michelle & cisco

2011 in review

2011-12-19T20:02:00.000-07:00

I had every intention of posting this before Christmas when I sent out a few Christmas cards. That obviously didn't happen but better late than never! I can't believe 2011 is almost over and that means we have to remember to write 2012 on everything in just a few short weeks. 2011 was such a great year and I have a feeling 2012 is going to be even better. Here are some highlights from 2011 for the Aravena family.

I graduated with my Bachelors in Exercise and Wellness in April and was so excited to be done!
To celebrate graduating, I decided to turn 23 a few days later.
I ended my time with LDS Philanthropies. After working there 3 1/2 years and coming to love the people there, it was sad to go. I then enjoyed almost 4 months of being unemployed.
Cisco got a new position at vivint (APX) in the IT department as a system's analyst. He likes the job because he likes the people he works with so he does a lot of playing at work.
I went with my dad to visit KC, Emily and my favorite triplets on the planet. I can't believe how much they change every time I see them. I had so much fun playing with Alex, Bennett and Ruby and hanging out with Emily every day and wish I lived closer to them to see them more often.

In May, Cisco and I celebrated 3 years of marriage.
In June we went on a cruise to the Bahamas with my family and it was a MUCH NEEDED vacation. We had so much fun in Florida for a few days and enjoyed our days at the beaches and relaxing all day. It was so fun to be together with almost my whole family and we ate so. much. food. Seriously, sometimes we would say, "Bring me one of each so I can just taste of bite of all of them" and then we would proceed to finish and clean all of the plates in front of us. Needless to say, I don't think any of us wanted to be seen in a swim suit by the end of the week.

Cisco turned 27 in July!
In August, I finally got a job ending my unemployment streak (which was fun for about the first month before I started going crazy at home all day) and got a job with Intermountain Healthcare. I am an on-call secretary for all the physical therapy offices in Utah Valley. It is a fun and yet difficult job. I can get asked to cover any office from Spanish Fork to Saratoga Springs (about a 30 mile radius). I really like all the therapists and people I get to work with and I enjoy the work but it is definitely challenging trying to remember all the differences between each office and never feeling like I am the expert at any office. It is kind of funny never knowing what my paychecks will be like. I won't have any work scheduled for 2 weeks, and then the next week I will work a full 40 hour week. I absolutely love working for Intermountain Healthcare though and am so grateful for this job.
We enrolled Mac in obedience school and he is perfectly behaved now...... Not really but he is at least a lot better.
We went down to Moab with Cisco's parents and LuAnn and Brandon while they were in town and had a lot of fun even though it was ridiculously hot. They all hiked to Delicate Arch and we ate at some fun and delicious restaurants while we were down there.
My Grandpa Carlson passed away in August so we drove to Denver to attend his funeral. It was such a great service and we will miss him a lot.

Cisco juggled full time work at Vivint as well as school full time and decided that just wasn't enough so he threw in volunteering at a physical therapy office.
To add more to his schedule, Cisco also played on 3 soccer teams, the Hooligans, Hooligans co-ed and La Muerte.
Camille got married September 3rd and I somehow ended up as the designated wedding planner. I had a lot of fun planning the wedding but I realized there is a reason that is not my chosen profession. The wedding was beautiful and it was great to share that day with Camille and Tyler.

We went to visit Casey and Nicole after they moved to Fort Collins, CO in October and fell in love with that town. We had so much fun taking Mac with us. We got to enjoy Fort Collins' "Zombie Crawl" and take advantage of their bike library. Yes, they have a BIKE library. As in, you get a card and can check out a bike for a week to take advantage of their many trails.

Cisco and I got released as Primary teachers for the Valiant 9 class and I got put in as a Laurels advisor. I was super nervous at first since I feel like it was just a short time ago that I was a Laurel myself (and I was 7 years ago) but I have loved it so far.
We babysat 4 kids for a week and that was an adventure unlike anything we have ever experienced. They weren't young kids and we had a lot of fun doing it but it definitely gave me a new appreciation for moms.
We didn't dress up for Halloween but Mac was a cute little devil for Halloween.
Cisco got called to work with the Young Men working with them on their Duty to God.
Thanksgiving we spent with Cisco's parents and I provided the traditional pretzel jello and pumpkin pie.
This year we kept with our new tradition and ventured out into the Black Friday Madness and went up to the Park City Outlets to hit the sales and we got so much stuff and were out into the wee hours of the morning.
Christmas was such a fun time. We enjoyed Christmas eve dinner and Christmas day and have loved the break spending time with our families.
New Years Eve we will be celebrating by chaperoning the youth stake dance!! haha should be fun.

We hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New year. Cheers to 2012.

6 to 8 black men

2011-10-07T09:00:00.000-06:00

Have you ever heard of David Sedaris? My lovely sister Nicole told me about the funniest story told by him I will probably ever listen to. I had completely forgotten about it until Cisco asked me about it the other day. I listened to it again on YouTube and was crying. Tears were flowing down my cheeks. My abs hurt. I looked ridiculous sitting alone in my house crying and laughing. Mac had no idea what was going on. Here is the link to listen to this story. It is 15 minutes long so listen to it when you have a break but I promise you will not regret it. Just get through the whole thing. Especially the segment on the Dutch version of St. Nicholas.

Enjoy.

Working on a Tan

2011-10-06T12:00:00.000-06:00

It is getting cold!!! I am not the only one around here who is not happy. I don't go tanning anymore. And I haven't since high school. But someone else in our house likes to work on their tan. And it isn't Cisco. Remember how Mac hates cold rainy weather as I mentioned in this post?

In the summer he is such a punk. He runs to the door and jumps up and down as if he has never had to pee so bad in his entire life. The second I open the door, this is what happens...

"oh... suddenly I don't have to pee after all. I think I will just lay here for a while."

One day he also got sick of his appearance and decided he needed a change in his look. He chose to go with coloring his fur purple. A little extreme if you ask me.

He managed this look by chewing the end off of a purple liquid ink pen and getting it all over his paw. He was very careful not to get a drop on his mouth though. Not sure how he managed that one. He wasn't quite as careful with the carpet but we managed to get all the ink out thankfully.

He is so obsessed with his appearance.

My Weaknesses

2011-10-05T15:54:00.002-06:00

Just like every other women who watched the General Relief Society Broadcast, I LOVED Elder Uchtdorf's talk. It was such a good reminder of so many things I needed to hear. My favorite part of the talk was this lovely quote:

"We spend so much time and energy comparing ourselves to others—usually comparing our weaknesses to their strengths. This drives us to create expectations for ourselves that are impossible to meet. As a result, we never celebrate our good efforts because they seem to be less than what someone else does."

Oh how true it is. So I decided to write an entire blog on my weaknesses that I tend to compare to others.

1. I don't live in a fancy condo or own a house. We are renting my parent's basement apartment and we love it here. It is such a nice apartment and we love the neighborhood. The one down side to this apartment is the lack of a living room. We have a kitchen and a bedroom. It's fine for just the two of us but makes it hard to want to invite people over to do something. Along the same note...

2. I do not have a cute apartment. This was a funny realization the other day. I have cute elements in my house, but I have some not so cute elements which make the overall look quite ugly.

Prime example: My couch. At one point it had a couch cover on it. The couch cover was more awful than the Indian-style print underneath so I took it off. The pillows that came with the couch have lost all their shape. The stuffing has congealed into lumps. This doesn't help since they were ugly to begin with.

We also have a cute white comforter, but it is too hot so we don't sleep with it on the bed and lets not lie, I don't make the bed every day. So it doesn't cover our very cute yellow quilt, but that very cute yellow quilt is completely mismatched with the rest of our room.

3. I am not working full time. I graduated with my Bachelor's degree in April and should have found a full time job to help make lots of money for our family. Cisco is working full time, in school full time, and volunteering several hours a week. This is probably my hardest weakness to deal with. I don't have kids right now to take care of and I hate Cisco having such a huge load. I would like to be able to work an 8-5 job but that isn't realistic with my health issues so I have to recognize my success that I have a job that provides me with a few hours.

4. I don't like to cook. I'm pretty sure when I was little I loved the Food Network so much I wanted to be a chef. Glad that didn't pan out.It feels like a major success when I cook dinner on a regular basis. So many people talk about all these amazing recipes they have just tried and every time I save the recipe and know I will never look at it again unless it has 5 ingredients and they are ingredients i regularly have on hand. They are fun to look at though...

5. Since I don't work every day, some days I don't have a reason to get ready and dressed for the day. On more than one occasion I have been in pajamas or sweats until 4 or 5 in the afternoon.

6. Cisco and I don't know how to go to bed before midnight. I always get so jealous when people say they go to bed at 10pm. That would be so great! We say it has something to do with the fact that Cisco has night classes, but that is only part of it. We are just night owls. We usually walk Mac after 10, our favorite Food Network shows are on after 10, and we usually start our homework after 10 (and by we I mean Cisco starts his homework nice and late).

7. I don't exercise. I am working on this thanks to this amazing DVD. I learned about this from my Personal Training Strategies class from Dr. George and I loved that class. I loved my major. Exercise and Wellness was so interesting and I know I needed to take those classes to improve my own health. I get envious when I hear about people running marathons and hiking and biking. I don't know if those are things I will ever be able to accomplish but I am proud of myself for working out a few times these past 2 weeks. It was so funny to be an Exercise and Wellness major and know that I could count one one hand the number of times I had actually worked out in the past year.

8. This year I have had random acne. Seriously?? I thought high school was supposed to be the bad years. My skin is on the mend but the past year I have had acne worse than those awesome high school days. So not fair.

9. I have some cute clothes. Not that many cute outfits. Oh how my wardrobe would be completely different if I had some money. Or the talent to walk into a store like TJ Maxx or Ross and find the gems in there that other people seem to find. I don't know how people do it. I need everything lain out for me. Even Forever 21 is a little overwhelming.

10. I can't give up my ice cream in an attempt to eat healthier. It is just way too good. See previous post and you will realize that I love ice cream enough to write an entire blog post about it.

My successes?

I love Cisco. We have fun. We make a good team. He picks up my slack and I pick up his slack.

We have a really cute dog. He is a punk sometimes but he is also so cute.
ps. Notice the nasty pillows he is sleeping one. They are the same pillows mentioned above... Mac blends right in to them. He is so spoiled on this throne of pillows.

I do tend to compare my weaknesses to other peoples strengths but I have so many strengths that other people don't have. Way to go me.

Ice Cream 101 with Michelle

2011-09-15T16:23:00.002-06:00

For those of you who really know me well, you know that ice cream is a staple in the Robinson household. Thanks to my dad, I developed a love for the good stuff. He would serve me a heaping bowl when I was just a little kid. Whenever I would scoop a bowl of ice cream for one of my friends, their eyes would go big as I scooped 4 or 5 scoops. I was always so confused when they said that was a lot of ice cream. To me that was normal.

Fun facts about me and ice cream:

I always prefer something chocolaty.
I hate Vanilla. I don't know why and it is very inconvenient so I wish I didn't... but i do. If I ever had a bowl of vanilla ice cream, I would cover it in chocolate sauce and stir it completely until there wasn't a trace of vanilla left.
My favorite chocolate Ice cream is a very milky chocolate. The BYU Creamery has my favorite chocolate ice cream. I also like Blue Bunny and Tillamook a lot too.
My all time favorite ice cream is Girl Scout Thin Mint cookie. I have been known to become very greedy when it comes to this ice cream. I do not like to share it since it is a limited flavor. In fact, when I had to go to the hospital during my freshman year of college to get my gallbladder removed, I was at Macey's buying this ice cream. Sadly to report, I never did get to eat that ice cream and it got thrown out at the end of the year. I almost cried when my roommates broke the news to me.
I like my ice cream really really frozen. People who put their ice cream in the microwave for a few seconds to soften it are committing a crime.
I also like to put a tiny bit of milk on the top because when the ice cream is so frozen, it freezes the milk a little and creates a delicious milky concoction.
Ice cream tastes so much better when it is eaten out of the carton.

I found these pictures that make me laugh every time.

Freshman year: Me and Julie each with our own carton of the Thin Mint ice cream. This was pre-gallbladder attack.

HAHA I cannot look at this picture without laughing so hard. Allison and I clearly weren't ready for this picture to be taken. It looks like there is a gas leak in our apartment because we look high.

I do love ice cream.

Chupacabras

2011-09-09T00:06:00.001-06:00

If you are confused about the title of this post... so am I. Cisco read the post and I asked him what I should call it. This is what he said. So it is sticking. If you don't know what a Chupacabra is, it is like the Mexican BigFoot/Boogie Monster that sucks the blood of goats. Apparently that sums up our family.

A little about the Aravena's

Our favorite TV Shows:

We LOVE the Food Network. Specifically Iron Chef, Chopped, and Diner's Drive-ins and Dive's.

Modern Family is the greatest show ever created.

Bones is a favorite.

How I Met Your Mother is also pretty funny.

We like to eat out:

Cisco's favorite: Moochies (which i am sure I have mentioned before)

My favorite: Any Thai curry. Seriously... this is a food that I will overeat to no end.

I love curry and crave curry.

Spicy Thai? yes. Bangkok Grill? yes.

Too bad it is the one food that Cisco will eat but doesn't care for. Go figure.

We have a cute dog.

Mac has such a funny personality. And a lot of it. He is one ball of energy.

He chases his tail. He wags his tail when he is having a good dream. He loves to sleep whenever Cisco is sleeping. Sometimes he needs to blow off energy and runs laps around our tiny apartment as fast as he possibly can. He HATES water. If he gets near a storm drain, a stream or a bath, he spreads all 4 legs as far as he can and puts his belly on the ground. Silly dog.

I hate to cook.

I said it. I want to be the cute wife who has dinner ready when Cisco comes home from a long day at work but that is a rarity. Although I am happy to report that this week I have had dinner ready 3 days in a row. Impressive! There are a few things I have mastered but I really don't like cooking. Things just go wrong.

Don't even get me started on baking.

You need a good short term memory for baking and I have none. Too many times I have forgotten how many eggs or cups of flour have been added, or what temperature to set the oven to seconds after I read it off the recipe card.

Sometimes we like to take on more than we should.

Prime Example: I became a wedding planner for Camille's wedding while starting a new job. A special thanks goes out to Cisco for not seeing me for a few weeks. I was a busy girl but the wedding turned out pretty great so It was worth it all. But I am glad it is over!

Cisco likes to work 40 hours a week while going to school full time, playing on two soccer teams, and volunteering at a physical therapy office. I don't know how he does it.

We also like to make big plans.

I think we have 5 trips planned we are "saving for". Although I am not sure any actual saving is going on.

We had a lot of fun camping last weekend (the day after the wedding we needed a vacation so we packed everything up and went to a nearby campground for one night. A lot of work but it was a nice break after a hectic week).

So now you know us.

oh, and we don't take pictures. I think I would take more pictures if I had a good camera. Good excuse for a new one right??

Working Family

2011-08-14T23:23:00.000-06:00

Did I mention that I got a job? Probably not since I don't ever update this blog but I did! It has been almost 4 months of enjoying the unemployed life... well I enjoyed the first 2 months a lot, and then I started getting really stir-crazy. But never fear, I read a LOT of books to keep me busy as well as various projects.

I got a job with Intermountain Healthcare in the Physical Therapy group. I am an on-call secretary for 7 different physical therapy facilities, from Spanish Fork to Saratoga Springs. On Monday I went to orientation all day and started training on Thursday (although I have to do training in all 7 offices which should be fun trying to learn all the different ways the offices are run).

I am exhausted after my first day of training and have no idea how I will ever get the hang of everything I have to memorize. I was thinking I would still have a lot of free time, but that may not be the case. Some weeks I may never get called in, but other weeks they may want me to do 8-5 four days a week.
I had stopped looking for jobs and this was the last one i randomly applied for. Then they called me in for a group interview (that was kind of weird) and I got the job. I am exhausted and the week hasn't even started. Lots going on this week but more to come on that later.

Cisco is still working full time and as hard as ever and works with some pretty fun people.
We are one busy working family.

Is it a bad sign that I have only worked two days and I am already missing my unemployed life? (which had been anything but lazy and relaxing the past two months so adding a job into my list of a million things to do sounded like a good idea). Luckily the people I have been training with have been super nice and awesome.
I really do love Intermountain Healthcare and am excited to work there. Hopefully I will catch on quick so it isn't so intimidating.

Parade of Homes

2011-08-05T00:39:00.000-06:00

I love going to the Parade of Homes. Some houses made me laugh out loud and I honestly wondered what people were thinking. Other houses made me wish I had a place to decorate....and money to do it. But I am in the mood to post some of my favorite and least favorite things so here you are. I may or may not have taken 264 pictures. A lot of them were with my phone so the quality is amazing

some of my favorites...

I loved these towels

Cute chairs in the office. Loved the floral arrangements in this house done by my favorite Urban Cheateau Floral.

Cute chair and pillows.

Loved that the tile looked like bead board.

These wood floors were amazing. They looked so natural and straight out of a beach house.

How cute is this entry way?

I loved everything about this kitchen. Of course it was a Hatfield Home. They tend to be amazing.

Love this dining area. Table and chairs are my favorite.

Fun way to do colors with all mismatched pillows. Easy to change up with the seasons.

This was a really cute bedroom.

I didn't like this one house but I was in love with the random table stashed in a corner.

Cute Homework area.

