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Sunday, August 26, 2012

Quick-ish Trip to Utah

This last Wednesday morning at the bright hour of 5am (gag me). Haley and I took off to drive to Utah to drop her off at college. Her parents asked me to drive with her so she could have some help driving and after rearranging my schedule a bit I made it work. I'm so glad I did, we had a great time.

We had some....minor mishaps to say the least. The first of which happened only 1.5 hours into our trip. We were supposed to merge onto I-90 but ended up in the express lane that had a barrier blocking us from that exit....we ended up driving down that stretch of the I-5 about 3 times and ended up on Mercer Island somehow. We had GPS as well as 2 iPhone with siri for directions and we still managed to be lost for about an hour. Great way to start the trip. While it was stressful, I have this obnoxious habit of laughing in tense situations and I couldn't stop laughing and I think Haley probably wanted to punch me in the throat (not really she was laughing a bit too but she was stressed!!). It was my job to direct her since I was the passenger at this point. Finally we wove our way thru Mercer Island, at one point Haley thought we were in Europe and started driving on the left side of the road randomly I thought she knew what she was doing and that we had a turn coming up but when she saw a car headed straight towards us (while we were backing up to make the turn we almost missed) she was like, WHAT AM I DOING?. That made me laugh again....

Eventually we made our way and only had 2 other mishaps. I remembered that we should say a travel prayer about 15 minutes after we left so I said it and I think we really were blessed because of it. At one point we were in the middle of nowhere, literally and Haley looked down and realized that we had 30 miles worth of gas left and 36 miles to the nearest gas station, woops. I used my trusty Siri to find us a gas station that we completely just randomly chose an exit hoping it was have a gas station, it did.

It was smooth sailing for the next many many hours. We switched off driving about every 4 hours so we each drove half way which was good, we were able to take little naps inbetween our driving which helped us drive straight thru. We only made 4 stops which was so great. They were to get gas and potty breaks. We talked, laughed, slept, drove, listened to music, tried to listen to 4 different books on tape, finally decided to listen to a BYU devotional about the spirit world which was excellent.

I had seen that the Brigham City temple was having an open house for August-Septemberish and I REALLY wanted to stop there but knew I wouldn't have time with such a quick trip planned. But when I saw we were in Brigham City I was driving and I saw the temple off in the distance and begged Haley to stop there (didn't have to beg too hard :)). We had no idea where it was but we followed Captain Moroni who took us right to the temple. It was so amazing. We both were in street clothes so we were just going to walk around and take pictures but soon decided to take the tour as well. I was glad we did, it is such a huge and pretty temple, one of my new favorites. We both felt so relaxed and calm after our tiring, hectic day. It was a good 2 hour detour though so we were ready to get back on the road after taking 50 pictures.
We entered the temple while it was light and when we left it was perfectly sun-setty and all lit up. What a great place and I was SO glad I had randomly clicked on a link the day before that announced the temple open house. I guess it was meant to be.

At this point we knew we were going to stay with a family in our home ward who were on vacation in a rental house mansion in Draper. We were grateful for that, most of their family had left so they had lots of extra space.

Our one last setback happened when we were about 20 minutes away from the rental house. Once again we realized we were low on gas, but we needed to find a Shell station to use Haley's card. Well I guess Utah doesn't have many Shell stations so by the time we exited the freeway, the mile gauge had been blinking ---- for about 10 minutes, woops. We ended up getting off some CRAZY freeway intersection that was terrifying. After getting gas, it took us about 15 minutes to get back on the freeway. our little Magellan friend was telling us the right way to go but we thought we knew more than it did and didn't listen to it (object lesson?). We ended up passing through the insane intersection again, passing the freeway entrance, driving 2 miles down the road, turning onto a dark side street, turning around again and almost passed the freeway entrance again. I made Haley do a very illegal U-turn that scared her a bit and I felt bad but it allowed us to finally get back onto the freeway. We were very grateful to get to Draper at this point.

We got our stuff inside the house, showered, slept SO good in our room with a king sized bed, sauna, HUGE jacuzzi tub, fireplace, and walk-in shower. Intense.

Haley took off early the next morning. I was invited to hang out with the Hoyts for the next couple days which I was grateful for since I didn't really have any way to get around by myself. Thursday afternoon we went to Sweets candy factory and got a behind the scenes tour by one of Tim Hoyts mission buddies. It was SO fun, not quite Willy-Wonka-ish like I had hoped :) but still awesome to see how candy is made. They supply like 80% of the world's saltwater taffy. So that taffy you're eating comes from this place and I saw them make it!! It's such an awesome process. Plus at the end, we got to buy whatever we wanted from the candy shop and got a special friends discount on all the candy we wanted. Score. I might have purchased 5 pounds of salt water taffy, they had such cool flavors that I've never tried/heard of.

