Tagged (Again!)

So, I've been tagged again! The rules are that each player has to list 6 facts/habits about themselves. At the end of the post, the player has to tag 6 people and then go to their blog and post a comment telling them they've been tagged and to look your blog for instructions. Now, can I think of 6 more things about me?

1. This may not be a surprise to many of few, but I am totally addicted to the television show LOST. I love love love it and I have even had dreams about Sawyer/Josh Holloway (some of which have been very funny).

2. Some people think this is totally weird until they try it, and then they love it. I like to dip my grilled cheese sandwiches in ketchup! It is soooo good! Most people would just dip a grilled cheese in tomato soup, but even if we're having grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner, I get the ketchup out so I can dip to my heart's content. Mmmmm!

3. While I'm talking about food, I will also say that I must just love dipping sauces as a whole. My favorite of all dipping sauces? A-1 Steak Sauce. It is so good I often think about just drinking it straight from the bottle.

4. I'm stealing this one from Randee (and could steal a couple more, but I won't). I also love Disneyland and think that it really is the "Happiest Place on Earth." The recent commercials where they've been saying someone can actually stay overnight in the castle would be a dream come true for me! I love the rides, the gift shops, the cute characters, the food, and just everything else you could possibly imagine. It is my dream next time we go that I finally get to eat at the restaurant inside the Pirates ride. Todd thinks I'm weird, but I think it would be so fun!

5. Todd thinks this is funny, but there are a few songs that he would describe as pretty hard "rock" that I love. I don't know why this is so funny to him, other than I'm his "sweet little wife that's afraid of everything." The song that makes him laugh the most is Bring Me to Life by Evanescence. It is soooo good!

6. Finally, I love our house to be clean, but I hate cleaning it. I find so many other things to do before I'm forced to finally clean. Luckily the two of us aren't very messy and the cleaning I have to do isn't horrible. I'm also lucky that Todd is willing to help. I'm not sure he knows this, but I often assign him the things I hate doing the most. Is that bad? :)

I tag Robin, Jenni, Stacey, Laura, and Cordia. Have fun!

Anniversary vs. Valentine's Day

So, we are very lucky to be able to celebrate our love twice in the month of February. Once for our anniversary on the 8th, and of course for Valentine's Day, which is a week later. You should all know that before we got married, I was very concerned about the closeness of these days and told Todd that I expected to celebrate BOTH of these special occasions each on their respective dates and for no reason should they ever be combined into one celebration. I was NOT going to be ripped off! But, after a couple years of marriage, I realized it was silly to try and do something extravagant for both, and obviously our anniversary is the more important of the two, so for the last couple of years, Valentine's Day was celebrated by a simple dinner at Cafe Rio, which makes me perfectly happy. And instead Cafe Rio this year, Todd made me a really yummy dinner, and got me roses as well! As for our (5th!) anniversary, we drove to Midway during a really crazy, scary snow storm that had me literally SCREAMING at the top of my lungs "I can't see anything!"and Todd saying "Just close your eyes!" (I obviously wasn't the one driving!) We stayed for a couple days at the Zermatt—one of our favorite places ever—and had our "special" dinner at the Snake Creek Grill in Heber City, where I think everyone should go! It was a little pricey, but well worth it. The best was the Black Bottom Banana Cream Pie we had for dessert! It had an Oreo crust, a layer of chocolate ganache in the bottom, the banana cream, bananas, and yummy whipped cream with chocolate sauce. It was HEAVENLY and totally worth falling off the "no treat" wagon for! I'm very lucky to be blessed with such a sweet husband that takes me to such nice places and SPOILS ME with such fun things! 

Kept Resolutions?

Every January, I make a New Year's resolution to have no treats or BAD food for the month. Sometimes it varies in restriction though. For example, I may decide that I can have treats on the weekend, or maybe even after Sunday dinners, or I can go cold turkey. This year was cold turkey! I do make one allowance, and that is that I can have sugar-free pudding, and it does wonders to get me through the tough days. Well, as you all know, today is February 1st, and amazingly, I made it through the ENTIRE month without a treat, and what is even better, I didn't even make it through a whole 6-pack of sugar-free pudding! There were some HARD times with this resolution, so I'm really proud of myself! At work we have what we call "Tasty Thursday," and every Thursday somebody brings a snack/treat/whatever from one of our cookbooks so we can all have a taste. Yesterday I had to pass up Pecan Sour Cream Muffins that looked and smelled SOOOOO good! I also had to pass up fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies when we were at Spence and Julie's house playing games one night. (I should mention that Todd, who also had the same resolution, downed about FIVE of the cookies, which made me want to quit right then and there!) But I've held true, and feel so good about it, I'm thinking I'll stick to it until the end of February, or at least TRY my hardest! In combination with a six-week diet I've been doing (that ends Feb. 25), maybe I'll finally drop the last five pounds of my pregnancy weight. Everybody wish me luck!!!

