Sunday, February 19, 2012

Valentines Date Surprise!

        Because we had just celebrated our 1-year Anniversary, the plan was to keep Valentines Day pretty low-key.  The morning of Valentines Day, John had the idea of going out to lunch, so he picked me up on my break and gave me the one thing I had asked for, Chocolate.   He gave me a bag of Mini-Cadburry eggs, which we both LOVE!  For lunch we went to Subway and then walked around Walmart.  I know, super romantic, haha.  I wanted to give John an iPod charger for his car because his has been broken for awhile, but everywhere I checked they were sold out of them.   However, while walking we started looking at games and I saw some poker chips (which is one of the things John wanted for Christmas that we didn’t get). Instant Valentines gift. It was perfect. Well, John dropped me off at work and I thought that was going to be the extent of our V-day celebrations.

After Work I remembered that we were planning on eating Taco’s for dinner (we had purchased lettuce and tomatoes the week before, so we really needed to make the meal before everything went bad.)  On my way home John called and asked me to buy more sour cream for dinner.  I was a little disappointed, not because I don’t love taco’s, but just because everyone else at work was talking about their special plans for Valentines.  But hey, at least he was making dinner, right?  j/k  When I got home I opened the door and this was what I saw!

Lettuce Salad, Roasted Potatoes, Smothered Chicken,
Cranberry Apple Martinelli and Chocolate Strawberries! 



I was so shocked!  With the help of his sisters, John pulled off this awesome meal, 
complete with Homemade Raspberry Cheesecake!




  Everything tasted so good.  Best Valentine's Day Ever!

Sunday, February 5, 2012

One year down, Eternity to Go!


Preface:  This really is like a post that would be considered a long family journal entry, so if this type of thing bores you, don’t worry about reading on.  I won’t be offended 

This weekend was our 1-year anniversary!  Because our actual anniversary was on Sunday we basically just celebrated the entire weekend.  On Friday night as soon as I got home from work, we finished up packing and drove down to Manti.  We didn’t start driving till about 7:00 p.m., but luckily because it was already late, traffic was fine.  On the way down we mostly talked about how our days had been.  The most exciting thing that happened to me at work was that I sang two different “Friday songs” to a member who came in.  The reason I sang them to her is because she was really excited it was Friday and she was trying to remember the words to a “Friday” song that her son’s teacher used to sing…  After a couple of seconds of her trying to remember, I asked her if it was “Friday, Friday, Friday’s my favorite day” or “Today is Friday, Today is Friday it’s my Favorite School day!” …  Anyway, there I was singing to this Lady and she was the only member there, so all of the other tellers just started staring at me like I was CRAZY.  To give them credit, I was singing in the middle of a financial institution, so…. Yeah…. I probably am crazy.  Anyway, back to the drive.

I surprised John with Jones Soda and Peanut Butter M&M’s for the drive down so he was pretty excited about that.  When we passed through Nephi and saw the Wendy’s I realized that roughly 5 years ago from this same weekend, we had gone there for my friend Michelle’s b-day.  It was one of the first times John and I hung out before we started “dating,” so that was a fun memory.  When we got to Ephraim it was crazy to see how many things had changed.  They have a Little Caesar’s, they remodeled the Subway, and painted my old apartment a new color, but it’s pretty much the same as always.  We drove on to Manti to check in to our bed and breakfast, and then decided to go back to Ephraim to get ice cream at the Malt Shop and walk around Campus.  We spent most of our time in the Music building, eating our ice cream and reminiscing about our younger years.  We then went back to Manti to call it a night.


The room we stayed in was the Wilford Woodruff room (all the rooms were named after prophets).  It had an “America” theme.  Basically everything inside the room was red, white, and blue.   The room was one of their smaller ones, but the bed was super comfortable!  


We didn’t really do gifts for our anniversary, but I did give John a gift that was more for the both of us.  I put together a book with all of our wedding pictures in it (with the help of Shutterfly of course).  It also has little things about our wedding day so although it’s pretty cheesy it’s good for history and something for our kids to look at.