Cutest nursery ever.

What can I say? I am obsessed with white kitchen cabinets.

Love all the random knickknacks on this cool shelf.

Seriously loved these floors!

Wallpaper as the accent wall.

My favorite wallpaper in the bathroom.

I love this door. I just do.

Outdoor furniture in front of a fireplace. I could spend many nights here.

cork board wall. kind of cute.

not my favorite...

I hated most of the kids rooms in the parade of homes. Just so over the top.

Hahahaha this was on the floor in a random studio and it made me so happy. (i hope no one knows who this is haha.)

This is a shower curtain. There is no light in the shower. Shaving would be super fun!
I always wanted blackout curtains in my shower.

That random photo studio I was talking about.

DIY that just doesn't do it for me.

Ball of trash decoratively hanging above the toilet.
On the bright side, I was laughing so hard when I saw this that I had to pee.
So I guess it served it's purpose.

Jackalope. Watching you in the guest room as you sleep.

There you have it. I seriously took way too many pictures.

Summer Months

2011-07-14T11:23:00.000-06:00

This summer is disappearing way too fast.
But we have done some fun things at least.
Like the cruise. I loved the cruise.
I miss that beach in Nassau. I could have stayed at that beach for hours on end.
And that blue water. So beautiful.

Since we have been home we celebrated the 4th of July.
Cisco turned 27!! So we celebrated by going to Moochies.
If you live in Utah and you haven't tried Moochies, I HIGHLY recommend going there.
The Philly Cheese Steaks are delicious. And their Jalapeno sauce is our favorite.
I usually get their amazing Tomato and Feta or their Tuna which are also super yummy.

It is on 800 South in Salt Lake and about 200 East. You don't want to drive by this place without stopping.

We also organized our closet.
Doesn't it look great?

And most recently we got callings at church.
We are teaching the Valiant 9 primary class.
We teach around 10 kids. It will be a new adventure!
Here we go...

A great hair day

2011-05-28T23:44:00.001-06:00

Don't you love those mornings when you wake up and your hair looks perfect and ready for the day? I do. It doesn't happen often but it happened a few days ago. I am posting the picture. And I don't care that I don't have an ounce of makeup on and I still have morning bags under my eyes. It was just too awesome to keep to myself.

Seriously. Awesome. You too can achieve this look by following these simple steps.

Step 1: Take a hot shower and do not wash hair. I chose to take a hot shower to relax my muscles but whatever reason you choose should work just as well.

Step 2: Partially blow dry hair but do not dry all the way. Just enough so it isn't soaking wet but still damp.

Step 3: Go to bed and Sleep in an awkward position. I am not sure of the exact position but I think it was equal proportions of right and left side.

Needless to say it was effortless to achieve and it lasted all day until I got in the shower.

Tut Tut it looks like rain.

2011-05-24T22:48:00.000-06:00

I am not the only one around here who is sick of this cold rainy weather. Mac won't even go out to the bathroom some days after he rings the bells. He is silly.

Its a good thing we will be going here in 3 weeks...

And this will be taking us there....

And while we are out there we might as well stop here...

That will be a nice vacation.

3 years

2011-05-17T13:47:00.000-06:00

On May 16th, 2011 Cisco and I celebrated our anniversary. I have been married to Cisco for 3 years. That seems crazy and yet it feels like we have been married longer. Maybe because I have spent almost every day together with him for the past 4 years. He is my best friend and makes me laugh more than anyone I know. Do any of you remember that i NEVER used to laugh out loud? I just had this silent shake when i was laughing. Cisco actually makes me laugh out loud. a lot. I love it. I love him. I never did write down our story of how we met so i might as well do it now. I seemed to quit writing in my journal a few months before we started dating and never seemed to pick it up again. So for those of you who don't want to read the whole story, here is the summary, met on a blind date, dated for 5 months, got engaged, were engaged for 7 months and have now been married for 3 years! You can stop reading now if you like! And now for the whole story (or as much as i can actually remember/handle typing out).

We were set up on a blind date in March of 2007 by our dear friend Lindsey Orton. She worked with Cisco at Bajio. I was almost done with my freshman year of college. Cisco was complaining to Lindsey that he was sick of all the girls he was going on dates with just wanting to get married. He had only been home from his mission for about 5 months and wasn't looking to get married right away. Lindsey's response was "I have a friend who doesn't want to get married!" To clarify, I didn't want to get married young. No one in my family got married young and I tended to associate getting married young with being unhappily married... Not sure where i got that idea but regardless, I had no intentions of getting married young. For my Sophomore year i planned on going on a lot of fun dates.
So the pretense of us getting set up was that neither of us wanted to get married. Cisco did not want to go on the date, however, Lindsey said she had already told me he said he would go and I was excited. I did not want to go on the date. Lindsey convinced me that she had already told Cisco I would go and that Cisco was excited. To make it less awkward she got her friend Steven to double with us and we would keep it casual. About a week later Cisco picked me up in my dorm as we all peeked through the window to see what he looked like and what kind of car he drove. He was cute and I assumed he was full of himself. The date was fun but awkward because what first date isn't? We met Steven and Lindsey at Rumbi Grill and planned to watch a movie up the canyon and have a fire. This was March in Utah however so it was still FREEZING outside. After we went and bought wood at a gas station and made it up the canyon, we decided it was too cold and then proceeded to return the wood. Instead we went to Blockbuster and rented Casino Royal to watch at Steven's Grandparents house. Lets just say that it was full of those moments that we all love, like: we are sitting next to each other watching a movie, do we hold hands?? does he like me? Do I like him? All that great stuff.
At the end of the night we had a good time, but no sparks were flying or anything so no plans were made to go on any other dates. We did establish a few jokes that would give us something to talk about in the future. I bet him he couldn't really eat all of his brown rice at Rumbi with Chopsticks and if he did i owed him a back rub. Something of that nature.
We text each other on occasion over the next few months and joked with each other. We hung out a few times but still nothing ever happened between us. Cisco even started dating another girl for a few weeks.
For my birthday I went out to Florida with my mom and dad that year and had my gallbladder surgery scheduled for the day after i got home. Things ended between Cisco and this girl while I was in Florida and although he didn't come see me while i was recovering from surgery, he did ask me to go on another date a week later on May 7th.
When May 7th came around (I'm pretty sure I was still bloated from the air they pump into your stomach to do the surgery) we went and saw a movie and just hung out. I think we even went and got a shake a Denny's. We are high class. We call this our 2nd first date. or our real 1st date. two days later we went to walk his two giant labs in the park and it was like a scene from 101 Dalmatians where they were twisting us together with their leashes. My heart would beat fast every time that happened. I was twitterpated.
From that day on we spent almost every day together.
Now since I didn't want to get married, I just assumed we would date through the summer and then break up when school started again. About a month and a half after we started dating i remember talking to my roommates on the phone and saying, "I really fell for Cisco". They were pleased to hear that I liked my boyfriend.
I was still freaked out about marriage and had a lot of insecurities about my ability to be a wife. I was scared to get married and put all of my health problems on Cisco but Heavenly Father knew what I needed and Cisco loved me.
On October 11th I was at a bridal shower for one of my oldest friend, Kate Payne. All the girls there were asking me when I was getting engaged. I laughed and said we had just ordered the ring so at least another 6 weeks before we even got the ring. Oh how naive i was.
The next night on October 12th, 2007 we were going to go on a double date with one of Cisco's mission buddy's TJ Ross. The plan was to go see a movie and then get some dinner. I was completely clueless. Like I said, I thought the ring was still weeks away from being finished and going on a double date isn't at all suspicious. All I kept thinking that night was "I'm not even dressed cute! I'm wearing sneakers. I hate sneakers!" TJ called us on our way to the movie and said the early show was sold out so we would have to go to the next time which didn't start for another hour. We decided to meet TJ for some food first but Cisco said it would take him a while to get to Provo so we just went to walk around the Provo Temple for a little while. Even this wasn't weird. We spent a lot of time talking or just walking around the Provo Temple. When you live in an apartment with 5 other girls, there isn't room to just sit and talk and since Cisco lived in Spanish Fork at the time, instead of just sitting in his car, we would sit on the grass at the temple.
My first clue should have been that Cisco was acting so WEIRD. It was hilarious. It wasn't cold out but he grabbed a coat (which had the ring in the pocket) and was all nervous and jittery. I was still clueless though. As we walked around to the back of the temple Cisco was really getting weird when he pointed to the mountain and said "What is the name of that mountain?" um... really? haha it was a great way to get me to look in the opposite direction. Little did i know we walked right past TJ where he was setting up. When we got to the back of the temple Cisco said he had written a poem for me and this is where it hit that something was up. The poem was beautiful and so cute and I kept waiting for him to get down on one knee... and waiting... and waiting. But then his phone rang and TJ was "ready to meet us for dinner" so Cisco said we should go and we started walking back to the car. I was confused. So i assumed i was wrong and that the poem was just a random nice gesture.
For the past half hour, TJ had been setting up the scene where Cisco was planning to propose. There is a huge pine tree on the side of the temple that you can stand underneath because all of the bottom branches are gone. It creates a little room. TJ had hung candles from the branches (with the Temples permission) and scattered rose petals all over the ground under the tree.
As we walked back to the car i was still in my oblivious and confused state of mind so I didn't even notice that there was a tree glowing on my right side. Cisco finally had to point to it and say "What's that?" As soon as I saw it I knew what was going on and stopped dead in my tracks. Cisco had to pull me to get me walking again I was so shocked. When we got under the tree I was crying and still In shock. That is when Cisco said some really nice things (although I can't remember a thing that was said... he probably said "I love you" somewhere in there) and got down on one knee asking me to marry him. I said yes.
My biggest regret is not having a camera to take any pictures! It was beautiful.
We met some friends at Carrabbas to celebrate (Like Lindsey and Steven who were there when it all started) and called all of our family to tell them we were engaged. I think in those first few nights I told the story of how we got engaged at least 100 times. All my roommates knew what was going on and I got a lot of really fun reactions. I have to say one of my favorite reactions was from Alicia Wallace who lived across the hall from me.
Now the reason we got married in May when we got engaged in October was because when we started talking about getting married I told Cisco that I do not handle stress well. I did not want to get married in the middle of the semester. I wanted to enjoy my wedding day. So I told him I would not get married before May and to propose accordingly. It turned out I needed a 7 month engagement to mentally prepare for marriage and i actually loved it. We didn't even talk about wedding plans for the first 2 months, we just enjoyed being engaged to each other. Everyone thought we were crazy (since our engagement was longer than some people's entire time from first date to wedding date in Utah) but it worked out for us.
We were sealed in the Provo temple on May 16th, 2008 by my Grandpa Carlson. It was the hottest day of the year so far and was perfect. I loved my wedding day, loved my reception, and was so happy to be married to my best friend.
We went on our honeymoon to this bed and breakfast in Midway and had such a fun time. We rented scooters and went on scooter rides up the canyon, went on paddle boats in the lake and had the most amazing breakfast brought to us in bed every morning.

I have loved being married to my best friend. He makes me laugh at least once every single day. I look forward to the next 3 years and the next 50 years together.

In front of the tree where he proposed.

3x the fun

2011-05-16T22:23:00.004-06:00

The end of April was a very fun month. I graduated, celebrated Easter and my Birthday, and flew out to Maryland with my dad to see the triplets. It was a good 2 weeks. Since we celebrated my birthday on Easter, my parents hid my birthday money in Easter eggs around the house and made me look for them. I had been asking my dad when he was going to start hiding eggs again since he has kids living at home now. I guess I got my wish although it wasn't quite what I had in mind... me looking by myself while my whole family watched and laughed as I passed right by the eggs. It was a fun day. On my actual birthday, Cisco had 2 finals to take so I went shopping in Salt Lake with Nicole and Erin and came home with some great finds. So here's to turning 23!!

On the Wednesday after my birthday I woke up around 4:45 am so I could shower, eat breakfast and get to the airport. Our flight was at 7:40 am. For those of you who know me, this should make you laugh quite hard. I can barely manage getting up at 9 am... let alone getting up, driving to Salt Lake and landing in Denver for a layover before my usual alarm ever went off. I slept for a few hours on the plane.

The week in Maryland with KC and Emily and the triplets was a blast and I am missing them already. I have put off posting the pictures of the trip because I miss them so much! I better start saving so I can make more regular trips out there. Alex, Bennett and Ruby are the most adorable little munchkins i have ever seen. I promise I am not biased at all. They really are the cutest things. They have so much personality. Three 20 month old's (although technically 18 month old's since they were born 2 months early) are a handful. I don't know how Emily does it. She is a supermom if there ever was one. If she can do it with three, I can certainly do it with one.

Ruby is the explorer. That girl is tough and is not afraid of anything. She will climb on anything. My favorite moment was when all 4 adults were sitting in the living room and all of a sudden Emily yells "Woah, somebody get that baby!!" Ruby was sitting on the dining table munching away on some pita chips. As soon as KC went to get her off she took two handfuls of those chips and shoved them in her cheeks.

Bennett has the funniest laugh and it is so infectious! He is also so easily entertained and just seems to enjoy life.

Alex is the goofball. The first night we got there he was showing off and just laughing by falling on the floor, getting back up, and falling on the floor again... repeated for a good 5 minutes.

They are all so good at counting. They can almost count to 15! They are smart babies. They also know the whole alphabet. I love asking them what a letter is, or what sound an animal makes (what does a bunny say gets the cutest response with them scrunching their little noses). Ok. Obviously I love these babies and I miss them. I will just let the pictures show how cute they are.

There are about a million pictures in this post. really. I just uploaded my album. They are all sorts of out of order but i don't really care. I also didn't want to go through the work of posting it as a slide-show. But they are cute. So i don't feel bad that you have to scroll through them all.

I know Ruby, I felt the same way about leaving. Sorry for the 100 pictures... I was too lazy to just make them into a slide-show.

Graduated

2011-05-04T13:56:00.000-06:00

I made it through finals! It felt like this day would never come but 121 credits and 5 years later, i am officially a college grad. It feels good to be done. I am thoroughly enjoying unemployment right now and have adventures to blog about since graduation. I decided to walk in Commencement and Convocation because (hopefully) I will only graduate once (I say hopefully because I currently have no desire to do a masters program but who knows). Commencement was good although I walked by myself and was bored out of my mind sitting in between two strangers. I wish i had figured out which of my friends were walking since there was no rhyme or reason to who you had to stand by and all of that fun stuff. Here are some pictures of the event.

There were a lot of graduates.

Me and my supportive hubby!! Thanks Cisco for helping me get through all my breakdowns and wanting to give up at least once a semester.

My cousins wife Taryn. There were a lot of us cousins graduating.

All the graduates (April and August)

We had a graduation party and i made some little decorations for our brownie bites. I even included a U for Nicole who is getting her Master's from University of Utah. We all celebrated in harmony.

My freshman roommate! We started this journey out together and finished together too. It was fun to run into her.

All of the grads in the family. I think Nicole was the only one who knew this picture was being taken.

The mother who helped support all these amazing grads!

Cisco's dad even came to support me. I had a great support system throughout college.

Friday morning i walked and got my diploma (these are all pictures from Friday since Thursday was cold and windy). I got a nice surprise as i walked onto the stage. My dad was sitting on the stage and got to get up and give me a hug as I walked to get my diploma. That was a fun surprise. He asked the dean of my college if he could pretend he was part of the Life Sciences faculty. Afterwords we celebrated by going to Red Lobster (pretty sure I haven't been there in 5 or 6 years...) but it was where Casey and I decided we could go so we all enjoyed LobsterFest. Fun day and I am glad to be done. Now i just have to figure out with my life. No biggie.

Am i really almost done with college?

2011-03-29T22:57:00.001-06:00

April is looking goooood. I finish classes on the 13th, take a final on the 13th and another final on the 16th. And then i am done. done done done with 5 years of college. What have i learned?? A lot. and yet i REALLY don't feel like i know enough to go out and get a job in my major field. Anyone else feel like that after completing their college degree? I should take the NSAM certification test at the end of the semester to be a certified personal trainer. I would like to do the certification because i would kick myself if i wanted it later and had to re-learn everything. Only problem is that it costs about $400. yikes. At the same time i don't know if i could really do personal training professionally because i don't work out. like at all. Not even once a week. How sad is that? I feel guilty every day when i go to my classes and i am lumped into the "we work out because we are Exercise and Wellness majors" group. Let's be honest though, i don't work out. I need to. i want to. you think those would be enough motivation.

aaaaaaaannyways......

I am so ready to be done and graduated but still have no idea what i am going to do for a job. hint hint if there is anyone out there in this wide, vast, world who stumbles onto my blog, please find me a job (part-time). it would be greatly appreciated. I have applied for what seems like a million hospital jobs but those never work out. It is hard to get a job there.

As excited as i am to graduate, i will have to find several good books to read to keep me busy because i will be done with finals before Cisco even has his last day of classes. And then while he is taking his finals he will also be starting a spring class at BYU. And not just any class, Anatomy. It is going to be a lonely few months after graduation but don't worry, we can celebrate being done by going on a cruise to the Bahamas. yes please.

