July

This is what we've been up to for the last few weeks:
 

We went to Benihana for the first time ever for my birthday celebration! I guess the fact that I'm debating putting my age on here means I'm finally old enough that it might be time to start lying about it!

 there's the chef doing his magic. if this speech pathology thing doesn't work out I would love to do what he's doing...

  

Yes, I ate sushi in addition to my regular meal. Richard hates it so this was my first time eating it since I ordered some on our cruise for our honeymoon. Mmmmmmmm

And then there was this time we went to the Spanish Fork carnival with our friends the Malones and I risked my life on this death machine formally known as "the zipper". It wouldn't be too bad except for that it lasts for about 10 minutes. That's 10 minutes of being flung around in a cage.

 That's Rachel and I waiting to get on because our husbands didn't want to ride it.

 

Does anyone else feel a little bit nervous about a ride that gets put up in one day? Also note the rust...

  

And there was this other time that I defended my thesis! Unfortunately it continues to haunt me and the process isn't over. But this was a good day nonetheless.

 And the next day we got to go to Richard's twin sister's wife's family's (did you catch all that?) cabin and ride rhinos and shoot guns! Richard's sister Wendy and brother Chris were there too!

 I got in trouble because I wasn't holding my gun right. What, I can't shoot my gun like that?

Richard loves guns. Not many people know this but he dreams about being a sniper. I'm not kidding, it's his dream job. I thought he was kidding when he first told me. He wasn't.

 That's Richard's twin Jeremy behind us and his wife Katie at...

the DEMOLITION DERBY

 it was real fun except for the parts when they had to pry people out of the cars with the jaws of life. that made me a little nervous.

 After that, I attended a week-long (45 hour) lactation conference (yes, i said lactation) in South Jordan where I learned things I never wanted to about breastfeeding. Complete with pictures. Did you ever know you could talk about that for 45 hours??

And all that culminated in this weekend when we babysat my sister-in-law Amy's kids while she and her husband had a weekend getaway to Vegas! We got ice cream one night. The kids got waffle cones and the workers looked at us like we were insane. Maybe because they thought we had 4 kids and I often get mistaken for a 16 year old.




We're living a busy life trying to look for housing and work full time and turn in my thesis and graduate this weekend but we have fun in between all that!

Highlights

Well it turns out it's been about a month since I posted anything on here, so here are some highlights from our life lately.

Highlight #1

 warning: this is not a baby bump picture even though it looks like one.

Yes, that's right, the husband and I joined an intramural softball team! It's honestly one of my favorite things we've ever done together. We're on a team with a bunch of other old married people like ourselves and no one has really ever played before so it's a lot of fun. Richard, of course, has been a baseballer all his life

what a stud!

 that's my boy! he was quite the pitcher in his day

and i played too, you know. it was more just social for me, i was on a team with all my little bffs, but we bobcats were a name to be feared in the world of pre-teen ymca softball

would you wanna come up against this?

no way. richard and my team is 2-2 right now so we'll see how this thing goes!

Highlight #2

So, I recently started a new job! I'm doing early intervention with the Provo early intervention program trying to help the little kiddos ages 0-3 talk better/talk more/start talking. I mentioned that I wanted some books to read with the kiddos (books are great for language for all you mommas out there!) Well one day Richie comes home from work with books in hand. This is the book that he proposed for the kids I work with:

This isn't a joke. Richard actually brought this home with the intent for me to take it to the kids I work with (ages ZERO to three). It was a very sweet gesture! Let's take a look at some of my favorite pics from the book:

hey, anyone want me to come over and give your 2 year old nightmares for a few years? he's a funny boy. i'll save it for him to read to our kids..

Highlight #3

July 4th of course! Being the food network junkie that I am, all I wanted to do was create some yummy parfait things for the holiday. I don't like blueberries so these were red, white, and black. And yellow from the pudding.

We also did some grillin'

 We were pleased to spend the holiday with Richard's brother, Chris! Quite the master on the grill, I must say. Don't you love the corn on the cob? Richard tied the little corns up into those little corn bundles shown above.

 grenades!

 In spite of the fact that our entire state is on fire, we had a great 4th of July!

 Highlight # 4
Speaking of fire, the day after the 4th of July we were blessed with a rain storm. I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I always do rainstorms. we had some killer ones in texas that I miss dearly so any time there's a terrential-ish rainstorm here in the desert (guess how often that happens?) i like to take advantage. I knew Richard was watching, but was unaware he was photographing me. Excuse the fact that I look like the phantom of the opera in this pic, there's some sort of weird mask looking thing on my face. In this pic I was probably celebrating the fact that the bird poop got washed off of my car, which is making an appearance behind me in this photo.

 Aaaand after about 30 seconds it was too cold.

Can't wait for the adventures that are to come this month!

Surprise!

