santa claus came to town!

well, he came to work anyway... and let's just say he did a pretty good job as santa for our guys... they LOVED it!  the staff on the other hand... not as enthusiastic (though we sure showed our enthusiasm!).  most of our guys sat on the extra chair we set next to him... but he had all the staff sit on his lap.  and not just sit like you did when you're a kid. more like this (pretty much word for word): "ok, sit right here on this leg, put your leg up on my other leg, cross your other leg over, put your arm around santa's head, give me your hand, and lean your head in against santa's."  voila, this is what you get...

picture 2: "who's that?  is that your friend?"  "um no, that's my husband."  "oh, well get him over here, one of you on each leg. put your leg on your husband's.  now you put your hand on her leg. higher. higher.  higher. now both of you lay your head on santa's head."  and there you have it. 

welp, merry christmas!  i hope i never have to sit on a santa's lap ever again.

life lately...

well let's see. we got our wedding photos back. if you haven't seen them and want to, you can look here until january 2. oh, and happy thanksgiving! we went up to Logan to be with a couple of Adam's sisters and their families. while we were there, we built our first (edible) house together.  here it is... from the front (cool wreath, yes?)

so you can see this side of the roof...

and the other side of the roof... did you notice the tootsie roll log pile?

and the back... um, well maybe we just wanted those cadbury chocolate balls and so made a design for the back. this is called maximizing the amount of candy we get to take home without making it look incredibly tacky (maybe just a teeny bit...)

and i found this random picture on my camera. it's from when we went to the aquarium. i think it's telling us to swim with the jellyfish...

our loft

So. We live here. me too (insert by Adam). ok, this first picture is not our living space, it's the storage part. we live at the top of a house in one gigantic room, like a studio apartment, or just a loft. anyway, i'll stop typing and let you look. this is what you see when you open the door and start coming up the stairs.

when you reach the top of the stairs and look left, this is what you see... all our dishes and some food too.

next to the little nook is the one door in the house (besides the front door) that leads to the bathroom. our toilet is literally a throne....

here is our teeny little kitchen. now you know why all the dishes are in the nook. on the left of the picture just above the trash can you can see the doorknob to the bathroom. are you getting a sense of the place yet?

here's a close up of the main part of the kitchen. i just baked these cakes for a rah activity.

this is our kitchen table directly across from the nook. i'm standing at the fridge taking this picture. it's pretty messy but we can usually clear a space to eat. ...we're still organizing and getting lazy finishing up the odds and ends...

this is the bedroom/library (adam has a gazillion books... these aren't even all of them). it's on the other side of the kitchen. see that white part on the left of the bookcase? that's the fridge.

here is the living room. again, apologies for the mess. i guess i coulda tidied up before taking these pictures. oh well. so the kitchen table is behind the couch and the bed is to the right of this picture. still following along?

here is the closet/entertaining area. besides the skylight we have, that bright spot is the other window in our house. um, so we also recently acquired some furnishings from adam's grandma and we haven't exactly found a spot for them yet, which is why it's just sitting in the middle of the room. again, still sorta organizing....

it's the entertaining area as well because the screen pulls down and we watch our movies from a projector with surround sound. all that equipment comes with the place. otherwise, we don't own a tv.

so there you have it. it's small but cozy and we like it! the place has lots of character. if you hate it, we don't want to hear about it.

honeymoonin'

So we had our first road trip as a married couple to San Francisco... it was our honeymoon trip. We stayed here at the Crescent Hotel in downtown really close to Chinatown. The rooms were cozy and we liked it. We did not like, however, being woken up to jack hammers outside, one morning it was a false fire alarm, one morning it was room service (they didn't have those convenient do not disturb door hangers)... good grief, all the unwanted noise!

Anyway, we did a bunch of stuff... like going to the City Lights Bookstore, which is famous for some reason that I don't remember....

We visited Chinatown a lot... (i think Adam's hair in this picture is hilarious)

We went down to the pier to enjoy the view for a bit before eating lunch at the Slanted Door (Jason's suggestion and it was goo-ed)

We ate in Chinatown a few times, and at the bakery of course. This is at Sam Wo, a total hole in the wall awesome place with excellent food. And they served way more than I thought they would so i accidently over ordered... oops.

