of the branches. So Hal continued to cut mostly as I picked up the branches and put them in the chicken run for chipping, and I started stacking the logs that Hal was making. It was seriously hard work! Can you believe that in 60 degree weather, and working in the backyard I got sunburned? Can you believe that? My part of my hair, and my face (the only two things not covered) were both sunburned by the time we went inside.

 It was cool to see my man, all manly with a chain saw.

You really have to give it to him. He is seriously the hardest worker that I know. I stopped to eat and he just kept on working back there cutting that thing apart. Well, right as the sun went down we finished with the tree. It ended up like this.

That may look like just one large wood pile, but look closely, there were so many pieces, we had to make two piles. I think the back of my thighs are still sore from bending down to pick up these logs.

In the words of Hal: "Happy Earth Day, I cut down a tree."

I'll share the rest of my Easter weekend in a few days. We just had so much happen I had to split it up. I hope you all had a lovely Easter though.

Weekend Update: Food Challenge Edition

I think this weekend spring finally hit Utah. It was 70 this weekend, oh man, it felt so nice to be walking outside and not feel cold. I'm bummed though, my favorite part about spring is when the trees blossom, but this year a lot of trees blossomed too early, and it snowed a bunch and so their blossoms just turned brown and yucky looking. One of my favorite smells is when a certain tree blossoms, and all of the trees that I know that produce that smell, blossomed too early and so I missed it. Blast! At least the rest of the trees are beginning to blossom or get those young bright green leaves. I love it. Everything just feels so fresh and alive.

This is the best time to go to my favorite place, Wheeler Farm. I wanted to go this Saturday, but Hal wouldn't take me. Don't worry though, I'll get him to go this weekend. It's the time to see all of the babies that they have there!

So we made a compromise and went to Rock & E. It's a farm store basically, but they have baby chicks. My sister and my in laws both decided to get chicks this year! I can't wait for my in laws to get theirs. I plan on playing with them every day.  They're going to end up being the most people loving chickens they've ever had. Just wait and see. Anyway, we went to Rock & E. I was pretty bummed that I couldn't hold the baby chicks. But what made up for that? And what is even cuter than a baby chick? A baby duck. I'm pretty sure their tiny webbed feet are the cutest thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

They were all piled on top of each other trying to sleep and get warm, but it seemed that they never stopped moving. Hal was a big fat bum and wouldn't let me have a baby duck. The guy even told us of his friend who had a duck and it followed him everywhere. I NEED a duck. Too bad Hal didn't agree.

Well by this point we were starving. So after driving around deciding on where to go we ended up downtown at Blue Iguana. This was some seriously yummy mexican food. He-Sam decided to do a food challenge and ordered the Burrito Grande. This thing was seriously bigger than my head. These pictures don't do it justice.

Look at the size of that thing. It's plate was even bigger than mine or Hal's Look at the size of it compared to his arm! It's gigantic.

I was super bummed that he didn't make it all the way though. He had maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of it left and he just hit full. According to him it's rare that he hits full, but this was just one of those few moments. Too bad, we didn't get our free dessert, which was a big bummer. But that's ok, I was still impressed that he could eat as much as he did.

My little brother(who ate 50 peeps in 15 minutes) and He-Sam are the two people I know who can eat pretty much an endless amount of food. I'm thinking this isn't the last of the food challenges that we go with them to try. There's a Merlinator in Garden City I want He-Sam to try. Anyone know of any other food challenges around? Have you ever tried a food challenge?

And thank you guys so much for your comments on my last post. It really was comforting to know that I'm not alone in having a hard time figuring out what in the world I want to do with myself.

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!

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?

Weekend Update

We had a pretty crazy weekend, who doesn't love an extra long weekend thanks to a holiday? It was my first Monday I've had off of work in forever. It felt so nice to just lay in bed and do nothing all day. Ok, so Monday wasn't included in our busy weekend since Hal had to go to class still, and I was super busy reading like 200 pages in my book...real busy.

My weekend actually started off on Thursday night, when my amazing wedding photographer, Duston Todd came over and set up this in my living room.

His equipment pretty much filled my entire living room. He is starting on a new project for a gallery showing in march. I was able to be one of his subjects! A while ago he did an exhibit on death portraits that he took, and now he's starting on portraits about sleep. You can read about both here. So he took some pictures of me first thing in the morning on Friday. Yikes, like literally right out of bed. I'm interested to see how they turn out.

Oh, do you see Hal's head in the bottom of that picture? Duston taught us how to download games directly onto our Wii. Did you know you can get old school games like sonic on sega genesis downloaded onto your Wii? Hello, that's the only video game that I ever really played. Duston showed us some cool demos and Hal spent the rest of the night in that exact spot playing them.

After some time later that day at the social security office I remembered that we had a wedding reception to go to. Oops, it's only Hal's best friend's little sister's wedding. Oops. So we maybe showed up in regular clothes and felt a little bit under dressed the rest of the night.  They were such a cute couple! I did have a little problem though, it seemed like every time I went to take a picture, a little how do I put this nicely...a little chubster got right in the middle of my shot every time.

Ug, He was the torture of my night. It seemed like every time I pulled out my phone he would appear out of no where and just happen to make it into the shot before the shutter closed. Boo on him. Anyway, that last picture was when they were doing a wedding march. It was something I've never seen done at a wedding. Maybe it's a latin thing? They had some latin music playing and everyone grabbed shoulders and traveled around the room in a march and then they went in to do some other things, like the arch that everyone goes under. Hal and I joined the line for a bit, but someone in front of us hopped in the line alone and messed up the whole thing. Not really, but sort of. We hopped out of the line before things could get too crazy. We stayed to hear He-Sam sing his song.

And that's probably the worst picture ever, oh mood lighting and trying to take a picture while dancing aren't the best combination. After the song we went and snagged some more yummy cheesecake and busted out of there.

All weekend we enjoyed ourselves a little bit of some Sweet Tooth Fairy. Don't even worry, I have a whole post coming that's devoted to how delicious that place is.

And the most boo part of the weekend, even more lame that the child who kept getting in my way, was my phone slightly broke. What am I supposed to do without swype in the English language? What kind of update makes the English part of swype corrupt after a while? Boo on that! I'm still dreading to call customer care and have them tell me to try a factory reboot like the guy at the store said they would make me do. Anyone have any suggestion on that because taking out the battery doesn't work...

Then we ended the weekend with a little bit of these:

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P.S. If you're looking for a really good two player wii game, Donkey Kong is it!