Word to my Plano homies:

Just saw this posted on a high school friend's facebook page:

Plano Independent School District: Plano, TX, is a suburb situated within Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX, and boasts many wealthy neighborhoods. Once named by CNN Money as the 11th best place to live in the country, it’s also been called one of the richest towns in the area, if not the whole country. Plano’s public school system is significant on two very different but possibly related fronts — its academic and athletic performances are some of the best in the United States, but it also suffers from a significant drug and suicide problem among its students. Lance Armstrong and many professional football and baseball stars attended public high schools in Plano.

This just makes me wanna say "PLANOOO PLANOOOOO. EEEEEAST EASSSSSSSSSST"

I grew up in Plano and have to laugh that it's the #2 most posh school system after #1, Beverly Hills. Really?! My school was definitely on the ghetto side. Many of those suicides they're talking about happened in the high schools themselves. And kids did drugs in my classes. And got beat up at lunch. And there were gangs in my school. Posh indeed! On the other hand, people did get made fun of for wearing clothes that didn't have a name brand on them, driving older cars, and for living in a one story house (and that was in elementary school! I thought that was normal).

But way to go Plano. Now I can use this as the reason why I wasn't in the top 10% of my class or on any sports teams (marching band!). My AP classes in Plano truly were harder than most of my classes at BYU and about 10 times harder than my AP classes in Idaho. I guess they have something there.

It's good to be from Plano.

This week's highlights

Lots of amazing things have happened in the last little bit so I want to highlight them all!

It's great that amazing things still have time to happen. I find myself with very little free time these days (which you may not believe from my 2 blog posts in one day..) between my internship, working on my thesis, "An Acoustic Analysis of Elements of Contrastive Stress Produced by 8 to 10-year-old Children", which involves 60+ hours of data analysis, plus write-up of the results, plus annotated bibliographies, etc, doing my relief society thang (i'm the secretary in my ward and we spend several hours each week doing visits, meetings, etc), and working out. But great things are happening.

Speaking of working out: Great thing #1- Gold's gym memberships for the husband and myself!

Call me weird, but this is something I've been wanting for a loong time. I'm so burnt out with running the same paths outside in the cold/wind/snow/rain. Richard has never had anything good to say about Gold's gym and has even sworn to me several times that he would never work out there "because they swindle your money" or something to that effect. However, as we weighed the different gym options in the area, Gold's had the best deal (that we could find. and it has zumba!!!) so we decided to go with them. Now we are planning to work out in the mornings before we have to go to work and it will be fantastic. I've already been several times and I must say that the zumba changed my life.

I even saw one of my old (not like old as in former but old as in old) BYU religion professors there I think. I didn't love his class because he speculated a lot and I didn't like it. Turns out this is the case for various BYU religion professors. Any of you who have been following the news (well, the utah news at least) and/or facebook know what I'm talkin about. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm referring to this. Ouch. That guy owns the reception hall where we got married and also taught the first BYU class I ever attended when i was still in high school visiting my sister so I feel for him :( I am a little annoyed at how many people think we're racist now, though. We were watching this show called what would you do and it had some mormon people on there and talk about propagating stereotypes.. ugh.

Anyway...Richard and I have discovered only one downside so far to Gold's Gym, other than a lot of really scary looking, buff people there. We were watching 20/20 about the honeymoon killer Friday night (did he do it or not?? we couldn't decide), because that's an amazing date idea, right? And the story after it was about HOLES in the walls of the showers at Gold's gym. The men's showers, not the women's. Apparently at the Gold's in Murray and also 2 in Utah county, where we live, holes have appeared, drilled into the shower stalls. Here's the story, if you're interested. They wouldn't say which 2 in Utah county had this problem (ah!). The funniest part is they said they've tried everything to cover the holes but they keep appearing. They even filled them in Thursday night, only to find them there again Friday morning! What the heck? Hilarious. In a gross kind of way. I told Richard to check the shower stalls yesterday when we were there but he didn't do it so they could be anywhere! Just a heads up to those of you who go to gold's and are brave enough to shower there.