Oh and did i mention that Cisco got a new job in Vivint (formerly APX Alarm and no they did not get bought out or any of the other millions of rumors as to why they changed their name. they just changed their name). He was an Assistant Supervisor in the Scheduling department. Now he is an Assistant Service Operations Analyst in the Service department. he does complicated stuff with computer programs. I am super proud of him. He is one of the hardest workers i know and gets promoted at every job he has ever worked at. It is a good job. i see him way too little though. He is working 32 hours a week, going to school full time (including a night class almost every night of the week). I didn't know i married Wonder-Boy. I don't know how he does it. But he does. Needless to say he is excited for the semester to be over too. I hope that at some point i get to see him before 8:00 at night. Preferably sooner rather than later please!

That's it for now. April is going to be the best month ever. followed by an amazing May and an even better June.

The Trading Post

2011-03-23T13:17:00.000-06:00

My friend Jessie created this site and it is so cool (Why is everyone so talented but me)

I should not have discovered it though.

I want to buy everything that these people post from their etsy shops.

This could be problematic.

Maybe not as long as no one tells Cisco.

I wish i was crafty and could make stuff to trade.

Example: Today there is a giveaway for an Owl Rattle that is beyond adorable.

I don't have kids yet but i will in the future and i REALLY want this. The Owl Beanies made by this same girl are beyond adorable too.

our camera lately

2011-03-01T23:48:00.001-07:00

We are really bad at taking pictures. Here is pretty much all the pictures we have taken since Christmas break (besides of Mac who we have PLENTY of pictures of). Notice how none of them are of me and Cisco. The few that are Lindsey took on her camera. So here you go. Enjoy.

I did this puzzle almost entirely by myself. It was big. and hard.

New Years Eve. Cisco and Sterling playing each other on the iPhone. not sure what the random glowing dot by Cisco is.

We had some good snow storms this year. Lots of shoveling for Cisco.

One time we were out shoveling and we left Mac in the bathroom. This is what i came back to. The entire toilet paper roll. destroyed.

Last month we went to see the Ice Castles in Midway with our friends Lindsey and Steven. So crazy how they made these. I was not smart and was wearing my TOMs. My toes were frozen walking through all that snow.

Kind of scary looking up at all the icicles coming down at you. They make you sign a waiver when you get there. I thought it was weird until we got inside and i saw that these could seriously kill someone. really cool though!
That's it with the pictures for now. I am betting it will be another few months before i get around to blogging again so hopefully i will take more pictures. doubt it.

By the way... We need to enroll Mac in obedience classes. Any good experiences with trainers anyone can recommend? He is adorable and we love him but he jumps on people and is hyper to no end when new people come over. so funny.

Also if anyone would like to tell me what i should do when i graduate i would love the suggestions. If you could give me a job that would be even better.

I've been putting this off.

2011-03-01T23:06:00.001-07:00

It's been a really long time since i blogged. I just never want to sit down and write what's been going on in our lives. Sorry for the absence. Remember in the last post how i said i wanted to send out Christmas cards? Yeah... that never happened. So if you didn't get one it isn't because i didn't think of you. I can't believe it is already March in 2011. I will be done with school in 2 months.Tomorrow morning i have to go get my cap and gown and i am completely weird-ed-out/ecstatic about that. 2010 was a great year for us and 2011 will be even better!
I was looking through my old posts and stumbled upon my goals for 2010. I think i accomplished one of them. Maybe one and a half. So sad. But we did do a lot of great things in 2010.
2010

We went to Chile!! (can you believe that was just May of last year? because i can't).
I finished all my internship hours at Promise North for Women and Families. A drug rehab clinic. So interesting. I also went down to the St. George Senior Olympics and got to help out doing health screenings for these senior athletes.
Cisco did an internship in Cardiac Rehab at the hospital and loved it.
We got good grades.
No major health emergencies! for the first year since we have been married. surprisingly all the other years have been Cisco... And we all thought i was the one with the health problems. (2008: kidney stone. 2009: kidney stone removed. 2009: Cisco rolled the 4-wheeler). good times.
I just lied. just now. Cisco did get Shingles. Although that wasn't really a medical emergency, it was random.
We loved having Real Salt Lake season tickets on the 3rd row. Lots
We loved watching the World Cup this year.
We went to the Shakespearean festival and saw 39 Steps and LOVED it. So much fun. We also drove down Vegas and went to a very expensive and very lame buffet.
We adopted Mac.
We played lots of Just Dance and sweat a lot.
Got addicted to the show Bones. love it.
We went to Colorado for Thanksgiving and got to see Grandpa (driving in a whiteout blizzard).
and lots of other things. I'm sure i will think of a million things to add as soon as i post this.

2010 was a good year. Here are some things i am looking forward to in 2011.

I will Graduate in April
We are supposed to go on a Caribbean cruise (fingers and toes crossed) with my family when we all graduate. Nicole (with her masters), Casey and I will all be graduating so a cruise just seemed like a logical thing this year.
In May i am going with my dad to see the triplets!!!! I can. not. even. tell. you. how much i miss them. Do you realize it will have been a year since the last time i saw them? Last time i saw them in person they were still sitting in bumbo's. They were still swaddles for naps. My oh my how things have changed. Now they are all walking and talking.
did i mention that i am excited to graduate? i am.
The down side to graduating is i will have to find a new job. I have been at LDSP for 3 1/2 years and am not really sure what i am going to do when i graduate.
Mac will become perfectly trained and obedient :). He will turn 1 year old in August.
Me and Cisco are going to lose weight and get in shape. We gotta look good for the cruise so that we can gain it all back with the food for a week. sounds like a good plan to me.
We are also going to eat healthy. We actually do OK at this but i need to eat less sugar. I crave sweets.
Lots of other cool things will happen in 2011 but i have no idea what they will be. This has been a long post so i think i will leave you with a picture and make the next post an all-picture post.

Mac's coat for when it is snowing, raining, windy, or whatever other excuse we can make up to put him in it. Hilarious when the little hood is covering his head. You know he loves it.

Mac chewing on his bone in his favorite spot...under the armchair in our bedroom. He is currently sleeping under there as i type this post. such a funny dog.

2010-12-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

We finished another semester!! I think this precious-punky-puppy helped in his cute moments. Dead asleep sitting up in my arms. so cute.

Sometimes he sleeps in funny positions

Bath time!

I never posted pictures on here after his haircut. He is a completely different color and no longer looks like a homeless dog. So cute.

He got caught stealing Cisco's shoes.

Still his favorite toy.

When we finally did finish finals we celebrated by decorating our apartment for Christmas (the week of Christmas). This reindeer made a nice decoration under our tree. It is from Sterling Orton specifically for Cisco because "girl's don't drink soda do they?" haha he is our favorite.

The Christmas corner. All borrowed from my moms leftover Christmas decorations, except the ornaments.

Now we just have to finish (or start...) Christmas shopping. I hate that Christmas doesn't start until finals are over when you are in school. I have Christmas cards to send out and lots to do. Hope you are all having a Merry Christmas season!!

Speaking of Christmas cards, if you want one give me your address!! or email it to me aravena.michelle@gmail.com. No guarantees i will get them out any time soon but somehow i will try to get them out!

Meet Mac

2010-11-23T16:50:00.001-07:00

Meet Mac. The newest member of the Aravena family. We adopted him Friday night from Wasatch Animal Rescue in Salt Lake. Remember Mighty from the last post? This is him (well, technically his brother). We went to meet those dogs on our blog Friday night and didn't think we would bring one home since we were planning on going to Colorado for Thanksgiving. But once you meet a cute pup, it is hard to leave them behind. Mighty had a brother who we called Mighty #2 and after getting to know all of the dogs personalities, Mighty #2 came home with us and became Mac. He is so cute!We had talked about naming him Mac because it was a cute name and then it became a funny joke between me and Cisco because Cisco is begging me for a Mac laptop. All the time, "if i pass this test, will you get me a mac??" or "hey look what i brought you home, the Mac price list! I'll just tape it above your pillow so you know where to find it." Now i can finally say i got him a Mac.
A little about our new buddy:

He is 12 weeks old

He loves to play with his toys

He plays fetch, even with this toy that is way too long for him.

He HATES going outside in the cold but LOVES playing in the snow. I don't get it either. We have to put him in sweaters because he shivers when he goes outside. When he plays in the snow, he prances through it like a deer. I think it was only because it was fresh snow. Now he avoids walking in the snow as much as possible. He walks along the cement ledge to our stairwell so he doesn't have to touch the snow. It is pretty funny but we need to put a stop to that because he has come close to loosing his footing on that little ledge.

He met his "uncles" Ashton and Token and was able to hold his own without getting clobbered. He likes chilling next to token. He sort of blends in with the flowers on this couch though doesn't he?

He is so sweet.
He doesn't bark, he doesn't whine during the night and stays in his crate all night happily.
He knows that Cisco means play time and Michelle means cuddle time.
He is our little shadow and follows us everywhere we go in the house.
He doesn't like his leash or going on walks when it is cold outside.
If you do take him for a walk, he tries to get in between your legs because he is cold. You end up trying not to trip over him the whole time.
He snores a little when he is falling asleep.
Potty training is improving around here with only a few accidents now and again.
He can finally go down stairs on his own and get on and off of the couch (most of the time).
The funniest thing is he is seriously afraid of his reflection in the stove door and the windows. Not mirrors for some reason. We have to hand towels covering our stove door because he sits and growls at it for hours if he can see his reflection.
He is so cute and our little buddy!
He is precious and sleeping next to me as i type.

**P.S. not sure how he is going to respond to the crazy blizzard that is supposed to be coming tonight. I'm thinking he won't be too happy going to the bathroom outside in this storm.

Puppy Love

2010-11-09T15:17:00.001-07:00

I need someone to tell me what to do because I am seriously struggling making this decision on my own. Cisco and I REALLLLLY want to adopt a dog. There are lots of reasons but the main reason why we want a dog now instead of later is that i want a little therapy dog to curl up to me when i am not feeling so great. Cisco has 2 big labs who i have blogged about before and they have the cutest personality. Dogs just know when you are in pain and know when you are having a hard day. They are so cute and bring such fun happiness into the home. I would want a very small dog since we live in an apartment and i really am looking for a cuddly lap dog that i can pick up. We are pretty sold on the idea. Concerns? some people say you shouldn't have small dogs with young children and while we don't have any kids yet, we will in the next few years. Dogs are also quite pricey little guys. So tell me what to do. or vote on what i should do. if you have small dogs and kids, even better! what do you think? thanks.
Oh and here are some of the dogs we were looking into adopting. they are all so cute!

This little guy is Toronto:

haha Chico

Gregster

Mighty

Nachos

Pictureless

2010-11-06T13:37:00.000-06:00

I need a new post... because i don't like looking at my post about a new blog. I have some sad news to report, there will be no pictures to come in the near future. why? because the battery to my camera is missing. My camera is not missing, it is sitting in my purse ready to be used. I am not sure how i went about losing a battery but not the camera. I don't think someone stole it and left the battery unless they were a very stupid thief. That means it has to be somewhere around here but i have turned my house upside-down looking for it. I didn't notice until i tried taking pictures while i was down at the Senior World Games in St. George. Not sure what to do now! But my camera is missing a very important part. I don't have anything else to blog about so that's it for now. Enjoy this fall season! I have been raking leaves outside and have just found several leaves in my hair so i will take that as a sign to go clean up and shower.

new blog

2010-10-02T19:40:00.001-06:00

So i made a new blog. It is a personal blog about struggles i go through and how i deal with them. i have never really been open about my health issues but i am trying to change that because you can't really know me without knowing about my daily struggles with pain. Feel free to read if you like. This one will still be the normal blog about the adventures of me and Cisco. Hope everyone is having a great conference weekend! I sure am. Some of my favorites of the day, Elder Scott, Elder Anderson, and President Uchtdorf.

My new blog: on my side of the fence.

oh good, you found my brain. I had misplaced it.

2010-10-01T16:18:00.000-06:00

It seems my brain likes to take vacations now and again. For example, a few weeks ago i was purchasing textbooks for the semester (how is it midterms already?!) and after the BYU Bookstore not having several of my text books, i ordered several on Amazon. A week later I went back to the bookstore looking to see if any of the books i hadn't found had come in and realized i needed to buy the books for my religion class so i special ordered them since the bookstore was still out of them. That same day i get home and there is a package for me from Amazon. It is those same religion books. Oh wonderful. I completely forgot that i had already ordered them. So i go back to the bookstore, cancel the special order and get a refund, and buy another text book i needed for an assignment. I had already ordered this book on another website but it was taking way too long so i thought i would cancel it and just get the one that BYU just got in. Same story. Next day i get a package and the long lost book i had ordered 3 weeks earlier arrives in the mail. I now get to pay shipping and $6.50 restocking fee to send that book back. I wish i could say these were isolated instances but i think i do this every year. I was going through old textbooks and found an old humanities book that i had just bought again this summer for that dreaded online class. I have done this with chemistry books too. The worst is when i buy books, drop the class but don't return the book because i plan on taking the class the next semester. Then i don't. So now i have a shelf of books i have never used and no one will buy back and i don't know what to do. Lame. I have mentioned before how cheap i am and how much i hate spending money but apparently i have this secret love for wasting money on textbooks.

In other news, next week i get to skip school (because missing class once a week isn't enough) to go to St. George for the Huntsman Senior Olympics!! Yay. I get internship credit for helping run some of the booths at the health fair. I will be using an ultrasound machine on peoples carotid arteries to analyze their plaque build-up. should be fun. So i get to drive down with 2 people i have never met, stay in some kind random strangers house, and spend 3 days with a lot of older athletes. I am excited. Looking forward to a lot of this next week:

10 happenings and ah-ha moments

2010-09-09T00:13:00.003-06:00

Sorry guys, I haven't been feeling the whole blogging thing lately. I went through another stage of feeling like we really don't need a blog until we have kids. I guess that will just have to be sooner rather than later so people will read our blog! ha totally kidding... I'm not pregnant or anything. So whenever you run into people that you haven't seen in forever they ask you whats new and what have you been up to? Honestly? not a whole lot. Does anyone ever have a really good answer for that? It will be great one day when i can say, oh actually we bought a house last week, or oh didn't you know, i have had 2 kids since i last saw you. But at this stage in life where both Cisco and I are in school, not a whole lot changes. But that doesn't mean we have wasted our days doing nothing. I have had some very significant things happen and discoveries take place.

1. Ice cream REALLY does taste better when eaten straight out of the carton.
2. No matter how many times I try it, nuts just do not belong in desserts (especially ice cream, hence why i have been eating out of the ice cream carton: so i can pick around the nuts).
3. I am still addicted to reading. I have read 3 books since school started last week. I don't know how i do it. It's not like i sit home and read all day either. I go to school full time, work 20 hours a week, come home and make dinner and usually watch a show with Cisco and yet i still manage to read a lot. By the way, I think this one is real. I think i really might be addicted to reading a little. I spent this summer working at Promise for Women and Families which is a drug addiction rehab center and every time they were talking about addictive personalities I could apply most of them to my reading. Don't worry, i started taking a few steps in the right direction. Glad I got help before I quit my job and had to sell things to pay for my books... only kidding.
4. Spoon Me in Provo has the FUNNIEST bathrooms in all of Provo I am sure of it. They have all these common sayings but where a word is replaced by spoon... only people have ripped the S sticker and the N sticker off so now all of the sayings say "poo". haha not sure how they didn't see that one coming. So comforting to go to the bathroom and read things like "nice shoes.....wanna poo?" and "if poo ing were a sport, I'd be an all-star" etc. Here is a picture i found of the bathrooms when they first opened (probably the Salt Lake location) but just try to read some of them and imagine what they look like now. Seriously potty humor (in every sense) but they made me laugh because they haven't fixed them so they probably don't care. too funny.

5. Cisco is in love with a new book series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians. They are short, fast reads but i really like them too.
6. 10:00 still are not a realistic possibility... shame.
7. When I tell people 10:00 classes are not doable, the first thing they say is "what are you going to do when you have kids? Kids don't sleep in till 10." Thank you. I had never thought about that in my years of sleep problems. I am so glad you have enlightened me so that i will miraculously be able to change my ways to have kids or just avoid having kids at all. Ok, this one was a little bit of venting but it makes me laugh how many times i get that told to me in a week.
8. Cisco got an Internship at the Hospital in Cardiac Rehab working with a physical therapist and is way excited to start.
9. I get restless/antsy/fidgety way too soon. We have lived in this apartment 9 months and I am already thinking "how can I rearrange our furniture for something new?" We have a very small apartment and there isn't exactly a lot of options for rearranging. Not to mention we have things were they are because that is the most convenient and they are pretty heavy to move but alas, i will find a way. I can't change up the apartment with decor because we are super poor college students.
10. Oh, and I applied for graduation today. Cougar class of April 2011 (took me long enough). I will be graduating along with Casey, Nicole (masters), my cousin James, his new wife Taryn, my cousin Julie (masters), and the other thousands graduating that day, but still, that is a lot of people i know all graduating at the same time. Fun!

Oh and an edit to add #11, I did dye my hair brown and like it a lot. Seriously, pictures of my hair through the ages is coming soon. It has been in the works for a long time.

Ok that is my list of 10 things that have happened to me so when people ask I just have to pull one from this list. It may sound something like this:
Long lost friend: "So Michelle how are you?! What's new what have you been up to??"
Me: "Oh not much, just eating ice cream from the carton, still hating nuts in my desserts, battling my addiction to reading, laughing at potty jokes, watching Cisco read, sleeping in late, realizing having kids isn't going to be a walk in the park, cheering Cisco on while he is in the Cardiac Rehab for the next few months, getting restless and ready for change and applying for graduation. So yeah, not much. What about you??!"

