City Deals

I love City Deals! They sell retail and restaurant gift certificates at a discount and they have some really good ones. I buy them for places that I know we are going to eat and we usually save at least 50%. I just bought one for Gloria's Little Italy, so now I can make Kevin take me next week. I love that place! Find more info out here.

Carl Bloch

I meant to write about this a while back, but forgot. If you haven't' been to the Carl Bloch exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art, you need to go. I went before Thanksgiving and it was incredible. If you don't know who Carl Bloch is, he did this painting:

The Museum already owns this particular painting, but there are four alter paintings that are on loan from Denmark and Sweden. This is the first time that all five paintings have been in the same location. EVER. There are several other paintings and sketches that are worth seeing too. I think the exhibit runs through May, but you don't want to wait that long. Admission is free, so bonus! You just have to reserve your tickets in advance online at carlbloch.byu.edu.

Make it a date night and go!

Parents for a Weekend

Two weekends ago Kevin and I got to babysit my two adorable nieces, ages 5 and almost 4. I am going to write an account of the weekend because I don’t want to forget, but I am sure there will be way more details than any of you need to know. I just don’t want to break out the journal and handwrite all this.

I picked them up Saturday morning and brought them back to our place and immediately started decorating ornaments for their parents. I think they had a lot of fun. After a snack, it was time for Toy Story 3, their current obsession. I took a nap while they watched, and then my loving husband put the girls down for a nap so I could continue mine. After our naps, off we went to McDonalds for some happy meals and playtime. Then we went to the Festival of Lights, which the girls LOVED! We went around twice, and I have to say, it is much more fun going with two little girls that were excited about all the lights. Bed time was fairly uneventful, thank goodness!

Sunday morning Kevin had meetings, and I had one as well. The girls came with me, which I don’t think they enjoyed too much. Having 1:00 pm church is not fun when you have little girls that need a nap around that time. I feel sorry for all the parents out there that have afternoon church. The girls love Primary no matter what ward they are in, so I felt good about leaving them in there for the next 2 hours. After church and dinner, came a much needed nap. We watched Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph and then it was Christmas cookie time! I love decorating cookies with the girls, not sure why, but I do. Kevin made some delicious candy cane ice cream and we just relaxed for a while.

Monday I worked from home half the day to watch the girls. I tried to get as much as I could done before they woke up. They were pretty low maintenance once I got them ready and fed. It was a blast to have them for a couple days and it makes it even harder to say good-bye when they move to AZ this week.

First Thanksgiving

Kevin and I spent out first Thanksgiving together as a married couple and it was pretty great. My parents and little sister drove up from California and we spent Thanksgiving Day with my Dad’s side of the family. Dinner was good and pretty uneventful until my older cousin Zack threw a wadded up piece of roll and it hit my younger sister Heidi right in the eye. Her eye was pretty swollen after that and I think it still hurts.

It was so strange to have Black Friday start the night before. We attempted to go to Toys R’Us at 10 pm, but the line was at least 2 hours long outside, so we made our way to Walmart and wondered around figuring out what items we were going to stake out for the next couple of hours. Our group consisted of my parents, Aunt Judy, my three sisters and my little brother. We paired off and it was a lot of fun. I ended up just buying a bunch of stuff for Kevin and me. The most exciting purchase: a Sonicare toothbrush. Exciting, I know. The movie section was like a mosh pit, so I sent my little brother in for the movies we needed and he had a blast. I attempted to brave the crowd for a couple minutes, but I was nearly trampled, so I retreated and let my brother do the work. The store was so disorganized and we waited in line for over 2 hours, but finally finished around 2:30 am. I was glad to have it over with and get some sleep.

