Getting Crafty!

So a few weeks ago I was talking with my fantastic friend, Shalise, and I mentioned how with all my free time on my days off, I would love to do crafts, but that I never know what to do. Shalise then told me about Pinterest. For those who haven't heard of it, it's like an online blog where people "pin" things they are interested in (ie: crafts, clothes, food). Facebook helps connect you with people you know so you can see what people like and find all sorts of awesome blogs/websites. I LOVE it! It's so addicting and fantastic!

So, through pinterest, I have found all sorts of halloween crafts to do. I have made pumpkins out of toilet paper rolls, hung up bats, made spiders, and am now finishing this wreath. It's awesome!

I must say though, the websites were you can find the crafts, don't always state the important things. For instance, from Country Living I found all of these simple halloween crafts. So i cut out bats to cover my walls. Country living said to use double sided tape to hang them inside. Great! However, the bats started falling after 5 minutes. Even with loads of double sided tape, they were dropping like crazy. I was not very happy, and Brad thought it was the funniest thing ever. So I had to create plan B: hang them with fishing wire and 3m hooks. No more falling!

I got the fall wreath from this "Sassy Sanctuary" blog. She makes it sound so easy! You just buy fabric, cut it into 1" by 6" pieces, and tie onto this wire wreath. Easy right? Nope! It is extremly time consumning! Oh my goodness. It is turning out really cute, but I'm getting blisters from all the tying. Basically, I tied a bunch on and thought I was almost done, except I still had a ton of fabric I hadn't used. Wierd. So Brad takes the wreath and uses his man power to shove the fabric around so I had tons more places to tie fabric. That was nice the first time, but he has done it 4 more times. I love him, and he is helping, but not the best thing to do when my hands hurt and it's 11pm. So after a week, I am hoping to finish today! If you decide to do a cloth wreath like this, plan on lots of time. The cutting takes lots of time, especially if you are just using a ruler and scissors. Luckily my mother-in-law has a huge fabric cutting board thing that made the cutting go by much faster. I would recommend doing the tying while watching tv/movies. It helps take away from the monotany of tying.

So there are my 2 cents. I love Pinterest and can't wait to get started on christmas crafts next month (I will not start them in October cause that is just wrong).

Finally Done! It wasn't till finishing that I realized I had read the directions wrong and used 4X as much fabric!

Oh well, it looks cute at least...

This is Fun Right?

So last Saturday, Brad and I went to Ogden for the 5K Foam Fest. I was super excited. This was a run with obstacles along the way. Sounds fun right? I even had been running the 2 days before to be better prepared for this 5k than I was for the last one.

So we get to this park and I notice lots of trees. That's good, we won't be melting in the sun. As we are walking to registration, we cross over part of the trail that we see goes up a very large hill. Fantastic! This is when my montra turned into "we aren't here to win, we are here to finish". Before I had wanted to finish the whole thing in 30 minutes. After listening to the 9am heat running in with a lot of people coming in at 40, 50, and even and hour after the start, I realized that maybe a 30 minute goal was out of reach.

After stretching they foamed up the starting line for us. And off we went. The first half of the run was all running. And that running was up and down hills, BIG hills. I started out great, but after going up and down several of these, I was tired. My muscles were fine, my lungs were fine, but I was running out of gas. Brad however, who has not been running, was doing fine. What hills is he running that I don't know about?

After running up and down up and down, we come to the first obstacle: climbing over 2 6 ft walls. I had thought that obstacles would be could breather opportunities. Wow, was I wrong. Brad would go first and wait for me. Poor guy, he is such a good husband waiting for his slow wife. After the walls, I needed to walk. Then Brad got me running again. At this time we are in the nice cool trees. So we are running around a nice trail and then come upon a steep incline. Yay! And we get to go up this incline on stairs. I think stairs are worse then just a bare hill. I ended up walking up these stairs cause jogging got exhausting. I haven't done the RB stairs for over 2 years, so stairs are not my strong suit.

After Brad patiently waiting for me at the bottom, we came to more obstacles, like climbing under a chicken wire (supposed to be cargo net I think), running through tires, walking along pieces of wood (for balance), running through creeks, avoiding trees and things thrown onto the trail, etc. All this while running in between. I was tired. Then we came to the river with the string of tubes tied together. You had to cross the river on the tubes (or give up and swim). Now walking into the race, we saw the 9am heat do this and it was funny to watch. Doing it myself, EXHAUSTING! Once again, Brad turned out to have some amazing strength and durability.

I wore out after 5 tires and tried just using my arms to pull me (bad move). After seeing a guy just jump in a swim the whole river (cause this obstacle was a huge road block), and having a guy pass me on the tubes, I finally just slide off the tubes and walked/swim the rest. While this was much faster, I forgot that the water would be freezing so I started to hyperventilate. But I made it across to Brad, caught my breathe while walking through a string maze obstacle thing, and then saw the foam slip-n-slides. The fun part. Brad used this to try and motivate me to keep running, because of course we had to run around before actually getting to the obstacle. After that didn't work, he told me that we had to beat the fairies.