Working at Home . . . Sort of

After having such a rough go in 2007, Todd and I decided that I had earned the right to eliminate some of the extra stresses in my life. Since I'm married to such a great guy (who supports me in all that I do!), starting on January 7, I am officially cutting back my work schedule. Hooray! After talking with my boss, I realized I was going to be needed in the office more than I'd originally thought (I'd wanted to work from home 4 days a week). However, she thought there would be no problem cutting my hours to 30 instead of 40. So my new schedule, you ask? I will be working Mon, Tue and Thu for 8 hours in the office. I will work at home on Wednesdays for 6 hours, and the best part—I have Fridays off! I wanted a little better set up at home so that things felt more official and so I wouldn't have to sit on the couch in the family room or at the bar in the kitchen while working. So, with that said, we've set up a really nice "office" in the corner of our living room. We purchased a desperately needed computer, got a desk that I could spread my work on, and a nice big book case so I'd have somewhere to put everything.

I also want to say that I am so fortunate to have a really great boss who not only cares about me, but also cares about what I want. I hope that with my new schedule I'll be able to take better care of myself physically as well as emotionally, and that by doing so, I can have a life that seems, at least a little bit more, stress free.


Here's my new office! I love it!

Happy 5th Engage-iversary!

Five years ago today, Todd proposed to me in a secret spot at Temple Square. We didn't have our usual Sunday dinner plans today, so we decided to go to Temple Square and see the lights and visit our "spot" to sort of celebrate. We bundled up so we wouldn't freeze, and Todd made his delicious hot chocolate and poured it into a thermos for us to enjoy once we came back to the car. We had a lot of fun walking around and trying to take cool pictures of all the lights. I thought I remembered there being a lot more lights when I was younger, but wasn't sure. Is it because I'm all "grown up" now and things don't seem as big? Let me know if any of you agree! Either way, everything looked pretty all lit up and the company was definitely good. I love Todd very much and am so happy to be married to him! I'm also lucky to say that he's made me smile (or at least tried!) every day of the last five years too, and I'm always so happy to see him and just be with him.

It's finally done!

Hooray! We are officially finished with our bathroom remodel! Well, except for a few spots of touch up paint, but besides that, we are DONE! I finally felt like we could take some pictures so you all get an idea of what the bathroom looks like, but honestly, I think you have to come see it in person because the pictures don't really do it justice. Todd did a really great job, especially considering he had to try and figure out a lot of stuff on his own that he had never done before. It wasn't 3-day Kitchen & Bath, but now that it's all over, it was definitely worth the wait! I especially love my tall cabinet in the corner. It's 2-feet deep and has two roll-out shelves on the bottom half and three shelves on the top. Look how pretty!

O Christmas Tree

Last year we were not the brightest and did some damage to our Christmas tree as we put it away. Some how (I'm too embarassed to say what happened exactly), we bent some of the branches on the bottom half of the tree. I was worried we'd possibly done something to the lights as well, mainly because that part of the tree always has issues with the lights when we put it up, even though it's only 4 years old. Anyway, it's our tradition to put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving, but I couldn't remember how much damage we had actually done last year. We woke up pretty late on Black Friday, about 10:00 a.m., which we haven't done for a very long time (I have to say that I had previously been sick and was still recovering, so I was pretty tired. I have no idea how Todd slept that late!). I was sad because we had decided not to wake up at 5:00 a.m. to go stand out in the cold and go shopping, and I wanted to go! I suddenly remembered that we might need a new Christmas tree and jumped out of bed and made Todd go grab our tree so I could test the lights. I found the plug and plugged it into the wall and NOTHING HAPPENED! I panicked! How could all the lights not work? Then I remembered that Sears (which opened at 4 a.m.) had a really nice looking tree for $99 and so we jetted off to see if we could still get one. Of course, on Black Friday at 11:30 a.m., most of the doorbuster items are long gone and the lady at Sear's just laughed at us when we asked if they had any trees left. So we went home to see if we could salvage our poor tree. We set up the bottom half, and amazingly, the branches we thought we had broken, seemed fine. They just needed a little help being propped up with some strategically placed paper. Now the next test was the lights. Todd found the plug and pulled on it just enough for us to discover that when I had plugged it in earlier that morning, it had been attached to absolutely nothing else. Sooooo, we plugged in all the little extensions and, TA-DUM! Our tree worked! It was a Christmas MIRACLE! We (and when I say we, I really mean I) decorated the tree and the house and all was well. We are so excited for Christmas!

Apple Pie and Thanksgiving

This year we spent Thanksgiving at my parent's house. With a few cousins missing, it was smaller than it has been in years past, but it was still fun. Since my grandma was in charge of bringing pumpkin pies, we were told to bring any pie but pumpkin. We decided on apple. We'd never made an apple pie, so Todd did a bunch of research on how to make the perfect crust and how to get the filling just right. (He's so funny about things like this!) So, on Thanksgiving morning, we worked together to make our very first double crust pie. It actually turned out really well and not only tasted yummy, but was pretty too. Todd did a great job with all of his reasearch, and we now have a favorite pie recipe that we can proudly say we created together! I was also in charge of making my family's traditional Thanksgiving dish, Indian Pudding. I know this is very un-p.c., but that's what we've always called it. It's a yummy corn casserole that really only me, my mom and aunt like. Everyone else always goes for the "regular" corn and would probably never miss Indian Pudding. I'd be totally sad if it was forgotten because, for me, it's a tradition--and I will always make sure it's on the table for Thanksgiving. Finally, I want everyone to know how thankful I am for Todd. I am blessed to have a husband that is so loving and giving, and also willing to put up with me and all the silly things I do. Every day is a good one when he is by my side. We've been through a lot together and I just can't imagine my life without him. I love you Todd!