Crazy Thought

You know what's weird? I had a crazy thought today (the thought is the weird part, not that I had one):

Larry and I dated for a little over 4 1/2 years before he left for the military in 2009.

He came home in 2010, which means we've reached that 4 1/2 year mark again!

So we have officially been together the same amount of time pre-military as post-military

What a crazy world we live in, I'm so glad this is the only time we should celebrate this. It's a special occasion, but one I'm happy to do without in the future.

Happy semi-anniversary baby! Glad I have you to celebrate it with :)

Here's some pics from the early years:

Bryce Canyon ... 2008

Larry's Basic Graduation 2009

 

Our first trip to Vegas - Valentine's 2010

Date Night

I'm sure I've mentioned it on the blog before, but the 15th has become our special night with Larry and me. We always make sure to have a date night on the 15th, not matter what. We switch off who picks and pays (except for birthday months. I pick, he pays in December and he picks, I pay in July). A few months ago Larry really wanted to go to this barbecue place down the street, Sean's Smokehouse. Unfortunately his day fell on a Sunday and, being in Utah County, everything seems to shut down all day Sunday. I was going to take him for my pick the next time, but I chose something else last minute. I can't remember what it was, but I'm sure I had a craving attack and went with that instead. Well April was Larry's month so he finally got to take me there.

The food was actually pretty good! I was very surprised, in a good way. I originally wanted to try the grilled cheese (because I've been craving cheesy stuff lately for some reason), but I talked to my manager who had eaten there and she said she got the brisket. I absolutely LOOOVE meat (I wish I didn't, but I do and it's my curse) so I decided then I had to go that route. I made mine a combo so we could share the drink and fries, but I almost didn't want to, it was all that good. I'm getting myself hungry now just thinking about it.

Look at all that meaty, fatty goodness haha

Unfortunately I ended up going way over my calorie goal from the MyFitnessPal App, but I figure one night a month for date night shouldn't count against me right? Haha

Overall, I'd recommend this place to others who like barbecue. My meat looks tiny in the picture, but with everything it was all so filling I didn't complain. The to-go containers were our salad, which was pretty yummy as well. Larry got ribs and baked beans and he seemed to really like it (I have a theory he just likes messy food, but so do I so who am I to talk? haha) I like our new date night tradition. We usually try a new place we've never been to before and it's been a nice experience so far.

Spring Time?

Hey there! Remember when I posted this post about how it was nice and warm when it should've been Winter? Well now it's the opposite. We're supposed to be in Spring Weather, but look at what we had last night

So we've had nothing but wind storms lately, but yesterday definitely took the cake! It was so windy the trees all looked like they were going to blow away. At one point I was calling to make our eye doctor appointment when I heard the lady on the phone tell the other one to "go get it before it gets away." I asked her if the wind was blowing something away and she said "yeah, the license plate on her car" (Um, hello? That seems like there's pretty intense winds outside!). With all the wind there was a lot of dust in the air, so by the time I left and it was raining, it was more raining mud than water. The picture on the below right is the passenger window on my car covered in mud!

Unfortunately last night just happened to be when Larry had to go in for his physical for his work's Wellness plan so we had to go out again in the yucky mud rain storm. I made a joke that I hoped Larry's appointment would take until the rain stopped, I think I should've been more specific because as we were back in the doctor's office he left to fax in the form and came back to say he hoped we like snow because that's what was happening at that point!

We went in with rain (so I didn't wear any sort of jacket) and came out to snow. For some reason my phone identified this as "light rain" (HUH???). The bottom left picture is outside of Larry's car window. It was pretty awful to see this in April! The good news is Larry's checkup went pretty well. The doctor even let me see inside his ears so I could see what scarring on an ear drum looked like. He also told us we were a very beautiful couple and that he hoped we had many years of happiness (weird for a doctor, but I'll take all compliments that come our way haha).