We visited one of the Chinese shops where they sell a lot of junk, and found these awesome sunglasses. Which we did not buy.

We drove over the golden gate bridge (we would've stopped but there were TONS of people at the stopping points) on our way to...

the Muir Woods. It's such a pretty place with all it's tall redwood trees.

We also went to Golden Gate Park and went to the Japanese Tea Garden.

And saw this car parked on the street at the park. Someone loves dogs... or at least dog figurines.

We didn't take pictures of everything... but we also went to the MOMA (museum of Modern Art), and we saw Wicked which was awesome! We ate at a lot of other places including the Stinking Rose, which if you like garlic you should go there, it is delicious!

And now we're back to real life in the swing of things. We went to the aquarium for work the other day... on Adam's bday actually... and they have a touch pool with sting rays. Here i am with a participant doing the two finger touch on these silky feeling creatures. Adam hated touching them but i thought it was pretty neat-o.

and that is our life in a nutshell. maybe when we get our place organized i'll post some pics of that. and one day when we get our wedding pictures back, there will be a post about that too.

married!

it's that time to blog again... except that i'm in the middle of moving... in with a boy... so this will be real brief. our wedding day was fantastic. the sealing was lovely, the weather was excellent, the family was stupendous, and everything worked out really smoothly. it was a really fun day. here we are coming out of the temple!

anyway, we went to san francisco on our honeymoon which was really fun as well. a few pics from that trip to come, and one day we'll get wedding pictures up too. we have to wait a few weeks before we get the pictures back :) thanks for everyone's love and support! we sure do appreciate it!

oh right, i blog...

so i just realized that july is almost over and i haven't posted anything this month. but basically all that's on my mind is wedding planning. with that being said, here are just a few of the photos taken during our engagement session. don't worry, you'll be getting your invitation in the mail soon. (the invitations are in print as we speak...)

our photos were done by yan photography (yanphotos.com) and she was great! just sayin...

i'm engaged!

Remember that boy Adam from a couple of posts ago that i referred to as my coworker? well, that's true, he is my coworker, but maybe i failed to mention that we were also dating... well actually, at that time i don't think we were. so yeah, Adam and I have known each other/worked together for a couple of years. we started dating last December and i may have broken up with him twice in that time. But alas, it eventually worked out and now we are getting married August 24th. And we're pretty excited.

oh. and i went to china the last 2 weeks in May with some of my family and it was AMAZING. if we're friends on facebook you should look through the pictures that have been posted thus far. some of them are pretty entertaining.

mother's day

dear mom,

happy mother's day. most all the people around me are calling their moms or celebrating this day with them. since i can't do either, i decided a blog post to celebrate you would be my mothers day tribute. just wanted to say thank you for bringing me into the world. and for being an amazing mother and being a wonderful example of how a mother should be. you've shaped my life and taught me well. i wish i had more time and opportunities to learn from you, to ask you questions i have. of course i do have dad and the other siblings who i've been able to go to and learn from. they've been really great but let's be honest, they aren't you. thank you for all your sacrifices, your kind and encouraging words, your simple acts of love, your cooking and baking skills that you've passed on, the knowledge that you've shared, and your love for Heavenly Father and the gospel that you demonstrated in all walks of your life. there's a whole lot more i could say but i don't want to bore the public world who may be reading this... anyway, today is a day to think about and honor mothers. well, i think about you daily and i miss you. happy mothers day!

God be with you till we meet again. i love you!
love, me

a lotta nuthin happening...

so i know it's been a while since you've heard a peep from me. that's because it's been a pretty boring time of the year.... so we did a core fitness class at rah. everyone in the class got an exercise ball and for several weeks we worked on strengthening their cores. it was really fun and they loved it too. we stored the balls in our craft room and every week we had to haul all 35 or so balls into the big room for class... we've got real good at efficiently getting those in there.

the first week we made a "play pen" using the couches as the walls to keep the balls together before class. it was hard to resist just jumping in the middle of it....

