A normal conversation

While climbing into bed last night:

          Me: Do you know how much I love you?

          Troy: Your hair is like spider webs. 

He always makes me smile. Love you, Monk. 

Love me some dogs

Considering I seem to have plenty of excessive free time lately, I decided to start volunteering at the Humane Society of Utah. I've done the orientations and such but yesterday was my first official day volunteering. Can I just say, most fun volunteering experience ever.

They wanted us to start of walking the small dogs just to get a feel for it. I ended up walking 4 of them. One of which was this little joy, Frankie.

Frankie is a character. We were racing to the park bench and I was winning. He decided to be a sore loser and stopped dead in his tracks. Then right after stopping, he took the opportunity to empty his bowels. So I looked like an idiot running around then to add insult to injury, I then had to pick up his crap. Thanks Frankie. You should have seen the smile he had on his face though. He was quite proud of himself. 

After playing with the small dogs, I looked around at the big dogs. They had all been walked already but I asked about it just in case. They said that since they have all been walked, they can get a second round. One dog stood out to me so I took him out. 

Meet Bucky. 

Cute face right? He took some time running around, playing with other dogs, barking, exploring, and then we played some ball. After a few minutes he jumped up on the bench with me and just sat there. Who knew the energy crazed pup was actually a lap dog too. Love it. 

The other dogs I played with were Mojo, Landi, and Bruiser. You can see them here. I'm excited to keep going back and getting to know the other beautiful dogs there. 

A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.  ~Robert Benchley

Thank you Universe

Lets just get this one out in the open...I get attached to inanimate objects.

The day we sold Rita, everyone was in a hurry and in all the rush I realized I never got to say goodbye to her. I didn't have that last moment where I watched her drive off into the distance with her new family. I got pretty sad whenever I thought about it. What if she didn't know how much I loved having her in our lives for a few years? That would be horrible.

Well the universe likes me and the other day I was driving to Michaels when I got stopped at a red light.

I looked to my left a bit and guess who I saw...

RITA!!!!

They happened to be going the same way that I was for quite some time (don't worry, I didn't stalk them) so I had some time to catch up with her. She seems to be doing quite well. 

Thank you universe. Best. Gift. Ever. 

My Next Project(s)

This year for Christmas Troy got me a sewing machine. I've had a lot of fun playing around on it the last couple months. I've made some pillowcases and a simple quilt. However, I wanted to start trying to make clothes. I went to JoAnn's just to look around.

Well apparently its my lucky day. Sewing patterns were on super sale. Actually they were just on normal sale but by my standards it could've been called a super sale.

Check out my loot.

I spent about $25 and ended up getting 5 different patterns plus some fabric to make a skirt with. It'll be cute I promise. 

Here is the best part of my trip though...

I'm a savings genius. End of story.

A Friendly Reminder

Troy and I don't plan on living in Utah forever but occasionally we have those days where we're reminded that we definitely should not permanently reside in here. Yesterday was that kind of day.

For starters, I spent the morning looking up beignet, gumbo, and jambalaya recipes. I finally decided on a Cajun Crawfish and Shrimp Etouffe recipe for dinner. I knew crawfish would be tough around here so I was already set on just doing shirmp. However, apparently grocery stores in Utah are not sufficiently stocked for about half the ingredients in a Cajun recipe. Strike one.

Next, Troy wore his "Mardi Gras" shoes to work.

Go figure that all the big bosses who run his company decided to show up yesterday as well. He spent the whole day trying to hide his feet so as not to confuse people into thinking he always dresses that way.  Strike two.

Finally, I made cupcakes since I couldn't make a festive dinner.

While they may look like your average cupcakes, don't be fooled. These are special cupcakes. 

Special Mardi Gras  cupcakes. We brought some down to Neen and Jon who thankfully understand Troy and I. However, we also brought some to another couple in our ward.  They looked at us like we were crazy. Strike three. 

Apparently while Troy and I were busy incorporating some Louisiana into our day, the rest of Utah was completely oblivious to the fact that yesterday was supposed to be the greatest party day of the year. The ward may think we're odd but at least they got free cupcakes out of the deal right?