Some people dressed up for this race in matching outfits. Like the lifeguard team with all their floaties. There was also this family with white tank tops and red fairy wings. They were behind us. Brad wanted to keep it this way. The slip-n-slides were fun, except with all the foam, you had to be careful of when to breathe. The first one you could breathe fine cause there wasn't that much foam. Then we went through the human car wash (just a bunch of foam and noodles, and then a big foam slip-n-slide that was in some blown up thing that incased the foam inside. Meaning don't breathe till you think you are out. Brad went first and scratched up his face on the dirt that was on the bottom of the slide. I went and stopped sliding a little before the end, so I was covered in foam and trying to clear my face to breathe and see. They gave us towels and then there was a water slip-n-slide. Brad had fun this whole time till he scratched his face. By now, the finish line was in sight, so we ran it in. We finished at 43 minutes. I was pretty happy with this time.

At then end they had everyone take pictures in a foam bath. Fun, except there was no place to hose off afterwards. So we used our water bottles. Now I can say that the run was fun, but if I do one of these again, I need to run up and down hills. I told Brad that this race taught me that I should never go into the military.

But hey, we finished. And we got some really fun shirts out of it! That's what counts right?

We were a little too tired to do anything fun in the tub, sorry.

We love Futbol!

When I got to work this monday, everyone was talking about the weekend. Some completely avoided talking about it, and others couldn't stop. Why? Because of the BYU Utah rivalry game. My friend/co-worker Mckenna asked me if my weekend was ruined (which hers was not cause she likes Utah). I looked at her and said, "Ruined, I went to the ReAL game and they won and then we stayed for the One Republic concert. Oh yea, and had some yummy free frozen yogurt." Good weekend.

You see, Brad and I of course are big BYU fans. I'm not saying that the fact BYU lost miserably did not make us sad. But, we happened to plan for better activities. It actually was a complete coincidence too. We love going to the ReAL games. They are fun, we love soccer, and the mexican section is crazy. When we saw that they had a game with a One Republic concert right after, we decided we couldn't miss that game. So we talked to our connection and got tickets. When last weekend finally came, I finally realized that we were missing the rivalry game. This did not make me sad, because I hate watching that game. I have pride, and watching my team lose kills it. Brad does not love watching games with me cause I will get up and leave when the football team is sucking (a beauty about watching a game at home and not being at the game). Last year we went and saw Tangled in theatres during the BYU Utah game.

Of course, after returning home from our wonderful Saturday evening, Brad and his sister, Christine, wanted to watch the rivalry game. I didn't. I went downstairs and looked up the score on ESPN. Right in time too, cause seconds later my dad text me about the game. I went back upstairs to get a drink and saw the first fumble/utah touchdown. Brad asked me if I wanted to sit down and watch with him. I told him 'sorry, but I would prefer to miss this game and just go to bed'. He was disappointed, I was tired, so I went to bed. When he came to bed, I could tell he was bummed. Brad will sit through an entire miserable game cause he is a good fan. I'm not, my happiness is more important then watching the a game crash and burn over and over again.

It took my manager a few days to talk about the game. She is a BIG BYU fan. I heard Dr. Ockey say that he didn't want to talk about it. Poor Brad had to listen to all the dumb insults at work from his Ute co-workers. I say, good job Utah for winning so well and making something of all those fumbles. I still love BYU and will always wear blue. I just won't always watch the games. I will keep watching ReAL though. Futbol is a game that makes sense to me and I love, even though all the flops can be retarded. And guess what, ReAL's colors are navy, red, and yellow. Funny huh, so at the ReAL game we saw people wearing the colors with a Utah or a BYU hat. Brad wore a red ReAL shirt and I wore my navy one. Always good to find some unity in Utah.

Brad was not cooperating with taking pictures, so that's why this ain't a good picture of us.

Side note, One Republic was awesome, even if I'm too short to see the stage over all the tall people's heads. We enjoyed watching moms dance, high schoolers act retarded, and the poor little kids who were falling asleep in their dad's arms. Good concert.

The Whole Band (picture taken on tip toes with arms up high)

Jacob's Run

There is a little boy in our ward who has a regressive neurological disorder, where he was born normal, but his body was always behind regular progression until he is now unable to move at all. He is the cutest kid and always smiles. Our ward decided to do a 5K run/walk for him to help his family with all of his medical costs. The whole community pulled together and it was so much fun.

This was my first 5K in 5 years I think. Needless to say, I was out of shape because I have not been running every day, and to top it all off, I had a head cold. Brad had his 2 pulled hamstrings (one from spring softball and another from 2 weeks ago during fall softball). I had taken dayquil, had tissues and cough drops in my pockets, and thought that I would just stay behind with Brad when he needed to rest. Ha ha Brad ended up staying behind with me. I did okay the first 2 miles, but I was out of gas after that. So we walker most of mile 3, and then Brad got me to run in the last .3 miles or whatever it is. With all the little kids in the race, some ran/walker, but others were on bikes or scooters. I really wanted a scooter. But I'm glad that I pulled through, with the encouragement of Brad. They had a big breakfast to welcome us all back after the 5K, which was awesome. There was also a silent auction with some really neat stuff that was all donated. It was fun day, and we found out that the event brought in 17K (after expenses) which is so awesome.

