December

Wow, I can't believe it's been so long since I posted anything in here! My last post was about halloween and now it's February.

Possible reasons for my lack of blogging:
1. I am easily overwhelmed (exhibit A- while Richard's at work today I am supposed to clean our house, go running, and work on my relief society lesson. While sitting on the couch thinking about what to do first, I decided to write in my blog). As it relates to blogging, I was gung-ho about blogging my trip to San Fran to visit my sister. Then I was so busy that I never did that. Then we went to Idaho and I didn't blog that either. The thought of playing catch-up made me want to avoid it altogether so here we are.
2. Lazy.  Our desktop computer is now (since we moved into a 2-story place) upstairs, not in front of the TV like it used to be. When I come home from working with toddlers all day, which many times involves administering a complete assessment of every area of their development which runs about 2 hours (can you imagine administering a 2-hour standardized assessment to a 1 or 2 year old? It's hard.), I basically crash for the rest of the night on the couch. If I want to blog and watch TV at the same time, I have to use my laptop. Because my laptop was a graduation gift from 2006 (two thousand and six!), it freezes about 10 x throughout the course of blogging and I have to start over. Not ideal.
3. I've gotten a little better about going running. Almost all of my blog posts used to happen when I was supposed to be outside running. It was just hard for me to get out the door. Unfortunately I'm in that same boat today. Maybe because the last time I went running outside, I ran across a poor little old man who had fallen down on the ice and it turned in to 5 people stopping their cars to help us, a makeshift Spanish interpreter, an ambulance, and firetruck. I'm glad I could help, although not eager to relive that experience. It made me too sad. It might also be the cinnamon roll I just ate for breakfast.

That being said, here is my attempt to catch up! Some pics from December. I was all over the place this year; I went to San Francisco with my sister Jenny and her girls for Thanksgiving, then to Idaho in early December, then to Maryland for Christmas!

Here is San Fran for Thanksgiving:

 I painted the girls' nails, it was so fun! I gave them (and myself) one "surprise" nail that was sparkly on each hand.

Then we were off to Idaho to see my broseph come home from 2 years in Hungary! Here's my mom at the airport in Boise.

                                  And here he is getting off the plane. I got a little teary eyed.                                       

                        

        

So fun having him in the US again! Especially because he's in Provo just like us!

 

                             (my niece Brielle, she loved Richard! In this pic it looks like she's ours)

Then before we went to Maryland...

                                                              

SLP and nurse's office at my work decked out for Christmas. "we have ways of making you talk"

oh. and we bought a car!

 she's a beaut! I get to drive her around.

Then we went to Maryland. We did so many things in Maryland, his parents spoiled us. I don't know if I even have pictures for all of the things we did but here are a few:

Hershey, Pennsylvania! Oddly enough I had actually been there before a couple years earlier. Always a blast in a town that centers around chocolate!

                                        

 Twins in their Rawlings gear from our brother in law Dave!

 This tree had so many presents under it it was unreal.

 Visitors center at the DC temple, featuring nativities from different countries- this one was for Ryan! And above is my sweet little niece Camden. She was my bff during this trip to the temple

 Christmas morning- got my lamb-ajamas on, as I did for most of the trip

 Christmas morning was chaos and also a blast! Richard's dad wrote his mom a poem that gave her clues for what and where her gift was so we got to watch her find it and open it. I was also introduced to boulah boulah to find another Christmas present. I was nervous to spend my first Christmas away from home but his family made it so much fun, they are so great!

 Trip to the aquarium in Baltimore!

 They had a dolphin show! Those things are hard to capture on camera, believe me.

Air and Space museum in DC. Probably my dad's favorite place on earth. He was jealous.

 Richard's family humored me and allowed me to fulfill a lifelong dream- to go to DC (Georgetown) cupcake shop! I've watched the entire TLC series on netflix so going there was pretty exciting. Great cupcakes too

                                 
                                         
New Year's eve got a little wild! We had a fun party planned by our sister in law Katie Jane

                                                       and Happy new year from us! That's a wrap.

But in case you want some more, this is for you.

 If this isn't the most disturbing thing you've ever seen I don't know what is.

October

October was good to us this year- always a good thing because it is one of my all-time favorite months!

It was filled with caramel apples, pumpkin carving, halloween candy (which has also trickled in to November...) and football, of course.

One special day we got to watch the BYU vs. Georgia Tech game at the BYU broadcasting building, where our friend Colton works!

We were part of the live audience for the talk show that they have before the game on byu tv. They had signs that told us when to applaud and how loudly to do so. I even saw them putting makeup on the men beforehand- kind of funny since most of them are former football players (aka big, manly men). AND we got free pizza out of the deal too and watched the game on a giant screen! yee haw.

Also in October a very special thing occurred. My beloved car, that I have had since the day I turned 16, had her own special birthday.

happy 200,000 miles!! I was so nervous that I would miss the photo op, but I got it!