How to spend a perfect Saturday

Well within the last week I both scored my dream job and got laid off from my dream job. Curse you budget cuts. Thats life when you work for a nonprofit organization though huh? We decided to make this weekend extra fun to make up for the huge bummer.

Saturday morning I had an orientation at the Humane Society of Utah. Since I can't own a dog, I figured I would at least go play with dogs that are looking for homes to make their day a little better. I'm so excited to start volunteering there. I already can tell I'll have a couple favorites. (I may or may not have started looking at different apartments just so we could add a four-legged friend to our family.)

This is my new buddy. Her name is Paula and she is about a year old. I want her to be ours but as long as she gets a happy home I'll be loving life. She is a super smiler and so happy. Just try to tell me you aren't falling in love.

After our adventures there we headed up to Salt Lake and walked around the Gateway. Apple store...check. Sports store...check. Forever 21...no check...how did that happen? I do not know. 

We did stop at Z Gallerie though. Love that store. We had a particularly good time playing with these. Probably spent a good ten minutes bonding with the magnifying glasses. We're mature adults. 

After a quick nap on the side of the road we went to...The Melting Pot. Words cannot even describe. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures, not that you're surprised by that fact. It was probably one of the best meals of my life. I'm sold on the fondue idea. We had a cheese sauce with bread, apples, and veggies. Salad. Lobster. Chicken. Steak. Duck. Shrimp. Ravioli. More Steak. And then there was the chocolate....oh boy the chocolate. 

We stopped at REI on the way home and spent a good hour and a half just wandering around. We are big fans of that store. We'll see if I'm still a fan when we have to wake up super early for the garage sale they have though. 

It was honestly a perfect day. No lie.

El Presidents Day

We're behind on the blog again. My bad. Brace yourself for some updates though.

Through some tricky planning, Troy happened to get President's Day off from work. Miracle yeah? We decided to take advantage of the situation and went down to Vegas for some time.

Friday, Olivia came down to Provo so we got to eat dinner with her and chat a while before heading off. Hopefully next time she comes we are able to see her for more than a few hours. We ended up leaving pretty late and the drive was cah-raaaazy. It was pouring rain...in the desert. Of course the second we got to the city the rain stopped though. We got to Vegas around 4:30 am Utah time. That was fun.

Saturday we took advantage of some warmer weather. First we went out to Valley of Fire to look around. We did a hike called Mouse Tank. Its the classic Valley of Fire hike.

Kritter apparently turned into a mountain goat some time over the last few months.

The hike has lots of heiroglyphs along the way. My personal fave...the snake dance glyph. I made Troy Boy go touch it so I could take a picture. Such a good husband. 

At the end of the hike you get to the actual "tank". The story goes that an outlaw used this area as a hideout because he knew there was water there. I've been here tons of times and never seen water but luckily due to the impressive rain storm the night before, there was actually water! You can kind of see it here. We threw some rocks in the water and it sounded pretty deep. Nice little swimming pool if you ask me. That Mouse was a smart man. 

After we left Valley of Fire we headed to St. Thomas. If you haven't heard of it before, its definitely worth your time to google this bad boy. Be sure its the one in Nevada and not the island though...although I wish we had gone to the island. I think this picture accurately describes our journey through St. Thomas...

The rain made things nice and muddy so we all had about 8 inches of mud on our shoes at all time. Nothing like journeying through the wilderness on 8 inch mud-platform shoes. 

We had so much fun just hanging out with family. Lately our visits to Vegas had been a bit hectic so it was nice to get to relax and do some fun things. 

I didn't have my camera with me but we also went to Bass Pro Shops and ate at this awesome new burger place. It was definitely a keeper. 

Don't be too jealous but also visited this little gem. Don't let the sign fool you though, they aren't really open 24 hours. 

 

Overall it was a great escape from the cold and snow. So grateful for my family! Especially family that lives in the sunshine. Thanks for letting us come visit!