le mie nuove scarpe

Sweet Heaven ...

Home Improvement

So since our anniversary, we've been working on keeping our house cleaner. I know, for some of you, it's like, "What?! Your house isn't clean?" But, like 90% of the world's homes, no it's not. Maybe one day.

We did some improvements that really are helping us WANT to keep it spick and span all the time. We rearranged the living room so it feels more open. Not to mention Trevor got a sweet new big screen (57") from his work for $150! Since the living room is more open, and we brought our desk back out of the second bedroom, it worked out to finally pull our dinign room table out from the wall and move the computer to the desk. It feels so nice to actually have a dining room be used for what it's supposed to! I put out my table decor, and got new red placemats that balance out all the green and brown.

Last Saturday while I was at Target shopping for yet another wedding, I decided it was my turn to get something cool for our house. So, along with the red placemats, I got new red curtains, towels, and a rug for the kitchen! It looks so great in there now! Before it was mostly white with random colors in some places. But now it has a theme. Robyn helped me trim up the curtains with her handy sewing machine so they weren't so incredibly long. I could say nothing better to explain how I'm feeling but this:

:)

These pictures are sort of in the middle stage of our improvements. They are before the big screen and before the red additions to the dining room and kitchen. Why am I no good at getting up-to-date pictures? Who knows.

Trevor

1. Where did you meet: A combination of choir and seminary.
2. How long did you date before you were married? Two years and 10 days.
3. How long have you been married? 2 years and 16 days.
4. What does he do that surprises you? Turns off all the lights and makes scarey noises :)
5. What is your favorite feature of his? His shoulders and back.
6. What is your favorite quality of his? His strong values and determination to stand up for what he believes in.
7. Does he have a nickname for you? Gol, which one?! Poo Leg seems to be the most common. I like Honey Bunches of Oats better.
8. What is his favorite color? Uh... I don't think he really has one. Maybe black, but I wouldn't say he likes it that much more than all the others. It just depends on what the color is being used for.
9. What is his favorite food? Apparently it's lasagna still.
10. What is his favorite sport? Teatherball. Haha!
11. When and where was your first kiss? On my mom's couch 2 weeks after we started dating. He pulled the old switcharoo on me and told me he'd wait until I was ready. Tricky tricky.
12. Favorite thing to do as a couple? Depends on the day. Watch movies, go see things like the zoo, go out to eat. Have living room picnic/movie nights
13. Do you have any children? Not yet.
14. Does he have a hidden talent? His vocal abilities and desires are quite hidden from many of his family and friends--we hope more people will be able to share in his talents some day.
15. How old is he? 21 years, 5 months, and six days. Do you count time in the womb?
16. Who said I love you first? I think it was Trevor. Neither of us can really remember. We remember the event--it was in a car when I was dropping him off at home.
17. What is his favorite type of music? Black metal/hardcore/death metal all all combinations thereof. There's probably some other kinds I didn't mention.
18. What do you admire most about him? He's committed to me even though he could be out having a fun life being 21. he admits he loves me and is okay with what that means :) He knows what he wants and believes in and stands for it. He doesn't let other people looking down on him stop him from fulfilling his dreams. He's smart but not nerdy. He freaks out about things like Iron Man and Between the Buried and Me coming to Salt Lake. He likes kid stuff and birthday cake. He can design freaking unique and awesome art in photoshop (I don't admire that he won't make me a new blog background though, even though he can). I admire the times he calls for pizza on his own.
19. Do you think he will read this? Probably not, he doesn't get on the internet very much anymore. Which is okay, in case I got one of the questions wrong :)

Pumpkin Carving!

Wednesday night we decided spontaneously to carve pumpkins with Trevor's brother Travis and his wife Robyn. They live right next door so it wasn't too difficult to coordinate :) This is probably more pictures of pumpkin carving that you ever wanted to see, but I like taking pictures, so you can just enjoy.



This one's mine. I like it.
Mine has a curly cue.
Travis' in progress...

Trevor's

We made hot cocoa, and it was perfect! We started the water boiling in Travis and Robyn's tea pot and it was whistling quietly pretty much the whole time. It sounded like someone moaning...totally set the mood for Halloween.
The gunk from inside.

How come everyone had to make their pumpkins look so much better than mine?

Travis and Robyn's on their porch, pre-candles.

Becky and Trevor's on our porch, pre-candles.
Trevor's, an official jack-o-lantern. I like how the flame is in the eye...spooky.
Ours, together.




