This One's for Aaron

1 More Hour Till My Husband is Home and I Won't Have to Blog About My Dogs!!!

There are few things on this earth I love more than animals. Especially horses and dogs. Particularly MY horses and dogs.
With Aaron being gone lately I have really noticed how my dogs are my companions. Perhaps I talk to them a little more than people would call normal. But I really think they understand it. Well, a few words I know they know for certain: squeaky squid, bedtime, poop, and breakfast.
I even love them when they knock over our 10-ft tall real Christmas tree at 6:30 am making the ornaments fall off and break and gallons of water saturate the carpet. Yes, I even love them then.

Skating, Shooting, and Fishing

They go together like...
uh. nevermind.
I just felt like posting some more pics of what we have been up to. unlikely combination but that's what makes us who we are. right?

Kirsten learning to longboard and loving it!


Fly fishing with Casey! Best day of fishing this season... even if we didn't catch anything. it was too cold. we did however find bear poo when aaron took us bushwhacking too far from the river.



Spending some quality time at the Heebs Skate Park.



Exercising our God Given American Right to Bear Arms...

WOW! WHERE TO BEGIN!

Hmmm so when you don't post for almost a month turns out you have a lot to write about.

To start out with, about 2 1/2 weeks ago Aaron went on a kayaking trip to West Water on the Colorado River. Sorry, no pics of that since cameras+river=no good. The trip then resulted in an unspoken obligation on my friends' part to celebrate my bday. And they did.




But perhaps even BIGGER news is the grand unveiling of our FENCE!!!!! In the words of- well we will call her Ms. Anonymous- upon seeing a cell phone pic of the fence Ms. Anonymous' reaction read "Are you effing kidding me? That is the most legit fence I have ever seen. It’s like a medieval fortress wall. Where’s the moat and draw bridge?" Another recipient responded "something tells me you designed this fence in AutoCAD before doing anything". Welll, Mmmmmaaaaybeeeeyessss. What can I say....

This Guy Sums it Up...

BANANA FRIENDS AND FAMILY

Banana Republic's friends and family event is this week

so if anyone wants to use my discount at

Banana, Gap, Baby Gap, Old Navy

any store anywhere, including online

let me know and I will register you on my account

and you will get an email with your coupon codes.

P.S. This isn't a sales pitch or anything.

I don't get anything for you shopping,

it's just like employee appreciaion letting our fam use our discount.

The sale is the 13th - 16th.

Happy Halloween

Well I don't DO haunted houses, or haunted forestes, or corn mazes, or anything like that.
But I am pretty sure I could handle this....

7 RANDOMS...

FIRST TIME TAGEE- Thanks Alexis! I feel like I am finally officially a part of the blogging community.

1. My secret dream job is a cake decorator or a doggy daycare. I would love to work for Duff on Ace of Cakes! It looks like so much fun. And they teach a class on it at the community college. Unfortunately the pay probably isn’t that great. But perhaps more realistically I have thought a great deal about an upscale doggy day care for the Park City clientele. Those people LOVE their dogs. I think almost more than their children.

2. I am scared of the dark. Not just scared, more like horrified. This results in Aaron having to fall asleep to Glenn Beck or Jon and Kate + 8 every night. This problem became particularly daunting when Aaron moved away to Colorado. My solution: weapons under the bed. Any weapon will do. One weekend when Aaron and his friends took the guns and went up to a cabin- I resorted to ski poles. Like I said, any weapon will do.

3. I crave tabloids. I can’t help it. I love to read the celebrity gossip. This makes me feel like I know them somehow. Many times I catch myself referring to celebs on a first name basis as though they are my friends. Example: “Honey I saw Kate got a gorgeous new bag today and I totally want one! But I am sure it’s way too expensive for us.” Aaron’s typical response “what are you talking about? Who is Kate???”

