Girls Night- Sister Style

Last night I had my sisters over for some fun. We decorated sugar cookies, ordered pizza, and watched Morning Glory. It was my first time baking and decorating sugar cookies. They were a bit messier that I thought they would be, and I think I over baked them a tad. For the cookie and royal icing recipe click here and here . I don't think the movie was such a hit--Alisa and Kelee fell asleep for most of it! But all in all we had fun, and took lots of pictures!

Alisa, Kelee, and Ximena with her "tooth" cookie. I thought it was pretty creative!

Flowers, bunnies, and butterflies

I apologize for the quality of the photo, but this was the most creative of the night...can you tell what it is? A guy wearing a sombrero. I love it!

And she was the creator of the sombrero cookie.

Group pic

Gotta throw a crazy one in there.

Home Sweet Home

If any of you didn't know our home for the past three years has been at Watchman Self Storage.

No...we don't live inside a storage unit silly. We manage the property and live on-site in an apartment. We have it pretty good. In fact, I don't think I ever realized just how good we have it until recently. The apartment is a huge three bedroom apartment. We live rent and utilities free, and on top of that get paid a salary for working in the office.

Well that whole deal may be coming to an end soon....without too many details the place has been taken over by the bank and will be sold at auction. So who ever buys it is not guaranteed to keep us on, plus for the next few weeks until the auction date we are not guaranteed to get paid, so do we stay on and hope that whomever buys the place will compensate us back for the three weeks we worked?? Working ten hours a day for free doesn't sound so appealing to me. It's kind of a mess the way the whole thing has worked out and I feel really bad for our old boss. He lost everything he owned, but I don't wanna sink in this ship with him. Dan and I are trying to stay patient and just see what happens. We are so blessed that Dan got his new promotion when he did otherwise I would be a lot more concerned.

I can't say I would be very sad to leave the actual job part behind. It was easy, but almost too easy, and the office hours made it very hard to get through school. I would not miss tenants knocking on our door at midnight wanting to get something out of their storage unit. Nor would I miss the construction going on in our front yard at all hours of the day and night. If I ever have to hear the sound of a jackhammer outside my window while I am trying to fall asleep again I might kill myself.

At the same time there are things I would miss... the paycheck, the free rent and free utilities, and the apartment. As I have been looking at various apartments on KSL I have realized you cannot get the same amount of space we are used to without paying an arm and a leg! And it's even harder to find a nice place that allows pets! In fact we went and looked at a few places yesterday just to see what is out there, and I was mortified at the condition some houses are in, and yet they still ask so much for them! I wish I could just pick the whole house up and take it with me!

So, we have been considering buying a place of our own. Of course this idea is very tempting and exciting. But are we ready? I am not ready to be house broke. There is so much to consider when buying a home! Realistically, we had been planning on starting the whole house hunting thing around August of this year. I know it's only five months away, but those five months gave us so much more savings to put towards our down payment and the time to be completely debt free. So do we rent for five months, or just put a little less down? Decisions, decisions....

Here are some pics of our home sweet home for the time being.

Living Room:

Dining Room/Kitchen:

Master Bedroom:

Bathroom:

2rd Bedroom/Office:

There is also one more bedroom and a laundry room...but the bedroom is our junk room, and the laundry room is full of dirty clothes so there is no way you get to see those!

7 1/2 Weeks

Ahh!!!


I'm so excited, I'm nearly fainting at this very moment.

I have been itching for a vacation for months now, and after we filed our taxes we finally had enough extra cash to plan something. We are going on a get-a-way to Puerto Vallarta! We will be staying 6 nights at an all inclusive beach front resort. We leave April 24th, and come back April 30th.

So what does this mean??? I have 7 1/2 weeks to get my body in swim-suit shape. I am super motivated though, and Dan and I are going to look and feel great.




I cannot wait to spend my days on the beach with my hubby. I have been looking at all the fun things there are to do and see in Puerto Vallarta, and I have so many plans for us! I have a feeling these next 7 1/2 weeks are going to go by very slowly.

