Hello world.

I need a vacation. Work is long and hard, I just spent all weekend moving, and I seriously just placed a textbook order of a not small amount of money that is making my heart and wallet cry in despair. Why in the world are textbooks so expensive? Seriously though. And what happened to the days when the school provided the books and if you needed to do extra reading you just had to check it out from your teacher? I didn't even buy books for myself! I don't want to think about what my wallet would do if I had bought books for myself and Brandon. Just because I can mostly afford to go to college doesn't mean I want to pay for the other things too. Sigh. Take a vacation? Is that what you are all telling me to do? Deal. I will go to Florida tomorrow.

But really, I am going to Florida tomorrow. Can I even believe it? No. Am I nervous to fly without my parents or some other qualified adult? Yes. Sometimes Brandon and I get lost places, but you know what, he did a really good job of making pictures in our new apartment look good, so I should probably just trust him on this too.  Two days from now I will be living it up at Hogwarts. Our first day will be spent at Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios, which is where Harry Potter World is. I am probably going to cry of excitement. The next day will be spent at the other half of Universal Studios, and the following six days will be spent at Walt Disney World. It doesn't feel like we are even going, and I probably won't feel that way until we actually get to the parks. All I know is that I thought today was going to be the longest day of my entire life, but it is already 2:00!!!! Six hours down, three to go, and then I get to go spend some quality time with my kitty and pack for a vacation that I don't think I am actually taking.

Onto the real meat of the post. We spent the past five days packing, moving, unpacking and arranging our brand new little home. And by little home I mean larger-than-our-last-home apartment. But seriously, this place is a huge step up from our last apartment. The living room is smaller and has no cable hook up, but we love it so so much. Friday night we moved the last of our belongings. Brandon's dad and brother helped us move our huge washer and dryer, which was super nice of them! We had everything moved over to the new apartment by 9:30 that night! We stayed up until about 12:30 unpacking stuff and setting up beds and furniture and what not. We both woke up around seven and couldn't really sleep anymore, so we unpacked so hard until like 3:00. I was nervous about how our kitchen would work out, but I love it tons!

At 4:00, we went shopping for a few things for the new apartment, and some clothes and shoes for vacation. It was a nice break from moving, but we never really slowed down. We shopped from four to seven, then went to the fair for some tasty fair food! We had barbecue pork sandwiches for dinner with some beans that were to die for, then we walked around until we met up with our friends Keaton and Cassidy. We walked around to all the booths, saw the animals, and then ended the night with a sweet treat. Brandon and I were still so full from dinner so we got cherry limeades! They are definitely my favorite treat of the summer! After the fair, we were so exhausted that we went home and got in bed and were asleep before eleven!

Yesterday morning I woke up at 6:15 and couldn't sleep anymore. I got up and unpacked a bunch more stuff and tried to get our house more in order. Brandon and I spent the morning organizing and cleaning, then went out again so I could find some shoes. When we got home we did laundry, hung pictures, and Brandon made our entertainment center/wires look fancy and clean.

Here is a story for you. We had dinner at Brandon's parents house last night like we do every weekend, but this weekend was far more entertaining than any other Sunday. I learned about the games that Brandon and his brothers played on the trampoline. One of them was called Buttcheese. Who comes up with that? Seriously. All you do is bounce and try and hit people with your hip or your bum. Weird kids. They also like to bounce things on the trampoline. Tomatoes, fruit, frozen turkeys....who are these people? Weirdies. That's who they are, but I like them anyways :)

We spent the rest of the night trying to get our apartment to look clean and closed the night with some ice cream and an episode of The Office. Did I mention we don't have cable? How am I supposed to watch Glee or Gossip Girl or the Bachelor?????????? Maybe I will get over it.

Anyways, right before bed I took some pictures for you nice people. Please pardon the mess and the bare walls, we are working on it!

This is the view as you walk in.

Having our entire sectional set up took up too much room in the living room, so we made the sectional into a sofa!

These two pictures are of the guest bathroom. It is right off the living room.

We decided on gray and yellow for the colors in this bathroom. I am excited to decorate!

The laundry closet is just off the kitchen, right after the bathroom. I love having my washer and dryer enclosed. P.s. Mom and dad, we are still loving them!

The kitchen!! We have a lazy susan, which I usually don't love, but I love it right now!

Our HUGE dining area. Notice the patio door isn't sliding, I love it! And our patio is bigger!