After the tour, we needed some real food so we stopped at Cafe Rio for my very first time. Delicious. Seriously I want it so bad now that I'm home. We were going to head into Provo next, so the three of us girls loaded into the car and started driving but poor little Hailey Hoyt was dehydrated and felt sick so I volunteered to stay back at the house with her so mom-Hoyt could go visit her mom in Provo. After a bit 2 of the boys asked if we wanted to go see the movie Brave, then another brother got home and a little while later we took off to see it. The drive there was an adventure and an intense game of corners in the backseat. It was a good-ish movie. When we got home, we watched a couple episodes of How it's Made and a really old episode of the Batman show, so ridiculously funny.

We had to pack up a bit that night and the next morning we packed up the rest of our stuff. We planned to leave at 6am but left around 9:15ish. Our trip home will be blogged about next since this post is already too long, but here's a little picture to wet your appetite.
Yep. Stay tuned.


Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Lately.

This last week has been cracrazzy. With Ty getting home a week ago today, it seems like we have been going non-stop.

We've gone to Burlington to shop a bit (because Ty gave away every piece of clothing he owed 2 years ago). That was fun, spending lots of money on lots of clothes :) not really, it was a reasonable amount of money and clothes, that I badly needed). Later that night I went tubing with the YW and I think I gave birth at one point, I don't know WHY I was so scared but I was

The next day we just hung out a bit, I had a lot to do during the day so I focused on that.

Then the next day (we're at Friday now FYI), we went as a family to a place called Absolute Air Park in Arlington, Wa. SOOOO fun. You pay like 10 bucks and get an hour of jumping time. This entire warehouse building is full of trampolines. 1/3 of it is just wall to wall trampolines, 1/3 of it is a huge foam pit that you jump into (good luck getting out), and 1/3 is a bouncy dodge ball court. We spent a fair amount of time in the foam pit and dodge ball court. It was so fun, until someone had to go and land on her back on the green bumper while jumping into the foam, and bended her knee in a not normal way. (ME). It was so fun though. They need AC there for sure but if you keep up a good jumping pace, you can burn 1,000 calories an hour.....while having FUN and not feeling like you're working out. Win win win win. We need something like this in Bellingham fo sho. I would totally do an aerobics class there if it were closer.

Saturday was the most crazy. Went to Hovander to take pictures of a cute family, drove straight to the river and drove around for 20 minutes trying to find the right entrance to see a friends daughters' baptism in the river (so cool) I got there at the end and arrived just in time to take pictures. Drove home, stopped at the Mexican Market and got Mexican Popsicles, delicious. Had some photos to edit, realized what time it was and that I was missing my works annual family BBQ DANGIT!! Left that evening to go to a wedding reception. It was a full but good day.

Sunday Ty spoke in church for his 'homecoming' that was fun. I invited our neighbors who enjoyed it. It was fun to have a lot of our family there too. Sunday was full of meetings I got to church at 9:30 and didn't leave until 4:30, nuts. But it was ok we got a lot accomplished I think. Ran home, luckily my mom had started dinner in the crock pot earlier. I got the guac made and we had tostadas with our neighbors.

Monday was family night and we had a BBQ picnic for family and a few close friends to come see Ty. It was hectic trying to get ready and having everyone there. I was quite tired afterwards and when I got to work that night I could hardly keep my eyes open but of course as soon as I laid down to sleep I was wide awake. I had pretty trippy dreams too, involving loosing all my teeth, transforming baby chicks to humans using towels, sam eating all my apples, a white peacock with way cool feathers, etc....

Came home this AM, slept for a bit, had a rude awakening. Got up, ate some Chobani pineapple greek yogurt which is delicious. Had a HUGE to-do list and accomplished a lot on that list but not quite all of it. Packed tonight for my short road trip to Utah. Hopefully we'll get in around 9-10pm tomorrow night then I fly home Friday morning, I wish I could stay a bit longer but it wasn't possible this weekend dangit.

Anyways I don't know why you're interested in that, and I really NEED to go to bed, my alarm is set for 4:30am (I plan on changing into sweats, brushing my hair/teeth and leaving how I am, huge lip pimple and all).

So since I should be going to bed, I'll go watch an episode of Raising Hope on Netflix :) suuuuch a funny show.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Are we there yet?