I think I'll make a chain to countdown the days...

Valentine's

This year Dan surprised me at work with some cute roses and white chocolate covered oreos (my favorite!). It was so thoughtful of him :) He also got me my own set of golf clubs! Tuesday we went to Mulligan's driving range and hit a bucket. I hoped that having my own set of clubs would magically make me play good...not so. But, I did get the driver down pretty consistently. As for every other club it was hit and miss. I am thinking of taking a group lesson or two this summer to get better...if any of you girls are interested in a group lesson let me know! Dan got a new driver, and three new golf shirts. He might not play like a pro, but at least he looks like one :)

Valentine's dinner didn't quite go as planned. I had called at four o'clock to make dinner reservations for six o'clock at Red Lobster. We show up and were told there was a two hour wait. I told them I had called two hours ago, put my name on the list, and wasn't waiting that long... but was told there was "nothing they could do". Pssshh I was way to hungry and impatient to wait that long. So, instead we ate at Art City Trolley-they have the best ribs! Later we went and saw "Just Go With It". Seriously, the funniest movie I have ever seen.

My clubs

Dan's driver

My roses

In other exciting news Dan finally got hired on full time as a linux engineer at Novell!!! He had been an intern up until today. Full time means benefits and a salary. We are so blessed, and so grateful for this new job!

Super Saturday

I say super because I feel like super woman for having accomplished all I set out to do in one day :)
Rundown:

-6am woke up and baked/decorated cupcakes for a friend's baby shower (p.s. if you would like to see pics of those cupcakes go here . It's my cooking blog, I just changed the name and url.) Why six am??? I am asking myself that very question now.

-thought about cleaning up my cupcake mess, but said screw it and went shopping for a shower gift.

-Around noon went down to Springville to help Kelee get ready for Sweethearts. I curled her hair, and did her make-up. It was so fun, and I'm glad she lets me do things like that for her because I really enjoy it! She looked gorgeous, if I do say so myself :) Her dress she bought on clearance for $10 and decided to go for a more casual look. I think it turned out super cute! She is going with a boy she doesn't know well, but thinks is cute :) For the date they are going to the Provo mall where they have a scavenger hunt set up, and each couple has cameras and has to take pictures of them doing something that is on each clue. It sounded really fun. Then they are going back to one of the kid's house where the parents are making a nice dinner. After that they are heading to the dance. I hope she has fun with her group, and her date better behave himself :)

Kelee and her friend Ashley

Supposed to be whispering, but to me it looks like they both just got pocked in the eye and are grabbing it in pain lol


Her dress! She rocks this look.

Teenage goof-balls

I wish I could say this is an optical illusion, but alas, my younger sis is taller than me

The outfit she is wearing on her date before the dance...she gets her looks from me :)

After the hair/make-up/picture session with Kelee I flew back to Orem just in time for a friend's baby shower. It was a lot of fun. We played the usual shower games, ate food (personally my favorite part :) , visited, and took pictures.

Pregnant bellies are just so cute

The cupcakes I made, again click here for more pics :)

Karen made this cute diaper cake

Another busy but fun filled day!

Hussle and Bussle

This past weekend was one of those go-go-go weekends.

Friday night Dan had late night school so I got together was some zumba friends whom I hadn't seen in a while. We ordered pizza (combination and hawaiian, yum!) and watched "Case 39." I don't know if this movie ever came to theaters because I don't remember hearing about it. It was mildly scary and had a few jumpy parts where I screamed like a baby. I would recommend it. Of course we took lots of silly pictures because that's what we do :)