Picture Overload

2010-08-26T22:50:00.001-06:00

Wow. Where to begin. I am too tired to write about all the amazingly fun things we did this summer... only we didn't do that many amazing fun things this summer. It was filled with school, work, and an internship for me. Such a busy summer. So we basically had a 2 week summer after those awful weeks and did our best to fit as many fun things in as we could! We had some fun things spread throughout these summer months but here are some pictures of our adventures. We went down to cedar city, saw the hoover dam, went to a buffet in Vegas, and saw a play at the Shakespeare festival! Now we are back in school and the break DEFINITELY wasn't long enough. So no stories, just loads and loads of pictures. Basic overview:

sealing of our friend Lester at the Salt Lake temple, Me and Camille (way back from our Park City trip), Driving to Vegas (umm... who is driving?!? thanks Cisco haha), the hoover dam (apparently parts are closed after 9/11. who knew?), the buffet in Vegas at Aria (loved the waterfall on the entire front of the building (also the limo that broke down and was on wheels being pushed), and finally back on a drive through Kolob Canyon. YAY! We then came home and did some back yard camping which is always a bonus! So my style of camping. Cisco got the huge air mattress and I got the foam pads. hmmm not sure why my cute husband thought we would be too crowded on that huge air mattress but he insisted it would be uncomfortable. He just wanted the huge thing to himself. Funny boy. I didn't mind but i had a tiny bed next to his. And that was it for the summer.

Chipmunk Cheeks

2010-08-08T11:31:00.000-06:00

Sorry friends it has been a while. I have a list of things i should have blogged about but alas, i bit off more than i can chew. I feel like a chipmunk with my cheeks bulging only i don't have chipmunk skills to know what to do with it. I don't know why I thought I could take on so much in one summer but I am paying the price now. I am doing a class on campus, working, doing an internship, and an independent study class. My classes have to be finished by the 12th. of August. And i basically started my independent study class 2 weeks ago. I can't get an extension but that is a whole other issue that i don't want to get into. It is a humanities class so i have spent the past week reading my entire textbook and trying to memorize painters, musicians, philosophers, and remembering when different movements happened. I will share some things I have learned.
1. Artists painted a lot of naked people.
2. I love sculpture and seeing what they can do with marble.
3. Pop culture borrows a lot more from history than i realized. Case in point: Lost. Lost borrowed names for their characters from history.
John Locke- "father of liberalism"
Faraday- Chemist and Physicist
Rousseau- philosopher, writer, composer in 18th century
Funny that after reading this entire textbook in 2 weeks and memorizing paintings, musical compositions, and everything else to do with arts, I will probably remember the Lost characters names.
So until next time when i am done with this craziness, we are alive. things are happening in our lives. we haven't been too busy doing fun things to blog.

20's or 80's??

2010-06-23T14:43:00.000-06:00

Me and Cisco are in our 20's... but sometimes I get confused and think we are in our 80's. Why? because we have health problems of 80 year olds. I had my knee's scoped when I was 12 because they "looked like the knee's of an 80 year old woman". ok... then I have Fibromyalgia which is also more common in older people. Then I get diagnosed with chronic bronchitis. That is what people get after smoking for 30 years. So that's my story. I walk up and down stairs like a little old lady and not a young, healthy 20 year old.

Cisco's story. 2 weeks after we got married Cisco got a Kidney stone. This is his 2nd or 3rd which is a lot for someone his age. His first was when he was 10 or 11! Then yesterday we went to the doctor after he has had pain in his leg and some hive-looking things and found out he has shingles. A reminder of what shingles is: Chicken pocks gone bad. Usually older people with weakened immune systems get shingles. I know young people get these health problems too on occassion but i'm just sayin... It's too much of a coinsidence that both of us get the health problems we probably shouldn't be getting for another 20 or 30 years. I think there may be something in the water....

And just so you know, despite these fun little events we are all doing good and getting along just fine! The Shingles should be on their way to getting better, or so the doctor told us. He didn't get any medications for it because we didn't go to the doctor till a good 5 days after he got the bumps which means we just need to let it run it's course and hope it's faster rather than slower.

In other news Cisco and I started watching Lost on netflix from the very beginning. and yes, it is as addicting as most people say. Here is a cute snapshot of us enjoying our TV time together.

Only kidding... we really aren't that bad. Maybe in 30 years.

Ster-fry

2010-05-31T21:55:00.000-06:00

Lindsey Orton. She makes me laugh. I love getting her random texts with smiley faces and stuff. This morning I got an email saying she was bored and made a fun new header for our blog. Talent like that makes me oh so jeleous. Isn't it cute? I've been looking for an update for my blog for a long time so I'm glad I can count on Lindsey to do these fun things for me.
Lindsey is practically family to us and so is her family since we spend so much time hanging out with them. Her little brother Sterling is our favorite and he LOVES Cisco. If I come over by myself to visit Lindsey, Sterling immediately asks "Where's Cisco?". Ster-fry is so funny. He also has a condition called VCFS (velo-cardio-facial syndrome) so he is a trooper and a survivor. This is a tough condition and he has been through so much. Several surgeries since we've known Lindsey. We are trying to help them raise awareness of this condition so please give it a read! I'll just be posting it from Lindsey's blog. If you want to help please post this or share it on facebook! Thanks!!

Hello Friends. This is going to be different than a lot of my blog posts and I hope you take the time to read it. My littlest brother Sterling (Ster-fry) has a genetic condition called VCFS. My Dad was recently put on as the VCFS-Educational Foundation President. I'm just going to copy the letter my Dad wrote cause he says it better than I can.

About eight years ago, life for our family changed drastically. Our son, Sterling, was born with a genetic syndrome called velo-cardio-facial syndrome (VCFS). VCFS is caused by a tiny deletion of genetic material from chromosome 22 that contains about 40 genes and is therefore called a microdeletion syndrome. VCFS is the most common microdeletion syndrome in humans, and the second most common multiple anomaly syndrome after Down syndrome. We consider his life a miracle as he struggled to breathe and keep his heart beating several times his first week.

We are most grateful for modern medicine, skilled doctors and specialists. Sterling has had seven surgeries and has been through extensive professional care from occupational therapists, dieticians and speech therapists. We marvel at the progress he has made. As parents we want Sterling to have the best life possible. We are actively involved in making friends and family more aware. We are most excited that the 17th Annual International Scientific Meeting of the Velo-Cardio-Facial Educational Foundation, Inc. will be held this year in Salt Lake City, July 15th - 18th.

This prestigious meeting has been held in most major cities in the U.S. as well as in Great Britain, France, Italy, and Australia and has been hosted by prestigious institutions such as Stanford and Harvard to name a few. To make this conference successful we need to raise funds to support the ability to bring scientists from all over the world to speak. I am asking if you can assist by making a financial contribution for the conference. All money that you donate is tax-deductable; the VCFS Educational Foundation, Inc. is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Here’s how to donate:

http://vcfs.org/support_foundation/donations.php

Here is a picture of the little squirt.

We would really love to raise awareness of this condition. If you could re-post this, tweet, facebook, or e-mail a link to this post you would be helping lot.

Chile 2010

2010-05-21T18:55:00.000-06:00

Two weeks in Chile. I don't know where to start. There is so much to talk about and so many pictures. We had such a good time meeting all the family and trying all the good food. Too much to write so I am going to sum things up and share a few of my thoughts of Chile. A few words FYI: Tia=aunt, Tio=uncle, Abuela=Grandma, Vina Del Mar=where we stayed. Abuela Lela is Cisco's dad's mom and who we were staying with. Abuela Elsa is Cisco's mom's mom.
These were a few of my favorite things.
- my first international flight and first time with a passport!
-meeting Abuela Lela and Abuela Elsa
-stray dogs everywhere!!!! i wanted to feed them all. Perrito!!
-Amazing dinners every day of the week. Lela really knows how to put on a presentation. Every night had some amazing meal, a yummy salad, juice, and fresh bread.
-bus rides in Vina = rollercoaster rides. The buses are more like taxi's than buses. There are a few normal bus stops but half the time you just hold your hand out like you are hailing a taxi and they pull over and let you in.
- bread. Bread in the US will never be the same
-first time tasting coffee.... sort of. Everyone in Chile drinks something hot at night and since they are all members, there is a caffeine free coffee substitute that the church encourages its members to drink instead. Caffee con Leche. with enough milk and sugar it was pretty good!
-Chile reminds me of California. A lot.
-The beach at Algarrobo is amazing!! We wanted to rent a beach house there they were so cute!
-music playing on the buses is mostly in English. and there are several of the same popular songs that are played here but most of the songs are the songs i loved in the 8th and 9th grade! haha i loved it.
-there were 3 small earthquakes while we were there... and i only felt one of them. I was so excited about feeling my first earthquake and i never even knew what was going on! disappointing. The first one was really early in the morning before we had woken up and i said to Cisco "stop moving, you are shaking the bed" then the windows rattled a little and he informed me that i had just felt an earthquake. The second one was while we were in Sunday School at church. All of a sudden everyone starts chattering (in Spanish of course so I had no idea what was going on). After Sunday School, Cisco asked if i felt the earthquake and my response was "What earthquake?!". The last earthquake was around 40 seconds long, that is long for an earthquake and I STILL didn't feel a thing. We were getting ready for bed and I told Cisco it wasn't an earthquake, it was just him moving. Guess I was wrong. So those are my exciting first experiences with earthquakes.
-Tio Pancho (aka Uncle Francisco) has the cutest yellow house. I love it!
-Pan con Palta= Bread with Avocado. Delicious. I love that all the little kids there come up and ask for "Pan con palta" or "pan con queso". All the kids love avocado.
-We saw Iron Man in the theater there (in English with Spanish subtitles) and when the movie was over we forgot we were in Chile. We were expecting to walk out and be in a Utah parking lot.
-We went to the mall to try and go shopping but Chile is in the middle of their Fall so they have winter clothes out. Instead we went to the yummiest restaurant called Domino, not like the pizza place. People are always asking me what Chilean food is and i've never really known what to say. The food we eat at his moms is so similiar to what I grew up with, I didn't know what was Chilean and what was just something they ate when they got here. If you were to say hamburgers are a staple American food because all sorts of places have some version of it, then Chilean food would have to be sandwhiches and completo's. The sandwiches that are everywhere are the Churrasco Palta and the Chacarero. I can't do these justice trying to describe them but this little article does a great job of showing a few of the food staples in Chile. Here are some of the pictures i borrowed from their website since i forgot to take pictures of some of our favorite sandwiches.

Chacarero. Fresh green beans and a hearty bread. So delicious!

Lomito

Completo Italiano. Hot dog with smashed avocado, tomatoes, mayonnaise, ketchup, maybe some mustard. Actually a delicious combination. And the bun isn't the fluffy American hot dog bun that practically dissolves in your mouth. This is GOOD bread. enough to hold in all the delicousness.

So those are some basic Chilean food staples. They also eat lots of vegetables like tomatoes and celery with olive oil and salt. so good. Chilean meals also mean juice and fresh juice and bread and coke, lots of Coka Cola. Coke is different there. It is sweater and not as carbonated, therefore it is better.
- all the museums were closed because of the earthquake so we only got to go to one room that was open about some of the Easter Island stuff.
-We went to Santiago for 2 days and it was a lot of fun. We did some great shopping there and got to walk around the temple grounds. There are so many trees lining all of the streets. It was beautiful.
-Driving down the coast is a good way to spend a day. I loved seeing all the buildings and restaraunts right on the ocean.

Ok i am warn out and sick of typing. 2 weeks is too much to tell everything fun that happened and everything I liked. Moral of the story: Chile was fun and we loved it. Maybe tomorrow i will tell some more of the funny stories of our adventures in Chile. There are quite a few of them. Thats it for now! Enjoy our pictures.

Day of Birth

2010-04-25T12:50:00.001-06:00

Finally done with the semester. I can't believe we go to Chile in 3 days!!! Life for the next 4 months is going to be crazy! The triplets just got to Utah and i can't wait to see those cute faces. Today is my birthday and then it's time to pack for Chile. Cisco will be doing finals right up till the morning we leave. Awesome! When we get back its time to get back to work plus an internship. Did i mention i got an internship this summer? I am super excited and SUPER nervous. Actually using what I've learned in school? huh? I didn't think I would have to remember this stuff! Not to mention teaching it to other people. So what is this scary new adventure? I am interning with Utah County Department of Substance Abuse. I will be working with recovering addicts and teaching them healthy lifestyles and eating as well as some exercise classes like yoga (yikes it's been a while since I've done that). Oh and I guess I should mention for those of you that don't know my major is Exercise and Wellness. I will be done with classes in December unless I decide to do a minor in Public Health (which I would really only do to keep our insurance and stuff). This will be a very busy summer for us. Cisco and I will be taking classes in the summer semester, and working. Cisco is still at APX alarm in the scheduling department and they love him there. It's not surprising that he gets offered promotions with almost EVERY job he takes. They want him to be a supervisor now but we don't think he is going to do that. Being a supervisor would mean working 40 hours a week in the summer and till 9 every night. Its a little more money but we both just want to focus on school. I'm just proud of him. That's it for the updates in our lives. A little overview of my birthday so far:
Yesterday (Saturday) I woke up and got to go get my hair done. Coulnd't ask for a better start to a Saturday. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE my hairstylist Ashely? It feels so good leaving the salon and loving your hair. Then I came home and Cisco was busy doing something sneaky in the backyard. He didn't want me to hear what he was doing to he blasted some music in our house to the point where i couldn't even talk on the phone. That was when i decided to make it easy for him and I met Nicole at the Women's Expo. We went to see Erin and as crazy as it was, I found my swimsuit that I have been trying to buy for the past week! Happy Birthday to me. This obviously isn't me in the swimsuit (i'm not about to flaunt how white I am to the blogging world) but I am so glad i found it in time to take on our trip! Its a Lime Ricki swim suit. love it.

I also got the cutest headband from the Veranda booth that Erin was working at. Another happy birthday to me! We ended the night by going to Happy Sumo (Me, Cisco, Casey, Nicole, and Erin) and enjoyed one of my favorite treats: sushi (obviously). I also was thrilled to find they had Mochi for dessert. I cannot tell you how much I have been craving Mochi for literally the past 4 years. Yes 4 years. I haven't been able to find anywhere that has it and I love it.
This morning I woke up to get ready for our 8:30 church (not so happy birthday to me) and Cisco again hid me in the bathroom while he did a few things. I came out to find happy birthday signs up and balloons hanging from the ceilings. So cute. He also bought me a kite!! I am so excited to go fly it. It isn't just any kite folks, it's a Dora the Explorer kite. I think it is a last effort at helping me learn Spanish before we leave on Wednesday. Then on our way to church I couldn't stop laughing when i found this on the lawn:

Hahahaha this is what Cisco was oh so sneakily working on in the backyard yesterday. I mentioned to him a week or 2 ago that birthdays aren't as fun when you grow up (hence the kite). I said people tend to forget my birthday because it is the end of the semester and finals everyone is leaving for the summer. I cannot tell you how hard I laughed seeing this. I still laugh everytime I walk outside. Such an awesome husband. Next we are off to Cisco's parents to celebrate with his parents and tomorrow night we are having dinner with all my family and the triplets. This is the best birthday ever.

Oh and we got some new toys last week that have made my birthday equally amazing:

An Iphone. Love it. Don't know how I ever lived without it. It more awesome than i ever thought it would be. YAY for birthdays. I have the most awesome husband and the most awesome families! I should dedicate a whole post to how much Cisco makes me laugh every single day. Hope your days are as fabulous as mine has been so far!!

Letters to Inanimate Objects

2010-04-06T19:21:00.000-06:00

If inanimate objects would listen to me, here are the things you might hear me saying to them:

Dear lightbulbs, why do you keep burning out? I replace you and then your friend decides to go out. I don't want to spend a lot of money on a lightbulb that will last longer so could you please shine a little brighter and a little longer??
thanks, Michelle

Me and Cisco have frequent visits from someone we call Katrina. Yes, as in Hurricane Katrina. I would like to ask her to please stop coming through our apartment because i am trying to keep it clean and it is rather rude to come through and scatter things everywhere. It would be greatly appreciated.

I have pleaded with the snow to please go away. I do not like it. In fact, I hate it. The sun has been toying with my heart, coming and going with no reliability. If the sun and snow keep playing these mean tricks on me, i am threatening to not come back from Chile. Or to move away from Utah as soon as possible. Since I don't mind living in Utah, we would all be happier if we just worked together and got along. So please sun, come and stay a while. and as for you snow, please leave and stay away for a LONG while. Come and go in the mountains as you please, but no more down here. My sandals are getting jealous of my boots. You are just causing problems for everyone.