Next up we have Halloweeeeeeen! I love Halloween. Working full time has put a damper on my ability/desire to create anything fancy, so I went with an old classic, or as some would call it, a repeat costume that I found in a box in my room.

here I am in all my Glenwood glory in 2008! love these girls!

and in 2012! only thing that changed was the headband (somehow in the last 4 years I managed to lose the other one) and I had to last-minute sew the fringe back on before our ward trunk or treat

well we tried to go classic skating with our friends, but got turned away due to private parties. we ended up going to miracle bowl!! where we got a blue slush (as shown in richard's teeth above), got richard's costume critiqued by the miracle bowl employees, and saw someone dressed up as a snail for halloween! genius.

it was fun!

then we have the haircutting extravaganza. that was today, so I guess it's not October anymore. but let's face it, it'll be a while before I post again!

armed and dangerous! bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz



I was nervous, but I felt okay because I knew I couldn't do worse than this

this was richard after a real live haircut that he got from The Cuttery when we were in Maryland visiting his family. I'm amazed every time I see it! The woman who did this had a license!

probly should've taken a before pic of richie's hair... but this is the after!

 not too shabby, although I did screw up many things and Richard did spend 15 mins or so "touching it up" in the bathroom after. But he's extra picky about his hair.

More adventures to come in Nov. and December! Dec. 6th my little bro comes home!!!!!!!!!!!

Arachnophobia

Welp, I guess it's time for my monthly blog post!

Here's a little summary of the last month and a half.

Starting with this:

This wild thing was found in the basement apartment that we moved into at the beginning of September. I think I haven't blogged about this yet because it was so traumatic for us and I didn't want to relive it. Here's the story.

The first night we went to visit this place (after signing the contract...) we saw 5 spiders running around in it. A few more too that were dead. That was a red flag. I cried.

(Other red flag: many appearances of creatures like this outside our door. It looked like a giant green hot dog):



Richard bought spider bombs to set off in the place so it would be spider-free when we moved in. Also, we told our landlord and she had pest control come and spray. Phew.

Fast forward a week. We move in. Everything we own (we have a lot of stuff). Since we were moving from a fully furnished apartment to an unfurnished scary basement, we also bought all kinds of furniture and set it all up in there.

From day 1, Richard continued to find spiders in our house (and not tell me--for which I am grateful). I thought he was being paranoid when he told me to shake out all of my clothes when I took them out of the boxes while unpacking and to be careful. I thought he was being paranoid when he shook out the sheets each morning. I thought he was paranoid when he was afraid to sleep on the floor on the air mattress that we were using while waiting for our mattress to be delivered (we literally had 0 furniture before we moved into this place). "We haven't seen any spiders since we moved in". That's what I thought.

The 2nd morning we slept in our new place, after an entire weekend of moving our stuff in til all hours of the night, we got up to get ready for the day and Richard shook out our sheets.

I was getting ready for work. That's when I heard the scream. It was a manly scream, but I knew something was wrong. Richard said there was a huge spider and then proceeded to run around trying to trap it- not my first instinct.

here he is, trapped!

I went to work and he spent the morning getting the thing identified. It was identified as a HOBO, a scary nasty kind of spider that can cause skin lesions and necrosis. woof! well that was the end of that, richard refused to sleep there ever again. Luckily, our wonderful friends let us stay with them for a few nights and so did Richard's sister Amy while we looked for a new place to live. Shortly after, we were blessed to find a place close to where we both work, where we live now.

We had to move allllllllll of our stuff out and into this new place. Moving is terrible. Moving 2 weekends in a row is really terrible. Moving might be my least favorite activity. Probably Richard's least favorite too because of how cranky and emotional I am by the end of it all. By the time we moved the last of our furniture into our new place I was ready to never move again, ever. Here's to hoping we'll be in this place for at least a year or two to come! We love it here. I'll be putting some pics on here in the near future of some of the little projects I've been doing to spruce this place up!

Californ-i-A!

Here is a little taste of Richard and I when we were first dating (like the first day we started dating in fact).
As you can tell from this video, richie and I were absolutely meant to go to california together.You can also tell that we were meant to marry each other by how giddy and ridiculous I am acting :)

Welp we did the marriage thing about 8 months ago, so it was time to fulfill our other destiny- to go to California together!


Day 1- to the BEACH! Newport Beach

 It doesn't look like much, but it sure beat the minivan from our honeymoon. And it had functioning A/C, which neither of our cars do, so we felt pretty good cruising around in this guy.

 Then we went out to this Japanese place to eat later that day so I could get some sushi!

 ... and dessert. Guess which one is mine? :)

 Day 2- Hollywood!

  Representin' my boyz

 Who doesn't love Will Smith? PS if you've never been to Hollywood, it's tough to get pics next to these hand prints. It's tough just to walk through the place without getting trampled, if you ask me. I was willing to make it happen though for my boy Will.


 
I asked this guy for a picture and he asked me for a tip. How hard is it to stand there while someone takes a picture of you?

 We (sort of) hiked the trail to the hollywood sign! Do you see it?

 My first time seeing a Porshe get towed for a parking violation

After Hollywood, we went to Beverly Hills where we saw some amazing automobiles. Just about everyone there has a Bentley, Mercedes, Audi, Lamborghini, etc

 Last Day in California :(

 We went to the beach at sunset for a little romantic end to the experience.

No judging- it's sparkling grape juice

 probably one of the highlights of our trip was going to sprinkles cupcakes, a cupcake bakery started by Candace Nelson from the food network's "Cupcake Wars" (i'm obsessed with the food network)

disregard the rather unflattering photo of the woman in the line in front of us. that was not intentional.

 we got a red velvet, s'more, black and white, and i honestly can't remember the other one. they were tasty though! that box cost us $14 plus tax so you'd better hope they were good (how do people afford to live in California??)

And here we are in the airport, ready to fly back to Utah! I took a picture because of how goobery/touristy we looked since we had matched that day on accident. It's like those old couples that go on vacation dressed in matching Hawaiian shirts. 

And then we came back to life as usual here and prepared to move! We had so much fun and can't wait for our next adventure!