Saturday I woke up at 8, went to zumba, then got talked into staying for the next class at Golds, "Power Pump". Boy was that a kick in the butt...and every other muscle on my body! I am still sore. After the gym I came home and started cleaning the house because my sister was coming over. I folded a weeks worth of laundry that had accumulated. I don't even have kids to use the "no time" excuse, but for some reason I cannot bring myself to fold and put away the laundry until I have nothing to wear...its the bane of my existence. Kelee came over; we got ready together, waited for Dan to get home--he was at Mulligan's driving range with a friend, then left the house and headed to my mom's to celebrate a few birthday's. My brother Derek turned 15 on Jan 27th, and my sister Alisa will turn 12 on Feb 10th, so we had a party for both of them. We ate yummy food, and had cake and ice cream sundaes for dessert. After dessert we wanted to get a family picture, which turned into a picture marathon of which even I was exhausted...but we did get some fun ones! Later that night I took Kelee shopping for some "Sweethearts" stuff. She needed a jacket for her dress and some shoes and leggings. Her dance is this weekend, and I get to help her get ready! I'm so excited!

The birthday girl and boy blowing out the candles

Being silly

The women in the fam, minus Jessie

Pyramid...now this was a fun shot to try and grab!

Sunday...the famous superbowl :) I would have rather watched "On the Case With Paula Zahn" but getting together with friends and fam was fun! Dan was rooting for the Packers since his team (the eagles) didn't make it to the superbowl this year. We spent the first half of the game at Jordan and Corinna's house. Corinna went above and beyond typical hosting duties, and had every snack/fingerfood you could ever want. Everything was yummy. Madi, Landon and Stephanie's daughter, kept us all entertained and full of candy! She was quite the "share-er" :) The part of the game I was most looking forward too--the half time show, was a huge let down. The Black Eyed Peas just don't sound good live! We spent the second half of the game with Dan's family, again overeating. After the game we watched a dateline exclusive on the guy who got stuck in the grand canyon and had to cut his own arm off...it was very interesting to say the least.

So that was our busy, fun weekend. It was way too short. Things to look forward to this week:

-school...and a test
-work
-construction right in front of our house
-seeing Jessie and Will
-helping Kelee get ready for her dance
-meeting cute baby Crew!

The fun mixed in with the not so fun- such is life. Have a great week everyone!

Blah

Well it has been about three weeks, and nothing very exciting has happened that is "blog worthy" news. I was looking through all my old pics while I was moving them from our laptop to our desktop, and thought I would share some favorites.

Back in October of '08. Kelee came over to watch conference, and well...we took goofy pictures. We did watch conference...it was on in the background :)

She might look vicious, but it's all a facade. She has "little dog" syndrome

This past July we watched fireworks from our rooftop and cuddled. It beat stadium of fire any day

Last summer, one of the many joy rides we took around the town. One day we passed two groups of bikers who were doing the same thing...one guy had his dog in a backpack though.

At the top of West Mtn. Proof! We were once skinny :)

I love these blue eyes and this backwards hat. In Hawaii on a bus ride to Pearl Harbor.

My silly puppy

Dan cooking Gyoza for dinner a few nights ago!

My handsome husband and me

Since I am blogging, I might as well give you all a quick update on our lives: We started school, both of us taking night classes... I'm chipping away at the last few credits I need to graduate. Spring 2012 baby! One of my classes is Statistics, and my teacher is a Nazi. Actually she is just Chinese. Her accent is so thick I spend the first 30 minutes of class just getting used to it before I can understand a word she says. One of the class rules is if you miss one class your grade drops a full letter. From A to B, just like that. It seemed ridiculous at first, but at the same time it will motivate me to be there every night which means better grades. Dan got hired onto a new team at work; he is now considered a "Linux Engineer" at Novell. It's really challenging compared to the CSR team, but he likes it! I like that he is at home every night :) He is playing with some friends on a Pinnacle basketball team, and it's fun to watch him play! I have been working, cooking, eating, studying, and zumba-ing. What else... Wednesday night I came down with a bad case of what I think was food poisoning. My stomach was in severe pain, and I threw up 9 times in ten hours. Luckily by mid afternoon on Thursday I was feeling better. Dan, unfortunately, got the same thing last night! I will never take for granted a good nights sleep again! But all in all life is great for us! We have no complaints except that it's time for Winter to go!