I'll tell you though, the worst part is being in Utah, we're used to having crazy weather when the seasons change, but nothing like this (from today)

I don't think I've ever seen snow like this in April before. Say what you will about being in Utah and getting over it or used to it, this is just crazy! I hope it goes away fast. Weather reports say it should be nice by the weekend, and I so want to believe that. If you're not in Utah and you have nice weather right now, be ever so thankful! Haha

If you're new to Utah...Welcome! Always be prepared for anything here. Happy April everyone!

Crazy Week

So man I feel I've had a pretty crazy/eventful week so far. Monday started off really good. I was sitting at work when I got a message from our front desk that I had a delivery. On my way downstairs I kept wondering if there was some occasion I didn't realize had happened. I wasn't expecting anything so who could've sent something to me. Well when I got back upstairs to my desk and opened the box out came this

I read the card and it turned out one of the groups I work with sent it to me to thank me for being so helpful. I was so touched. I've never had someone I worked with surprise me with something like this! I immediately sent them a Thank You email to let them know I was so happy to help them and that it was really amazing that they did that for me. I'm trying to ignore how they got my last name though haha. It definitely had some goodies inside, but I'm sharing them with other co-workers because really, who needs to eat all that by themselves?

Today took a turn though. The weather was pretty good up till this point, but today it was awful. It was windy and rainy like nothing else! Unfortunately, I had to go do a physical this morning for Larry's work wellness plan. It really wasn't too bad since I had a really nice doctor who did a lot of fun little tests. The bad part was when she informed me I have scoliosis. So back story here, back in Junior High I have a weird memory of people coming in to test us for this, the lady who tested me had me re-situate my feet several times before telling me I had scoliosis. She didn't write a note or anything to give my mom so I chalked it up to her doing the test wrong. I've been to many doctors since then and no one has mentioned anything. It's always been in the back of my mind, but since no one brought it up I never really paid attention to it. Well lately I've been having back pain in my lower back. It's as if I can tell my back is bending a weird way, especially after running (boy does it kill after that!!). Well when the doctor confirmed it I asked her if that could be related and she said it most likely was. She couldn't tell the degree of how bad it was, but could definitely tell my "spine is twisted" as she put it. So needless to say I'm probably going to need to go see someone eventually for it. The good news is I apparently have had this for over 10 years and it really hasn't inhibited me in any way. After the doctors I made my way to work, it was so crazy rainy and windy I decided I needed my umbrella...unfortunately my umbrella decided to quit on me

How insane is that? The wind literally ripped it inside out the second I stepped away from my car. Luckily I had a little bit of coverage on the one side, but needless to say it was a bad hair day from then on out haha.

So that's my news for now, fun gifts from almost strangers to a crazy windy day with some unfortunate news, let's hope it gets better after today...Happy week y'all

"Hoppy" Easter

Haha I'm so clever...Hoppy Easter and all. Just kidding.

Anyways, today we got to celebrate Easter. Unfortunately all my plans for the day went awry, but it worked out in the end. I've been craving a trip to the zoo, I always do when the weather warms up. We were going to go with Jena and Cailyn, but they let me know yesterday that they weren't able to make it. I didn't feel like going as just us, since last time we did we weren't there for very long and it felt like it wasn't worth the gas or money to get in if we only spent an hour there (and that's a generous guesstimate on the time). I ended up texting my aunt and grandma to see what they were doing (I was hoping to convince my aunt to do the zoo, but I think she saw right through me) and my grandma ended up inviting us over for dinner (I'm pretty sure it was a pity invite, but still).

Dinner ended up being delicious, Andy came over so I got to talk to him about his birthday and if he wanted to get together, and I got to jump on the tramp with my cousins! I was hoping I'd get a chance to do the latter option because I desperately needed steps on my Fitbit AND I hadn't jumped in a long time and told them last time that I'd be over again soon to (I'm pretty sure that was last August-ish).

Plus I got to hang with my adorable new little cousin, Olivia.

Ignore the no makeup look, it was just dinner with the family after all. Isn't she adorable though? Such a chunk! By the way, when I say new, I mean newest...she's almost 5 months old now.