That's what I've felt like for the last week. I don't feel like I've had a chance to sit down and not do anything for awhile now. I brought it all on myself though. Who decides to screen print 16+ tshirts, make 8+ posters, demolish a bathroom and patch it back together again, plus do all the regular day-to-day stuff all within 4 days? Me. I got so annoyed with myself this weekend oh well. The hard part is done.

Tuesday morning around 12pm I finished up the bathroom with just enough time to shower in said bathroom and get ready to go to the airport to pick up Ty, it was hectic.

Here's the completed bathroom:






in case you wanted to see 100 pictures of this 6X10 room, there ya go. That big wall above the toilet will soon have a towel rack/shelf do-dad, there's also a rug that matches the shower curtain now as well as a basket on top of the white shelf. We lost a lot of storage with this remodel but I think it was worth it. We downsized pretty easily.


Anyways Ty also got home, that's fun. He has a funny accent and everything he says sounds like a question and his voice inflects in weird places. He also came home and started opening up drawers and wondering around in a sort of daze. He said everything was so green, big and not dusty. He also said our house smells like a party......whatever that means, I don't know if it's good or bad.

Here is one of the signs I made, I made Sam hold it because I was busy.
 a 'before and after' photo. The top is a picture of us when we pretended to drop Ty off at the MTC (he really went in a few days later). And the bottom was us yesterday. We were backwards but whatever. If Sam wasn't slouching you'd see that he is an inch or two taller than ty.
This was part of the group that came to the airport. It was a happening place. I think 5 people showed up after we took this picture (and half the people aren't looking). We took up the entire Bellingham airport with our signs and crowd it was kind of hectic but I everyone who was on the flight with him just smiled at us and weren't too upset thankfully.

Tonight for YW we went tubing on the lake. The last 2 years we've done this and it's seriously SO fun. I must have lost some of my daredevil-ish-ness though because this time I screamed at the tame parts and got off after like 10 minutes where before I would stay on for 30 minutes at a time and request the 'crazy ride' over and over. I'd come home black and blue and so so sore but I loved it. This year I just wasn't feeling it too much for some reason maybe because there were lots of girls and I wanted them to have lots of chances, before we only had like 4 girls total. After getting out of the boat my arm/fingers/neck started being really weird and I can't hardly move my entire right arm so that's different. Typing right now is fine because I'm propped up but it does kind of hurt.

Oh well. I'm so tired, I should go to sleep now.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Call me Holmes.

My bathroom is not done, but my feet hurt in a way they've never hurt before so I'm sitting for a few minutes, sue me. If you've been reading my blog you'll know that last Thursday I demolished my bathroom with a crowbar and mallet (I suggest using a hammer or something with more umph). My parents got inside and saw what I had done and said, ok it's your project. It has been alllll mine. The only thing my parents have done is, my mom has gone shopping to pay for stuff and my dad wrapped the tall light fixture with tape so I could paint it. Seriously. Sam helped a little with painting but that's it.

Anyway, on to the pictures:

 BEFORE
BEFORE

You can see WHY this needed to happen right? Totally ugly 70's gross bathroom that was NOT cute. Seriously I've been so over this bathroom. It was time. I was under a time constraint, I demoed on Thursday and have to be done by Tuesday (tomorrow) when my brother gets home.
Ugh I cringe looking at this picture I don't know how we lasted so long with this.

 After demo....well mostly done with demo. See my little basket with my tools? Cute. I need a pink toolbox I decided, and pink work gloves/hammer/screwdriver/drill. Just saying.

 I acquired this huge swollen bruise, this pciture does not to it justice at all. It hurts I have no idea how I got it. Maybe when the cabinet started falling on me?
once demo was done, we went to the hardware store for the 4th time and realized that our plumbing was not in the right place. yikes. Luckily we know a handy plumber who dropped everything to come help us fix this problem. Thank goodness. But let it be known, that I did all the plumbing stuff before he got there. I unhooked the sink and spent 30 minutes prying the old rusted pipe off and learned all about plumbing and how nasty it is.


He moved the pipe to the right place then muddied the wall, I primed when he left the night before and pulled up the old floor. The next day friendly plumber came back and installed the flooring and toilet. Him coming to help again allowed me to do this:
Screen printed 16 tshirts for everyone to wear at the airport tomorrow when Ty gets home from Chile. There are going to be so many people there it's gonna be a mad house, sorry in advance Bellingham airport.

During shopping trip number 8 I declared a mandatory menchies break. I think I need another one of those.