Saturday morning we woke up and had breakfast (eggs, waffles, bacon, and orange juice).  We then got ready to go to the temple.  Neither John nor I had ever done a session at the Manti Temple, so we were pretty excited about it.  However, the more exciting part was probably the fact that I had forgotten that they do “live” sessions, so I was even more excited!  One of the temple workers had a full on Sanpete County accent so that was really the cherry on top!  The session went smoothly, and it was nice to feel the spirit.  After the session was over, John was trying to show me the sealing room his cousin was sealed in a few weeks back.  However, one of the temple workers thought we were trying to go inside the sealing room and told us we couldn’t without a temple worker. She then told us she would ask someone to show it to us if we wanted to wait a minute. So we waited a bit and after a minute we tried to sneak back to the dressing rooms, but that sweet sister really wanted us to see them and basically wouldn’t let us leave till the other one came.  When the other sister got there she showed us three of the rooms that were closest and told us a little bit of the history of each room, so I was glad we stayed around to see them.  She explained that they all had different “names,” and even though all of the rooms are numbered, everyone still just calls them by their themed name.  It was pretty interesting.  She kept telling us, “There’s nothing like a Pioneer Temple” 


After the temple we went back to Ephraim and got some Fat Jacks Pizza.  The pizza place is technically called “Roy’s” now, but they have the best cheese bread you’ll ever eat! 



The drive home wasn’t too bad.  John kept trying to take a nap, but it wasn’t really working out for him.  So instead we had an hour-long conversation about Music.  Both John and I are really into music and grew up around it, so most of our questions were about how other people who didn’t grow up around music process it in their brains.  Here are some of the questions we discussed: 
When you have a song stuck in your head, or are just thinking about a song.  How accurate is it in terms of all the layers (melody, accompaniment, distinguishing different instruments, etc.)  My conclusion to this one would be how well you know the song…  This then led the conversation to people who are “tone-deaf.”  Many of you probably know where this is going if you read my recent face book status: “To those who consider themselves to be "tone deaf." In all seriousness I'm wondering why, or at what point in your lives did you come to this realization. Did someone tell you? Did you recognize for yourself that you weren't singing the same notes as those around you? Did you just not put effort in hitting precise notes? The Music Therapist in me wants to know :)”   I’m still really curious about this and think it would be a really cool subject to study, but overall I think it comes down to an Ear thing.   Any way….. back to the weekend again.

Saturday night, we visited our parents and went to Baskin-Robbins to get our all time favorite ice cream, Love Potion number 31.  Oh my goodness, if you’ve never had this ice cream you need to try it.  It’s only available in February so go get it people.   That is if you like “White Chocolate, Raspberry ice cream swirled with a raspberry ribbon and loaded with raspberry-filled chocolate hearts and chocolate chips.”  It really is so delicious.   

Sunday morning John had to go back to work.  It was so nice having him for the entire day on Saturday.  It was our Stake conference so it was really nice not having to plan Sunday school on our Anniversary.  One of those tender mercies I suppose.  Other than that we pretty much relaxed for the rest of the day, watched part of the super bowl, and had dinner with my parents.  I can’t believe we've been married a year already, but I’m excited for the things to come in our year #2.  Here we go! 

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Short and Sweet news of the Week:


On Monday I got a raise!!  I’ve been waiting oh so long (probably 2 months) for the paperwork to get processed in order for this to happen, and I’m sure excited about it!

John completed his first test of the semester and feels pretty good about it! Part of it was a take home portion, which included a “coloring-by-number” segment.  
Oh SLCC, what are we going to do with you?

Last night we had a conversation on whether or not the 90’s had any legitimate, good movies-besides Disney of course.  This then led to a half-an-hour conversation about the rise and fall of M. Night Shyamalan.  (Which is funny because most of his movies came out in the 2000’s.)

This Weekend is our 1-year Anniversary!  We’re celebrating by going down to Ephraim/Manti for the weekend.  We’re excited to do a session at the Manti Temple and eat lots of Fat Sticks!  
Pictures to come next week :) 



And to finish it up, this is how John and my parents watch the Jazz when they go into over time, haha.  

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Christmas Catch-up!

Here I am playing catch up again, so buckle up and enjoy the ride!!  What a fun month december was! John took his finals for the semester and thoroughly enjoyed having time off from school.  However with that time off, we spent most of our nights performing up at This Is The Place in the Caroling Choir.  

John also wears a top hat and jacket with this get up!


This year the “Christmas Season” for the park was a lot shorter than last year.  It also wasn’t as cold and snowy as last year so it went by really fast.  Between our regular jobs, the caroling choir, and shopping for Christmas we did find some time to spend with Family and Friends. 


Grand Kids!

With my immediate family being so large, there was only a 2 hour time span during December when the entire family (siblings/in-laws/nieces and nephews) could be together.  We savored it and of course got a “yearly” picture with all of us in it. We were able to spend the Sunday before Christmas and Christmas evening with the Southwick side.  For our first Christmas together, John and I did stockings for each other.  Some of our favorite presents we received were a new camera, a kitchen aide, a knife block, movies, sunglasses, clothes, other kitchen appliances, a cocoa-latte’ machine, and of course socks! 