Brad and I just laugh because we ran in together at the end of the race, and yet they have our times listed as a minute apart....Now there is a 5K Foam Fest that I want to do. Do I enjoy running? Heck no! But this involves obstacles, mud, and a giant foam slide. So at least the 5K is spice up with stuff (plus the shirt looks pretty cool). Maybe, now that it is starting to cool down to Fall temperatures, I will go running so I'm not so out of shape.

Summer Adventures

In order to catch up on the fun things we have done this summer, I'm gonna attempt to do it in one post with pictures even! So this year was pretty exciting fireworks wise, since aerials were legal in Utah. For the weekend of July 24th, my parents and little sister came to visit. That morning Brad and I saw HP 7.2. We were both a little disappointed with some of things that were changed. Then my family got here and we went to the Real game!

There was a fireworks show afterwards and it was awesome!

My dad was excited about the aerials, so we went to a stand and he bought quite a few. Sunday we set some off for our own show. Then on Monday, July 25th, it was supposed to be nice and warm, so we went to float the Weber River. Too bad the sun never came out and it started to rain. So we got a little cold (Robyn and I especially). It was still fun, just not what we were hoping for.

The first weekend in August, we went up with our friends Ashley and Sean, to Snowville UT, where Ashley's family owns a lot of property. We road 4 wheelers, horses, and Brad and Sean had fun with a potatoe gun.

This last weekend, Ashley, Sean, Brad, and I all went up to Island Park. It was nice and cool. Ashley and Sean had never been to Yellowstone, so we went and saw all sorts of geyers, hot spots, and stood on top of a volcanoe (Grand Prismatic). Ashley and I were very happy that Yellowstone did not decide to explode right then. We also went to Mesa Falls and Big Springs. Both gorgeous areas in Idaho.

Young Love

I teach the 5 (turning 6) year old class in church. There are usually 9 kids and they are cute, but can be quite a handful. While being extremely loud and rambunctious, they can say the funniest things though. This last Sunday, when we were leaving Primary to go to our class, on of the girls asked me if she could go tell Landon something (Landon is 8 and in a different class). I told her that she could after class.

When we were getting towards the end of class, this same girl (Quincy) was talking to one of her friends and I heard her say that she liked Landon. Then all the girls (there are 7 in the class), started talking about this boy Landon. Quincy and another girl, Gracie, talked about how they both really liked him. By this time, they were practically shouting. I told them that they should be more quite, or Landon would know that they like him. Quincy then looked at me and in all seriousness told me, "I don't like Landon, I LOVE Landon. I'm going to marry Landon. I want him to know that I love him too." Then Gracie told me that she also loved Landon and wanted to marry him.

Now, Quincy is a kid who believes that what she says is fact, and all the other kids act that way as well. So, she looked at Gracie after this and told her, "You can only marry one person and I'm going to marry Landon." Well, this devastated Gracie. She came crying to me. I hugged her and told her that it was okay. I then told her that I liked a boy when I was 5 too and that guess what, I did not marry that boy. Gracie looked at me and said "Really?" I told her that it was true and that I did not meet my husband until college. I told her that she had a long time to meet lots of boys and pick one to marry. Gracie seems consoled by this and then looked at me and said, "I hope Quincy forgets about Landon."

I had to try so hard not to laugh. A few days later, I heard that Gracie made a present for Landon. These girls are so cute, and their little resolves to get this boy crack me up. I want to warn Landon's parents that he has a few admirers in my class who are pretty serious about their son. It will be funny to see what happens when they all get older.

Leonard

I love music! Between the ages of 16-20 I was pretty obsessed with music and found out about a lot of good stuff. Probably helped that I had some boring summers with not enough work so I did was listen to AOL radio.

Well, when I got an ipod for christmas in 2008, I put all this fantastic music into itunes and continued to collect more music (thank you friends, roommates, and siblings). All was fantastic and my 30gb ipod was filling up really fast, until my computer decided to have some hard drive breakdown. So when my computer could only be on for maybe 5 minutes before the blue screen of death came on, I stopped syncing my ipod and adding music. My last sync was January 1, 2010. Yes, I do remember it well, and that I turned on my computer to add Lifehouse and then turned it off.

Brad continued to add music to his computer, music I liked too, but to sync to his computer meant losing all the music he did not have. So I have not synced it for almost 4 years. Brad has tried countless times to fix my laptop, but it would not fix. So when we bought our fantastic desktop, and after much of Brad's coaxing, I finally decided it was time to sync my ipod. So over the past 2 months, I have found all my cds, put them on the new computer, and had Brad help me to get some of the music that was vital to my ipod that we did not have on cd. It still took another 2 weeks, but I finally updated, erased, and synced my ipod (who is named Leonard), today.

Brad thinks I'm ridiculous. I was worried that the process would kill my poor ipod, but Leonard is hanging on. And I am getting more music, while still losing some (like Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, etc). But I can finally buy more music and actually put it on my ipod. Now I just have to get some missing music/cds from my older sis and all will be well.