Got home from a ward BBQ, wrapped the toilet in saran wrap to prevent it from being painted. Please try not to be so awed by my genius. haha but it did work good and it provided a sort of 'shelf'.

managed to paint more of myself than the room. Awesome.


Skip, jump ahead, this is close to what it currently looks like. Painted a light grey, light fixture up, tile grouted, wainscoting up etc etc.....
Another view:
Not done, you'll see the unpainted part. I worked on that today and I'm just about done, just about another hour and it'll be good to go.
I won't post more photos until it's completely done and 'staged'. Which is all I wanted to do to begin with, paint and buy new accessories.

I was put in charge of doing everything (or delegating to helpers who could do stuff I couldn't). I got to choose the colors/furniture, faucet, sink, mirror, design etc. I loved it. I had some hard choices but I'm pretty happy with the ones I made. '

I also found time to make several signs for Ty's homecoming:
 just one of the 6 or so. It says, Hi my brother. I wanted it to say Hi my brotha but couldn't find the correct spanish spelling. More pictures of the airport stuff later.

lalalalalala I'm exhausted and so ready for bed even though I still have too much to do.

Friday, August 10, 2012

I don't know what else to do....

....so I'll blog. I 'accidentally' started this bathroom remodel yesterday with the demolition which is turning out to be the easiest part. Luckily we have a plumber/handy man guy in our ward so he was able to come to the rescue today to fix my plumbing woes (he's at the hardware store now and will hopefully be able to finish up in a few hours so I can start priming the bathroom). Just so I can keep an eye on the prize and not get too freaked out by the amount of work I have to do here is an image I made up in photo shop of all the product's I've picked out and what the bathroom should kind of look like in the end.

it's a really crude drawing I didn't want to mess with angles and whatnot so it's all wonky but whatever it's good enough for now. If only I could have predicted the amount of work this was going to be, I might have been a little more frugal with my demolition.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

So far today.....

This is what I've done:

demoed our uglllly bathroom that we are going to have redone by next Tuesday when Ty comes home....ohh boy. Give me a crowbar and 30 minutes and I can do work. After blogging I'm gonna start on the counter, except maybe I'll just start on the bottom doors because I don't do plumbing. What started this epidemic, we saw this picture yesterday and started today, we think things through around here.

Screen printed 6 tshirts for next Tuesday for family to wear. I still have several more to do but am waiting for the shirts from people. Once I got the screen printed correctly it took about an hour.

I've started printing on sticky notes after I take scripture study notes so I can include them in my scriptures and not have scribbly unreadable margins....which I'll still have but that's not the point. I just like to print on post-it's, I gotta get some better colors though.

Although these items were done in the exact opposite order. Scriptures were first, then tshirts, then the bathroom. Taking a small Sonic happy hour raspberry limeaid break, the best ever.

Oh I might have watched the Olympics a bit too....no judgement zone it only happens 2 weeks every 2 years ok. Water polo is my favorite (the mens version is more intense and funner to watch though). I also quite enjoy Apparatus Gymnastics too, I can't wait for ribbon dancing, I'm not even kidding.

ALSO I've made my bed everyday for the last 5 days, that's a record for me, I used to find no reason to make my bed besides just throwing the covers around a bit but now I love it, it makes my entire room look so much cleaner. Go me!!

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

T-Minus 6.....

.....days until Ty gets home!! How exciting. I feel bad because I haven't been updating his blog as regularly as I should be, I'm several weeks behind, but I've been doing it for 2 years, come on!! Cut me some slack.

By this time next week he will be here which is so weird. It seems like he just got dropped off but thinking about all that's happened in the last 2 years it seems like so long ago, but for the most part it went by super fast for us here at home.

Anyways, this week in between all the other stuff on my to-do list, I'm going to make a bunch of posters (I want to make one for each person who will be there but I don't know how many that will be). I might make a banner that he can run fast walk thru, that's always been a dream of mine his.

I'm also going to screen print t-shirts for friends and family who want one. They are pretty simple to do. So far I'm making about 10 but probably more once I get a few emails back. Here is the image I created in Word....seriously Word is the best I could do on my laptop, I have yet to install photoshop so it's a pretty pieced together image, oh well.

It started out with just the map of Chile with Welcome home Ty but then I decided that it would just look like people spilled something down the front of their shirt. Then I added the flag, but I had to recreate it so it would be similar in size/shape to the map. Since the Chilean flag looks like the Texan flag, I wrote it big letters what it was I was trying to convey with the map and the flag.....

wow that was a long, wordy, and pretty unnecessary description. I guess I don't have to explain my random actions.