The bar in this apartment is so long we can fit five stools pretty comfortably!

This is just a little nook off the dining room. You can see the section of the couch, we didn't know where else to put it!

Our pantry/coat closet! I cannot tell you how happy I am that we have a coat closet. It is a dream come true!

These are our stairs. Sophie loves them!

There is a bathroom sink outside of the bathroom right as you walk up the stairs. Its kind of weird, but I actually love it. I can get ready after I shower without getting hot from all the steam still in the room! And I love that we have a linen closet! It's the best.

The innards of the bathroom.

The shower. Its just a normal shower, nothing special. Our bedroom is to the right as you walk out of the bathroom, and the guest room is to the left.

This is the guest room! It is so much bigger than the one at our last apartment! Everything is going in here until it has a place.

This is our bedroom. We haven't quite gotten around to hanging anything up yet though!

I love how much closet space we have. The regular closet is so big that we fit all of our clothes and a dresser inside! The smaller closet has shelves, so we bought canvas bins and gave our second dresser back to Brandon's parents!

This is us in all our glory after a hard weekend of unpacking.

We love our new apartment tons! I have some other pictures from the past few weeks that I will now share with you :)

Sophie was trying to help Dad fill the hole in the wall.

She took to sleeping like this for a few days, I'm not really sure why though.

Now I get to talk about Sophie for a minute! The move has been hard on her, I am not even kidding. When we started packing at our last apartment everything would scare her. She couldn't walk into a room without poofing up to protect herself. And then this whole weekend we would get spooked at the tiniest things. She has had a lot of fun exploring, but I think she has been nervous that we are going to leave her. She really won't leave our sides, and hasn't since the beginning of last week. Sometimes we lose her in this apartment. That sounds weird, but it really is so much bigger than our last one. This apartment stays a lot cooler than our last one because it is two levels. The bottom floor stays super cool all day usually, and we think that Sophie doesn't love how cool it is. Whenever she gets tired she always goes upstairs to take a nap.

We took her up to Brandon's aunt and uncle's house last week because they got a new six week old kitten. We hoped that Sophie would love her immediately and love having someone to play with, but she definitely hated it. I don't really know about getting a second cat now :(

That's about it for today! Actually that will be it for about two weeks! We get home on Thursday the 23 and start school the following Monday. Boo school. I will try and be quick about posting pictures from our vacation!

