Yes, Stephen is sneaking a piece of turkey
The spread
Don't forget the cranberry juice!
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Thanksgiving 2012
I had to take a few pictures since this was my first Thanksgiving playing hostess. All the food was amazing and we had such a good time with our parents! I wouldn't mind doing it again.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Winter Storm
Here are a few photos of the snow we got here in Salt Lake last weekend. I was pretty excited about it because I haven't seen that much snow in years. I didn't get too many good shots, I just took picture from my front window. It literally snowed for three days strait. Stephen had a great time shoveling the driveway.
Tofurkey
What a week. All I have to say is.....home ownership stinks. For the past few weeks Stephen and I have been planning out our holidays for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We are having Thanksgiving at our house for the first time this year with both our parents and we couldn't be more excited. we've made our Christmas lists and started planning on what our budget was going to be this year etc...
WELL.......let me tell you just how awesome our weekend was. First thing, our kitty Toby started throwing up last Thursday night, so Friday he stayed in the house all day because a huge snow storm just came through hurling a wopping eight inches of snow. He was throwing up all weekend all over my carpet around the whole house, so when Stephen came home from work he let Toby outside and we lost him until the next night. We found him on the basement stairs outside our house at deaths door. He had lost a ton of weight, he was still throwing up with diarrhea, and he wouldn't eat or drink hardly anything. Needless to say, it worried us so we took him in to the animal hospital because we were really afraid we would lose him, and yes, I know he's just a cat, but right now he's our baby and we love him. The vet did several tests and of course they all came back negative so she gave us some medicine to give him for the next week to help with his stomach pain, aka vomiting and diarrhea. Since we've been home from the hospital his vomiting has stopped, but his diarrhea is still going strong and he poos all over my carpet, so now he's been locked up in the only room that has no carpet with his litter box so its easier to clean up. I wanted to wait a few days for him to get better before I shipped him back outside, so tonight might be a good night to do that since the snow is melting. In the end I have cleaned up my fair share of cat poop for the rest of my life, and we were slapped with a huge vet bill.
Next, I had to take the car in for maintenance and get it ready for winter. That was another couple hundred dollars. Then I have an eye doctor visit this week because I am out of contacts. Add another couple hundred dollars.
Then, Monday morning comes around and Stephen had to get up early on his day off to set up flags for scouts and found that the roof of the garage had fallen on top of our car. Yaaaaay. Luckily the sheet rock was so wet it just crumbled so there was no damage done to the car, but I now have a gaping hole in my roof that is still leaking water from the snow storm. Add a few more hundred dollars to get that fixed.
Then last week I noticed something strange in the corner of my living room ceiling. I walked in there to investigate and come to find out I have a leak in the ceiling in my living room that we JUST redid. Awesome! Its not dripping water, thankfully, but there is a leak so we called a roofer to come take a look at it and he can't come out until the snow has melted all the way off the roof. REALLY?! It's winter! Add another few hundred to patch that up, but if we end up having to re-shingle our whole house it will cost us thousands. You think I'm done? Think again.....
Next, we go downstairs to the basement bathroom. We don't use this bathroom a whole lot, but since we have to clean up after Toby's accidents we've been using the sink in there . So we notice the carpet is wet around the toilet. Huh, that's strange. So we're feeling around to see just how much of the carpet is wet. There was only one spot, so we thought well maybe the vent in there will dry it up. The next day we notice the wet spot has now consumed the entire floor of the bathroom. Saturated. We can't figure out where its coming from, it's not the ceiling, or the walls, or the window.....its the floor. Which means we have a crack in our foundation. Grrrrrrrrrr!!!! Could this possibly get any worse you ask? Why yes it can...
We also have leaking sinks in the upstairs bathroom and the kitchen sink with buckets underneath to catch the water. Our entire house is slowly flooding, haha! It is so frustrating and stressful that its funny.
So back to Thanksgiving and Christmas....there will be no Christmas for us this year and as for Thanksgiving dinner we are having tofurkey because we can't afford a real one....
