The zoo and other adventures

Since Rachel is getting all caught up on her blog, I figured it was time that I did the same. 

When Mom and Dad were still here after helping me move up, we (Rach, Mark, and fam, Mom, Dad, Doug, and me) went to the Hogle Zoo in SLC. It was a fun time - even though it was forever long and hot!

Me with an elephant

Shelly and Emily with a giraffe

Now there's two!

There was this humongous hill that almost killed those of us pushing Mark up it. Shelly came to our rescue.

A few Sunday's ago, I came upstairs and found this cute sight:

One of the first few days with just the kids and me hanging out at home produced an unexpected result. Emily is going through the annoying phase of not eating anything except milk - even if it's one of her favorite foods - and I was trying to get her to eat something so she wouldn't be grumpy. I told her to sit at the table until she had eaten two bites. I went to go check on her after doing some dishes and this is what I found:

Apparently she was more tired than hungry. 

Twenty minutes later she woke up crying "ouch" because her arms had fallen asleep...silly kid!

Here are some random pictures I've snapped with my phone:

Time to play with the water!

This is a rare sight, Jason reading to everyone. Usually it's Shelly that's reading.

Annie showing me a "rollie pollie" or as I call them, rocks/bird poo/seeds

Coloring time with Aunt Katie

They all needed their own table and set of crayons, mostly because I have the supplies to make it work :) Each kid gets to put up 4 pictures on my wall, Shelly likes to rotate her pictures almost every day. Often in the mornings while I'm getting dressed, one of them will knock on my door to ask if they can come color. I made a "Kid Dance Music" playlist that we listen to while hanging out. It's my favorite when they actually dance to the music, it's awesome!

Provo House apartment with a splash of me!

It took a while, but I've finally got the apartment looking like someone actually lives here!! I still have plans to get new curtains (Mom gave me permission to toss the old ones that Grammie put up), but that will involve a lot more work than I've had time for. I need a new curtain rod - since I can't find any curtains that can span the whole 110 inches of the current one and the window is only 94 inches, much more doable - and I need to decide if I want curtains that are complete floor to ceiling with a cute pattern or go with the boring one shade that doesn't dominate the wall. Or I could get the cute pattern and hem it...see what I mean about it being too much work at the moment? :) 

Now I shall stop my ramblings and commence with the picture showing!

I moved the cupboard thingy that's next to my bookcase out of the closet to give me more space in there. 

My awesome bed 

The view looking at the bedroom from the front room 

Angle 1 of the front room - those carseats need to go into my car... 

Angle 2 

The kids love to come and color in my room, and they all "need" their own tables, so I have three that line the wall under the window. As a side note, it took almost an hour to wash that window. It was seriously gross and in need of a washing!

The bathroom. 

Don't you just love my shower curtain!?! And I brought an over-the-toilet storage thing that you can just barely see in the picture. It's been a nice addition to that small room. 

The closet 

So there you go! Now you've seen the apartment under my care :) 

Christmas in California 2012

It has been quite a crazy week and a half here at home for Christmas. Mom and Dad made sure that it was jam packed with things for their unmarried children to do (that's how they introduced us to members of their ward..thanks parents..). We went sailing, to see A Christmas Carol, played at Dave & Busters, Christmas stocking shopping, to the movies, the Reagan Museum complete with the biggest Disney Expo ever, we saw the space shuttle Endeavour, and the boys went scuba diving. I've enjoyed every minute of it!

Here's some pictures from the best part of the trip: the Reagan Museum/Disney Expo and the space shuttle

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!  

Air Force One that Reagan used

Disney's model of the Black Pearl 

 It's bigger than I thought it would be.

Perspective! 

 The ride Mom promised to take Doug on the next time we went to Disneyland, but they had gotten rid of it by the time we went again. He's never let her forget it..

 The good old days of Star Tours. 

Brakes! Where are the BRAKES!!!

The head they use to use for Fantasmic

Space Shuttle Endeavour

This thing is HUGE!!!!!