Yet Another Monday

     Is anyone as tired of Mondays as I am? I swear, every Monday when the alarm goes off I want to throw it out the window and just sleep all day. This weekend was a good one though, and I am getting pretty anxious for these next few weeks to speed by! Friday night Brandon and I went and saw the new Batman movie with his family. It was really good, but super long. I wanted to go to the show at 6:30, but his brother put up a fight so they could watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics, so against my better judgement we went at 8:15. Okay, I am an old woman alright? No offense, grandmas, I think you party harder than I do anyways. But it hit about 10:30 during the movie and I could hardly keep my eyes open. Its pathetic really. But Brandon loved it and already wants to see it again; he was telling me that as soon as we got home from the movie actually, so it was a success!
     Saturday morning we woke up around nine and went for a run. We came home and Brandon cut his hair while I worked out some more, then we had eggs and asparagus for breakfast! Mmmm...it was such a good way to start the day. Last week I borrowed all seven seasons of Boy Meets World from the library, so we watched that for probably about an hour Saturday morning during and after breakfast. Finally around 1:00 we decided we should actually go do something, so we went to the zoo! The Logan Zoo isn't too terribly exciting, but it was fun to get out and see the animals anyways. Afterwards we got sno cones and went and walked around the mall. Nobody punch me for this, but I bought a new pair of shorts and they are size 3. I am pretty sure they are a bit mis-sized, because I haven't been a size 3 since I was like 5, but I am pretty excited about it regardless. Brandon's friend and his wife from Salt Lake were driving home from Bear Lake, so on their way they stopped at our apartment. We were going to go to dinner, but they weren't ever hungry. We sat around and talked for about two hours and it was a lot of fun! Brandon and I stayed with them when we went to St. George for spring break last March before we were married. They are both from Idaho Falls actually, and the wife is just a year older than I am. The best part of the whole time we talked was that she loves cats just as much as I do, and her husband is like Brandon in the fact that he loves their cat, but doesn't like to admit it. So we seriously probably spent a good 45 minutes total talking about our cats. After they left, we met Brandon's dad to look at some tires for Brandon's car. Since we didn't go to dinner with Nate and Casey, we were both starving after we met with his dad. It was like 9:00 by this time. I never like to eat this late, but I was so starving and pizza sounded amazing, so we went to Pizza Pie Cafe. It is like Primo's, but definitely not as good. For those of you who know how much my dad loves Primo's, I am sure you can understand why going to Pizza Pie Cafe made me excited to see my family this weekend! After pizza, we went home to watch more Boy Meets World, but I fell into a food coma like 45 minutes into the shows. WHY AM I SO PATHETIC? I miss the days when I could stay up until 3:00 in the morning and be ready to go the next day.
     Sunday we watched a lot of Boy Meets World. We had more eggs and asparagus, and then watched more Boy Meets World. I think we have finished like 20 of the 22 episodes of the first season. Its really not that bad though, because they are only 20 minutes episodes. We went to dinner at Brandon's parents' house, then went home to finish the laundry. We have a hole in our bathroom wall currently because the towel rod anchors had come loose in the drywall (even before we moved in) and we basically got tired of it and pulled the anchors out. So last night we ran to Walmart, like, we literally ran there, bought some stuff to fix it up, and did what we could last night. So that is our fun little project for this week! We need to finish spackling, then sand it, paint it, and more than likely just buy a whole new towel rod.
     People, I only have one more month until school starts. It seems like a long time, but I realized last night how much I have to do before then. Brandon and I found a new apartment. It is one that his mom manages, and I had only ever seen it in the dark until last night and I absolutely fell in love with it. The living room is smaller, the kitchen is bigger, there is a half bath downstairs, the bedrooms are about the same size, there is a coat closet, a sink outside the bathroom as well as in which is weird but whatever, and there is a closet just outside the bathroom. Oh and did I mention that there is a CHAIR RAIL throughout the entire living room and kitchen??? TWO TONE PAINT IN BOTH ROOMS PEOPLE. I love it so much because its not just the blah blah boring white or brown that every apartment seems to be. Plus, because his mom manages them, she will let us upgrade little things, like sink fixtures and curtain rods. And we are getting a killer deal. We are hoping that the utilities at this apartment will be less expensive than what we are currently paying, but we are mostly excited that our hot water probably won't run out after showering for five minutes.
     Anyways, the point I was trying to make with that, is that now I have a lot of packing to do. It would be way hard to start packing stuff now, because we use a lot of things that we own; most of them actually. But here is the rundown of our lives. Thursday night this week we are going to Salt Lake to watch The Odd Life of Timothy Green for free, which means we have to pack Wednesday night for our trip to Boise that takes place Friday-Sunday. Then we work full time next week, then the following Tuesday we leave for Florida until the Thursday before school starts. Seriously, we get back on Thursday, then have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to buy school supplies and mentally prepare ourselves for school. We will go to school that first week and then the first weekend in September is when we are planning to move. When on Earth am I going to have time to pack????? The answer is: I have no freaking idea. I guess I will just have to do a little here and a little there, and then when that weekend comes we will be moving our stuff all in one day from sun up to sundown. Luckily its a three day weekend so we will have that extra day to get every set up the way we like it.
     So that is our life currently, and I love it. We all love it. Have I mentioned that I have the best little family ever? And I am so so SO excited to go see my family this weekend. It has only been like three weeks since I have seen them but that is long enough! Good luck with Monday everyone. Do something exciting!

I am feeling pretty proud....

...so I want to share with you my pride. It's of myself, so sorry. But back in April I started trying to lose weight, and I have done a pretty good job if I say so myself. I lost four pounds in April, 2 in May, 1 in June, and 1 in July. It was so easy to lose the weight at first: I monitored what I ate, and started running a ton. May was a bit harder with finals and getting my wisdom teeth out. I lost three pounds in two days after my oral surgery because I couldn't eat, but quickly gained two back after I started eating again which is good. Because that was unhealthy. And then ever since I have been working forty hours a week this summer my weight loss abilities have quickly decreased. I think that maybe I haven't been eating enough food, given how much I have been exercising. I also don't exercise very regularly, because let's face it: when you live in an apartment with no air conditioning and its 94 degrees outside it's pretty hard to want to exercise.

One thing that has made me so happy and persistent through all of this has been Brandon. He has been so supportive and even accepting of all the healthy things I have been doing/pushing on him. I finally got him to start running with me after school got out and that has been so motivating for me. If I ever am not in the mood to run, he says "Well I'm going to go alone then." And what kind of wife would I be if I made my poor hubby go running alone? A bad one, that's what kind.