Pros of gold's gym: zumba and working out with the husband (because goodness knows he was never gonna run with me outside). Cons: you might get your family jewels spied on in the shower. That's a chance I'm willing to take. Just wish we would have known so we could negotiate the price down when we were buying our memberships!

Great thing #2- Richard got promoted to a banker at Well's Fargo!! I'm so proud of him, he works so hard and has only been working there for about 3 months.

Great thing #3- crafts :) I've been hit by the craft bug after staring at white walls for the last
Found some pinterest things to recreate.. such as this sign for our house:

see it says clover! and it has little clovers on the ends of the shower curtain. it's not quite as great as the one on pinterest, but it was much cheaper to make (the other one involved cutting blocks of wood and modge-podging. do you think we have a saw to cut a bunch of wood blocks? no. so I used picture frames instead). Still waiting to fill in the picture frame above with one of our engagement shots. For now, it's a leaf collage.

also this!

not the bedspread of course but the wall thing above! pretty easy to make, just stain some wood and get some spray paint and a stencil. we're all about the fancy decor at our house. unfortunately, the complex is apparently painting our walls and all the stuff has to come down :( oh well. In other craft news, I just purchase this beautiful machine

to make all my crafting dreams come true. I'm planning on making pillows out of this fabric:

which I picked up at JoAnn's one day when they were having a sale and is currently resting on our couch as if it were already a pillow. Word to the wise: Never go to JoAnn's when they're having a sale unless you want to wait in line for an hour to get fabric cut and get trampled by crafty moms and teachers. This fabric, as it turned out, wasn't even on sale but the kind cashier guy gave us a 40% off coupon just because. Now I just have to hope that the machine doesn't have the same fate as our clock, since it too was ordered online.

Great thing #4- pictures from my students at the school I'm interning at. Turns out that around St. Patrick's day, when your last name is "Clover" kids think it's pretty fun to draw pictures for you. I've received some clovers, leprechauns, and other st. patrick's day things, as shown here:

My supervisor said, "get used to it with that name". Yes, well at least it's shorter than Christensen. I had to take that pic above at a funky angle in order to not break the law in revealing the child's identity- they take that stuff real seriously.

This picture is hands down my favorite.Is that supposed to be me? So many questions from this picture. What's on my face? Does she think I have zits? Or freckles? And that I weigh 1000 lbs? Why are Richard's legs so long? You get the idea.

Anyway, lots of great things are happening for us and we are grateful! Life is good.

To the birthday boy!

That's right folks!

This little guy (actually both of those little guys) turns 26 today. This is my sweet husband Richard in the red with his twin Jeremy. This is hands down my favorite baby picture of him!

He is my best friend and the best thing to ever happen to me and I'm happy I get to celebrate his birthday with him this year.

This is the first time I've celebrated his birthday with him. Last year we were pretty good friends but I guess maybe not that good because I don't remember even wishing him happy birthday last year... (sorry babe). So THIS year, I was determined to make it awesome.

Well, last night he started feeling sick and went to bed around 10:30. Woke up this morning more sick, so now he got his birthday wish, to stay home from church! (just kidding, but he was joking around about skipping church since he usually skips work on his birthday).

Luckily we got to celebrate last night by going to the Art City Trolley in Springville and having dinner and doing the only other thing that Richard requested for his birthday-playing Monopoly. He's a pretty low-maintenance guy. I rarely (never) want to play so I guess he had to request it as a birthday thing so I would do it :)

This attitude of his about birthdays (i.e. not requesting anything special for breakfast, not wanting me to make a big fuss) was a little disappointing to me at first. I like to go all out for my man on special occasions. When he said what he really wanted was a funfetti cake with store-bought chocolate frosting I was a little crestfallen. I love to bake these days and I like to make creations that I haven't tried before. It's so much more fun when you get to be creative! But if that was the cake he wanted, that's what I was going to give him. I went a little crazy on the decorations, as shown below, to compensate. It was 1 in the morning when I decorated it so that explains some of it too.


okay so I realize the lettering is awful but my cake decorating tool didn't have a nozzle small enough to draw so the stars and letters were drawn by snipping off the corner of a ziploc sandwich bag, ha. It turns out it's hard to do that way.

look how it coordinates with our fish tank! we're not obsessed with our fish, I swear. also this cake was made for my 26 year old husband and not for a 5 year old girl, as the decorations may suggest.