Roommate Christmas

Here are some pictures from our Roommate Christmas. I don't really want to put these ones up on Facebook, so I figured this would be a good place to stick them for family/friends to laugh at if they look at this page :)

Britnee got us all pillow pets (Melody - turtle, Chelsea - giraffe, me - penguin) and Chelsea got everyone matching pajamas. We had to have pictures of us all dolled up..

Foot-ee pajamas! 

The full effect. 

We tried to get a group shot of us head to foot, but they didn't turn out. Chelsea's pic will have to do :)

Why did I do this to ourselves?!

That is how I summed up the Pizza Day experience. Pizza Day was the funnest, tiredest, craziest, randomest, exhausting-est day.

The idea all started a few months ago when Melody, Britnee and I went to Maggie Moo's for some ice cream. While we were there we spotted an ad for ice cream pizza. It sparked a conversation about buying it for roommate Christmas and making a Christmas tree shaped pizza for dinner. Well, time went on and we kept the thought in the back of our minds, but focused on daily life - till December 1st.

While changing our whiteboard calendar to the current month, I realized that we needed to get going on roommate Christmas and eating ice cream pizza. We decided that the 8th would be the best day to have the party. The next day I got the urge to figure out what other kinds of pizzas we could make to go with the ice cream pizza. Well...that snowballed into us making 6 different pizza themed foods (7 including the ice cream pizza), watching pizza themed movies and listening to pizza songs. And so Pizza Day was born!

Since we were making so much food - and because we're so awesome - we figured we would share the joy of Pizza Day with our friends. We told everyone that it would start at 10am, with no ending time, that they could come and go as they needed, and to bring drinks if they wanted to contribute.

Here after is a quick (I use that term loosely..) summary of our day, complete with pictures!

*Just so you know, I had never made any of these pizzas before yesterday. And to top it off, the Institute closing social was the night before - there was a dance till 11, then a movie at the local dollar theater that they rented out for us - we didn't get to bed till almost 2am. It totally added to the craziness of the day..


Breakfast Pizza:
I got up a little early and made the base for this from a recipe that I got from Rachel for pizza dough. Then Melody cooked up some eggs and sausage. You pile that on the partially cooked dough, stick it back in the oven for the rest of the cooking time and voila! you have breakfast pizza!

It was delicious! Everyone love it - we didn't have any leftovers. After breakfast we put in the first TMNT.

This is how Melody "watches" TMNT. 

That or we just didn't get to bed on time the night before...

Pizza Sticks:

This was easy to make, especially cuz I wimped out and bought pre-made breadstick dough. Just stick some pepperoni and cheese in the middle and fold it in half, then sprinkle with whatever spices you so choose. We served it with pizza sauce to dip in. People were fighting over the last stick. 

Fruit Pizza:
While we finished up eating lunch, I started on the fruit pizza crust so it could cool while we watched the second TMNT. I learned while making this that 1) I shouldn't figure out how much butter I need while I'm tired and 2) I should trust my instincts - even when I'm tired. The recipe called for 1/2 cup of butter, but in my mind I read 1/2 pound of butter and, to top it off, while I was stirring it I kept thinking that I should add more of everything else cuz there was too much butter compared to the other ingredients. Let's just say that it was interesting...it tasted good though :)

 Me spreading the interesting crust into the pan

 Because of the extra butter, the crust was really crumbly and wouldn't stay put at all. 

 I got frustrated trying to spread the topping, Melody came to my rescue so I didn't have to deal with it anymore.

 Miranda and Melody adding the fruit

 Looks great, huh?!

 The fruit pizza and I got along fine in the end :)

Cake Pizza:

This pizza concoction I came up with while putting dishes away one day. Our circle cake pan was in an inconvenient spot and bothering me to no end, so I had to move it. As I tried to find a new place to put it, I realized that it was a CIRCLE, we could make a pizza something out of it! (yes, I know, I'm a dork..)  

 We had some colored frosting leftover from a cake we had made for Melody's mom's birthday that we used to decorate it to look like a pizza.