Yay for exercise!

the weather has been super nice lately. my coworker adam and i bumped into each other on campus and so we decided to document it.

i also made this delicious fruit pizza. isn't it so purdy?

see, not much to talk about. hopefully something better will happen soon...

Roommates

So the other day I was doing this fun questionnaire thingy and one of the questions, which turns out to not really be a question, was "List the people you have lived with". So I started making a list of my roommates. And the list never seemed to end. I have lived with WAY too many people over the last... 10... ish... years.

Me and Lexi. One of my first ever roommates. We were roommates for 4 years (minus the few summers that she went home).

Emily. Also one of my first roommates, also lived with her for 4 years (minus the summer that she went home).
Then there were a bunch of roommates from my first ones to my current ones but I just don't have readily accessible pictures of them all. Plus then you'd be looking at pictures for the next 12 hours. But these were the roommates I had at graduation. Alyssa, Kendra, and Lynn.
And my last year roommates, still Alyssa and Karen too. PS. that is a mini martinelli's bottle that I'm holding and Alyssa's drink is also martinelli's... just in case you were suspicious...
So the actual number of roommates I've had... drum roll please... 40. FORTY roommates. And that doesn't include the 31 different people I lived with when I was on my mission. I've lived with over 70 different people and it seems that that number will only continue to grow. Lucky for me, I've actually gotten along with most of my roommates. So, how many people have you lived with? (*update* - oh, i just thought of two more roommates, make that 42...)

christmas... months later

Ok. I know I'm really behind in this blogging biznis. But I'm catching up. Right now. With that said, let's go back a couple months to the Christmas season.

I haven't been to Temple Square at Christmas since being a missionary. I think I made up for all those years in between then and now because I think I ended up going up there about 3 or 4 times this year. This is the coolest tree when it's lit up, the Cedar of Lebanon (that's what the tree is called). They only light it every other year... so on the odd number years I guess.

This year I went to Oregon for Christmas to chill with Mic & Steve. Here's Mt Hood as I was flying in.

Mic & Steve's ginormous Christmas tree with its 2700 lights strung on. I know, that's a lot of lights but it looked pretty stellar, day and night. One of our activities involved going to the coast, to Lincoln City. The day we went to the beach was such a beautiful day. I love this picture because it looks so eerie. But don't worry, the beach wasn't haunted or anything. haha. Clarence wanted me to phone him from the beach so he could feel like he was taking part in our coastal activities. In reality, he was traveling to Utah and at the time, eating at Perkins Family restaurant... (and wishing he was at a beach) Mic found this float at the beach. No, I take it back. The float fairy informed us where she left a float and Michelle ran over to grab it. Then I sweetly asked her if I could see it, and when it was in my possession, I said, "oooo. MINE." hahaha. But like a very kind sister, she actually let me keep it. I offered it back to her a few times, mostly because I felt bad, but really I did want it and so i was really excited that she let me have it! Thanks sister! At the beach house we stayed at, there was this AWFUL puzzle. At first we thought it'd take no time to finish. Wrong. 6 or 7 hours later, we were only at this. Not your typical puzzle... 3d, all different shades of blue, all dolphins and fish, at different angles the images move or changed color... it was a bit of a headache and we never actually finished the puzzle. After those many hours, we started taking silly pics... which I know Mic will so appreciate me posting these... (please don't kill me). i find them to be quite hilarious. 'specially the 2nd one. When we got back home, we borrowed a real puzzle with twice as many pieces and finished it in twice as less time (well pretty much). We drove to Utah at the start of the new year because Clarence and family were coming out from Michigan. This made Jason and family decide to come up from California. This made Mic & Steve desirous to come down from Oregon. If only Andrew and family decided they could take the trip from Maine... Some of our activities included bowling, BYU, and Temple Square.
Oh, and corndogs.
That's right, we have matching coats. Classic Tang photo. Tree of Life at BYU. Ahhh, I love my little nieces and nephews!
Ok, I think I'm basically caught up through January. Yay!