Dear Easter Candy, you tricked me. You looked so delicious on the shelves and I was convinced I needed you in order to have a good Easter. What did you do? You made me feel sick after I consumed way too much of you. You made my cheeks hurt and my tongue raw. You made me so thirsty that i feel like i can never quench my thirst. How rude of you. I would also appreciate it if you would tell your friend the candy bar Twix that mini Twix is NOT the same as a regular size Twix. Not even close, and not even as good. Next year I won't be fooled by you and your enticing Easter candy looks. So as a mental note to myself: One kind of Easter candy is good enough, or maybe just some Easter ice cream. mmm.
Yours truly (no longer i hope), Michelle

My last letter is to my dear sweet bed. We have a love-hate relationship. I love you. You are a good bed and are so comfortable, but you are also very tricky. In the mornings you keep me sucked into the deep pit of blankets and fluffiness and you make it quite impossible for me to get out of bed willingly. I hit snooze for an hour which is causing me problems. You are so comfortable, but why is it that when i go to bed at night you are not comfortable at all? I toss and turn trying to find a comfortable position. I have decided that you purposely make yourself less comfortable so that your grip on me in the morning is much stronger and unbreakable. I think we can improve our relationship to a pure-love-and-no-hate relationship if you just shared some of your comforting embrace when i was trying to fall asleep. That is my suggestion. Please get back to me with your response as soon as possible. Thanks.

Lets just say that this has come out of being stressed from school work and it nice to blame objects for my frustration so i can vent a little. :) I feel better now.
By the way. We are going to Chile THIS MONTH. Unbelievable? yes. I can't believe it came this fast. I am so ready to take off but not ready for the semester to be over and all my assignments to be due. So ready for summer.

don't try this at home

2010-03-27T22:08:00.001-06:00

Some random memories. You know those things that people do to scare you like pretending they are going to rip your book or spray you with water? Any idea what I'm talking about? Well sometimes those things go wrong. Example 1:
Back when me and Cisco were dating, he decided it would be funny to pretend like he was going to crack an egg on my head. He was doing that trick where if you squeeze the egg in the palm of your hand it doesn't really break.

We were at my parents house making some omelets when he held the egg over my head and asked what would happen if he cracked it on my head. Obviously I said that he wouldn't dare do that because that would be annoying. Who wants egg in their hair? Well being who he is, Cisco decided to keep pretending he was about to break it as i kept saying "no! Somethings going to go wrong and it's really going to break!" He just kept saying it was a cool trick and that the egg wouldn't really break. He did it 3 or 4 times successfully scaring me when he squeezed the egg as hard as he could without it breaking. I bet you can all guess where this is going. He held the egg over my head one last time and i don't know what he did, but he FULLY CRACKED AN EGG ON MY HEAD. I had egg running down my face and down my clothes. It was dripping onto my parents bar stools and onto the carpet. I just sat there and stared at him as he burst into laughter confused at what had gone wrong this time. I sat there half laughing, and half annoyed that i now had egg all over me. This was pretty early on in our dating career. He is lucky i married him.

Moral of the story: If you are a guy dating a girl and you crack an egg on her head... you better marry her if she doesn't dump you.

Now every time Cisco likes to scare me by pretending to do one of those stupid things all i say is "remember what happened with the egg" and he usually backs off. At least he learned some sort of lesson. Even if the only lesson was how awesome i was.

While I'm thinking of this, here is another thing you shouldn't try at home. When you are trying to clean your floors (especially for cleaning checks back in the college days) DO NOT use half a bottle of soft scrub to clean the floors. It will take HOURS, yes hours, to get all the soap up. When you put it on the floor, it doesn't seem like it's going very far so you just keep adding more. Then as soon as the water comes to "wash it off" the suds start coming. Cisco was helping me with that cleaning check and we had to resort to spraying the floor with the sink sprayer and filling the garbage cans with water and dumping it on the floor to try and get all that soap off. The night ended with both of us soaking wet and covered in soap and exhausted from spending so long cleaning the kitchen floor. Not one of our more brilliant moments.

Babysiting

2010-03-22T19:11:00.000-06:00

Friday night Cisco and I got to babysit 4 very hyper, crazy dogs. It was Cisco's parents anniversary and since they were watching LuAnn and Brandon's two dogs, leaving them alone wasn't really an option. Cisco and I went over so they could go out to eat. We had Cisco's parents two large labs (Ashton and Token) and LuAnn and Brandon's two small, but very hyper dogs (Bentley and Bowie). Four dogs with four very different personalities. It was quite a funny night. We watched Gabriel Iglesias (our favorite comedian) and enjoyed a night home with these crazy guys.
First, Token. He by far has my favorite personality. He is always laying down and doesn't care what is going on around him, but if he gets hyper when he see's you, he doesn't run at you. He Prances at you.

My favorite is when i sit on the love seat next to Cisco. There will be a foot of space and token will slowly get up and weasel his way in. I don't think he realizes how big he is. He usually ends up kicking one of us off the couch.
My all time favorite is his love for watching TV. I am not exaggerating when i say that if you change the channel, he will turn around and look at you like he is saying "hey, I was watching that." Last night we turned the TV on for him in Cisco's parents room and we went to watch our movie in the basement. About half an hour later Token comes down to the basement and sits on the couch next to us. The funniest thing was we realized that he came down when the TV upstairs turned off.

Poor Ashton is balding. So sad. He is the protector of the family. I rarely see him sleep. He is always pacing and perking his ears up listening to every noise in the house.

Bowie. My favorite. He is the spoiled little baby of the bunch. I want a duplicate of him for my own dog.

And the newest addition (and the largest) is Bentley. Way too hyper. One large puppy. He still thinks he is a lap dog and likes to try and sit on your lap.

All 4 hanging out in the kitchen.

I think every kid who wants a dog should have to babysit 4 dogs at once before they really know if they want a dog. It certainly made me realize one is enough. And small, manageable Bowie would be my first choice of a pet. That was quite the Friday night.

confessions of a nerd

2010-03-19T17:41:00.000-06:00

Call me a nerd, or call me obsessed with reading, but the truth is, i am a bookaholic (i didn't make that up, someone else did). I found a website called bookaholics anonymous and i think i should start a provo chapter. I am addicted to reading good books. Here are a few signs of my addiction:

Last summer i read over 20 books
I average about 3 days per book
When i am reading a good book, i would rather stay home and read than go out and be social.
I get caught up in reading and forget to do normal things like eat
I can stay up all night reading a book
I have missed a class before because i was home reading
I have to ban myself from reading during the semester so I don't fail classes
I have a "to-read" list with at least 10 books on it
I have a ridiculously hard time buying books at borders because there are way too many i want, i can't pick just one
Cisco has to beg people to stop recommending good books to me (I get really into reading and am oblivious to what's going on around me)

These are just to name a few. My latest good book was Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (bought it. read it. loved it.) If i love reading so much, why can't i read a school textbook for more than 20 minutes?! It doesn't make sense. I want to start a list of all the books i have read to keep track. When I am out of school I can't wait to start a book group. The only problem with book groups is that they give you a month to read a book, a month? What am I going to do with all the time in between? I have a hard time picking up random books to read though, i love suggestions on reading. So if you have read any good books let me know (after all, the semester is almost over).

Yeah... We're Going There

2010-03-13T23:27:00.001-07:00

6 1/2 weeks folks. In 6 1/2 we will be on a plane to Chile. A little scary when you think about the fact that they keep having "aftershocks" measuring 7.0 (how is that considered an aftershock...i don't understand that). Regardless, we are so excited. I got my passport in the mail with my beautiful passport picture (why do they insist everyone look stupid in those pictures?) and i am so excited. I have already been to borders and started looking for a good Chile travel book to get myself prepared for this vacation and even bought a "Spanish phrases for dummies" although i don't expect that to help much. Needless to say, we can't wait to go. And here is one of the things i am looking forward to.

The biggest pool in the world (3,323 ft long)

It is more than 1,000 yards long, covers 20 acres, had a 115ft deep end and holds 66 million gallons of water.

Yeah.. those are sail boats. in the pool. How cool is that?! Its salt water that is pumped in from the ocean and filtered and cleaned (otherwise it might be impossible to keep clean with chlorine). I can't wait to go there. It isn't too far North from where we'll be staying. I hope the earthquake didn't do anything to this amazing pool, because i am looking forward to this!!

Chile Earthquake

2010-03-01T22:14:00.004-07:00

It was definitely a shock to turn on the TV Saturday morning and see Cisco's country torn apart. We got a call from his dad saying that most of the family in Chile was OK but they didn't know where Cisco's grandma was after the earthquake. What a blessing that they all turned out to be safe and none of their homes were ruined. It has been so sad watching the news and seeing pictures of Chile that Cisco recognizes. Bridges he has driven on, roads he remembers, and museums we were planning on going to have all taken a serious hit. It has definitely changed how our trip this April will turn out. We are still going and so excited, but it won't be quite the same Chile Cisco was hoping to show me. We are continuing to pray for his family there and the millions that are now without homes. We hope the death toll doesn't keep rising, it's already at 723. It could have been so much worse but it is still sad to hear that many people were killed and to think of them as someones brother, father, son, mother, daughter, or sister. Here are a few pictures of the earthquake I got from Liza's blog (Cisco's cousin with family still in Chile). She put up a post about her families experience with the earthquake that was a very real look into what it was like for people there. If you want to read it you can go here:
Chile Earthquake

I'm famous

2010-02-26T14:23:00.003-07:00

It's official. I'm famous. Call me a celebrity or a model, whatever floats your boat. I have been photographed by one of the most talented photographers I know and now she is giving away a session on GiveAwayToday, and I'm on the website!! (like a gazillion times haha). Check her out and enter to win a session here. I'm just kidding about being a model...but seriously :)

By the way, if I'm not famous, I certainly am related to half the people on there that are! Like my adorable Triplet nephews and nieces (they are the favorite of the website by far) and my sister in law with her adorable dogs.

A BIG Step

2010-02-08T18:36:00.002-07:00

So I have posted before about how cheap I am. I have a hard time spending money. Last night me and Cisco took the leap and purchased plane tickets to Chile!! I am so excited. Not going to lie though, it was one of the scariest things i have ever done. I'm not sure why but spending that much money at once really got my heart rate going and i really got nervous. Cisco kept asking me, "are you scared?" and I always responded with "yup", but we finally went through with the purchase. We have been saving for this since we got married and have been trying to plan this trip to Chile for the past year but I have always chickened out and not been willing to take the plunge. I have never traveled internationally (not even to Canada or Mexico) which means that I will be needing a passport for the first time. After finals in April we are taking off to Chile for 2 weeks. That's in 2 1/2 months! And I don't even know Spanish yet. I am so excited though. Me and Cisco have never been on a plane together. We will get plenty of that this time since the flight is about 14 hours. I can't wait to go and although it was the most amount of money i have ever spent in one fail swoop, it was worth it.

Humanitarian Services

2010-01-22T15:25:00.001-07:00

I have worked for LDS Philanthropies for 2 years now and i must say that seeing the response the the Haiti earthquake has been really cool. Lots of people in my building have been recruited to help with the massive amounts of donations received. We received thousands of donations over the weekend and continue to receive more needed donations every day. It is really amazing to see people step up and help. Here is a link to the website if anyone is interested in donating. There are fliers up in my building talking about how many donations we have received just from social networks and people sharing this so i thought i would do my part. One person sharing this on facebook brought in hundreds of donations. Click on the website to share it in your own blog. My heart goes out to all those people in Haiti still waiting for help.

Humanitarian Services

Welcome Home

2010-01-15T18:29:00.002-07:00

Welcome home! We are finally settled into our apartment. We spent Christmas break painting the kitchen, and then the bedroom (on new years eve). Painting is always fun to transform a room but it was a little much when the paint we originally bought was WAY too blue. It looked like a baby room blue which is not what we were going for. Here are some updates of our new apartment. It feels like it took us FOREVER to get moved in, because it really did. We still have some random things hanging out in the garage but we'll get to it. Eventually.

The first blue

cute blue, for a kids room. Anyone need some blue paint? we've got about half a gallon left.

our kitchen

other half of our kitchen... with our couch.

hallway

small but cute bathroom.

love the purple accent wall

we couldn't fit a couch in the bedroom so we put a little wicker couch that used to be in my old bedroom. it works. we don't sit on it too much though.

our entertainment center. its been so fun transporting this so many times. but at least it looks good. the one thing i don't love, having to sit on our bed to watch TV. some people might love that but it's not supposed to be good for people with sleeping problems, which is me, so we will see how it goes.

These are a few of my favorite things

2010-01-05T20:02:00.003-07:00

Puzzles. I love doing puzzles. This one was 2000 pieces with almost 1000 of them blue sky, needless to say we gave up after we finished the building.

Watching Cisco and my dad setting up the train around the Christmas tree.

Cisco has been asking to put up the train for the past few years.

We painted our bedroom. I LOVE my purple wall. With light blue walls on the rest.

My husband. He makes me laugh every day.

And he makes me yummy food.

My first time seeing Cisco hold a baby, and change a babies diaper. (He is holding Alex i think)

Ruby sleeping on me. So cute. I love it. She is so precious!

Other things i love:
- Reading (I'm obsessed. Its bad. I start a book and the longest it takes me to finish it is about 3 days. I read almost 30 books this summer and my "to read" list is growing since I can't allow myself to read while in school)
- the triplets. I love my new nephews and sweet niece. They get cuter every time I see them.
- Lindsey Orton Photography I love her pictures (not just the ones of me). She is just talented.
- Ashley. My hair stylist. She works at Metropolitan Salon. I love when she cuts my hair... and it is a rare thing for me to really like a haircut
- Being finally moved into our apartment. There is still some random junk that we don't know what to do with but other than that we are done unpacking

Happy new year! Goals for 2010

Learn Spanish
Read lots more books
Keep our apartment cleaner
Monthly temple attendance
Figure out my health
Eat healthy
Work out (at all would be better than none)
Get good grades
Cook more for me and Cisco
Graduate
Cisco transferring to BYU
Mentally preparing to start a family

Winter Wonderland

2009-12-20T14:58:00.006-07:00

These posts are all random and out of order but that's OK. I'm just glad I don't have school work I'm supposed to be doing instead of blogging. Here are some fun winter wonderland pictures from our Park City trips this week. We got to go back up after finals and it was very fun and relaxing. Nicole and Casey came up and we watched Home Alone 1, played some Quiddler, and hit up the hot tubs. What a good night. Casey and Nicole were less fortunate the next morning to find their car towed (I could go off about how shady car towing is, really...how is it legal for them to take your car to a different location, leaving you stranded, and make you pay hundreds of dollars to get it back. I think it should be banned. Give a ticket, maybe even boot the car if the ticket isn't paid but don't steal the car!). Enough of that tangent, lets get to some pictures.

Remember how we drove up to Park City in a snow storm last weekend? This was what we woke up to on Sunday morning (last sunday). It had snowed almost 2 feet during the night!

At least it was pretty...from inside.

We started out the morning by sitting in front of the fire because it was so cold but I wanted to trap the heat in. yes, we made a fort. We love doing things we used to do as kids. It was very warm and toasty in there.

Then we went for a walk to get some lunch. Our feet were soaked through after 2 minutes. Glad we didn't need to sit down anywhere.

On our way home on Sunday afternoon. We decided to take Parleys Canyon and go to I-15 instead of Provo Canyon. Good call.

There was several inches of slush on the roads. So glad we were in the jeep.

We made it back safe, finished our finals and drove back up on Thursday night. This is our fun drive home through Provo Canyon on Saturday morning. It was like we were driving through the clouds. We couldn't see anything and the lake we were driving around was completely hidden. It was kinda fun though. All the trees looked like they were spray-painted white they were so perfectly white. Love this winter wonderland look, hate the cold.

On the right is the lake... it's really in there i promise.

The trees just looked so cool!

Thats it for our latest adventures. We got home and decided to decorate my parents basement for Christmas. We put up their old tree and covered it with whatever lights we could find. We will be moving into the apartment this week (not looking forward to haluing the big stuff from the garage to the apartment) but that will be good to feel like we have a place thats our own again. Oh and just a quick update on Cisco's ankle, it is helaing nicely. It is still quite a bit larger than his left ankle and hurts a little in the cold but he successfully played a game of soccer last week and came out without and injury so that was very happy. He misses soccer a lot. We are excited for Christmas and cant believe how soon it is. Guess we need to get some shopping done.

Barely Made it Through Alive

2009-12-20T14:47:00.003-07:00

Ok so I have posted a lot about how me and Cisco just seemed to struggle this semester. One night at the end of the semester we just laughed and started thinking of ways we could get out of doing our final projects and final tests. This is what we came up with:

I have this cough that keeps coming and going (turns out it was chronic bronchitis...random) anyways i kept taking my temperature and at one point was almost hoping I got the swine flu. Or at least that I could get my teachers to believe I might possibly have it so they wouldn't want me to come to class.

Now no need to worry. We never actually got to the point of wanting to slit our wrists but we did have the brilliant idea of making it look like he did and sending the picture to a teacher with a note that said "Francisco needs to be excused from school work the rest of the semester, he is going through some rough times." What do you think? Is the red pen on the ace bandage believable? A little?

Probably not but it sure gave us a good laugh and got us to keep going. Good news: we made it through finals and this semester. I'd like to say we passed with flying colors but that most likely isn't the case. Maybe if we get less than satisfactory grades we can still use these pictures and say "but i did my best, i was sick." Maybe? Ok maybe not. Its lovely the things we do to distract ourselves and waste time when we should be studying.