4. I have a thing about my food not touching. If I Williams Sonoma carried divided plates that would have been my wedding china for sure. You know the ones I am talking about. I have to be careful what I order in restaurants purposefully choosing dishes where cross-contamination is least likely. As for the old saying “it all goes to the same place”… although it may be true, I’m not buying it.

5. I want to go back to law school. This is much more serious randomness than the cake-decorating thing or the doggy daycare. If we are ever in a position where my income is not necessary I will apply to go back to law school. The words “shoulda been a lawyer” are spoken often in our home. The two most usual instances include: 1. Aaron blurting it out after an argument because I always win; and 2. Me sighing it half-heartedly to myself after a slow day at work.

6. I fall asleep in movie theaters. I do. I can’t help it. I have a movie start time threshold of about 6:00 pm. Any movie starting after that is a waste of money for me. I will fall asleep in the trailers, no matter how badly I want to see the movie and how hard I try to stay awake. I am an early to bed early to rise girl, but seriously, this is a bit ridiculous. I used to feel SOOO bad on dates. Poor Aaron doesn’t get to see movies in theaters very often. Redbox is a much safer bet for us.

Let’s see, I am only on SIX!?!?! Wow, 7 random things are a lot harder to come up with than I thought. Well, 7 interesting things anyway!

7. I pull out my eyebrows when I am anxious or nervous. This is a BAD nervous tick I developed somewhere along the way. I notice it most often when I am sitting at work working on some big project deadline. I will look down and suddenly realize there is a pile of eyebrow hairs on my desk. Or when I am driving in traffic I will feel a pinch and look at my fingers which are then holding several little hairs. I think I get this from my dad.

So there you go Alexis! And anyone else interested in the inner workings of my mind.
I tag Whitney, of course, Carrie for payback, and Ashley. Have fun! :)

Calculus

Birthday Party!

Tonight we had my dad's birthday party at our house. It was our first "family dinner" at the new house. Actually, it was our first family dinner we've hosted ever. Period. I think it went really well!
And the baby didn't destroy anything! THANK GOODNESS!
Nick, Lorena, and Kirsten got here early so we could wrap my dad's HUGE present in old engineering plans from my work which Kirsten helped Aaron color on. -Hey I am just trying to do my part Reduce Reuse and Recycle.-
Kirsten also helped me cut the potatoes. Or is it potatos. Nope, it's definitely potatoes.
All in all it was pretty great. I love my dad SOOOO much and I really don't know what I would do without him. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

In completely unrelated news, I decorated my front porch for Halloween on Friday.
We have never lived anywhere that we could decorate before so I was really in the dark on how to go about this.
Adding to my decorative awkwardness was the fact that I am an engineer. We don't DO creative. We do math. That explains why everything is geometric and my spider webs look like equilateral triangles.

To Each His Own

Anyone who even remotely knows me knows there are two things that I definitely DON'T do...
Read
&
Exercise
The thought of sweating makes me irate.
It's not that I am a lazy non-mobile person either. I get my share of activity through alternate means such as waterskiing, snowmobiling, skiing, riding horses, working on the ranch, etc. But to go to a gym and intentionally sweat... no thank you.
But let me tell you about a breakthrough I recently had. For reasons unbeknownst to even myself I stumbled upon a Jazzercise class that happened to be at 5:30 am. And I LOVE it. Maybe it's the music (Justin Timberlake- yes, Sexy Back-, Leona Lewis, Beyonce, Cheryl Crow, just to name drop a few) or the "older generation" of ladies I groove with, but it is actually awesome. Weird.
And the dogs... well they get their exercise swimming through the current of the Provo River.
I panic every time Aaron throws the stick WAAAAY across the rapids thinking my dogs are going to float away, but they always manage to come back. Er Somehow.

And Aaron. Well, let's be honest. He needs the anti-exercise plan. Mr. Skinny. But hey, did you notice we are FINALLY mowing our lawn?!?!? Oh yay for grass.