Travis and Robyn's together. Robyn named hers Mike Wizowzky.

Travis'.
Robyn's.
Ours again...
Again, but it's okay because it's from a slightly different angle.



The stalk of Trevors. I like how it looks like there's lava or fire just waiting to burst out.

Trevor's. I liked his without the top on because it looks like his head has fire coming out.

The only picture of me :) My hair looked like crap that day.

Wha??

Trevor cut his freaking hair!

I have to admit, I was scared before. I really liked his long hair.

But everything turned out okay :)

So, here's the Trevor you all know (at least, the one you've known for 2 years). He's hot.

Here's a big reason why he wanted to cut it so bad. For his new job he has to wear it in a pony tail :( Way to ruin the awesomeness. He doesn't like the pony tail look.
And here's the new Trevor (at least, right after they cut his hair and styled it not quite as perfectly as he can).

I'll pro'lly get some better pictures eventually as time goes on. But I think he looks pretty hot still :)

Anniversary

I've been wanting to wait to post something about our anniversary until I remembered to bring my pictures to work, and now I finally have them!

Trevor got a new job last week, but before that, he was out of a job for a week. So that, combined with our horrible budgeting skills, made it so our planned trip to Ohio for our anniversary had to be postponed indefinitely. Ultimately, that meant we had to come up with something terrific to do for our anniversary with only 2 weeks to go. I told Trevor since I planned last year's, he had to plan this year's (but that was pretty much because I felt devoid of all ideas).

So, instead of Tuesday of last week being our last day of work for the week, we had to suffer through Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday before we could start having fun :( With Trevor's new work schedule, he is scheduled to work every Saturday. He was able to get our the Saturday of our anniversary off though, so that basically meant it was our last weekend of no work in sight. I decided because of that, we would celebrate our anniversary the ENTIRE weekend instead of just the day of :)

Since I got off work at 12 on Friday, and Trevor had to GO to work at 1, we decided we'd have lunch together; yay! We went for Chinese food, which is probably the best. It felt nice to eat out and just be together during the work day again (we used to have lunch together quite often before Trevor's last job--and before our new budget). Then I trecked my way home to clean everything up and wrap the "presents" I got for Trevor. We'd pretty much agreed we weren't going to get eachother stuff, instead we'd just splurge on things we could do together over the weekend, but since when do I really care about agreements like that? Earlier that week I'd gotten all his favorite treats and dessert fixin's and I wrapped them individually so it seemed like a lot of special stuff. I think it was okay to get all the stuff because it wasn't just for him, you know? We got to make the cake together, and eat it together, so it worked out. Let's see, there was the chocolate fudge cake, the chocolate frosting with sprinkles (Trevor gets cravings for birthday cake...), two cook-and-serve chocolate Jello puddings (we LOVE those), two Heath bars (Trev's obsessed), EL Fudge cookies (yet again, Trevor has an obsession), Cheezits (just plain good), white chocolate chips, and of course--Mountain Dew. Pretty much all the junk food we need for an entire month, but really will only last for a week.

So, after unwrapping all the goodness, we decided we had to have pizza. Ordered from Papa John's and watched Jumper. I thought it turned out to be better than every one said. Not exactly the BEST movie ever, but entertaining at least. Being full and excited for the next day, we didn't stay up too late (after doing a crap load of laundry).

Saturday = Zoo Day! Woot! We have been trying to go to the zoo since the first blossom of the year, but it just has not worked out. So, of course, the day we actually plan, and settle for going without friends, Mother Nature decides to make it the rainiest day in the history of Utah. Something about storms in the Pacific...Idunno. All I know is that it was raining when we woke up, and we were in denial. After a casually getting ready while catching some general conference here and there, we packed up our stuff, zipped up our jackets, and got in the car to head to the zoo. We weren't exactly sure how to get there since I forgot to print off the directions while I was at work (grr, we can't even steal internet from our neighbors anymore). So we headed on I-80 going east while I tried to use my mad cell phone internet skills to get directions. Totally didn't work in time, and we missed the incredibly hard to find exit 129 onto Foothill. So, we took the "scenic route" for a 15 minute drive down Parley's Canyon until the next exit. It was pouring rain, we hadn't eaten yet, we were a little bit lost, and we both were silently wondering if we'd actually be able to get in to the zoo due to the weather. Let's just say we were not happy campers.