Barbershop Fun

2009-12-20T14:36:00.002-07:00

So a while ago (i have lost all sense of time so im not sure how long ago this was, a few weeks, a few months?) Casey, the wonderful and magnificent barber, came to cut Cisco's hair. It had gotten really long and was time for a trim... or a buzz. We decided to do a full-blown mo-hawk for fun knowing we would buzz the rest off later. It was fun for the few hours it lasted though. I was amazed at how much hair we cut off. It looked like a cat had shed all its fur on our laundry room floor. It was comforting to know we will have no problems with kids not having hair or Cisco going bald...ever. He'll probably have a full head of hair till the day he dies and I love it! I'm hoping our kids get a nice mixture of our hair. Mine is too fine and his is too thick. Our kids should be just right. I could write a whole blog post about how much I love Cisco's hair. It provides so much enjoyment! I like to pick through his hair to find super thick hairs and I have found some crazy ones (including red, blond, white, and black). Yes i said he has red hairs that head or hair. I'm calling it now, our kids will be born red-heads. I can just see it happening. No one will believe they are ours but we'll see what happens when we get to that stage in life.
Anyways,I forgot to get before and after pics so we only have the process here. Later that night I buzzed the rest of Cisco's head since we had church the next morning.

Some Reflecting During Finals

2009-12-14T00:16:00.003-07:00

Just a thought, it is now almost one in the morning and I am sitting here studying for finals. These are the finals I have this week:
- Stress Management
- Chronic Disease Prevention
- Exercise Physiology
- Humanities 201

So finals has made me much more stressed, that's a given. I am currently studying for stress management and have used zero stress management techniques. This has lead to feeling sick and exhausted, hm. I have also been studying for chronic disease prevention but i am almost positive that studying for this has flared up the many chronic diseases I already have. Exercise physiology, well lets just say that I never exercised before this class and despite my best intentions to change, this class has done nothing for me in that area. I still have no idea what my body is doing as I exercise (but who cares if I don't do it?). Humanities was great. Loved the class but I don't know that I'll ever bring up Dante or Odysseus in conversation.

As I am sitting here thinking about all of this it made me realize, even if i get good grades in this class I still feel like I failed the subject. Doesn't that seem backwards? Shouldn't it be that the grade doesn't matter as long as you learn and apply what you learn in life? Does anyone else feel like this? Just thinking that my college classes are kind of counterproductive. Maybe it's just the classes i happen to be taking (like how stress management was my MOST stressful class this year).

Sanctuary

2009-12-12T20:18:00.003-07:00

To put it simply, we have had a rough few weeks. We have basically been living at my parents house in my old bedroom because the environment in our old apartment was so bad (from the lovely landlord). It was only after we had this huge fiasco that everyone in our ward told us that this was typical of her and apparently no one was surprised with what we were going through. So after a long and stressful few weeks, we moved out today. We packed last night and our wonderful elders quorum showed up today and had us moved out in an hour! We are really going to miss that ward. It was our first family ward and we LOVED those people. There were so many fun personalities and characters in that ward that we really loved going to church with them. And just like the last 3 times we have switched wards, we finally made friends the week we were moving out.

After this craziness we seriously needed a break and my parents happened to be able to provide an escape. They had an extra week at their time share that was about to expire and let us take the week in Park City. WOW, what a relief. We have been here a few hours and i already have forgotten how stressed out we have been with this situation emotionally, physically, and financially (we are talkin lawyers and everything involved). Although it was quite the adventure getting up here in the blizzard, it was definitely worth the trip. We ate dinner and soaked in the environment, i took a hot bath in the gigantic jacuzzi tub, got some studying done in this super quiet environment, and am taking a break to blog. I wish we could stay up here the whole week but we will have to do some commuting since it is finals week. Its not really like we can miss those. Believe me, if it was just missing class or work i would have no problem being snowed in up here, finals however are another story. So here are some pictures of our little adventure so far:

This is Cisco driving and being very focused on the road. Why did he have to be so focussed?

maybe it had to do with the fact that we were driving in a blizzard.

This is on our way to Heber driving around the lake. We saw 7 (yes 7) cars that had slid off the road and crashed and were on tow trucks. There were several more cars who had stopped to help others only to find themselves stuck. These weren't all small cars either, they were trucks, and jeeps, and all sorts of cars that should have been just fine. Some of them had some serious damage. It was snowing so bad that the roads were covered in a good inch of slush and cars were spinning out trying to get up the ever-so-slight hill to park city. They all had their hazard lights on and were stopped in the middle of the freeway. It was bad. Luckily we decided to take the jeep and used 4-wheel drive the whole way up. It took us forever to find our way here because you couldn't see any of the road signs (they were all covered in snow) and our google directions werent the best. After who knows how long in the car averaging about 15 miles an hour we finally made it to our destination and this is what welcomed us...

A beautiful master bedroom with a huge tub (which is wide enough for several people or one VERY large person)

The living room. High ceilings, nice TV, huge windows and a very warm fireplace which i am currently in front of roasting my cold toes.

Exhausted and content.

Our little kitchen. all we brought was cereal and some snacks. We will bring more when we come back at the end of the week.

One very happy couple.

All I can say is I am grateful for how much our families have helped us out and grateful that we can finally have a chance to relax. Ward members are also amazing. It's a shame that we moved .8 miles away and are out of the ward boundaries (that's Utah for you though). All our stuff is sitting out in a very cold garage and is very lonely on a slightly wet tarp. It will remain there until the current renters move into their new apartment and then we get to move all that stuff down the stairs. Can't wait. Life is rough sometimes but it makes these moments oh so sweet.

p.s. the cherry on top of this very nice week is that i get to meet the triplets on Monday!!! They are coming for Christmas and I don't think any of us could as for a better present. (exclamation marks can't show how excited i really am). Fly safe Emily!

How is that possible?

2009-12-03T22:59:00.002-07:00

Finals are next week?
The semester is over?
Its December??
Christmas is in 22 days?

I feel like none of these things are possible. Or at least I was not aware they were happening so quickly. I am still trying to catch up for the semester and I only have a week to do it... yeah didn't see that one coming. I keep telling myself I am going to make it to my 10:00 class BOTH days a week at least once during the semester, oops i guess i ran out of time on that one too. I also told myself we would get Christmas shopping done early this year. The outlook is grim for that goal as well. Christmas is in 22 days and we don't even have Christmas decorations up (or an apartment to put them in). We are moving next weekend and I feel like somehow life is zooming past and I am completely unaware. I really feel like I am just getting the hang of the semester and ready to do good. oh wait, it's over now. Can someone please pause time while i get all my homework done and pack and do everything i need to do? That would be great thanks.

91 days

2009-11-25T14:36:00.002-07:00

That is the number of days we have lived in our apartment...and the verdict is.....we are moving. After a whole 3 1/2 months here we are done and ready to move. I wont go into details but our landlord is not the easiest person to live with, maybe even borderline crazy. Due to that, not having internet there, and some medical bills that our amazing insurance will NOT be covering, we have found ourselves moving into my parents basement apartment. We never thought we would come to this but we did the unthinkable and are kicking the current renters out (I feel so bad and Cisco does too since that is what happened to us a few months back). We will be moving out whenever the renters find a new place to live, but to be honest i wish we could move out this weekend. We are just done with our current living situation. We are definitely looking on the bright side though. Although moving into my parents basement apartment wasn't our ideal option, here are the things that will keep us happy:

-We will have a DISHWASHER!! that's enough reason.
-Internet (Its been sooo long)
-Cable (i actually havent missed TV very much. I am more of a movie person)
-A bathtub! hallelua i cant wait for warm baths when its snowing outside
-we will be able to control the temperature of our apartment.
-If I ever need to go grocery shopping, I just have to go upstairs! ha im kidding about this one, but im sure the time will come when i run up there to borrow some items.
-We will be getting a GREAT reduction in our monthly rent.
-We will only be moving .8 miles away from our current apartment

We already feel like we practically live there since we have to go over there every day to use the internet for school. We will see how it goes. Lets hope we aren't moving in the middle of a snowstorm or anything. We are also hoping we will be able to cram our stuff into that apartment (since it is about 1/3 the size of our past 2 places).
Bring on the boxes. I've got my packing tape in hand and I am ready to go. 1 1/2 years of marriage and we are already moving to our 4th apartment. We will be moving pro's.

Never again has come too soon

2009-11-19T14:48:00.002-07:00

You may remember a past post titled "Never Again" because i was so sick of dealing with the stress of moving. We moved into our current apartment on August 15th... and we are ready to move. Lots of reasons but we want to find something for a better price. Only problem is, that place doesn't exist! At least that's how it seems. I have found several great apartments but they are all in Alpine, Pleasant Grove, Spanish Fork, Mapleton, etc. If i am late to class when I live 7 min from campus i don't think a commute would be a good idea for me. I can't wait to graduate and move away from BYU housing :). By the way I am thinking graduation will come (***hopefully***) in December 2010. Not sure about Cisco. We are both ready to be done.
So as much as I hate moving, I hate apartment hunting even more and yet here we are again! So if you know of anything let us know. Oh wouldn't it be lovely if housing was cheap and nice? And included utilities and internet? Oh the dream.

Halloween....a little delayed

2009-11-14T00:35:00.006-07:00

Since we still don't have internet, my blog posts that include pictures are very spread apart. It takes to long to put these in order so here are our Halloween pictures. I must say i had a blast this Halloween. Cisco and Casey went to the Real Salt Lake game while I attempted to do homework (yeah right). I met Cisco at Thanksgiving Point and we went up to Luann and Brandon's to have dinner and carve pumpkins. We brought along the costumes Casey and Nicole had used before just in case we decided to dress up for anything. Dinner was amazing. Brandon made steaks for us all and tortellini pasta. We then got to carve pumpkins and it was Cisco's first ever pumpkin carving experience. His pumpkin was way pretty amazing for a first timer. We decided we all wanted to try on our Halloween costumes and ended up just having a funny photo shoot. We didn't go anywhere or do anything with our costumes, but at least we can say we dressed up! It was a fun night. Best Halloween i've had since i quit trick or treating I think.

Luann=witch, Bowie=bumblebee, Bentley=preppy dog, Brandon=Hillbilly

love that wig, and Cisco makes an impressive gangster.

Our pumpkins, Brandons, Luanns, mine, and Cisco's

One of my favorite pictures!

Like i said, Cisco's first pumpkin is pretty impressive right?

This is what Cisco went to work as. It is KC's costume from when he was maybe 10? 12? who knows but it was pretty funny. We arent even sure what the mask is supposed to be. People said he looked like the boy on Jumanji when he turns into a monkey.

I love the tail.

Flapper and gangster

Excited Cisco with his pumpkin

Look at that innocent face. so cute.

Bentley, the newest addition to the Roy family (LuAnn and Brandon's cute dog)

Well thats it for our very out of order pictures. The funniest part of the night was when Cisco and I got home there was a deer right by our front door (to our house) that scared us. We put out pumpkins up on a ledge and went to bed. The next morning on our way to church we were noticing that Cisco's pumpkin looked a little different. after some examination we noticed it was because the eye patch was missing. We also noticed a set of teeth mark that were wider than any raccoon or cat and realized the deer had come back and decided Cisco's expert pirate pumpkin looked like a tasty treat. Maybe he didn't like it because he didn't come back for more. I am so sad i never got a picture of it because it was really funny.

All dressed up

2009-10-29T17:21:00.006-06:00

Last week was BYU's homecoming and I have been wanting a reason to dress up fancy for a really long time. We decided to go to the homecoming dance and even got Casey and Nicole to join us. It was fun dressing up but all I can say is that although we enjoyed ourselves that night, it was NOT from the dance. There were 3 dances to choose from: casual, semiformal, and formal. We chose to go to the formal one just so we could dress up. It sounded fun too with its "live band" and carriage rides (which also sounded very cheesy). Luckily we went with not too high of expectations and not really taking ourselves seriously. We pulled some skirts out of the closet from high school dance days and were ready to go. We were all laughing really hard when we got there because people had gone ALL out for this (and they were all freshman). When i say all out, i mean full blown prom dresses, corsages, and hairdue's were all involved. The live band was a full jazz band so there was only jazz dancing and waltzing which none of know how to do. Half the people there also seemed to be on the balroom team so of course they were whirling and twirling all around the dance floor making us look even funnier. We attempted to dance to 2 songs and laughed in the process. The rest of the night we were very sneaky taking pictures of the people in all their glory. Here are some of our favorite's of the evening: (you really have to click on the pictures to see the dresses at their best)
(sorry if you know any of these people...but it was really funny)

Cisco and Casey eating dinner at Noodles & Company (yes we went there all dressed up. We got quite the looks)

Nicole and me

Nicole looks like she is really enjoying herself. Notice the full-blown prom gown behind her (which is what the picture is really of)

Again, they look like they are having a blast at this dance

Casey

One of our all time favorites. Long sleeves, to the floor, high neck, pearls around the neck and winding into the hair... I don't want to say it but it kind of looked like a polygamist dress.

My favorite picture. Nicole didn't even try to get Cisco and I fake dancing. If you will notice, this guy has a matching pink bowtie and vest under his tuxedo. Awesome dance moves as well.

This dress was the winner of the evening. Poofiest dress there and we LOVED the huge hair piece.

Nice hat, and renassaince-style dress.

Random armor.

Notice the corsage and fully curled and sprayed hair.

sprakly dress.

sparkly dress again. This one Nicole just went for and took as they walked away. Pretty funny.

After the dance we stopped at Casey's parents house and took the cheesiest fireplace pictures we could. I love that the christ picture is our background. All the pictures are on Casey's parents camera.

Cisco and I:tired and ready to sleep

lovely picture of Nicole

We really enjoyed ourselves but it wasn't the dance that provided the entertainment, it was the people. At least I can now say I have been to a BYU dance (I wasn't missing out on much). What a night.

Mummified?

2009-10-29T17:02:00.002-06:00

Halloween is THIS weekend and Cisco and I still have no idea what to be. We have no where to go and nothing to do so we don't really have a reason to dress up... but I want to dress up! We had so many ace bandages from Cisco's ankle fiasco that i thought maybe one of us could be a mummy. Lets just say it didn't work so well. This is how it all started...

A few weeks ago I was sitting in front of Cisco on the floor doing homework while he was massaging my neck. He said he had an idea and decided to wrap my neck in an ace bandage. It looked lovely. I just sat doing my homework as he had his fun making me look stupid.

After that I wanted to test my idea of Cisco being a mummy for Halloween. I tried wrapping it up but like i said, it didn't work so well. All of the bandages are different colors so it looked awful and we didn't have enough to cover him. Cisco was trying to instruct me how to wrap him best but neither of us knew what we were doing and it just ended up being really funny. Tears were streaming down my face I was laughing so hard. This is how we spend our "studying" time. So funny.

Days till Halloween and we still don't know what we are dressing up as. We have only had a few real ideas. Halloween is just not fun when you don't get to go trick or treating. We'll see what happens.

"Engament" pictures: Round 2

2009-10-26T15:59:00.006-06:00

So Saturday morning Cisco and I had fun helping Lindsey out and letting her take "engagement" photos of us. We had fun and the pictures turned out cute. Lindsey is our best friend so it was fun hanging out with her and laughing. She is so talented and I plan on using her as my photographer for life. She is especially amazing with all of her pictures of nature. I like to call them her national geographic photos. One day they will end up on the cover of some magazine or something and I can say, "I know her!!". Lindsey is also our favorite because she set me and Cisco up on our first blind date. You know those signs that people have in their house that say "all because two people fell in love"? Well we wanted to make one with this picture beneath it.

"All because of Lindsey Orton"

haha. It would definately need to be a very large picture hanging as soon as you walk in our door. What a fun friend she is. And amazingly talented with a camera (as you can see from her normal blog).

Our Life Lately: Pictures Galore

2009-10-04T16:53:00.007-06:00

These are completely out of order and very random but i just had to get all these pictures on. We have so many stories but they will have to get skipped. We like our apartment, school is a kiler this semester for both of us, and we are super busy all the time. We still don't have TV or internet in our apartment and I have discovered that i don't miss the TV but life in the 21st century is very difficult without internet. We are completely out of the loop when it comes to news and weather and movies coming out. We are still debating how to solve this problem. In the meantime here are some pictures from our lives lately.

This was Cisco's infection which is finally better after two prescriptions of some heavy duty antibiotics. His foot looks a lot better (although his skin is a little messed up). His skin is all wrinkly because it was swollen for so long and now all that skin is pealing
As of Thursday the crutches and scooter are gone and Cisco is supposed to walk around on his foot (with the boot he has). I don't have a picture of the scooter but it was a bitter sweet experience returning that thing. Cisco loved getting around classes so fast and weaving in and out of people.

Camille came into town last weekend and we had so much fun making stuff for the new babies. Camille, Nicole, and I went to breakfast on Friday and then spent until almost 5 making onsies and baby socks. We wanted to put all of the babies initials on the bottom of the socks but we had to get creative on how to paint the stencil. This was Camille's brilliant engineering. (this is Ruby's cute little sock. The other sock has a D for her middle name Dawn.)

Bouquet of tiny baby socks. So cute. I wish i could see the feet that will go inside of them!

We also made personalized onsies with iron-on letters. We put their names on the front and their middle names on the bums. The onsies were so small.

We also made these for all the babies to establish oldest to youngest. Oldest says "Doctors first pick." Since it was a C-section the oldest was established by the doctor reaching in and grabbing whoever he found first! For the middle child we put, "Big brother, Little brother." And for Ruby who will be the baby sister we put "saved the best for last." We had a lot of fun deciding what to put on these and had some good laughs. Some of our other idea's were "first place" "runner up", "Middle child syndrom", etc. We had some pretty funny ideas.

