New Year's Eve

2011 in a nutshell:

• ·         We went on a bunch of trips: Monterey Bay, Moab UT, Lake Powell, camping in Ephraim Canyon UT, Seattle WA, Victoria Canada, and Park City/Deer Valley UT.  And I did a quick girl’s trip to St. George UT twice.
• ·         Mic surprised me with a puppy. Love our Sophie Bug.
• ·         We went to a bunch of Mayson’s football games, and one University of Utah football game.
• ·         Two of our friends got married, and a few friends had babies.
• ·         We celebrated our two year wedding anniversary. Crazy how time flies!
• ·         Mic changed jobs, and also started the Business/Accounting program at Utah State University- and has aced all three semesters so far. So proud of all his hard work.

New Year’s Resolutions:

1. ·         Be more organized
2. ·         Have more date nights
3. ·         Get fit
4. ·         Do more stuff outdoors (once it warms up) i.e Tennis, Hiking, Camping, Picnics

Temple Square Lights

Happy Holidays!

We had a great Christmas this year. We got together with the Ashby’s on Christmas Eve. They always reenact the Nativity story which is a lot of fun. The kids love dressing up.

On Christmas we always do brunch with my mom’s family. I love seeing my cousins and their cute families. I made homemade cinnamon rolls, which surprisingly turned out delicious, I’d never made them before. Christmas night we got together with my dad, grandma, Laura, Alex & Mayson. I was scheduled to work 5-11pm, but one of my coworkers was nice and stayed two hours later for his shift so I wouldn’t have to go in until 7pm. That way I was able to do dinner with my dad.

I wanted to be crafty and make all of my Christmas gifts this year, but I ended up making like half of them. For my dad I made a corkboard/magnet board out of used wine corks (since he likes wine) and ordered a vinyl letter saying I saw once “Always carry a corkscrew, and the wine will provide itself”. I liked the saying, it seems like an optimistic idea.  I also made him a fleece tie blanket, Tifanie and I found the best fabric that totally fit his style. It had bears and fish on it and reminded me of Alaska- which he goes to frequently to fish. For my mom I made her a photo calendar and I made a cute temple picture thing of the Salt Lake Temple. For Mic’s parents I made a photobook of our pictures from our last family vacation. We drew names and I got Mic’s sister Kate, and I made her a cute jewelry box and also a fleece tie quilt. For some coworkers and neighbors I made homemade truffles with my friend Angie. Angie makes them every year, and this year she was nice and helped me make some too. They aren’t hard to make but definitely are time consuming. We made a butter rum and chocolate, cake batter, and cheesecake. So delicious!

I wanted to do a low key Christmas for each other, because what I really want is for us to go on a trip for my birthday/spring break in March. Mic got some video games and sweats, and I got a cute glue gun, fuzzy boots, and a cupcake/party tray carrier. And then I also bought us new dishes and some dvd seasons of our favorite shows (Big Bang Theory season 4 and Modern Family season 1 and 2). Sophie’s stocking was stuffed full of her favorite treats and A TON of cute pink and purple tennis balls. She is OBSESSED with tennis balls and always has one in her mouth at all times. She also got a new collar, because she’d outgrown her other one. I found her the cutest pink and gray argyle patterned one at Target.

May the Christmas season fill your home with joy, your heart with love, and your life with laughter.

Corkboard/Magnet Board

Our cute new dishes. LOVE them!

Our stockings & nativity,

The temple thing I made my mom.

Our Christmas card we mailed to family.

Truffles gallore!

Our niece Anika & nephew Jaden.

On our way to Mic's parents. Diet coke & Soph. 

Cute Keagan dressed up as a Shepard.

Anika as the Angel.

Sara dressed up as Mary.

Wade

half the group..

Mic and Soph

Christmas morning with Soph and Jack.

Spoiled Sophie.

Making cinnamon rolls.

Making Gingerbread Houses

I haven’t made a gingerbread house since probably Elementary school. So I was so excited when my friend Becky suggested that instead of our girl’s craft night we had planned, we include the husbands and make gingerbread houses.

Becky, Aubrey and I have been friends since sometime in Elementary school. We grew up in the same neighborhood and have a lot of funny memories growing up. It was fun to reminisce about them. I’m glad we can still find time to get together with our spouses.