WELL.......let me tell you just how awesome our weekend was. First thing, our kitty Toby started throwing up last Thursday night, so Friday he stayed in the house all day because a huge snow storm just came through hurling a wopping eight inches of snow. He was throwing up all weekend all over my carpet around the whole house, so when Stephen came home from work he let Toby outside and we lost him until the next night. We found him on the basement stairs outside our house at deaths door. He had lost a ton of weight, he was still throwing up with diarrhea, and he wouldn't eat or drink hardly anything. Needless to say, it worried us so we took him in to the animal hospital because we were really afraid we would lose him, and yes, I know he's just a cat, but right now he's our baby and we love him. The vet did several tests and of course they all came back negative so she gave us some medicine to give him for the next week to help with his stomach pain, aka vomiting and diarrhea. Since we've been home from the hospital his vomiting has stopped, but his diarrhea is still going strong and he poos all over my carpet, so now he's been locked up in the only room that has no carpet with his litter box so its easier to clean up. I wanted to wait a few days for him to get better before I shipped him back outside, so tonight might be a good night to do that since the snow is melting. In the end I have cleaned up my fair share of cat poop for the rest of my life, and we were slapped with a huge vet bill.
Next, I had to take the car in for maintenance and get it ready for winter. That was another couple hundred dollars. Then I have an eye doctor visit this week because I am out of contacts. Add another couple hundred dollars.
Then, Monday morning comes around and Stephen had to get up early on his day off to set up flags for scouts and found that the roof of the garage had fallen on top of our car. Yaaaaay. Luckily the sheet rock was so wet it just crumbled so there was no damage done to the car, but I now have a gaping hole in my roof that is still leaking water from the snow storm. Add a few more hundred dollars to get that fixed.
Then last week I noticed something strange in the corner of my living room ceiling. I walked in there to investigate and come to find out I have a leak in the ceiling in my living room that we JUST redid. Awesome! Its not dripping water, thankfully, but there is a leak so we called a roofer to come take a look at it and he can't come out until the snow has melted all the way off the roof. REALLY?! It's winter! Add another few hundred to patch that up, but if we end up having to re-shingle our whole house it will cost us thousands. You think I'm done? Think again.....
Next, we go downstairs to the basement bathroom. We don't use this bathroom a whole lot, but since we have to clean up after Toby's accidents we've been using the sink in there . So we notice the carpet is wet around the toilet. Huh, that's strange. So we're feeling around to see just how much of the carpet is wet. There was only one spot, so we thought well maybe the vent in there will dry it up. The next day we notice the wet spot has now consumed the entire floor of the bathroom. Saturated. We can't figure out where its coming from, it's not the ceiling, or the walls, or the window.....its the floor. Which means we have a crack in our foundation. Grrrrrrrrrr!!!! Could this possibly get any worse you ask? Why yes it can...
We also have leaking sinks in the upstairs bathroom and the kitchen sink with buckets underneath to catch the water. Our entire house is slowly flooding, haha! It is so frustrating and stressful that its funny.
So back to Thanksgiving and Christmas....there will be no Christmas for us this year and as for Thanksgiving dinner we are having tofurkey because we can't afford a real one....
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Stephen's Birthday, Halloween, and Everything In Between
So I will be the first to admit that our costumes were really lame this year; mainly because I had to make Stephen dress up with me and in so doing we grabbed and put together our costumes at the last second. But at least Stephen dressed up a little bit. Maybe next year we will have better ones and I can get him to put more on. He's supposed to be a pirate and I am obviously a devil--I even have wings!
Why the long face?
Happy Birthday Stephen!