"Movin' to the Country. Gonna Eat a Lotta Peaches"

PEACHES COME FROM A CAN. THEY WERE PUT THERE BY A MAN
Sorry, I just couldn't help it.
Ahhhh I love the fall. The best part is canning and bottling so much awesome food from the garden. (No, not my own yet. Maybe next year.) Most people may think this is a boring lackluster chore, but those people obviously haven't ever canned with me and my mom.
So after day of picking FOUR RUBBERMAID BINS FULL of peaches up in Ogden, and one itchy rash-covered drive home, we went crazy.
By the way, a car full of peaches and two yellow labs smells strangely similar to Pizza Hut.

And thanks to Aaron for the awesome apron which was one of my anniversary gifts this year. I think I pretty much wear it every day.



I think the grand total was 62 quarts of peaches. It only stopped there due to lack of jars and we ended up sharing almost half the peaches with friends. Good thing I have an awesome food storage room in the basement. Too bad our food storage only consists of peaches. Oh, and a few potatoes. Do you win anything at the State Fair for stuff like this? I mean besides a ribbon? Nothing against ribbons or anything...

Legend of the BIG "O"

So I am still stuck in Colorado finishing up the never ending Burger King. Hopefully I'll be done and driving home this week. Today Lindzi's dad, Orion, decided that his hip wasn't keeping up with his activities and needed a new one. Imagine that a 70 year old who is more active than most of our friends and also snowmobiles better than them too I'm sure. He is at the hospital as I write this undergoing a full hip replacement surgery and should be "back in the saddle" or snowmobile before the snow flies. Anyone that knows him automatically loves him, if you would like to wish him well, call Lindzi or me and we'll pass on his phone number, he loves to hear from people.

Fishing, Fishing, and MORE Fishing!

Well we decided that now since we live so close to the Provo River (walking distance) we should definately dust off the fly fishing gear. So basically that is what we have been doing the past two weekends. The first weekend the weather was GORGEOUS as you can see in the pics. And let me just say how these pictures DON'T do the swift current justice. Shortly after Aaron and I parted and he had ventured up the river, I decided to move up river to this hole that I was sure had some fish. But first I had to wade through a pass of rapids. Now Aaron seems to think this feat is no big deal, but for whatever reason (hello, skateboarding incident) I am not skilled at walking through a moving river. Surprise, right? I don't know if it's just me... or if it's a girl thing... or most people in general... and Aaron is just some sort of half swamp sloth/half man... but I am HORRIBLE at it! Well long story short I got too deep and the fast river swept my feet out from under me and I got washed down river. I was POSITIVE I was a goner and they would have to come fish me out of Deer Creek. All I could think about was not letting go of my rod. I finally got footing a ways down the river, but I was still stuck in the middle of a fast part and was completely stuck because if I tried to take any weight off of either foot the river tried to sweep me away again, so I couldn't walk to shore. And there I sat. Waders full to my chest of water, completely wet, just wimpering Aaron's name hoping he would hear and come save me. Of course the wimpers grew louder and finally Aaron came all excited thinking I must have a monster fish or something. He laughed really hard. Thinking back now I probably would have laughed too had I been in his situation. But he literally dragged my sorry pathetic butt back to shore and after re-grouping I went back into the river (shallower, this time) with waders still full of water. No pictures of that since Aaron doesn't allow me to carry the camera when I am on the river (and for good reason).


The fishing has been pretty good. Although it's been far better for my parents who outfished us completely in the 45 min. they were there. Maybe it has something to do with my splashing around? Or maybe it's just because quite simply Orion and Sue are amazing at everything. But we are having fun and it is SO beautiful. Last Monday we went out during the storm while it was raining/hailing and it was AWESOME!
As you can see I am a lot better from shore!
Also for Memorial Day the family went boating and fishing at Rockport. Your's truely caught the only fish. (Okay, we will call it a "team effort" with Orion.) And we played on the shore with Kirsten who we found is really fond of uncle Aaron as long as he is holding Goldfish and not wearing the Monster sweatshirt. I will have to post a pic of his new sweatshirt that scared the crap out of the poor girl.