Throughout my preparations for his birthday this week, I came to a conclusion- this birthday stuff is tough when you're married! (right, married people out there?) How do you keep things (like gifts..) a surprise when you have the same bank account and your husband works at Wells Fargo and checks your account 90 times/day??

I shot myself in the foot with Richard's gift this year. I wanted to buy him a watch. A nice (ish) one, because he had been talking about how he wanted one. So I'm looking around, but then it occurs to me- I don't know what kind he wants exactly (and he can be picky about these things...). So I craft what I think is a brilliant plan.

Last Sunday after talking to my parents, I get on my laptop and search online for watches (they have much better deals for them online). I was trying to think of a way to be like "hey, which one do you like" but in a more sneaky way so he wouldn't know I was shopping for him. As I was thinking he looked at my computer and said "what're you doing?". So from my mouth comes this elaborate story about how my parents' anniversary is coming up and my mom asked me to look for a watch for my dad (where do I come up with these things?). "I don't know which one he'll like" a subtle hint to Richard to look at the watches and tell me which one he likes best. Well that didn't work. He said, "I think older guys usually wear gold". "Oh.. yeah I think you're right..". But at least I thought he was buying into my weird story. Then he asks me: "So when is your parents anniversary?". "Oh.. you know.. this next month coming up". Busted. "Are you making this up, love?" Ha. After trying to convince him that I was indeed looking for a watch for my dad, I relented.

I've never been a good liar, obviously. It's especially hard to lie to someone who can tell when I'm frustrated/sad/whatever emotion even when I don't realize it myself. It's a blessing and a curse!

So then I pretended like I wasn't going to get it for him anymore. "I can't get it for you for your birthday now because then it won't be a surprise. We can get one for you soon". So I went with this scheme, that I wasn't going to get one for him, so he'd be surprised when I really did get one for him. Well, this week he of course got off work before me every day so when a small package was delivered to our place, it caused some questions to be posed. Darn that UPS. So after a few "it's not what you think it is"...s from me, I said what the heck, he already knows what it is. So Thursday, he opened his special birthday gift and it was, in fact, exactly what he thought it was.

Lesson learned- don't buy things for your spouse on the internet and ship them to your house, where he will inevitably find them. I got him a new pillow too and that was a surprise so I guess it's all good.

Anyhow, the poor guy is zonked out right now thanks to our friend, the Nyquil so this may not be the most exciting birthday he's ever had, but I love him and I am thankful every day that he's my husband!

The case of the missing wedding gift

Let me tell you a story that begins last week.

So at our reception in Boise, which was Jan. 21st, someone told me they had sent something to us online. I thought that was great and didn't think much else about it because I had to talk to the next person in the line of course.

Fast forward a week or so and I start thinking about this gift. This person is quite a reputable lady and we still hadn't received our gift, so I started to get curious. I went online to our registry and found an item that we didn't have yet. Using my powers of deductive reasoning, I figured that must be the one.

Then I started to get excited about it as I visualized it in our house. I waited for it to be sitting on our doorstep every day when I came home, but guess what. It never came.

