Adventures of September

Good news!

Al and I actually did stuff in September besides just homework and watching How I Met Your Mother!
It's honestly almost sad how uneventful our lives generally are...
But not this last month!

Actually, school was part of the adventures we had; Al and I had some credits we needed to burn before graduation, so we decided to take a river rafting class. Uh, best. idea. ever. We got three class credits for sitting through 2 classes and going on a river trip. I was actually pretty fun, even though the river was mostly flat.
There were 11 people in the class, and 3 instructors on the trip. Of those, there was only 1 other girl besides me. Let's just say I have never seen so many boys not care about peeing. right. in. front. of. me. I was like, really? You don't even care that I'm here? It was pretty funny though.
Anyway, Apparently the U has an awesome outdoors program where you can just rent any equipment you want for a pretty cheap price, so note that if you ever want to do stuff outdoors. The instructors wanted us to be able to try out as many different things as possible, so they brought paddleboards, two-person inflatable kayaks, sit-on-top kayaks, and oar boats too, of course. We were able to try all of these, which was awesome.

Al is the one on the left there, on one of the kayaks.

I was kind of glad the water was flat when I was figuring out how to row, because the boat moved completely opposite of what I was expecting, but I thought it was awesome once I got the hang of it!

Clearly I am looking my most attractive in the pic.

Anyway, that was a good time, but what was even better was that the day after we got home from that trip, we left for Newport Beach to spend some time with Al's fam.
It was awesome to take a much-needed break and to spend some time with the fam. We stayed at the Marriott in Newport, which is awesome.

 
It was a little cloudy the first day, so we mostly just played games. Actually, Al would have been happy just playing ping pong the whole time.

We went to the beach the second day. It was wonderful. We went boogy-boarding, practiced our volleyball, and had my favorite fries and shakes at Ruby's diner.

It was such a great break. And we made it home just in time to make it to this awesome game! Yes we did witness all 3 wins.

And, I would also like to add that we were not in the crowd that rushed the field early. We waited until after the second win to do that. Go Utes!!

After that it was back to the grind. We did get a break when were able to go to my family's cabin this last weekend, but unfortunately we didn't take pics.

aaaaaaand that was the end of it! Now hopefully all that excitement will get us through our last semester.

Yeah, We're Still Here

That's right, we are alive. Sure, we have become pretty much anti-social hermits, but summer school, work everyday, and scouts (that one is just Al), will do that for you. But somehow in between papers and projects, we were able to squeeze in some more interesting activities. So, in celebration of me procrastinating my homework right now, I will tell you about them. You are welcome America. 

To kick off our week long summer vacation we decided to try to make the floating lanterns from the movie "Tangled" with our friends Nate and Kenzie, and Jeff and Lindsey. Most of them failed miserably, but Jeff and Linds constructed some monster lantern out of not one, but four garbage bags. That one just floated right up!

Sorry those pictures are so awful, it was probably way more cool in person. Actually, right after this lantern took off it almost burned down a nearby tree. Luckily Al's cat-like reflexes snatched it before it could light. Good job Al. We then ran away to In-N-Out Burger before someone called the cops. 

We went on various hikes, and short over-night trips to crystal hot springs. Oh, and to add to our collection Al insisted I get a backpacking sleeping bag; so we decided to sleep in our new (not so new for Al) sleeping bags in our living room. This lasted about two hours before we both woke up in a pile of our own sweat and gave up and moved to our (much less hot) bed. 

In the beginning of June we finally got a niece to sort of balance out the boys, uhh sorry I can't figure out how to rotate it on this whole blog thing....

Then pretty much we did nothing until the 4th of July when we hiked and went to a rodeo. Yay, we love rodeos! Oh, and as you may notice from the following pictures, Al has been growing out a mean beard. Not sure how I feel about it, all I know is if it gets long enough that I can significantly mar it with scissors in his sleep, count on that happening. 

Check that Mountain Man

Crazy Kids

Well, that's all I've got for now! The semester is over in three weeks, so hopefully it won't be too long before I am back on here....

Happy 1 Year!

I can hardly believe it, but Friday Al and I celebrated our 1st anniversary! This is just crazy to me, partly because sometimes I still can't believe/forget that I'm married, let alone that I've been married for a year. But it's been an awesome year so it just flew by!

I told Al as our anniversary was coming up "don't mess up." And he did a great job! In the morning I got up early and made him breakfast before he went to work, and we gave each other just some little gift things: We decided we were not doing anything HUGE because we are getting iphones next week, so Al used his connections at Zagg to get us Zagg skins for our phones: so now we will have a wedding picture keeping our phones scratch-free! So cute. I never know what to get guys so I just gave him a whole bunch of candy...so heart felt.

When I got to work I found these babies waiting for me

Also with the flowers was a cute card written by Al, telling me that we were getting off work at 2, we were going to dinner, and then checking into the Marriott hotel.
We were going to go somewhere new/fancy for dinner, but then we just decided to go to Red Robin where we go pretty much ever-other week. That Bonzai burger was delicious as ever! And of course afterwords we spent a romantic evening at the Marriott watching March madness.

The next day we just spend a day at home wearing sweats, as can be seen in this picture, watching yet more basketball:

Man we look ragged. We also had a piece of our wedding cake top, which was surprisingly good considering it was a year old.

And that was our celebration! Now we are back to school to finish up our semester...so basically no more life for the next few months.