Aubrey & Jared

Becky & Josh

Mic & I. (I had just gotten done working a 12 hr shift & look super attractive in my scrubs)

Our cute house

Side view

Front view

Mic putting the finishing touches on

Becky & Josh's house of massacre 

Aubrey & Jared's cute house

What Happens in Wendover…

Friday after work Laura, Alex, me, and a bunch of Laura’s coworkers from Labor & Delivery chartered a bus & went to Wendover. Her cute coworker arranged the whole thing and even had the bus pick everyone up from the hospital. Super random having a bunch of L&D hospital staff waiting in the lobby for the fun bus.

I’d never really been to Wendover, except to stop for gas/food on the way to San Francisco, so I was stoked (and turns out a little naïve) to be invited along.

The ride there was quite entertaining, and seemed to go by fast and without too much mishap, minus a crazy rest stop somewhere along the way, and one girl who probably had had too much to drink before we even made it out of the hospital parking lot.

There were 18 of us total, and most of us made it back for the bus ride home- 6 hours later! I guess the rule is that the bus cannot head back earlier than 6 hours. So we had a 2 hour bus ride there, 6 hours in Wendover, and a 2 hour ride home. 10 fricken hours! And this is after I’d been at work at 7am. We didn’t end up leaving Wendover until 3 am & we pulled in my driveway at 5am! I’d seriously been up 24 hours. And I am not a night person whatsoever. Then I only ended up sleeping until 10am. (Now I know why I don’t work nights, because it is impossible for me to sleep during the daytime).

Wendover was fun (maybe not 6 hours of fun).  Laura even managed to win without gambling! How you ask? By finding someone’s cash out slip on the ground. I found two myself.. one was for 3 cents and the other for 25 cents- high roller! But Laura’s on the other hand was for $20.25! Awesome! That practically paid for the trip! And I’m way glad I remembered to get pictures of us with the ticket before we cashed it in. (Leave it up to me to capture every moment).

The bus ride home was AWFUL! The heater on the van broke and it was FREEZING! 2 hours of the coldest I’ve ever been. And tired. And it was so foggy, seriously the van driver couldn’t see more than a car length in front of him because of the fog/lake effect. I stressed the whole time that we were going to end up crashing in the middle of nowhere & I'd be picked up by my coworkers/Life Flight. But somehow we managed to make it home safely.

Mic had to work Saturday so he didn’t come with us, but Wendover with a bunch of crazy girls is probably not how he wanted to spend his Friday night anyway.

I did love the conversation on the bus ride home- since everyone but me (and Alex) work in Labor & Delivery , the talk was a bunch of birthing stories. So unlike my coworkers stories when we get together & talk about crazy traumas. 

When the night first started I joked that this should be an annual trip but looking back I think I had enough Wendover for a long long time. It made for good people watching though, that's for sure. 

Laura with her winning ticket she found!

I don't know why I ever think this gangsta face is attractive , LOL

Vacations Anonymous

I was looking at a family friend’s blog and she had posted a bunch of pictures of trips her and her husband had taken over the last year or two, and I thought to myself “Wow they travel a lot!” , which made me start counting up the trips Mic and I have been on since we’ve gotten married. And this is the conclusion I’ve come to realize: I need to join “Vacations  Anonymous”. Hi, my name is Lisa and I’m addicted to traveling. *Disclosure: I don’t want this blog post to sound like I’m bragging because that is not my intention AT ALL. I just love looking at pictures of our adventures, and since our blog is fairly new, most of our vacations aren’t “documented” on it, so I thought one blog post could sum up all our trips thus far in our marriage.

My family took a lot of family vacations growing up. I think my real love for traveling came about later though. I remember Freshman year of college visiting my best friend Tifanie over Spring Break back East in Virginia and then we drove clear to Georgia and back. And the day after Mic and I got engaged Laura and I flew to New York for Spring Break/my birthday. I think those two trips started my love of traveling.

I will always budget trips into our finances. It also helps that I seem to have a knack for planning vacations on a budget, and can make them super affordable.  (*If I didn’t have such a love for Healthcare, I would seriously love to go into something travel related).