 He also has been accepting of the health food I am trying to make and the junk food I won't let us buy. We haven't bought ice cream in ages, hardly ever buy soda, and haven't made brownies or cookies in a while. Going out for ice cream is a bit more costly, but I would rather splurge on tastier ice cream once a month than keep it in our house all the time, because let me tell you, I love ice cream.

We have worked harder at incorporating more color into our meals. More veggies, more fruits, whatever it takes. My new love is asparagus; I will put asparagus in anything. Same goes for broccoli, it's not much, but it is something right? We both grew up having muffins and rolls at most every meal, and I loved that. Rolls are seriously so good, but not so good for you. I still want to have my bread, so we have whole wheat bread with melted cheese on top and that works for me!

We also love eggs: boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, whatever! Recently we have taken to making breakfast burritos with eggs, veggies, and salsa. So good! And my new favorite love is almonds. I bring one serving of those bad boys with me to work and eat half in the morning and half in the afternoon and I am full all day long!

Everyone has already said it to me: "You don't need to lose weight." I know. Trust me, I know because I have come to a standstill with losing weight and losing more is going to be hard. But it has made me feel so much better about myself. Except for the fact that now all my clothes are too big; that part sucks. Whenever I talk to Brandon about how excited I am about how I have lost weight he always, seriously most every single time says, "You aren't doing this for me right? Because if you are, you should stop." There is never a reason to lose weight for anyone but yourself, but guess what everyone: you are beautiful no matter what. I like eating, and if I wanted to eat all I could and not exercise, I would.

It has been hard sometimes, I will say that. I love milk duds and haven't had any since The Hunger Games came out. I  have had to do a lot of math in my head when I count calories; and math is hard too. But it has been worth it. And because I came back from vacation weighing less than I did before I left, I'm going to go celebrate at Costa Vida with my girlfriends.

Ps. If I can lose two more pounds by the time school starts, I will let one of you take me shopping. If you don't want that to happen....well I would probably accept treats.

San Francisco!

Brandon and I left Wednesday night last week for the wonderful city of San Francisco! We took the train from Salt Lake to Emeryville, and lets just say it was a long ride. The train left at 11:30 at night, so we got on and crashed for a majority of the night. We stopped in Elko about three hours after we had left Salt Lake, so we both woke up for that stop, and just slept on and off the rest of the night until about 8:00 in the morning. The train really wasn't so bad until about noon. Sleeping wasn't awesome, but when we woke up we got to get off in Reno and stretch our legs. Then we made our way to the lounge car, had some breakfast, and checked out the scenery for a while. After breakfast, we started to get a little antsy. We went back to our seats and read for a little bit, which led to a nice nap, then we watched a movie, which led to another nap! It was a pretty boring ride, and I don't know if I would do it again, but it wasn't as awful as I had expected it to be.

about to board the train!

The seats were like airplane seats with more legroom and more reclining capabilities

 

We were so tired still. If you couldn't tell by my eyes.

This is the lounge car that we sat in!

 That evening, Brandon's parents and brothers picked us up from the train station. We stopped for some dinner, and then made our way to The Coliseum to see the A's play against the Yankees! The game was honestly probably my favorite part of the entire trip. It was so fun! The A's won, we got to sing Take Me Out to the Ball Game, had some peanuts and hot dogs, and I got to eat a ginormous bag of cotton candy. So yeah...I'd say it was a good night!

hot dog!

HAPPY DAY!!! Don't worry, I shared.

So much happiness.

 The next morning we were up bright and early for a hot day at Six Flags. San Francisco wasn't supposed to be super warm, so I didn't pack any shorts. Needless to say I was dying at Six Flags, but we did have a lot of fun!

These are their roller coaster faces.

 We saw a lot of water shows with dolphins, whale, seal lions, and otters, and they were great! I went on the first two rides and they made me feel a bit sick, so I had to sit out on a few of the rides that day, but I was pretty proud of myself for even going on as many as I did!

This was one I did not go on. It was towards the end of the day and I finally felt 100% and didn't want to mess that up!

 Saturday morning we made our way straight to the Piers and Fisherman's Wharf! I was in heaven being around so many tall buildings and so few mountains!

This picture is through a window, sorry.

 First thing on our agenda was to visit the Aquarium of the Bay. It was neat! We got to see and touch a lot of creatures that live right in the bay. There were even sharks, which don't live in the bay.

