The Marriage Partnership

"If I be in charge of making sure we never run out of money, can you be in charge of making sure we never run out of ketchup*?"


*must be Heinz

The New Baby

Surprise! Kevin and I have neglected to announce a new little addition to the family. I think we just wanted to get used to the idea. But without further ado, the newest addition to our family:
Kevin has taken quite the interest in photography lately, and our computer is getting more and more full of pictures that he's taken on our recent adventures. Here are some of my favorites:

Along with online albums here and here. And the new banner on our blog! (for those of you reading this with google reader, take a look!)

And, of course, one of the most important reasons we got a new camera is for the real new addition to the family, set to debut sometime around Thanksgiving!

20 weeks!

Silver Lake

Peanut Buttery Family Reunion

After much debate about the varying qualities of peanut butter, we put two experts to the blind taste test: my cousin Janel and my mom. They each tasted Jif, Skippy, and Western Family peanut butter brands. Much to their surprise, they chose Western Family as tasting the best and thought that it was Jif. Way to go, WF against the big boys!

The rest of these pictures are taken by our resident photographer, Kevin. I wouldn't have any pictures if it wasn't for him! I think they turned out so nice and I like showcasing my family. It was a fun little reunion at Cherry Hill in Kaysville, Utah, and I'm sad it's already over!








And I just wanted to brag for a minute about the hooded towel my cousin designed and made. She has her own little business called RubaDub Buddies and sells these adorable towels. I was lucky enough to win this penguin in the Bingo game!

One good thing about Utah

One good thing about Utah is that we really are just minutes away from pristine mountains. We are surrounded by great places to hike and camp and just go and enjoy. I am reminded of this everyday on my way to work and school as I marvel at just how beautiful Mt. Timanogous is. One of these days I will make it to the top. I got pretty close yesterday. Tess and I went on a short little hike to Battle Creek Falls, which is at the base of Timp. To get there you just drive on 200 South in Pleasant Grove and the road dead ends into the trail head. It is a short 15 minute walk or so to the falls.



The falls were really pretty and the rocks had some really neat patterns in them--reminiscent of Rock Canyon, but a little less spectacular.



When we got there, we were talking to this fellow who had continued up the trail and was now on his way back down. I asked him what there was up ahead on the trail. He said there were some bridges accross the stream, some beautiful views of the valley and if we continue on for another 4 or 5 more hours we would make it to the top of Timp. So we were pretty close.



There was a pretty good place to take pictures at the end of the hike. Sadly, its hard to take a picture of us both.

Watch this. You'll thank me.

I'm pretty sure I am most like the little girl with big glasses in the middle with a disappointed look on her face and her arms tightly crossed. Love it.

Life and MREs

I bought some Life cereal a few weeks ago and noticed an interesting dichotomy between the boxes for original and maple and brown sugar. You'll have to ask Kevin about his experience as a missionary in Houston when he innocently asked a black woman at the store if they had any brown sugar for some cookies he wanted to make...





Also, we scan slides. Quite a few of them. We just passed the 20,000 mark as a matter of fact. I can usually predict that a set of someone's slides will have one or more of the following events in them: Weddings, Babies, Disneyland, Grand Canyon/any national park, Graduation, Europe. I guess that's pretty much what we take pictures of too. It's just funny to see soooooo many pictures of Disneyland over the years. We have met some interesting people these past few months while doing this. The most interesting so far was this last weekend, when an older gentleman offered to pay us with MREs.


He left us one to sample so that we could decide if that's what we wanted. Anyone want to come to our house for dinner? We can make it really quickly!

New Hobby

Just for a quick history on my cell phone as background: I got one when I was 20 that didn't even have voicemail. After my mission, I got the same phone back and about six months later, got voicemail added...what a lifesaver. That kept me pretty content until I started missing events and notices because I didn't have text messaging. Fast forward to the last three weeks, I am now nearly as text-savvy as they come. I often joke that I don't know how I got married without the convenience of text messaging. It really is handy, and I've had the most fun texting my family back and forth. So here's the age old question: What is proper texting etiquette? I was at a get-together on Saturday with 2 other couples and we were playing a game. While I was waiting for my turn, I replied to a text from my brother and another one from my mom. Was that rude? I felt like it was ok because it was a pretty casual event, but maybe I won't have real friends any more if I'm too connected. I always got frustrated in one-on-one conversations when people would text another person and supposedly be listening to me at the same time. I don't want to become one of those. Thoughts?

Jordan River

We got to go to the Jordan River Temple with my brother Scott, and it was absolutely beautiful! Just when I thought we were making progress on our goal to go to all of the temples in Utah, President Monson announced another temple to be built in Utah, in the city of Payson! Luckily that one will be close so we shouldn't have a tough time making it there. But that makes the current Utah temple count FIFTEEN! We've been to seven (Provo, Salt Lake, Timpanogos, Draper, Manti, St. George, and Jordan River).