He looks like a five old kid on his birthday, lol
I got him birthday flowers
Some of the goods
Awe, what a cute couple
Stephen and I had lots of fun on his birthday. We went out to eat at a
nice restaurant and came home to open gifts and eat dessert. We had
family come over on Sunday to celebrate with us and have cake and ice
cream.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Los Angeles
We went to Hollywood!! This was the part of our trip that I was looking forward to the most. We headed to L.A. where Stephen served his mission so he could show me around some of the places he lived and visited. We took a VIP tour of Warner Bros. studio that lasted two hours. It was pretty cool to see all the backdrops and fake cities, buildings, parks, etc... that Hollywood uses in their movies and television shows. We didn't see any celebrities although we got word that Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunas was nearby. We got to on set of Friends and Pretty Little Liars to see how it all works. They were filming Pretty Little Liars and we could've gone over there to watch them, but by the time our bus came back around they taped off the street so we couldn't go by to watch it, bummer.
We also went to the props and costumes museum which was pretty cool to see the actual costumes batman, Harry Potter, Friends, and many more celebrities wore, and to see how big or small they are in real life. We also saw some the famous cars used in movies.
After our tour we headed to the Hollywood walk of fame. This place was crazy crawling with all sorts of people: lots of people dressed in costumes. We saw several spiderman, Star Wars characters, Mickey and Donald Duck, etc... people who were trying to sell you their CDs that would "one day make them famous", lots of tourists like myself, and people trying to get you to go on tour uses with them. I have no idea how long the walk of fame goes for. We walked several blocks on both sides of the street looking at names until we got too tired and I got blisters on my feet.
Stephen didn't find any stars he wanted his picture with. We passed by George Clooney and couldn't find Brad Pitt :( So behind him is the famous Hollywood sign.
I loved their Chinese gardens and landscaping. Stephen thought this sign was funny because, why would someone bring their turtle to a temple and dump it in the pond?
Lastly, we bought some Japanese ice cream. It came in a box called mochi that we bought at an Asian grocery store. The smell in that place was like a punch in the face. It smelled really bad and the further into the store you walked the worse it got. We bought chocolate mochi which is essentially an ice cream ball inside of a tapioca-like gel substance. I ate the first one and then decided that the mochi part really grossed me out-- not the taste because there is no taste, just the texture of it, so I peeled the rest of it off and just ate the ice cream itself.
All in all, we had an awesome vacation. We came home extremely exhausted which is a good sign, and we can't wait for the next one!
We also went to the props and costumes museum which was pretty cool to see the actual costumes batman, Harry Potter, Friends, and many more celebrities wore, and to see how big or small they are in real life. We also saw some the famous cars used in movies.
Dukes of Hazzard
Scooby Doo
Old Batmobile
The Weasley's flying car
These are a little hard to see. Julie Andrews
Michael Jackson
Johnny Depp!!
Sylvester Stallone
Sandra Bullock
I was a little disappointed I didn't at least get my picture taken with
Mickey in Disneyland, so I found this Mickey who took a picture with me.
I graciously thanked him and started to walk away when I felt a tap on
my shoulder. I turned around surprised to see Mickey following me. I
looked at him and without saying a word he rubbed his fingers together
and showed me some money in his other hand waiting for me to pay him.
Haha, I had no idea I was supposed to pay him to get my picture with
him. I wondered why all these weirdos wore costumes walking the street
posing with tourists!
Forest Lawn
We left Hollywood and wound up at Forest Lawn in Glendale. This is a huge, and I mean HUGE cemetery where celebrities and other people are buried. It's over 300 acres with several mausoleums, chapels, and other buildings. Plots are thousands of dollars $25,000 and up. It has original and replicated works of art of Da Vinci, Picaso, Styka, Braque, and Ledger. There is a replicated Christus, and statue of David, a stained glass window of Da Vinci's Last Supper painting. This was the first thing we saw. They had a 10 minute spiel about who created it and where the idea came from and then they unveiled the window. It was really pretty.
The first thing I saw when I walked into the mausoleum with the stained glass was a huge statue of an angel over someone's grave. I read the name on the grave and noticed she died last year, and I thought to myself, wow this lady must have been really loved." Then I realized it was Elisabeth Taylor's grave, haha, no wonder.