After about 3 weeks post reception, I started to feel like this package was never going to arrive. I proceeded to call Bed Bath and Beyond who, much to our surprise, said that the package was indeed purchased by this person, and was delivered to us January 25th! (it was now Feb. 15th). This was news to me as I had never received the package. Confused, I called UPS with the tracking number they gave me. Sure enough, the package had been delivered. The conversation went something like this:

me: Hi, I was sent a package but we never received it. The tracking number is _____________
UPS lady: yes, i see that that package was delivered on Jan. 25th and Moran signed for it.
me: I'm sorry, who?
UPS lady: Moran or Moran maybe?
me: who's Moran??
UPS lady: yes Moran, in #**9
me: wait... what? we're in **8
UPS lady: oh well we just had your neighbor sign for it because you weren't home...

What?! Is this just a Provo thing? Apparently UPS, if you're not home, will knock on your random neighbor's door who you've never seen/met before and deliver your large expensive packages to them and not tell you. Because everyone has neighbors who are honest and will actually deliver the stuff to them. Hmmm. That led to a very awkward encounter with my neighbor, when I had to go over there and ask her if she had my package. I hate confrontation, and like I said, we've had no contact with this neighbor whatsoever. It went down about as well as me asking my roommate last year if she had stolen my clothes.

I knocked on "Moran's" door and she literally opened her door just far enough to slip her head through, nothing else.

Me (a little unnerved and alarmed by how weird she was being): uh.. hey... have you seen any packages of ours?

Her: no.

Me: Oh, because I just got off the phone with UPS and they said you signed for one of our packages

Her: blank stare

Me: Like a few weeks ago?

Her: Oh... yeah. Well I asked the guy if we should take it in our place or leave it outside the door and he said we could leave it outside your door, so we left it outside the door (isn't that the reason they have people sign for the package in the first place? to keep if off the doorstep?). You never got it?

Me: No, we never did. (Thanks a lot).

Her: Oh, that's too bad. Well, bye.

Fighting back the urge to push open her door and see if the clock was hanging in her living room, I went back to my apartment, defeated. I called UPS though and I guess they are launching/have launched an "investigation", whatever that means.

All I know is it's awkward as heck to see them now, especially if UPS is investigating them!

So in summary, what happened to our package??! I still have no idea. A. our neighbors are dirty thieves and stole it. B. someone else in our complex/in the surrounding area is a dirty thief and took it. Since the package looked like this:
(half the size of the door), I wouldn't be all that surprised if someone else saw it and took it off the doorstep. However, due to the weird and shady nature of our neighbors, I wouldn't be surprised if that clock was in their living room either.

Lucky for us, BB&B sent us another clock no questions asked. I now have a semi-threatening note on our door saying "please leave our packages in the office if we're not home" so I picked up our replacement clock in the office today. Problem solved.

Lessons learned:
-Bring treats to your neighbors when you move in so they don't steal your packages
-Have your packages sent to a safe place, not a sketchy Provo apartment complex
-If you aren't very honest, you could probably get a lot of free stuff from Bed Bath and Beyond

Although it had quite the journey, I'm glad we finally got our last wedding gift!

Valentine's day

This year, my husband and I got to celebrate our first Valentine's day together. This made me really happy for several reasons. First of all, for the past few years I have been excited about finally being married on Valentine's day and spending it with someone I love (aww). That's really the main reason. Another reason, though, is because until now I had a tendency to start dating someone right before Valentine's day and break up with them shortly after. My family noticed this pattern I guess and always gives me a hard time about it. They have reason to make fun of me for this as it happened probably 4 out of the last 6 years (I didn't do it on purpose, it just happened that way!). Sorry family, that pattern is over!

For the special day we decided to go out to dinner and go ice skating! I really wanted to go outside (you know, like in the movie Serendipity? it's so romantic, right?) so we looked up outdoor ice skating rinks and there are some here in the Utah valley! Who knew?

This is what the place looked like:

We got there and thought it was closed because noone was on it. Nope, it was open! So Richard and I got to skate around it by ourselves for like 30 mins until some 13-year-old's birthday party came to join us. One of the girls said, "Sorry for ruining your Valentine's day". haha. It was actually nice to have them with us because a. it made us feel better about not being able to skate very well on the ice and b. it gave us someone to take pictures for us!