Some stuff taken from my life

I just thought I would share a number of memorable things I have experienced the last few days.   1.       Remember my people watching post? Well I saw pit bull guy without his dogs today. He was peeing on the tree outside my window.  Then he noticed that I could easily see him through the window, and that I had an extremely disgusted look on my face.  He then smiled and waved at me and went on his way.  Note to self: don’t touch anything down town ever again.   2.       The other day I happened to be walking through a door at the same time as a very old woman. Naturally I held the door open for her, and she said to me ‘Oh are you holding that open for me?! Bless you, I’ll remember to put you in my will.’ Sort of made my day. When I get old I wanna be just like her.   3.       I watched part of the Oscars last night, and I decided that Angelina Jolie is very anorexic. Also, everyone keeps saying that J Lo was one of the ‘best dressed,’ but I through her dress was hideous. Just had to get that out.   4.       (Also from my previous people watching post) Security guard guy had been wearing brightly colored pajama pants lately along with his hat that says ‘security.’ I always knew there was something weird about him…. and that's the end. I know what you are thinking: cool story, Hansel.

Weird.

Something weird happened last night.

I sort of wish I could have filmed myself sleeping. 

All I know is I slept like a log, but woke up feeling like I got hit by a semi, every time I move my joints pop. And the pajama pants I was wearing when I fell asleep were no longer on me, I found them wrapped around my right arm. And my retainer was under my back. And it took me 30 mins to hear my alarm.

And I’m still disoriented.

Also, my usually very neat bedding looked like this (betcha can't guess what side is mine):

And poor Al informed me that he spent most of the night huddled on his side, blanketless and freezing.

What actually happened will forever remain a mystery.

The end.

Happy New Years = Cleaning Out My Phone

As I was cleaning out old texts on my phone today (for the new year!), I came across a section of texts that I had locked so I wouldn’t accidently delete them, and I realized something. Many people lock texts with important information, or that are meaningful, etc, etc. However, all of the texts I have saved were because they made me laugh. So I just thought I would share some of my favorites:

“I shafted Mr. Latin, because he almost killed us sailing. Really. And some other latin guy asked me out through a window today. They’re just too much for me to handle.”

        -Natalie Canfield. If you don't know her, you should because she has the best dating stories ever. 

“I’m in Provo. And I peed on their campus. The end.”

“So I sneezed today and my eye exploded again…”

       - Taken from my vast Kallie Johnson/Hillam Collection

 “Uhh did you know unicorns can walk on rainbows? Because according to Dora the Explorer they are the only things that can. I need to get me a unicorn asap.”

       -Allie Vincent. A.K.A. Allie my wife. (She used to be a nanny)

“I am sorry you have been crying…You aren’t pregnant dear.”

      -Ali my husband. He has learned that when my hormonal-birth-control-induce-no-reason-crying happens I always have a fear that I am prego. So sweet...he's always reassuring me. 

Then there are always good ones from the sisters:

“Hello?! Why didn’t you save us a spot at the parade?? We had to stand behind 3 rows of people on the middle of a melted snow cone!”

       -Elly (This was after a Days of ’47 Parade)

“OH MY HECK BIRTH CONTROL HAS GIVEN ME HIDEOUS VEINS IN MY WONDERFUL LEGS!!!”

       -Kassidy

…and last but not least, my favorite one from Kassidy. This was a while a go when she was dating some guy (not her husband) who looked like Shrek when he turns into a human in the movie. I told her to write to Dear Abby for advice on their …problem…so she just wrote me a super long text:

“Dear Abby, I am a semi-attractive female in my early 20’s. I was raised in a shallow family with unrealistically high expectations for boys I date. I am currently seeing ‘Dave’ a tall, witty grad student who resembles a cartoon. But I have a problem with the way he dresses. ‘Dave’ has a terrible pant-shoe connection. It looks like he grew out of his pants 2 years ago. I am sometimes embarrassed to go out in public with him. Abby, how do I tell him he needs new pants without offending him? Sincerely, Shallow in SLC.”

Maybe these are only amusing to me...if that's the case, sorry for wasting your time. Happy New Years!

Hope you had yourself a Merry little Christmas!

It just took all of my self-control not to name this 'Happy Christmas, Harry!' but I didn't want my Harry Potter obsession to get to the point of annoying people.

But this year was a Christmas of firsts, that's for sure. So I thought I would share a few Christmas moments from last week. Promise I will write another witty blog about nothing tomorrow.

I guess we will start with the tree. Al was thinking ahead and brought it home after he found it in some warehouse he randomly happened to be helping clear out last year. Considering we don't really know where it came from, and it was free, I thought it was pretty cute. It has lights too, but I couldn't get a decent picture with them on.

Then, presents! Unfortunately we both sort of knew what we were getting before unwrapping it, but oh well. Al got some gold clubs, and I got a cricut machine! I bet you can guess which one Ali wrapped.

Ever since our hallway has been a putting course.

Also, in relation to Christmas. I decided to get crafty and we spent the whole months of November and December eating canned soup so I could make these:

I got the idea off of Pinterest. It's my new favorite website. I made these pretzel chocolate things (that I also found on Pinterest) to put inside of them. So, I guess that is my craft for the year.

We spent Christmas day with my fam, and then the next day was Christmas with Al's. Overall it was a great couple days, I would say....oh I can't resist. Happy Christmas, Harry!