The first 18 months of our marriage we were fortunate to go on a lot of vacations. In fact, Mic flew on an airplane more times during those months then he had in his entire life! I think my love for traveling has been rubbing off on him, and we are loving being able to get away just the two of us, or with family. We both know we probably won’t always be able to travel as frequently as we have been able to, while it’s just been the two of us once we start having kids, so we are enjoying every second of it for now.

Some pictures from our “adventures”. 

Moab July 2009

San Diego Sept 2009

Washington DC May 2010

Yellowstone June 2010

 Southern Caribbean Sept 2010

San Francisco March 2011

Monterey Bay, CA March 2011

Moab April 2011 

Lake Powell June 2011

Seattle,WA Aug 2011

Victoria, Canada Aug 2011

Deer Valley Sept 2011

Laura & Alex find a dog:

I wish I still had the text message conversation between Laura and I about this story so I could include it, because it was hilarious. But here is the gist of it.

Sunday, Alex found a Pomeranian wandering around on his street and somehow caught it in his backyard. He woke Laura up (who had worked a night shift so she was sleeping) and had her check out the ID while he held him. They then called the number & said “hey we found your dog...” to which the person on the phone said she had no idea what they were talking about and that they had the wrong number. Then Laura text me a picture of the dog with something like “Now don’t freak out but Alex found a Pomeranian...” to which I did indeed freak out & responded “I’ll take it!” Side note: I have wanted a Pomeranian my whole life. Despite pretty much everyone telling me they are high maintenance, and yappy. In fact I wanted two, and their names were going to be “Sophie and Poofy”.  (Well I did get a puppy and named her Sophie- Mic pretty much vetoed Poofy).

Hours later after much begging, Laura and Alex finally brought the dog over. He was seriously SO cute and friendly, and even Soph loved him. Jack, not so much. I’m a little hesitant around dogs I don’t know, but I picked him up the second I saw him, and fortunately he didn’t bite my face off.

Then Laura and Alex left to Alex’s parents for dinner and took the dog with them. (Who I started calling Mosby- his name tag said MoMo, which I thought was lame. I wanted to choose a new name that closely resembled his given one.) Laura said she’d bring him back to my house that night to stay until we could find his owners, because Parker (her cat) didn’t like him, and Parker has enough issues without adding a dog to the mix. I told her she had to drop him back off by 9pm because I go to bed early.

9:30 comes around and I still hadn’t heard from her so we just decide to go to bed, and I figured that Alex’s family had probably kept Mosby.

Apparently that night though they came back to my house at 10:30. We were both asleep. I was in my ambien coma, but Mic woke up and answered the door. He was less than thrilled that the fur ball was staying with us. He kicked Soph out of her kennel and put the stranger in.

I woke up at 3am, and went to grab another blanket from the floor on Mic’s side of the bed, to which I got surprised by Soph being on the loose and licking my face. Being half asleep and not expecting her to be out of her kennel, I was caught way off guard. I woke Mic up & asked why Soph wasn’t locked up, and he groggily said “because there is another dog in there...” I used the flashlight on my phone to shine into the kennel and low and behold there was Mosby chillin in Soph’s kennel. I about died! Especially because I’d slept through the whole thing! Which is actually kinda creepy, but thanks to my crazy insomnia, I will have to continue to take my ambien- and hopefully no one breaks into my house, or the place catches on fire because I will sleep through the whole thing.

Monday, Laura and I took Mosby to the Humane Society to check to see if he had a microchip. Which he didn't.  Then we took him to the pound to see if anyone had filled out a missing pet report, which they hadn’t. They also informed me about some crazy fine/penalty for keeping stray pets, and I reluctantly handed him over. They said if he wasn’t claimed in 5 business days I could be the first to adopt him. (I hadn’t completely convinced Mic that we should adopt him, and be outnumbered by 4 legged weirdos. 3 to 2). Nor had I really convinced myself 100% that I could take on more responsibility. Pets are like crazy long term commitments!

Long story short, Mosby’s owners apparently did finally claim him Wednesday, which is probably a good thing. But I did enjoy him in the short time we had him. He was seriously so well behaved and super friendly. And didn’t bark! And Alex if you find him wandering your neighborhood again, then all bets are off & I get to keep him! *And not hand him over to the authorities. 

Chillin at my house

In the car

So well behaved!

How can you not love him?

At the pound, right before I handed him over.