Trevor was nice though--I think he knew how much I'd really been wanting to visit the zoo, so he ignored my snappiness.

Well, suffice it to say we got to the zoo unscathed, but decided not to venture out into the downpour :( It was ridiculous--and we could see people leaving the zoo. Ugh.

This story's getting longer than I anticipated...We settled on seeing if the weather would be better the next day, and ate at The Cowboy Grub on right there on Foothill. Trevor'd been there once with his old boss (the blind 90 year old architect) last year and had been wanting to go again ever since. We had very homestyle meals of chicken fried steak and meatloaf. It was pretty tasty. They had a salad bar with this crab salad that was pretty dang amazing. I sort of have this mania about crab salad. I try it every where I go, and decide if it's good, bad, better than I've had before, or not worth having again. This one was probably one of the best I've ever had. The sauce was more orange than white, totally weird, but it made it less fishy tasting. Trevor made me take pictures "discretely." He was embarrassed to be seen with me and my camera :) That's why they are from these horrible below-the-nose/chin angles.

So, in an atempt to avoid heading straight home to veg out and watch TV all day on our anniversary, we drove aimlessly downtown in the rain. But! We did find Trolley Square. This may come as a shock to all you Utahns, but neither of us had ever been to Trolley Square before, so we thought, "What the hey, we may as well." Thoroughly soaking my shoes on the way in, we entered, expecting something much more than we received. It was okay. Just a mall, with sorta old fashioned theme and partially-being-renovated walls. We looked around an overstuffed antique shop--but found only midly interesting eye-sores. We found a candy and taffy store though, and of course, that was pretty sweet :) So we splurged on the overpriced chocolate truffles, fudge, and salt water taffy (made from salt from the Great Salt Lake, of course).
On the way out we stopped by this booth for the Utah chapter of some greyhound adoption group. The greyhounds were pretty neat--really calm, but huge. Made me want a dog even more, if that's possible. We also went into this novelty store (I guess that's what it was), where they sell birthday cards and books, with slightly inappropriate taglines and topics. We found zebra gum! That was one of the best parts. I wanted it for the tatoos and nastalgic qualities.

So, soaking my shoes again on the way out, we left and ate our truffles on the drive to Jordan Landing to see a movie. For some reason we settled on The House Bunny. It was the only one playing right then--we didn't feel like waiting an hour. It turned out to be pretty funny and a lot less explicit than I expected. Of course, as with every Happy-Madison film, it had a few inconceivable moments that were just corny and not funny, but overall, it was entertaining and left us feeling happy.

We hung out at home for a while and watched some TV while waiting to get hungry so we could go out for our fancy dinner we'd been planning. But after a couple hours we just weren't feeling like a big dinner. I think it was because we had a lot for lunch. It turned out for the best though because the less we spend, the better :) We decided on Riley's for some sandwiches, soup, and shakes. Yum yum :)

We went to PetSmart and got a new rat. Now we have 3. Dont' ask questions, just accept that we did it, okay? Her name is Remmy, she's dark gray, and she smells like no other. We're going to give her the 2 week guarantee period, but if she still smells...So don't anyone get too attached.

By the end of the day, we were content to just lounge around at home watching TV, till Trevor decided we should go on a walk. So at 11 we went on an hour long walk on the Jordan River Parkway behind our apartments and under 4700 South. Totally neat.

Sunday arrives, and after a hearty breakfast of buscuits and gravy with sausage, we were happy to see that the sun was out and the sky was blue. Perfectly cool weather for the zoo! I'm so not about to talk to you about it being Sunday.

Boy howdy! The zoo fulfilled everything we wanted.

Remember the lion drinking fountain?! It was so awesome! This one doesn't work anymore but they have another one by the penguins that works. Brought back so many memories. Trevor was lame and didn't want pictures taken of him, so he's always just standing there.

Oo! this one had a baby! It was the cutest little thing! But it was running around everywhere so all the pictures are blurry.

This one was sitting on the 2 inch ledge 15 feet in the air...

Okay, alligator, but his genes are mutated so he has no pigment in his skin. He's not albino though--his eyes have color. They're more rare than albino though. They die if they're in the sun too long.

He totally just looks like a rubber alligator.

Oh! The elephants were probably my favorite out of all the animals. They're eyes are so... alive. They were dancing to the music playing too :)

Rhinos. Huge.

You could hear them chewing and breathing and sniffing. WAY LOUDER than you'd expect...especially after only having pet rats.