The highlight of the cemetery was the crucifixion and resurrection paintings. The Crucifixion was done by Jan Styka and is the world's biggest oil painting at 45 feet tall and 195 feet wide. It took him several years to complete the work, and when it was done it was lost for 44 years and damaged until the owner of Forest Lawn found it, and had Styka son restore it. We weren't allowed to take photos in any of the buildings so you'd have to go online to see a picture of it; It is purely amazing. The other painting was of the resurrection of Christ. It wasn't quite as big, but just as beautiful.
The rest of our time spent in L.A. we bought $40 worth of soda from a soda shop full of unheard of soda companies and all sorts of different flavors like chocolate, peach, and pepper just to name a few. We visited the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple. This place was beautiful as well and we also couldn't take photos inside the building just like our own temple.
Lastly, we bought some Japanese ice cream. It came in a box called mochi that we bought at an Asian grocery store. The smell in that place was like a punch in the face. It smelled really bad and the further into the store you walked the worse it got. We bought chocolate mochi which is essentially an ice cream ball inside of a tapioca-like gel substance. I ate the first one and then decided that the mochi part really grossed me out-- not the taste because there is no taste, just the texture of it, so I peeled the rest of it off and just ate the ice cream itself.
All in all, we had an awesome vacation. We came home extremely exhausted which is a good sign, and we can't wait for the next one!
Disneyland
We got two day passes to Disneyland so we could at least spend one day in each park. I found a site on the internet a week before that was selling tickets at a $30 discount, so that's where we bought them, but we had to pick them up the day we went to the park. I had no idea we were buying elicit Disneyland tickets! I waited in the car while Stephen went in to get them. The office we picked them up at was in the same building sandwiched between a gas station and a small restaurant. Anyway, the guy told Stephen to remember three things when we tried to use the tickets because the ticket takers ask questions just to make sure no one is reusing tickets. We were using used tickets! Haha, we had no idea and there was no way to get our money back.
We went to California Adventure on Tuesday and Disneyland on Wednesday. The whole purpose of going to Disneyland in the middle of October was to beat the heat, but both days we were in the park it was in the high 90s and Wednesday it hit 101 degrees! We had fun riding all the rides and seeking out the Disney characters, but most of the rides are for smaller children, so we probably ended up only riding 1/3 of the rides in both parks. I'd say Tower of terror and Space Mountain were my favorite rides; I rode them both twice.
We went to California Adventure on Tuesday and Disneyland on Wednesday. The whole purpose of going to Disneyland in the middle of October was to beat the heat, but both days we were in the park it was in the high 90s and Wednesday it hit 101 degrees! We had fun riding all the rides and seeking out the Disney characters, but most of the rides are for smaller children, so we probably ended up only riding 1/3 of the rides in both parks. I'd say Tower of terror and Space Mountain were my favorite rides; I rode them both twice.
California Adventure was more like Pixar land, most of the rides were from Pixar movies like A Bugs Life and Cars.
Me and Zac riding Tuck and Roll. He loved this ride!
California Screamin coaster
This is the Radiator Springs ride in the new Carsland that was the most popular ride in the entire park. It was pretty cool I have to admit.
Tower of Terror
Space Mountain
Splash Mountain
This was our boat on the Grizzly Falls ride: Dad, Kaylee, me and Stephen...
Sariah, Bekah, Mom, and Lori
Star tours was another really fun ride with the Star Wars characters. We saw these little backpacks people were wearing all over the place and thought they were fun. This is Yoda on Stephen's back. He looks a little creepy
Jasmine was the only princess I got my picture with. There were long lines for an hour or more to get your picture taken with the characters, but we also spotted Cruela De Vil and Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty too.
What's Disneyland without Mickey Mouse ears?
I was looking forward to seeing all the princesses (yes, even at my age), but because the lines were so long this parade is as close as I got. At least I got to see them.
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