Since we only had one circle pan, we had to make cupcakes with the leftover cake mix 

 So we had mini cake pizzas :)

 Proof that we even cut it like a pizza 

Pizza Pasta:

For dinner we made pizza pasta. This one made it into my top 3 favorites (the other two are breakfast pizza and cookie pizza). Cook up some beef and onions, toss in a pan with pasta (we used rotini), pizza sauce, and pepperoni. Cover with cheese and more pepperoni, then stick in the oven. 

 It was delicious! I went back for seconds

Ice Cream Pizza:

This we bought from Maggie Moo's. I don't know if it was the fact that I was exhausted or that I was stuffed with pizza pasta, but I didn't like it as much as I was hoping to. It was better the next day, but it still didn't make it into my top favorites. 

Cookie Pizza:
By the time we got around to making these, I was slap-happy tired (it was while in this mood that I stated the title of this post; hence my lack of proper grammar. On a side note, I just looked up the definition of slap-happy - casual or flippant in a cheerful and often irresponsible way - and it describes  how I was acting perfectly).

 We used the cookie recipe from Toll House and made HUGE cookies for the base. 

 They got even bigger after they came out of the oven..

 Our pizza toppings: 

Pudding (chocolate or vanilla), Reese's pieces, M&M's, Snowcaps, frosting, and syrup. 

The end result. 

Since it was late (really it was around 9pm, but we were so worn out from making all the different pizzas that it felt like 11pm) we just sent everyone home with a cookie pizza making kit. That way they could make it the next day at home. 

As I stated earlier, Pizza Day was insane! But I enjoyed every moment of it. Next time, though, I might make it into a Pizza Week..less stress in one day. 

I did the impossible again!

This is mostly just for Rachel - she'll be seriously jealous! I was playing Set while watching Conference and these were my last 9 cards:

Only one other time - it was a few years ago - have I ever done this. I was so excited that I missed the last little bit of Neil L. Anderson's talk. 

Thoughts from church

I thought I would share with everyone some of the insights into my own life that I made today while only half paying attention in church - they relate to the lesson, in that the lesson reminded me of them :)

In Sunday School we are in 3 Nephi while Christ is visiting the Nephites. I have been thinking for some time about a conversation that we had a while ago among my family concerning God and Christ and their ability to know all things past, present, and future. This scripture (3 Nephi 17:4-6) was used in the conversation to illustrate a point that this person did not fully understand how Christ can know everything and yet His "bowels were filled with compassion towards" them and He tarried longer with them. If Christ knows all, then why tell the Nephites He must leave only to stay longer? It seemed to not make sense to this person.

As I was sitting in class I was reminded of this discussion and couldn't get it out of my head. I want to share with you what I wrote down in my notebook about my feelings/thoughts on the topic: "Christ is showing His mercy and love to the people of Nephi by tarrying longer with them. It reminds me of earlier this year when I went to visit Rach and Mark for a week. This is the conversation between Shelly and me when I first got there -

Me: Shelly, I've come to visit for a week! Aren't you excited?

Shelly: (thinks for a second) How about 2?

I laughed and hugged her for saying that. At the end of my week, I decided to stay for a second one. Shelly asked me near the end of my stay if the reason I stayed longer was because of her. I thought for a minute and then I told her yes. There were many reasons why I decided to "tarry longer", but I wanted Shelly to know how much I love her, so I told her I did it for her. Shelly asking me to stay longer put the idea in my mind and it showed to me how much she loves me. It is one of my favorite memories and one I shall always cherish."

The second insight I had today relates to my wonderfully amazing Mom. In 3rd hour we somehow got to the topic of family and things we have learned from our parents. I, of course, thought of Mom's #1 rule: No Fun Allowed! and #2 rule: You can go swimming, but you can't get wet. Looking back on growing up, it's funny to realize how much that #1 rule had an effect on my life. Mom obviously was never serious when she told us her rule. She wanted me to live life full of fun and laughter. And I have. Rarely do I not find a way to make something that is boring/tedious into something fun. I love laughing. There is nothing more joyful and therapeutic than laughter. I am, oh, so grateful for Mom. For teaching me what life should be like. For showing me that even though I "have to" do something doesn't mean I shouldn't act as though I "get to" do it.