Anyways, the day ended up being a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I got to talk to my mom on Skype before dinner (just her and me, some weekends I like those Skype calls that are just us) and then seeing the rest of the family that I love made it even better. Anna and Abby taught me what they were learning in school and so we got to have fun with that. Anna had a new Zoo Song she sang to me (it reminded me a lot of "This Is The Song That Never Ends" haha) we also talked to her about how fun gym class is when you're her age (8). Abby is learning spelling so we had her spell simple words. She's really good so far, but both of the girls had a tough time spelling Jodi (apparently they both believe it should start with a G) and Larry (the rry seemed to throw them off). Overall a fun Easter. Though I do look forward to next year and hopefully we'll do the dinner at Larry's Uncle Thayne's house again like last year (because who doesn't love baby goats and fun time with kids on Easter?).

Thanks Family for the (pity) invite to dinner. You made it a fun (and yummy) day :)

New York, NY

So we haven't left for our trip yet, and we still have quite some time before we do leave, but we've done a lot lately to get everything all ready. We've officially booked our flights and hotel, we've reserved our rental cars, and we bought our tickets for activities in each area we'll be visiting (at least the things we could prepay for) . If I could insert a huge smiley emoticon here I so would! We did this earlier this week so I forgot it happened until something showed up at our door step yesterday:

Our New York City passes showed up! I forgot I had checked to have those mailed out and so when I saw them I screamed so loud! It's so exciting how real it's becoming, even if we have a while still. Although there was a scary moment when we almost lost our Statue of Liberty tickets earlier in March, I almost really freaked out. I thought we had some time still, but I randomly decided to go check the dates I had scheduled for it and there was only ONE crown access ticket left for the whole day! They only had pedestal tickets left. I was so sad and they didn't have any tickets left over for any of the other days we'd be out there, I literally almost cried. Luckily, I have the best, most understanding husband. After he asked how important the statue of liberty was (I mean you absolutely can't go to New York and not see this monument, am I right?) he said he was willing to take a pedestal ticket and let me have the crown one that was left over. So we were able to get them scheduled at the same time, and he offered to hold all my stuff I might have (because you can only go up with a camera) while I enjoy the view from the top. I'm sad we can't go together, but at least I'll be able to go to the top and get some (hopefully) good pictures to show him.

You can see in this how high up the Pedestal still is
Those little things at the bottom are all people.

I guess it's good that I now have this Fitbit because it's going to be a lot of steps and I'm sure we'll be walking around a lot in the city. If you're thinking you might want to get one, you should! It sets you for a goal of 10,000 steps a day, and just trying to hit that has helped me consistently lose weight every day so far. It hasn't been like a pound a day, but since I started using it last week I've dropped almost three full pounds so far. It's very helpful and very much recommended. Now my plan is to get colored wristbands for it so I can make it match my outfits each day haha.

Fiesta Like There's No Manana

So I know I've said this repeatedly, but I love my job, I love my company, and I love my co-workers. Back in 2013 we had a fun party to celebrate reaching a goal and I remember it being one of the most fun parties I've ever had at a company and thought how great it would be if it happened yearly. Now, don't get me wrong, my company is really good at having fun parties or doing something special for the employees, but I've always thought about that amazing Mardi Gras party. This year I got my wish in the form of a Fiesta-themed party.

We got fun prizes (complete with a new, huge water bottle, a new jacket, and cute little bag to hold everything in) before heading in the "party zone" . We also got mustaches to have fun with while we were in line waiting for food and a mariachi band to entertain us. The food was from Red Iguana (if you haven't been there, go try it. It's AMAZING!!) and we, of course, had to get as many people in a picture with our new disguises. We have so much fun at our work, even if it's a hard day, it's just always so great! There's a quote from a movie that I think applies here (they are talking about relationships, but I'm going to take it to mean work in this scenario). One character asks how often another character is happy in their relationship. The woman responds with "Every day. Maybe not all day every day, but yes, every day." It's so fitting for this company. I can't say every moment is my favorite, but there's at least one that makes me feel so proud.

Moral of the story: HealthEquity for the win :)