When I was Young...

This is hilarious. It's a great break from work right now! *laughing-so-hard-I'm-crying sniff*

Mormon Mommy Wars: When I Was Young

And for what it's worth:

I thought boogers were poisonous. Thanks Megan. (it worked)

I always got "pedestrian" and "presbyterian" mixed up.

My prayers were basically a wishlist of which toys I wanted. A Santa letter, if you will.

Like another commenter on this blog "I believed for a lot of years that cows that lived in hilly areas had one set of legs shorter than the other (so they could stand on the hill sideways to graze)."

It took me years to realize that fun curly shape was a "D" for "Disney".

I firmly thought my little brother Jeff could speak Japanese as a baby. That's what my parents told me, so it had to be true.

I was in the gifted program too. Haha.

We bought our first home!

If you don't know already, we've bought a house! Yaaaayyy!

It's got a great view of the mountains, a big garage for AJ, a big yard for Griz (and us too), a garden, a playground (come over and play!), and the house definitely has room for our family to grow. And we can't contain our excitement to have a house that stays heated in the winter! YES!

We are SO excited to move in. We've been boxing up what we can and our current place looks like a tornado hit. The house isn't too far away (it's in Nibley) so I'm tempted to fill up laundry baskets, dump them out, and return for the next load, but I'm trying to pack things up the "right way". The right way involves finding lots of boxes and using lots of tape. Griz is in heaven...if you know him you know he loves him some cardboard boxes!

I'm a champion at packing. Just so you know. It's a good thing our boxes aren't very big, because with all the stuff I can (in a somewhat organized fashion) cram into them, they are getting pret-ty heavy. But at least I don't have to help pack anything in the garage. AJ is all over that.

So this weekend I'll be grungy and sweaty and probably get a headache, but it will all be worth it. I'll try to keep you all updated with pictures and fun projects we'll be doing.

Here are some photos AJ took of the outside of the home. He had to build a temporary railing for the deck so we went out there to get some measurements. And we took Griz. He FREAKED out. Right when he got there he ran up the front steps like he owned the place, waiting to be let in the front door. After he peed on everything in the backyard, he ZOOMED around the property, sprinting in all different directions, running in circles and diving into tiny piles of snow. It was pretty darn cute. He approves.

Yummers

Thanks to my friend Shari, I'm sharing this with you all. It is SO good. Very flavorful. I'm craving it. Right. Now. Gotta get home...

Chicken Tortilla Soup

1 Packet of Dry Ranch Dressing
1 Packet of Taco Seasoning
1 Can of Corn
1 Can of Black Beans
1 Can of Kidney Beans
3 Cans of Chicken Broth
4 Chicken Breasts
1 Bunch of Cilantro (unless you're named Jenni)
3 Cans of Diced Tomato (preferably Cilantro Lime, but plain will do)

Boil and dice Chicken Breasts. Combine Broth and Seasonings in the Crock Pot and add chicken. Add in canned beans, corn, cilantro, and tomatoes (don't drain tomatoes). Heat and enjoy with Sour Cream, Mozzarella cheese, and corn chips :)

Get seconds and thirds until you have to unbutton your pants. Don't move until it settles or you might topple forward out of your chair. Follow with dessert as soon as possible. Then get romantic.

(okay, I added the last part)

My favorite Super Bowl Sunday Ad

Actually, the best ads were during Puppy Bowl! Puppy Bowl VII on Animal Planet! Check out the other Subaru ads on youtube. So funny. But then I find dogs sitting in a car's driver's seat absolutely hilarious.

Good Things are Happening

For those of you who received our Christmas Card, you know that 2010 wasn't the most interesting or exciting year. Statements like "Hilary got contacts", "AJ shaved once", and "Griz (...okay anything about my dog)" were sort of funny to thrown in our year-in-review. But I felt like I never had anything happen that was worth reporting, or blogging about. Plus, I didn't make time (what time?) to blog much, hence the 6? posts all year.

Don't get me wrong, it was a great year. AJ and I really started figuring things out about, us, and the life we want to have together. We both had good jobs and were trying to make good, new, grown-up decisions. We formed meaningful friendships with neighbors and coworkers. That was new for us because we had never lived one place long enough to feel it was worth while to spend quality time opening up to neighbors. (Yes the world would be a better place if we all reached out instead of kept to ourselves...but like I said, we were learning to be grown-ups, okay?) We spent the year learning to enjoy what we had, but there was always something we felt was just around the corner. We waited for Spring to arrive...in June. We spent the first 6 months of the year waiting for my job offer to happen. I waited for my new social security card with my new name on it. I waited for my last freelance paycheck. We waited for AJ to get a pay raise. We waited for cars to sell and car parts to arrive. And then we started looking for a house.

Actually we've been looking at houses since we moved to Logan 3 years ago. We made an offer on a house probably 4 months after we moved here, and I'm really glad we didn't get it because I feel like NOW we know what we want. And it definitely wasn't that split-entry dingy blue house with the pop out windows.

Last fall we found a house that seemed perfect. Great location, lots of square footage, big garage, half an acre, and for a great price. Because it was a short sale. So we (and countless other people) made an offer on it. We had to at least try. And we had to be competitive to have a chance. So then we waited. And waited. (um, SHORT sale?) And waited. And then we found out a friend who we knew we made an offer on it as well, way higher, and when it got accepted he backed out because, um, he forgot he couldn't afford it. So the house went to auction and we weren't exactly in the mood to try and find that much money in cash to bid on it. We let the house go. And it was okay.

I was really starting to get discouraged. I had this crazy idea that there would only be like 10 houses in the entire valley that we would like, and one by one they were disappearing. I would get really pouty (opposite of grown-up behavior) with each house we turned down and AJ would tell me there would be another house. And he had been right so far: there always was another house, but I'd always fall in love with it. AJ told me not to do that either.

The good news is, we thought we had all the MLS listings in our range memorized, and in the last few months we've been pleasantly surprised to see a few new ones popping up. More options! So we started working down this new list. And part way down the list we found a realtor we actually considered sticking with. (Let's be honest, if we had all the MLS listings memorized, why did we need a realtor to e-mail the listings to us?)

And then we found a "for sale by owner". And we like it. And good things are happening. 2011 is going to be a great year...more updates to come!



Yay...

Kid History

I'm not even done watching this yet but I'm laughing so hard, I figured I'd better share it with the world!



(because the world reads my blog)

Eye candy

This is so cool. If you have 10 minutes to waste, waste it on this.

The 600 Years from the macula on Vimeo.