Today I completed my last final ever, and my last day of school, ever. "unless I wanna get my PhD", I told Richard. but that was just a funny joke and will never happen

let me just tell you that I went out with a bang. I was on campus from before 8 this morning til 6:30 p.m., 3 hours of which was taking a timed final that literally left my body shaking when the time ran out (it was really stressful...okay?).

and I also managed to squirt water from the water fountain directly into my eye, which hurts a lot more than you'd think. like imagine shooting a hose in your eye. it's a bad deal.

and all I brought to school today was a bag of granola- bad planning.

and some random Idaho number called me twice last night, once at 1 am and once at 2. I'm tempted to do the same to them tonight and see how they like it. and I had weird dreams about killers all night so all in all I didn't sleep too well last night.

because of those factors, I was kind of a grump/generally checked out today. even after the school day was over.

but then as I'm driving up to my house, I see this on someone's door:

but wait a second, that's MY door! (notice the "over the hill" decor)

and then I opened the door and found this inside!

my cute husband set up about 5 balloons, streamers, flowers, all kinds of stuff around our apartment, all because I finished grad school today.

well you better believe that frown turned upside down and I'm a happy girl now!

thank you to my sweet husband for all you do for me!!! he is the b-e-s-t! i love fun surprises

here's to no more school (or I should say no more classes...) and moving ninja-style through our apartment for the rest of the day :)

Staycation

for the last two weeks, I have been holed up in my room every night working on my thesis/relief society lessons/other relief society stuff for my calling/reading hundreds of pages of articles for my exams/working on group projects/working my new job/working my other job/going to class, etc. Richard sat down with me one night and wrote out everything I had to do for me so I could figure out when I could possibly get everything done and not get overwhelmed and go insane (thanks babe!).

lucky for me, tomorrow marks my LAST DAY OF CLASS ever. EVER. it's been a long road, and I am ready to see it end. of course I'm still not done with my thesis and probably never will be, BUT at least I don't have to go to my classes anymore. They're 2.5 hours each. wooof.

due to the stress i've been under lately and general lack of time, not a lot of fun has been had. it is for this reason that today, I blew off my client (sorry buddy) and studying for my exam tomorrow (B's get degrees) to go here with my dear husband, who had work off today:

to lagoon! probably one of my favorite places in Utah! I love roller coasters almost as much as I love desserts. almost.

so naturally we went on some roller coasters, which was great fun.

the first one we went on, I screamed bloody murder as I always do and my throat hurt. I was a little afraid to talk/scream on any rides after that for fear my vocal cords would end up looking like this:

(I took a class on voice disorders in my master's program where I saw pictures of vocal trauma like this daily. would you ever forget an image like this? no, you wouldn't. and you're welcome for sharing the disturbing photo)

I was a little nervous to drop some serious $$ to go to lagoon because when Richard came with me to Idaho last summer to meet the fam, we went to the state fair and he wouldn't ride any of the rides because he gets sick. he assured me he could handle these though.

well after a few roller coaster rides, poor Richard wasn't feeling too good. after a few hours of dizzy spell, he was ready to go for it again and tackled this bad boy

 

I thought he was gonna jump ship before the thing took off because he was really nervous but he did it!!!!!! I was nervous getting on this one too, but it was because my seat had a puddle of something on it when I went to go on the ride...I spent some time trying to figure out what it was, any ideas? it wasn't raining or anything...

In addition to the rides, we saw a peacock wandering around the grass (I'm honestly not sure if it was supposed to be there or not.. it wasn't even fenced in)

 took a little ride through the park

 and enjoyed each other's company, of course.

also we finished the experience with one of these. mmmm

it sure was nice to have a break! here's to working full-time and getting to go home and just relax!

Boise!

this is a little late in coming thanks to certain things in my life like my thesis... but last week for Mother's day we went for a visit to my Idahome! Oh how I love Idaho. It's one of those places that grows on you.

and so it began

I usually have a whole list of things that I have to do when we go to Boise. Places to eat, places to visit, etc.

Well this time I had one thing on my list: hiking table rock!

yeah, we're young and reckless. in the background you can see the motivational meeting/AA meeting/we had no idea what kind of meeting that was taking place

the treasure valley! there's a pretty sweet view from the top

 this is where you start to hike it. yes that's a large cross on the top, and yes I accidentally spilled water on myself immediately before taking this picture.

most interesting thing that happened on this hike was the brawl that we witnessed going down by a woman who loved dogs more than people and a grouchy old man. it happened probly 10 feet from where we were in the pic above, right as we started the hike. here is the interaction that took place:

grouchy man: that dog needs to be on a leash
dog lover (walking with her ROTTWEILER up the trail): uh actually he's a therapy dog and an AKC(?) champion but yeah thanks!
grouchy man: i've got pepper spray in my bag and i'm not afraid to use it on him if I need to
dog lover: oh my gosh dude, what's wrong with you? are you not from here? do you hate black people and mexicans too?

then the man's wife stepped in, told him to shut up and they went on separate paths.

later on the hike, the dog lady mistook our family for that couple and yelled to us to go away from her. hahah. fyi, rottweilers are not an ethnic group.

i'm not really a dog lover so I gotta be honest, I was kind of on the man's side. i don't care if you think your dog is nice, if he looks like he could eat me, keep him on a leash.

other highlights of our trip included making dinner for my mama for mother's day

skyping with my brother who is in Hungary on his mission, which I didn't get a picture of. he got to "meet" richard for the first time though!

going to BODO (Downtown Boise)- one of my favorite places in the world. Drink from Jackson's and Boise State merchandise are a must.

a trip to the Nike Outlet, Richard's favorite place on this earth. we both got new kicks, as shown below. we didn't realize until after we picked them out that they were the exact same shoe, only his were blue and mine were pink! $30 for Nikes, you can't beat it

and of course getting to see and chat with my parents! i'm already plotting out when we can go back :)