The best part about it was that it was only $1.50 for the skate rental each and free to skate! Can't beat it. The worst part would definitely be the cracks in the ice... it was pretty hard to skate on because the ice had mountain range-type bumps in it and cracks, etc. I guess when you're not charging admission it's hard to want to use a lot of money to maintain the ice. It was still really fun though! Here are some pics captured by our 13 year-old photographer.


Don't feel bad for her, she really only took that top picture, we took the rest ourselves.

I also came home to these beauties
Thanks babe! I love flowers.

It was great to be able to spend Valentine's day with the one I love! Looking forward to many more. It was great to spend the day with our fish, Sunny and Erwin too. I helped them celebrate the occasion by eating an extra piece of cake for them. You're welcome, guys!

We also have a new addition to the family that I forgot to mention...

a basil plant!!! It was an early Valentine's day gift for myself. I literally jumped up and down when I saw this thing for sale at Winco. I think I was more excited about this than the fish. As an avid watcher of the Food Network, I see them cook with this beautiful, fresh basil that they somehow have growing in their home in cute little mugs. Well you better believe I wasn't gonna pass this opportunity up to become more like Ina or Rachel Ray. So here she is! Apparently these plants are really hard to keep alive... mine is really wilted. Apparently they need like 8 hours of sunlight a day (we live in Utah and it's winter..?). For that reason, the thing is in our bedroom next to the South-facing window, to which we now have to leave the blinds open every day. If it dies I hope I can at least make some pasta sauce first. Nothing like fresh basil, mmmm.

Any advice on how to keep the thing alive would be appreciated! Seems to be hanging in there so far, but I have my doubts on how long it will be around...

Hope you all had a great Valentine's day!

Our wedding in pictures

As I ran in the door from turning off my car alarm just now (which goes off at random at all hours of the day and night), it occurred to me. I haven't posted my wedding pictures!

I've been meaning to do it since I received them on Wednesday (I was promised them "2-3 weeks" after we got married... but 6 weeks later here we are..), but we had some difficulties retrieving them which involved such things as me wandering around Provo looking for the photographer's house, finding out that she had in fact not put my pictures on the porch like she said she would, and meeting her husband several hours later outside of our complex to finally get them. Then we couldn't view them on our computer. To say I was a little frustrated that night would be an understatement. After 6 weeks of waiting patiently (more or less), I just wanted to see my wedding pictures, ya know?

Aaaanyways, here are some of our favorites from the temple.











These are from the reception!

My nephew Carson decided that my brother Ryan, who is in Hungary right now on a mission and unable to attend the wedding, needed to be in on the action.
I wasn't sure what to do with the cake...

So I made a last minute decision to shove it up his nose

It's okay, I cleaned it up :)


My cute grandparents.. this is my goal! Happily married after 60 years


Me with all of my nieces.. anyone else notice the weird lighting in these reception pictures? Not sure if these were edited or not. Hmm
Richard and the boyz from both sides
Girls from both sides
These girls, Richard's nieces, assigned themselves to be my personal assistants throughout the night. They were so cute holding my dress while I walked around.


My beautiful mom and sisters

Meet Richard's twin, Jeremy and his wife Katie!
Speaking of twins... from left to right you have my twin cousins Kristina and Elise, my mom and her twin Julie, and husband and his twin Jeremy. Lots of twins in our family!




This is one of my personal faves of Richard's niece Camden breakin it down! You go girl.







Just married car... Luckily my sisters were able to keep my brothers-in-law from doing anything to the car (when they were hatching their plot I distinctly heard the word "shovel" and got a little nervous). However, Richard's buddies from freshman year still got us! We were finding hot dogs in the most creative places for a while. First time getting gas again- Hot dog inside that little door you open up. Pulling down the visors when it gets sunny- hot dog. Using the windshield wipers- hot dog. haha. Actually hot dogs that time. But you get the idea.

Then we rode off into the sunset!We appreciate everyone who was able to come share in the day with us and who helped us make everything work! We love being married.