I loving having all kinds of firsts as a semi newly married couple. We put up our tree this weekend and it was kind of surreal. We bought a 7.5 artificial tree, and it is way bigger than I thought it was going to be. Our place isn’t that big and it just seems huge in our tiny living room. I think my favorite part of the whole ordeal was when Kevin opened the tree box and was shocked and very frustrated to find that we had to assemble the tree branch by branch. His family didn’t have an artificial tree when he was growing up, so it was a new and not so exciting experience for him. I found it quite entertaining.

Between the two of us, we had plenty of ornaments to cover the tree. I inherited (in other words “took” ) a bunch of ornaments from my grandparents since they have both passed away. Most of them are duplicates of the ornaments they sent to us growing up, so they bring back a lot of memories. For some reason I really love Christmas ornaments and tend to buy them throughout the year. We even bought a couple on our Honeymoon in Cancun. I just love to have memories of those special trips and events in my life. I really wish I had taken pictures of us decorating our first tree together. Maybe we will have to reenact it tonight for a photo op.

A Quick Update

I feel like time is just flying by. Obviously, I have been pretty busy. Work was insane for about the first month, working 12-15 hours a day and some weekends. Things have calmed down, but I also finally have a calling at Church. I am the Second Counselor in the Young Women’s presidency. It has been a lot of fun, though none of the girls are very "girly" and I don’t feel like I can relate to them. Welcome to Spanish Fork! It is just so weird to me that they don’t care about makeup, hair and nails. I think I should probably work on fixing that.

I am so excited for the upcoming Holidays! My parents are coming to Utah for Thanksgiving and we are going to celebrate my grandmother’s 90^th birthday, which happens to be on Thanksgiving. Christmas plans haven’t been finalized yet, but it looks like Kevin and I will be spending our first Christmas together by ourselves. I am kind of excited about it, though I will miss my family. I am sure we will meet up with some of them the day before or after or something.

For those who are wondering, I am not pregnant. Need to make a doctor’s appointment to see if we can figure out why. I find it so awkward when people ask (well people I don’t know that well) because it is such a sensitive subject and I start crying almost every time I tell them no. I know it will happen, I just have to be patient.

Married life has been great. Not perfect, but great. I can’t believe it has already been more than seven months. Pretty soon it will be a year and that just baffles me. My wedding dress will finally get paid off next week, which will really mean all the wedding stuff is over. Of course there are all those thank you cards that never got written . . .

Kevin still travels a ton, but I am coping. I try to turn the time into my productive time. Kevin bought me a sewing machine for our six month anniversary and I have been putting together projects. I haven't started any of them yet, but I hope to soon.

I have really gotten into baking, and Halloween was way too much fun for me. I will have to post food pics later.

And that's a quick update on my life.

Working Girl

Well, I'm entering the workforce again. Tomorrow. I have been trying to avoid getting a job since I got married, but I knew the day would come eventually. Starting tomorrow I will be the new Marketing Director at eFileCabinet. (I actually don't know if my title will actually be Marketing Director, but I'm sticking with that until I hear otherwise.) For some of you, that company name may sound familiar. Yes, that is where I was employed when I met my dear husband. I was the Events Coordinator for 2 years, then got let go do to downsizing a little over a year ago. The current Marketing Director quit yesterday and the CEO immediately thought of hiring me. He knew I would never come back and work there until she was gone (we didn't get along to say the least) and seems genuinely excited to have me back. I know he is panicked because they have a huge product launch on the 23rd. Luckily, I know the product pretty well, so things should transition pretty smoothly.

When I got laid off last year, my job responsibilities mostly got shifted over to marketing, so I will still be doing all of those tasks, among more marketing focused assignments.

Since Kevin still works at there, they are putting my on a 3-month trial basis, just to make sure there aren't any problems. Kevin couldn't be happier. He gets to see me A LOT more, and we can pay off all of our debts and start saving money. We get to carpool, so we get to save even more money!

I think this will be a really good experience. I can't believe how perfect everything seems to be working out. I feel incredibly blessed.

Words of Wisdom

My mom emailed this to me tonight and I thought it was pretty funny.