These were generic onsies that we made for the babies. Click on the picture to see them up close. They say, "voted cutest of the litter 2009", "They're with me", and one of my favorites "I survived a C-section and all I got was this onsie."

A few weeks ago we went to the storytelling festival. It was Laughing Night. Some stories were better than others but we all had some really good laughs. It was a fun night out. Me and Cisco went with my parents and Nicole and Casey.

We have also been going to the BYU football games. It has been quite the interesting experience since Cisco has been on crutches and a scooter. For the last game we asked them to sit in the wheelchair section which was fun because we had good seats. We bought tickets next to our friends for the season and haven't been able to sit by them for any of the games so far so that has been a bummer.

It was pretty funny when Cisco's foot was propped up on the llittle ledge in front of us and his foot slipped off. He came within an inch of hitting the ladies head sitting in front of us. That would have been really bad, and really funny.

Friday night we went up to Salt Lake to hang out with Cisco's mission buddies. We met up at the mission reunion but found the few people we wanted to see and went out to get food at Denny's. It was quite the night and my jaw hurt from laughing so hard. This is Jack Hattori and Jake Goeckeritz sharing a coke. We stayed at Denny's for over an hour just laughing and telling mission stories. It was me, Cisco, Jack Hattori, Jake Goeckeritz, Jess Phillips and his wife Stephanie, and Chase Harding and his wife Jessica (and their cute little girl).

We got to go to the Saturday afternoon session of conference and it was really fun. We met Cisco's old mission companion Mauricio Jaime and his wife Janelle up there and had a great time hanging out with them. Our seats were great and we were pretty close to where the prophet walks out. I did much better than last conference and didn't sleep through a single talk. I am pretty impressed with myself.

Me, Cisco, Mauricio, Janelle. It was a little windy so my bangs are sticking straight up.
This is one of the only pictures we have taken together in the past several months. I just wanted to put these pictures up of Cisco's dogs because they make me smile. This is Token. He loves to have anything in his mouth and will grab whatever is closest. I took these pictures when we were celebrating Cisco's dads birthday on Thursday.

Ashton is just hyper and requires constant attention.

Viewer Discretion advised: This blog post contains images that are, well... just gross.

2009-08-29T22:41:00.008-06:00

I am overdue for a follow up post on Cisco's ankle story. It is very hard to keep updated on the blog when you don't have the internet at your own house. I only get a chance to check my email and school stuff at work but I dont have time for stuff like blogging so i have gotten a little behind. It has been about 4 weeks since Cisco's lucky day and our fun trip to the ER. After our long summer day of camping and swimming, he got to go down to the Sand Dunes with some fellow Hooligans (their soccer team). His friend Brandon has some 4-wheelers so they went down to have some fun before the summer ended and school started again. This was going to be a weird night because I have never spent the night at any of our apartments alone and without TV or Internet I didn't know what I would do to keep myself from going crazy. Luckily I borrowed a new book to read and prepared myself for a night alone. Meanwhile...After 2 hours of riding and having a blast, Cisco and the others decided to head back to the campground because it was getting dark. Cisco thought he was on flat ground when he suddenly noticed there was a very steep hill in front of him. He tried to turn away from it but by the time he turned, his back wheels were already going down the hill... and they took him with. The 4-wheeler rolled with him on it. The others didn't see what happened but it didn't take them long to come when they saw the headlights of the 4-wheeler pointing straight up into the sky. Cisco thought he was fine and got up and walked a ways back the campsite where he decided he needed to lay down for a minute. He realized his chest was hurting really bad and thought that was the only thing wrong till someone pointed out that his ankle was the size of a softball. That was when they decided it was time to take him to the ER to get things checked out. This happened around 9 pm.
Around 10:30 i am sitting at home enjoying my book when I see a call coming from Casey (who was down at the sand dunes too). Casey tells me the weather was bad so they are on their way home... oh and that Cisco is hurt and they are taking him to the ER... but not to worry!! He only rolled a 4-wheeler but it was no big deal, he was fine. YEAH RIGHT. It is absolutely not possible not to worry when you find out your husband rolled a 4-wheeler and is on his way to the ER. It was very smart of Casey and Cisco to wait to call me till they were only about 15 minutes outside of Provo. Otherwise i would have been worrying for the entire 2 hour drive home.
My relaxing night home alone suddenly turns into a very panicking drive to the ER hoping and praying that Cisco isn't too badly damaged. I get to the ER and see his huge ankle and he is holding his chest. He had scratches on his face and he is covered in sand. He looks pretty beaten up and i am trying not to show how much i am freaking out. Despite how huge his ankle is (we thought for sure it was dislocated) Cisco says his chest hurts the worst and he was sure he had broken some ribs. We finally get into a room and the doctors check him out and order x-rays of the foot and CT scans of his chest to make sure he didn't do any damage to his spleen or liver. When all the results come back the ER doctor is absolutely shocked. She tells us she was positive the ankle was broken or dislocated but it was just a VERY SEVERE sprain. He had no broken ribs and no major internal damage. He had just hit his chest really hard and bruised the muscles. After we had covered everything in that hospital room with sand, we finally got to go home at 2 in the morning. We then had to drive to Walgreens to get his prescriptions for percocet and after that we had to make a stop at my parents house to pick up my old crutches (it was 3 am by this time). So our new home is NOT handicapped accessible. The driveway is extremely steep and then there are stairs up to a side walk then you walk on a stone path onto the uneven cement in front of our door. Cisco almost died a few times on this fun journey. His chest was still hurting the worst and crutches didn't help at all. We finally made it to bed at 4 am and by that time his entire foot looked huge. Here are the pictures from this exciting event in our lives.

The last pictures are a little out of date. His leg looks a lot better (the bruising is gone) but his foot is still swollen. On Memorial day we had to take yet another tip to the insta care to find out that Cisco now has an infection in his foot and is on major doses of antibiotics. The infection hurts worse than the sprain so that makes everything in life more fun. I still have lots of updates to post but this will have to do for now. I am at school and brought my computer just so i could finally post about cisco's ankle! Blog posts will have to be short and sweet from now on, otherwise i will never get a blog posted again. More to come!

PS I am absolutely ecstatic to be an aunt!!! Here is Emily and KC's latest adventure with their new triplets!!

To be continued...

2009-08-29T21:07:00.005-06:00

I am currently at my parents house using the internet to blog and i have SO MUCH to catch up on, so here come a few posts at a time. Here is what has happened since the last time i blogged:
-We packed
-We moved
-We unpacked
-We went camping
-We went swimming
-Cisco went to the sand dunes
-Cisco rolled his 4-wheeler
-We spent Saturday night in the ER
-I finished unpacking
-Cisco started school
-Cisco's ankle continued to get darker by the day

Since I have so much to catch up on you will be getting the compact version of all these stories as well as some very long slide shows with lots of pictures. Enjoy!

Moving went really smoothly because we had so much help. It was exhausting all the same but we had my parents and Cisco's parents and Casey and Nicole to help us so it went really fast and we got a lot unpacked on the first day which was a relief. The next week Cisco took Friday and Saturday off so we could pack everything we didn't get to do this summer into one weekend. I had only been to the pool once and Cisco didn't hadn't been all summer. We also planned a camping trip to go up to Payson Lakes. Friday after work we were doing a million things trying to get ready going grocery shopping, getting our tents and sleeping bags, and packing the car. We packed up the jeep and it was packed to the roof. We weren't expecting such a long drive but it ended up taking us over an hour to get up the canyon to Payson Lakes. Nicole, Cisco, and I went on this camping adventure and laughed really hard when we got all the way up the mountain to find out the camping site was full! Luckily there were some campsites farther up the mountain that were meant for groups but they had one open and let us stay there. It was a huge campsite for the 3 of us. We had at least 10 stalls for our one car and got to choose from multiple places to put our tent down. There were also three tables around the fire pit. We had a lot of fun and it was Cisco's first experience with tinfoil dinners. They were a huge hit and Cisco is now requesting them from the oven.
Saturday when we got back was extremely busy. Right after we got home Cisco went straight to play two back-to-back games of soccer (talk about exhausting) and then we all headed to the pool. Casey and Cisco only got to stay for an hour because they were heading down to the sand dunes for some fun 4-wheeling (you already know what happens there). So here are the pictures from the first part of our adventures and the exciting stories are still to come...

Buried Under Boxes

2009-08-14T13:19:00.004-06:00

Boxes are EVERYWHERE and i feel like this at times:We are almost all packed up and the big move is tomorrow. This has been a very tiring week for us. Cisco has had to work till 9 every night (including tonight) which left me in charge of packing. YAY! lukcily we don't have that much stuff but It is amazing how much junk i have sitting around that i have no idea what to do with. Some of it I cant throw away but I don't have anywhere to put it. Its random stuff like X-rays and wedding cards and all sorts of various items. I may be MIA from the blogging world for a little while. I cant post any pictures of the moving process since my camera cord is already packed and it may be a while before I get a chance to blog again. Although i am excited to move into our new apartment, we don't have the internet there and we havent figured out the cheapest way to get it yet. So until Im connected to the internet world again wish us luck! All the cupboards are empty and our apratment is in complete disarray. We will be sleeping on the floor and eating cereal for the next 2 days. I will try to get back to post some pictures soon. Packing isn't so bad....its the un-packing i am dreading more than anything else!

Never Again

2009-08-04T18:02:00.002-06:00

This weekend was such a roller coaster!! I have been SO STRESSED OUT apartment hunting and trying to find a place to live. I was not built for going through this. I get way too stressed out. I think I had a nervous breakdown at least 4 times since we found out we had to move 2 weeks ago. I went and looked at several apartments and all of them were falling apart and way more than we wanted to pay for a dump. Every time I got really excited when I thought I found the perfect apartment, I would leave work early to go see it and get there to find out it was not even close to a good place. The times it really was a good apartment, the apartment would be sold before I even had a chance to see it. Cisco has had to work every night for the past few weeks which meant I was on my own to find us a place to live. It also meant I would have to make a decision on my own if I found a place I liked. Every day of hunting was an emotional roller coaster. Here is how the process went,
We found out we were getting kicked out so naturally I cried. Emotional low.
I told Lindsey (who found us our current apartment) and she said one of her neighbors had a basement apartment (across the street and in our same ward) that might be available. My hope sky-rocketed. Emotional high.
Next day I found a perfect apartment and wanted to see it as soon as possible. By the time we were on our way the apartment had just been rented out 5 minutes before.
We were waiting to hear if the apartment across the street was really available. Waiting=emotionally unstable.
I went and saw several cookies apartments and took Casey with me to be Cisco's eye. All of the apartments were really crappy and really expensive. I was ready to give up. Emotional exhaustion.
We found out the apartment across the street wouldn't be available by august but we wanted it so bad we figured we would move in with my mom and dad for a few weeks. Not sure what that emotional state was.
I stopped really looking for apartments seriously because I was so sure we were going to get into that apartment across the street.
Saturday me and Cisco had a garage sale (thats another story) and afterwords i was brave and called our neighbor to find out when the apartment would be available. He told me the current tenants decided to stay until the end of the year. Emotional low.
Monday I was so stressed out I felt sick and stayed home from work. I was constantly apartment hunting, checking Craigslist, BYU housing, and KSL classified's every hour. I went to see 2 apartments that day and liked them both. I talked with both landlords for almost an hour. They both told me they wanted me to live there. One apartment had a great location but wasn't my favorite and definately had some down sides. The other was completely renovated and so cute but didn't have very much storage and was in South Provo. I had to go see both aparments by myself and was stressing all day about which apartment we should take and if we could afford either of them. Emotional chaos and confusion.
After Cisco got home at 9:15 I gave him a quick overview of both apartments and showed pictures. We decided we liked the apartment with the good location so i called the other landlord and told her we werent interested. I was then excited to call and get our apartment and finally have a place to live. When I made the call she dropped the news on me that she had just barely accepted a deposit from another couple. Complete emotional devastation.
The lady was very sad because she really wanted us to live there. She just had to run a background check on the couple and would call us the next day.
Cisco kept saying we needed to stay positive and that we would end up getting the apartment somehow. pretending to be emotionally ok.
Now we are up to speed to today, Tuesday August 4th. I looked for apartments all day and didn't find anything worth looking into. I was waiting for a phone call all day and when I got home from work at 4:30 and i still had no call, I had lost all hope. I was on the phone with my mom telling her how much I had wanted this lady to call back and tell us we somehow got the apartment. I got a call on the other line and it was the lady. Turns out through a series of fortunate events she told us we could have the apartment! Emotional relief.
The apartment is on Foothill Drive and not even a mile from my parents house which is funny but at least we are in a good area!
I am so glad this is done! now just comes the sucky part of moving and rearranging everything in our new home. We have to buy a fridge which is a down side but that is ok. We are really sad to be moving out of the ward. Most likely we will end up in the same ward we were in our first 4 months being married. Funny to go back. I am so glad the apartment hunting is over. I am so exhausted emotionally!! It was quite the ride. We are moving on the 15th so it will be a while before i post pictures of our new place. We'll see how it goes!

No Place Like Home

2009-07-23T18:00:00.003-06:00

Well there's no place like home... literally. Me and Cisco won't have a place to call home in a few weeks. We found out on Tuesday that we have 5 weeks to find a new place to live. Yikes! Due to some family issues, our landlords are letting their granddaughter move in after she gets married so we have be be out by the end of August (right when school starts). I cried when i found out because as many quirks as our apartment has, i love it. We have been completely spoiled and so lucky with our past apartments and there is nothing i hate more than apartment hunting. I have been apartment hunting and after 2 days i am ready to give up. We will find something but it wont be as cheap as we have now or as nice. Here are some of the things i will miss about our cute home:
Endless counter space in the bathroom
Huge living room and bedroom
Ground level (lots of windows)
Walk in closet
Potential to be very cute
Cable and Internet included
$500/month with everything included

Some of the things i dont love about our apartment but will still miss will be things like:
Carpet in the bathroom and kitchen
Our kitchen cabinets that are the same color as the carpet
The odd smells that sometimes come through the vent when the neighbors cook
All the blank walls (although i will miss that because i was planning on putting something on them eventually.)

Here is the post from when i finally had our apartment decorated with the pictures. It looks a little different but not a lot has changed since then. Our apartment.
Like I said, we have been spoiled with a great place to live and I dont want to leave. Everything is so expensive and we will be paying a lot more money for a lot less (smaller and older). We will survive. Hopefully we will find something good without having to go on the high end of our budget. If anyone has a place for us to live let us know!!

25

2009-07-20T17:37:00.004-06:00

Cisco has lived a quarter of a century. He has turned 25!! 25 is a big step because it means he can now rent cars, our car insurance should go down now (since he is so much more mature than he was the week before), and we could qualify for another tax credit next year. YAY! We celebrated Cisco's birthday all day long and didn't stop there. His birthday is July 7th so I liked to tell him the celebrations started on July 4th. I provided major fireworks and all. On the 7th he woke up to breakfast before he went off to work. I made a LOT of food for 2 people but it was delicious. I made german pancakes, hasbrowns, and bacon. He went to work for a few hours and when he came home he got to open his first present. Present #1 was new shin guard sleeves for soccer so it wasn't the most exciting present. We made some late lunch together and hung out. Then he got to open present #2 which was a Calle shirt I picked out at the soccer store. I loved this shirt but i was really worried he wouldn't like it. Thankfully he loved it and he gets lots of compliments on it when he wears it so i feel satisfied!At 6:30 we headed over to Nicole and Casey's house for a barbeque with some friends. It was good food and perfect weather! After the barbeque Cisco and the rest of the hooligans headed over to a nearby school field to play soccer. While the boys played soccer me, Erin, Nicole, and Sydney entertained ourselves by playing rumicube. It was great fun until the sprinklers turned on. We were pretty impressed with our quick reflexes though. Within 30 seconds we had everything on our blanket, wrapped up, and we were off the field before we even got wet. The boys kept playing despite the slight water addition. Nicole and I grabbed the ice cream cake and brought it to the field so we had something to eat when they were done and it was delicously rich. It was brownies on the bottom, carmel ice cream, a layer of fudge, topped with whipped cream. Nicole outdid herself. It was a delicious end to the evening. This was the cake with our special happy birthday candles. After 5 minutes of trying to light the candles with the wind blowing, Cisco ended up blowing out the one candle we got lit as we sang happy birthday in super-speed mode.

The cook and host of our birthday event.

The happy birthday boy after playing a good game of soccer.

Us at the end of a long birthday.