My brother Scott visiting from BYU-I

Clarification

First thing's first. I would LOVE to take credit for that beautiful piece of art that is our new quilt; however, I cannot. But I CAN claim to be related to the one that pieced it together: my wonderful mom did it as a Christmas gift for us. We were waiting for it to get quilted and it has been delivered. I feel like such a princess sleeping with it on top of me. Thank you, mom! My parents and brother came to visit us last week and we had a great time!

Dad, Mom, Nathan, and us at Brick Oven

What's that? You say my hair looks shorter? Well it is! I had a great experience as a first time customer at the Paul Mitchell beauty school. She took her own before/after pictures for her portfolio! I felt so honored. Here are my own before/after shots:

Showing off my birthday cake...Mississippi Mud a la Kevin

AND, I am so excited to announce that I am an official CHAMPION. That's right, my church basketball team WON the championship game 2 weeks ago. I practically LIVE in my new shirt. I love basketball so much and wish I could play it more. Here's our team with our supportive husbands after the big win.




The validation is really nice...although if I think about it, I only scored one basket in the championship game. Overall it was just a whole lot of fun!

THE QUILT!

Three Words

To sum up pretty much the whole month of February, I only need three words: Olympics, slides, and family. The first two things had a lot of overlap, too. I have always enjoyed watching the Olympics. I grew up watching Nancy Kerrigan figure skate and adored her, so I thought of her a lot when I saw the figure skating. I enjoyed watching Apolo Ohno in 2002. I missed out on the winter Olympics in 2006 since I was on a mission in Romania. We missed the summer Olympics completely since they began on August 8, 2008, which was the day we got married. So it's good to be back, watching the games! I am quite touched by the performance of Joannie Rochette, skating after her mother passed away on Sunday.
I cannot imagine what she's going through, or worse, what awaits her after all the fanfare has calmed down and she returns home. What a beautiful tribute to her mother that she not only skated so well, but that she took home the bronze medal. Life is so fragile.

The highlight of my month was getting these two cuties for an overnight stay at my house!

Jesse didn't want to be in the picture. But at least Kylee is happy!

I had planned and planned for my niece and nephew to come and was thinking about what fun things we could do. They got to my house around noon and by 3:00 pm, we had done everything! So I had to improvise, hence the grocery cart ride. What an ingenious idea to make riding in the cart fun for kids. Kylee was upset when I went to the checkout after picking up two things. I asked if they still wanted to ride around--the question that turned into us staying at the store for another 20 minutes, scouring for empty aisles so that I could run down them. They laughed and laughed. These two were quite easy to please. Sunday evening after they left was quite dreary and dreadfully quiet. Monday was even more quiet and lonely. I am so glad they got to come and can't wait to have them back! Just for fun, here's a video of Jesse back at Thanksgiving. The best is Ollie Octopus.

And last but certainly not least, I crocheted this little hat for my darling niece Alexa. I had a lot of fun doing it and can't wait to make more!

Change of Heart

The other day while in the car, this song came on . . .

and not only did I not change the station, I turned it up.

Kevin was shocked.

I knew it was inevitable that I would start liking her when my nieces were singing her songs and idolizing her. Heck, one of them even told me that I look like her. Yes, she said that I have "tangly hair, like Taylor Swift." (I'm sure she was remembering the first half of that video where it's crazy and unkempt, not the normal well-coiffed Taylor Swift that we're all familiar with.)

I'm still not ok with pretty girls being put in glasses for their "ugly" phase, and then suddenly no glasses = pretty. Whatever.

IN Utah, but definitely not OF Utah

I got an email at work yesterday that made my eye twitch almost as bad as when I see your in place of you're. Are you sitting down?

"Sorry about that, I sent it to the wrong person. Fills like a Monday."

Neat Trick

Did I mention the good news?

For the last seven months (June - December), I've been sitting here as the receptionist:

As of the first of the year, I got promoted and now I sit here:


Of course this isn't my dream job or anything, but it's a nice change of pace. I cannot even believe the difference in my job now compared to a year ago. One thing's for certain, I didn't have a window! I also have made some very dear friends since working here. My dad had a job in insurance over 30 years ago . . . never thought I'd be following in his footsteps like this! He also decided to go back to school to get his Master's degree, and subsequently met my mom.

In other random news, basketball season is back in swing and I'm really enjoying it! I'm not very good, but I sure love to play. Sadly my left ring finger got scratched pretty deep just below the middle knuckle. It bled a bit when it happened and has been raw ever since. I can't put my wedding ring back on, so I'm wearing it on my right hand. Kinda throwing me off! Oh, and for all the avid watchers out there, the ping pong ball has been securely back on the other side of the picture frame for the past week.