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I loved all the boats at the pier!

 Next we took a double decker bus tour around the city. That was really neat too because we were able to see a lot of the city in a small amount of time, and it allowed us to find places we wanted to go back to later!

I learned that there are no painting restrictions on houses in California. I think it is so neat and allows for a ton of creativity!

I realized on this trip how much I love fire escapes.  So many great things happen on fire escapes in movies!

 Sadly at this point our camera died, so I will have to post more pictures from that day when I get them from Brandon's parents. After the tour, we went and explored an old war time ship from World War II. It was huge! We learned that it was built in 56 days, and one of the veterans had served on a ship of the same size that was built in 43 days! The ship we toured was actually used in filming some of the scenes from Titantic, and sounds from the boat were also used in the movie. After the boat, we grabbed some lunch. I had fish! It was so tasty. Then we headed to a wax museum. I think they are weird, but it was fun! Afterwards we went back to the piers and took a bay cruise around the Golden Gate Bridge. There was an audio tour included, and that was fun because we got to more about San Fran and the surrounding area. That night we made our way into China Town for some authentic Chinese food! It was sooooooo good, and I ate with chopsticks 99% of the time! I was proud. Then we went back to the hotel for a good nights rest.

Sunday morning we headed to Union Square (their shopping center) to catch a ride on the old fashion cable car! The line was huge; we probably waited for about thirty minutes, but it was worth it! Besides the fact that everyone in line for it was a tourist, I felt like a local! Those things can move, and the streets are so narrow with cars parked all along the side that if you aren't careful, you could get your arm clipped off by a mirror! They have wood blocks that they use to help brake the car, so the whole time we were going downhill it smelled like burnt wood. The whole experience sure made Brandon very happy though!!

It gave us some pretty good views! This is at the top of the Crooked Street!

After the cable car ride we went to Ghiradelli Square and had an ice cream sundae! They turned the old factory into some luxury condos, and there were some cool stores surrounding the area. Mostly it was just neat. And I love chocolate.

Ice cream makes us so happy!

And then, to immerse ourselves even more into the life of a San Franciscan, we used the bus system to get to our next destination! Buses are hard. I don't even take the buses in Logan. But we took them to get to an old house once occupied by the Haas' and the Lilienthal families. They were important somehow, but the house was just neat. After the house we went to a place called the Exploratorium. It is a science place but it was way cool! Unfortunately we only could stay there for an hour before it closed :(

Toilet drinking fountain

We then drove to the house from Full House!

Then to the Painted Ladies! These houses are also shown in the opening credits of Full House, and are probably better known from the Cingular commercials.

Monday we got up really early to make sure we made our boat time for Alcatraz. I had really high hopes for Alcatraz, and honestly think I was a little let down, but it was still very neat!

This one was also an audio tour that told you where to go; there were so many people everywhere!

We left Alcatraz and hopped in the car to go to the Muirwoods. Trees are trees, I didn't take any pictures, sorry! That was our last stop on our vacation to San Francisco. On the way to Reno we drove through wine country, but weren't able to stop at all :(

It was a fun vacation, but I am happy to be home! I only have to work three days this week, and I can't believe that tomorrow is already Friday. Next week we will work all week, but Thursday night we are going to a special showing of the new movie The Odd Life of Timothy Green that I scored free tickets to. Friday we are getting off work around noon and going to Boise! This will be my last time sleeping in the house I grew up in, so that is kind of sad, but I am excited to see my parents new house! After that weekend we will have one work week, one weekend, and one day until we leave for Florida! It can't come soon enough!

I kind of missed something important.

Make sure you read the long post, but I forgot to mention something.

After seeing Rock of Ages, I completely fell in love with Julianne Hough. It lit something inside me, and I decided I want to be an actress/singer/dancer. I don't know if it will happen, but it's worth a shot right? I had a good friend of mine take some headshots for me, because I planned on going to Salt Lake for a casting call at a talent agency. We didn't end up going because of the long drive to Twin Falls on Saturday, but at least I have the pictures now just in case. I was also going to audition for a play here in town tonight, but Brandon's Grandpa, who is driving us to the train station tonight, wants to leave at 7:30 instead of 9:00 as we had originally discussed, so between that and auditioning I would have no time to mentally and physically prepare. I don't know if my new found dreams will ever come true, but oh well.

All photo credit to Callee Christensen.