Our lovely stocking presents 
John proved, yet again, to be a better gift giver than me this year.  After presents we went to Sacrament Meeting and sang with the choir for the Christmas program.  Other than that, it was a fabulous day spent with family.  The week between Christmas and New Years was our busiest.  Every night we seemed to have work, parties, or receptions to go to.  It really kept us on our toes, but I think we were able to see everyone we wanted to.  
Tripoley.
Let the addiction begin!
Sad this picture is blurry, but I still love it! 
The silly boys tried to be goofy in the pictures,
John definitely won it in this one!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Monday, November 7, 2011

A taste of Halloween

On Halloween I dressed up as Lavender Brown for work (a character from Harry Potter) and John dressed up in his dad's lovely 70’s polyester clothes for his chemistry class.  I guess they talked about "esters" and everyone who dressed up got extra credit.  John even won a prize for being in the top 
3 favorite outfits for his class!  Probably because he kept posing like Ron Burgundy from Anchorman.  


I should have pulled out my braids for the picture because that was probably the best part of my costume.


For work all of the tellers decorated pumpkins for display in the lobby.  This was my mummy pumpkin.  Turned out looking more like a volleyball with eyes, but that's ok.  It was fun to see everyone's creativity!

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Football!

 This past weekend was so much fun for John and I.  On Friday night we went to the Skyline game where my dad won his 300th high school football game (in his coaching career).  It rained... well sprinkled during the entire game so I wish I had taken an umbrella or a hat, but it was still fun with the family.  We were so excited for him and they wrote some good articles in the paper about it!
Way to go Dad!

 







Dad and Sons (except Johnny)
After the game they had a little reception for him in the press box with cake.  A lot of his old players also came to congratulate him.  John and I left the celebration a little early to go to John’s family’s house to watch the new x-men movie on blue-ray.  It was fun getting the whole surround sound package....Lately when we watch movies it's just on our laptops.  The movie was pretty good and we enjoyed spending time with the Southwicks!  

Saturday night we drove down to Provo for the BYU game to watch my dad get honored.  They had him light the Y before the game and they read a short bio about him. While that was going on, our entire family got to go down on the field and watch the team warm up and be a part of the tunnel.  It was a lot of fun!  John and I even got our picture taken with Cosmo!  Part of John’s sister’s family was also at the game and we just happened to see them before everything started and ended up sitting kind of close to them.  To top it off BYU won the game 29-16, so it was awesome. 






Thursday, September 8, 2011

August


6-Month Get-a-way!
At the beginning of the month we celebrated our 6-month anniversary.  We celebrated this great feat by going up to Logan and staying at The Providence Inn.  The inn is basically like a cheaper version of The Anniversary Inn, as it has themed rooms.  I heard about it from a friend in Logan and have wanted to stay there ever since.  So we booked our rooms and were excited for our first vacation together (not counting the honey moon of course).  When we arrived we were kind of nervous because the building was pretty old fashioned and quaint so we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves.  It almost felt like we were in the Bed and Breakfast episode on The Office where Jim and Pam go and stay at Dwight’s Beet Farm.

Jim:         “Mmm... I'd say one in six.”
Pam:         “What?”
Jim :         “Oh I thought you asked me what our chances were of being murdered here tonight.”  

Anyway, after we talked to the guy at the front desk, things were less awkward.  While we were checking-in he told us about the movie library, how breakfast worked out, and other odds and ends.  As we headed up to our room, John and I also noticed that they provided freshly baked chocolate-chip-cookies for guests whenever they passed the main hallway.  Yeah, that was probably my favorite amenity. 

The first night we were there we stayed in the New Orleans room.  I don’t know if these pictures do it justice, but you can get the idea.  In this room they even brought breakfast up to us, so that was pretty sweet. 




The next night we stayed in Duck Mill.  It was a little less expensive, but still fun. 

While we were in Logan we visited my sister, got Blue-Aggie mint ice cream at the creamery, went to firehouse pizza, walked around campus and had a good time just hanging out!  We thoroughly enjoyed not having too many plans so that we could do a lot of relaxing.


In other news... WE MOVED!
 That’s right ladies and gentleman, we no longer live in my parent’s basement! We had a great time living with the familia, and we will miss having them around, however we’re excited to be a little more independent. Our new basement apartment is located in Taylorsville.  John’s aunt owns the house and is kind enough to let us stay with her.  Upgrades in our new residence include, but are not limited to:
  A separate entrance
·      A kitchen with a dishwasher
·      A living room with an old school big screen TV
·      A showerhead that John actually fits underneath without having to crouch. 
·      A piano and organ that we have access to at any time
·      And so much more…
Pictures to come some day!