Hmmmmm ok I'm either going to watch an episode of Arrested Development or read Jane Eyre....so many choices, and I'll probably do both considering I'll most likely be up for four more hours....ughh hopefully not again. Speaking of Jane Eyre, look at this thing I found today on Etsy. 
Super cute right? I'll take two : )


Sunday, August 5, 2012

Blind as a bat

This is mostly a test for me. I don't have my glasses on, but I can't sleep and remembered I needed to print something for tomorrow so I've been squinting and trying to find my way around the world wide webs without glasses. Man I am BLIND. Luckily our keyboards have something called the home row otherwise this post would not be readable at all, all I see is little black squiggly lines instead of words. It will be fun to reread this tomorrow to see how poorly written this post really is.

Right now I love wireless everything. I have a wireless printer so I'm able to find what I need for tomorow and print it from my bed at 12:20 (I think, I can't really see the clock). That way it will just be waiting for me tomorrow. I also have a USB mini fan that is helping to keep my body temperature at a decent level, it's hottttt.

In other news (still can't sleep or see) I spent this entire, wonderful, sunny day inside my dark and dreary room (not really but you get the idea). Folding laundry and finally organizing after all the hecticness that has been this summer has prevented me from cleaning my room. As much as I want to use th excuse that I redesigned the mess in my room to be an obsticale course designed to keep me fit, I know the real reason. But I am happy to say that I woke up to a daunting mess and I'm falling (or not) asleep in a freshly cleaned/organized room with a floor that has nothing on it that shouldn't be there. Thank goodness. This is embarrassing but I literally had a pathway between my laundry baskets to get where I needed to go. It also meant I got to watch a couple movies, both happened to be mid-1800's types, since reading Edenbooke I'm back to being obsessed with the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen.  I recommend that book to anybody, it's so funny and wholesome. I actually have a stack of library books that I need to read but Jane Eyre is sitting on my self taunting me so I might just return these silly books so I can read Jane Eyre in peace.

I also planted wild flowers and cilantro today. We'll see if my halfhearted attempt actually works. I think you actually have to do something other than throw seeds in random places and hope they grow. Hey that could be a good analogy for church at some point.....

Anyways I need to stop my eyes are going crosseyed and I really should try to sleep again. plus I can see colors and my laptop battery light has been on red this entire time.

Sorry I'm so random. I don't know why, actually I do, it's just imbedded in me I guess.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Welcome Basket

There is a family in my ward who's son is getting married next week. I am friends with his mom and offered to help a little. We went over a weeded a bit on Wednesday then I asked if there was anything else I could do. She was nervous about hosting her future family-in-law because she wanted to be welcoming but had no time to prepare anything. Well this sounds just like my idea of fun. No joke. I love doing this kind of thing so after her protests I told her I was doing it, that she couldn't change my mind and walked away ;).

Here is the result. I don't know this other family at all so I wasn't sure what to buy but I went with generic items so hopefully something will be of use. It started off as towels and evolved from there. Ignore the silly phone pictures please and thank you.

These are both the baskets I made. The one on the left is for the family of 4 so there is a lot of stuff in there. The one on the right is for the newlywed couple. They only needed 2 of everything so their basket is put together a little differently.
A closer up of the newlywed basket. They basically have the same items just packaged a little differently.
To make it a little welcoming I made this little banner using my cricut to cut out the banner shapes, then stamped the letters then used my sewing machine to sew it all together. Much better/easier/faster than gluing the banner to ribbon.
The other welcome sign. I was going to write congratulations but forgot and did a whole welcome banner before realizing it. Woops.
and finally I made a little gift for the grooms mom who has been doing a massive amount of work around her house to prepare for the open house. Seriously I don't know HOW she's doing all of it. This is a sugar hand scrub that gets dirt and grim off your hands in 4 seconds :) plus the sugar makes it exfoliating and leaves your hands super soft. The sticks are to stick in the jar to get the soap out. Totally unnecessary but I just liked how it looked :)


The items that are in the basket are:
Towels for each person, washcloths for each, a hand towel, voss water bottles for each (purely for their shape), travel size shampoo/conditioner (one kind for girls, one kind for guys), body soap, hand soap, bar of soap, little votive jars filled with Q-tips and flossers wrapped in cellophane, toothbrushes, toothpaste, gum, 2 kinds of mouthwash, manicure kit, chocolate lindor truffles, earplugs. I think that's it.


Items I meant to get but couldn't find: luffas, sleeping eye masks, and a few other items I can't remember now


If anyone has any baskets they need made let me know!!


It's so fun to make them.

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