It was a great day. When we got home Cisco got to open his final present. Present #3 was Harry Potter movies 1-5. This was Cisco's favorite present and by the end of the week we had watched 3 out of the 5. We like Harry Potter in this family. (We also saw Harry Potter 6 the next week and loved it but why did they feel the need to change it from the book?? The book was already so good). Cisco is now 25!!! He still thinks he is the birthday boy even 2 weeks after his birthday and anytime he wants something he says ,"but i'm the birthday boy." I guess we are celebrating his birthday for a few months.

gowns, socks, and pain pills

2009-07-14T21:06:00.002-06:00

2 weeks after me and Cisco got married we had a little adventure when Cisco got a kidney stone. That was a fun way to start out married life. Our first Sunday back from our honeymoon was spent in the Emergency room at Orem Community Hospital. He was in so much pain he missed work for a week. He was throwing up from the Percocet and was usually in pain before he could take another pill. His boss from Bajio have him this ginger tea concoction (it was all in spanish so i had no idea what it was) and you were supposed to let it soak on your back over where the pain was. It really did help with the pain but that mean that every 5 hours i was boiling a pot of ginger tea and soaking it on his back for the next hour. It was quite the tedious process putting one hot towel on his back and switching it every 20 minutes, but i did it because it helped the pain. The most fun was when he would walke me up at 3 and 4 in the morning in pain so i would go start boiling the water. I was then up until 5 soaking Cisco's back while he dozed off. Again, this was 2 weeks after we got married. Not what either of us expected! Some nights i ended up sleeping on the floor because every movement i made would wake Cisco up and he would be in pain again. I would just sneak out of the bed and sleep on a mat we had without him knowing. We tried everything. We finally decided to try the whole coke and asparagus routine. It is all over the internet about helping to pass kidney stones. This was pretty grose. He had to drink 2 liters of coke over a few hours and then drink pureed asparagus. It was supposed to break up the kidney stone so he could pass it. He eventually passed a tiny stone and felt better and we were shocked that something so small was causing so much pain. We didn't know that a year later we would finally meet the real culprit.
A few months after the kidney stone incident Cisco starting having a little pain in his back. It felt like the start of another kidney stone so we got worried. The pain never intensified and the kidney stone never came so we moved on with life. This pain would come and go every few weeks or months for the next year. When the pain started coming every week Cisco went back to the doctor to find out what the deal was. They were sure it wasn't a kidney stone because of where the pain was. Then Cisco had blood in his urine and they were sure it was a kidney stone. After an x-ray they were pretty sure it was a kidney stone. Another urine test and they were sure it wasnt a kidney stone. Another x-ray and 2 CT scans later and they said "it is most likely a kidney stone but we aren't sure." We went to see a urologist who did another x-ray and scheduled surgery. Even after surgery was scheduled they weren't sure they were going to find a kidney stone when they went in!

Tuesday June 23, 2009 we went to the surgical center for Cisco's big surgery. They went in (catheter style...no need to expand there) and pulled the kidney stone out with a basket. After surgery I met Cisco in the recovery room where he was doing pretty good. He was so excited about his hospital socks (the ones with the little grips on the bottom) and kept asking me if he could keep them. That is when we got to see the VERY LARGE stone that has been hanging out in his ureter for the past year. Yes, it is most likely the same one. That stone has been forming for a long time and it most likely got stuck in one spot. It was weird that the pain wasn't constant but his body just adjusted and got used to the stone being there. He felt pain every once in a while when it moved.They gave him a couple pain pills.

Cisco before surgery.

Cisco smiling before surgery.

They say having kidney stones is like giving birth. This is either his 2nd or 3rd child....we aren't sure.Next to a pea.

It was quite interesting recovery. He was taking percocet every 4 hours but by Friday morning was finally feeling better.... until we went back to the urologist. Friday we had an appointment to get the stent removed (it was a tube they left in the ureter to keep it from collapsing). This procedure was a little graphic so i wont go into detail but he will definately be able to empathize with me when i am going through child birth. The doctor went up to get with a camera and a large metal clamp to pull the stent out. Cisco was squeezing my hands until they were purple and i thought i had lost my two small fingers. He was in worse pain after the procedure that he was after surgery. I had to go pick up a stronger prescription for Lortab and he had to take 2 every 4 hours to cope with the pain. He was fully recovered by Monday and is happy to be stone and pain free! Oh the adventures medical problems bring your. We like to joke that Cisco never had many medical problems till he started dating me. Then look what happened the second we got married. Oops.

"I thought the Rockies would be a little rockier than this..."

2009-06-19T23:23:00.006-06:00

Two weeks ago was my family vacation to Estes Park Colorado. It was so fun to be with everyone since we are never all together. We were all there except for Casey who was busy with his new raccoon friends in Boston. My entire life we have been taking trips to Colorado to visit my moms family and I always wondered where the Rocky Mountains of Colorado where. Estes park was my first experience with the mountains (besides driving through the mountains on the way home) and they really were amazing. We stayed in a fun cabin and had no cell phone service for the majority of the trip which wasn't all that bad. It was sprinkling and a little cool the entire weekend so we all wore the sweatshirts we brought everyday.

All of us at the Stanley Hotel

Bear Lake in the Rocky Mountain National Park. It was beautiful but most of us weren't really wearing hiking gear. I was in my purple flats and Camille and Emily were in flip flops.

On the arial tram. They said they stopped running the tram when winds were 40 miles an hour so we must have been at 39 miles an hour. I thought i was going to blow off the mountain.
Beautiful view. Kind of scary how high up we were.
The wind is holding Camille up. I don't think i have ever been in such strong wind.
Downtown Estes Park was a lot like Park City...with a more interesting variety of shops.

Sunday we drove down to my Aunt Caroline's house in Thornton for dinner with everyone. We also celebrated my grandpa's birthday since he turned 93 that week!! It was a lot of fun but the best part was the drive there. It was raining really hard and eventually it started to hale. I couldn't believe how loud it was. I got a call from Nicole who was in the car in front of us asking if i saw the funnel cloud. This was the coolest thing i have ever seen. Although it didn't really classify as a tornado, we like to think of it as our first experience being so close to a twister. This one next to us did touch down and looked a lot cooler in person. Apparently 5 or 6 tornados touched down in the surrounding area's that day. My cousins were kept at church for half an hour and one of their malls was damaged. That was one of my favorite parts of the trip.

It was Cisco's first time going to Colorado and I was really excited to show him all the places i had memories of. I didn't get to show him the mile long tunnel that we normally drive through because we drove there through Wyoming and he got to fly back since he had to be at work. It was a great trip though. To occupy myself on the long drive back i bought a book at Borders and finished it by the time we got home 8 hours later. Reading makes time fly!

By the way, when is summer coming? It was rainy in Provo before we left for Colorado, it rained the entire time we were there, it has rained almost every day since we have been back. Today was the first day I didn't need a sweater to keep me warm....and its June 19th!! I love the rain and it hasn't been bad since i've been inside working all day but i would like summer to come. sooner rather than later please!

Back Tracking

2009-06-10T19:04:00.004-06:00

So I have realized that waiting to write about what's going on is a lot harder than i remember! I can barely remember what we did for memorial day. Cisco was scheduled to work which was no fun but afterwords we went to my moms house for dinner. We had pasta salad and Philly cheese steak sandwiches. I have this obsession with pasta salads lately and crave them everyday. Im constantly searching the web for new pasta salad recipes even though i never end up making them. That's how it usually goes with new recipes i want to try. Anyways after dinner we had a badminton tournament which was a lot of fun. Here are some fun pictures of us in action and here is how the tournament went down:

Dad in action. Apparently after all these years he is still has all his badminton moves. He also made sure we played according to all the rules. who knew there were so many?

This is my favorite picture. My dad is demonstrating great form for the underhand serve while Cisco is demonstrating a different pose.

Erin was very into the game and took a few dives. This is her getting up from a very valiant leap for the birdie... and Nicole laughing at her.Cisco and I played against Nicole and Erin in the first round of games. Nicole & Erin won 2 out of the 3 games we played so they went on to play my dad and Cisco. Of course my dad is good and likes to take the skilled shots like spiking the birdie so him and Cisco were the winners of that round of games. It was a great memorial day!

The next morning i woke up and thought i had slept weird because my side hurt really bad. I told Cisco and showed him where it hurt and he said it was probably from badminton. I thought that was unlikely but when i reached up and made a swinging-my-racket-motion, i felt the pain in that exact spot. So i didn't sleep weird, i just played badminton harder than i probably should have and woke up very sore the next day! i don't know if i have ever been sore from badminton. I think that means i need to work out a little more. Maybe badminton is more rigerous than it used to be.

A little behind

2009-06-10T18:15:00.004-06:00

I guess i am a little behind with my blog posts but i feel like the few people who read my blog i see everyday and already know my stories! So here it goes. There may be a few posts at once!

A few weeks ago (May 16th) it was our one year anniversary!!! It feels like i can barely remember what life was like before we were married and at the same time i cant believe it has already been a year! We decided we wanted to get away but stay close so we found a bed and breakfast down in Cedar City. The place was called Henley Manor and was built for people to stay in for the Shakespearean festival. They ended up turning it into a bed and breakfast since the economy was slow. It said the rooms were Shakespearean themed which i thought would be a little crazy but after looking at the rooms we decided it just look like the decor in every other expensive home in Utah... so we decided it would be a good place to stay.

This was the room. It was a nice place to stay. It didn't quite compare to Johnson Mill where we stayed for our honeymoon but i don't think anything will every compare to that. We drove down Friday afternoon and went to dinner and got movies and just enjoyed the break from work. Saturday we decided to drive down to Las Vegas to do some shopping and eating. The drive down was only 2 1/2 hours so it wasn't too bad. I was so excited to go down to Vegas and spend all my birthday money until we got down there and i realized all Vegas has are tank tops and mini skirts. I did find a few things i loved but i found them all at Nordstrom which i could have just done here so that was pretty funny. Cisco found a bunch of new shirts which he desperately needed. We walked down the strip the another shopping mall and found a restaurant called Lombardi's. Cisco got this really yummy pizza and i got the seafood special which was so fancy and delicious. I took a picture of the food masterpiece.

That is 1/4 of a pineapple and it has been gutted and grilled with the pieced put back in. It has shrimp, mussels, and clams all over and is covered in a spicy apricot sauce. It was so good and exactly what i needed. After walking around on the strip in the 90 degree weather i wanted something light and not too heavy. It was fun to get something so new and different, After a few hours in Vegas we were exhausted (you can only handle so much of the Vegas strip). We walked what felt like a million blocks back to the car and headed back to Cedar City. We felt exhausted and like we were covered in a layer of dirt. Our hair smelled like smoke and our feet hurt from walking the strip. We got back to our room and joked that we needed a vacation from our vacation. It was a lot of fun but it wasn't the most relaxing! Vegas definitely wipes you out and after a few hours we were ready to be done. We rented a movie and enjoyed the night relaxing in bed watching a movie. It was a short trip but fun. We have been saving our vacation money so sometime in the future (hopefully sooner rather than later) we can make a trip out to Chile. We both have been dying to go and I want to see where Cisco grew up! I'm trying to learn some Spanish before we go but haven't gotten anywhere with that. I'll keep working at it and let you know when i'm fluent and talking as fast as Cisco (if that day every comes haha).

A Series of Unfortunate Events

2009-05-10T22:54:00.004-06:00

This story may be a little long and may not make a ton of sense (its hard to put into words) but it really was quite the day and i wish i had pictures of it. I wish i would have taken a picture of me two weeks ago when i was all wired up. I looked stunning and very fashionable. Two weeks ago I had to wear a Holter Monitor (heart monitor) for 24 hours and boy that was not the greatest. It wasn't for anything serious, my heart just feels like its doing some funny flips and jumps sometimes so the doctors wanted to see what it did as i went about my daily activities. I went to the health center in the morning to get it put on and i don't know what i was picturing but it definitely wasn't what they put on me. There were 5 huge electrodes that they stuck on me with wires coming out of all of them. All the wires fed into a not so tiny machine that i got to wear in a fanny pack around my waste :). Like i said, i was super fashionable. I had to tuck all the wires in various places and i probably looked like i had a bomb strapped to me at one point. I was wearing a shirt that had a scoop neck and the nurse stuck one of the large electrodes right on my sternum for the whole world to see. I laughed and realized i would have to go home to change into a shirt that covered my new accessory.
There were a few rules associated with wearing this monitor. I couldn't talk on my cell phone for 24 hours and i couldn't stand within 5 feet of a TV. Not talking on your cell phone is kind of a big deal when you don't own a land line and your cell phone is your only method of communication. That night i really needed to make a phone call and i had to drive clear up to my moms house to use her home phone! slightly inconvenient.
I just want you to keep that picture in mind of me, (a fanny pack with a heart monitor, wires sticking out various places, and not being able to talk on my phone) while i tell you my adventure of the day. You know when you see something unfortunate happen to someone and they look like a complete idiot and you can only pity them? That was me.
So two weeks ago it was Womens Conference on BYU Campus which means there were women EVERYWHERE. There was no parking so i had been riding my dads scooter to work. I hopped on the scooter, tucked all my wires in and headed to work at the Hinckley Building. I almost made it to work too! I was sitting at the light by the Marriott center waiting for the crowds of women to cross when all of a sudden i realize my scooter wasn't on anymore. The light was about to change and so i think "thats weird the scooter just died." I try to turn it on again and again but it isn't responding! that is when my heart sunk as i looked at the little circle in-between the handle bars. What do i see? This staring up at me.
I was dead out of gas. I knew i was running low and i had completely forgotten to fill up somewhere!! The light turns green and i am on a dead scooter. This is the part where all of those women watching me probably pitied me and laughed after i couldn't see them. I had to hop off the scooter and push it through the intersection across the street onto the sidewalk, with all of the cars turning following me thinking i am a lunatic. I couln't call anyone for help and even though i am not sure what anyone would have done, when you are in those situations you just need to call someone and tell them what just happened. I sat there for a few minutes deciding what to do (as hundreds of women walked around me and my scooter). The gas station was a block away and i knew i would have to push it down there. This is the part where i looked really ridiculous. There was a slight hill and i was going to use it to my advantage. I sat on the scooter, gave it a little push and coasted down the hill as far as i could go. Here are all these cars driving by watching a girl ride her scooter down the sidewalk. I made it about half of the block and that is when i had to get off and push the rest of the way. My favorite part was waiting at the crosswalk. There were two people waiting to cross along with me and my scooter. As soon as the light flashed for pedestrians to cross i pushed the scooter all the way across the street to the gas station and up to a pump. It then took me the next 10 minutes to figure out where the gas tank on the scooter even was! In the moment during this entire experience i was completely horrified and embarrassed but i cant help but laugh at how ridiculous i must have looked. Eventually i got gas in the scooter (i also had no clue how much to put in) and i rode the scooter back up to work. My heart was beating so fast from this little adventure and i was interested to see what showed up when the doctors read my results. I had to push a button every time my heart felt weird and write down what i was doing. this is what my journal looked like

10:50 Heart racing/pounding Scooter died
10:55 Heart racing/pounding Pushed scooter to gas station

I am sure the doctors were wondering what that was all about. If only they would have known i am sure it would have given them a good laugh.
Anyways, wearing the heart monitor wasn't that bad except for the itching! my skin itched under the electrodes so bad i wanted to cry a few times. when i went to get it taken off i couldn't stand still i was so excited to get it off and itch those spots for at least 5 minutes. You know the lines that accumulates around band aids from the sticky stuff? It took me a week to get that off because those electrodes were so sticky.
Well a week later i went to get my results from wearing it all 24 hours and i find out that their heart monitor hasn't been working lately and the machine ERASED all my results. That means those 24 hours of wearing it were all for nothing and that sometime in the future i get to do it all over again. If i do wear it again i will definitely avoid scooters.

FRANCUSCO

2009-05-05T19:42:00.002-06:00

So my dear sweet Cisco has had many funny nicknames throughout our dating/married life. Some of them have been Crisco, Frisco, Fernando (when we were very first dating), anyways you get the idea. Well Cisco got a new job at APX Alarm working in scheduling and it is so much better than where he was before. He came home with a new nick name though. They printed their new ID badges and I don't know who was in charge of making them but someone was careless enough to misspell his name so his ID badge says FRANCUSCO. I thought it was pretty funny and although they have told him they will get him a new ID, it has been 2 weeks and for 2 weeks he has been walking around as francusco.
This job came just in time! The place he was working at before was getting shadier by the minute and there was always some new problem. First they lowered commission payments, then they eliminated commission, then added it back, then half of his checks were just missing commission all together and he had to go to get it fixed. It was a hassle. They also changed from working with continuing education to selling something that no one knew anything about. He got offered a job at APX and was so glad to get out of there! He works in scheduling so he doesn't have to sell he just talks to technicians and customers who need someone to fix their alarm system. He is working close to 40 hours a week during the summer which means some long days where i don't get to see him till 9 at night but it is a good job. His schedule is different every day which is a little confusing but overall it is a good job and good pay so we are happy!

Rest in Peace

2009-05-02T12:47:00.002-06:00

It was two years ago yesterday that I had my gallbladder removed. Nicole and Casey made this beautiful shirt for me and I wish i still had it but i am sad to say that the washer destroyed it one letter at a time. It is weird to think that it was two years ago already. Just a week after i had my surgery (and was still recovering) I went on my second-first date with Cisco and that is when we started dating. I can't really say I have enjoyed life (at least the eating part of life) without a gallbladder and there isn't a day that i don't miss it dearly. Rest in peace gallbladder, you were good to me for 19 years.

A Real Birthday

2009-04-28T21:19:00.004-06:00

This year i celebrated my birthday with Real Salt Lake and it was a fabulous birthday. I woke up to a decorated living room. Cisco had hung purple streamers from the ceiling and put balloons all over. He woke up early to do this while I was sleeping and I had no idea. It was a fun surprise. Cisco knew birthdays were a big deal to me so this was fun to come out to.

I went to breakfast with Nicole, Erin, and Lindsey at the Blue Lemon Bistro. It is a new Bistro out in Alpine and they serve an all you can eat breakfast on Saturday mornings. It was so good! (a bit pricey but worth it). My favorite was the french toast and the yummy syrup that tasted like an apple-something syrup. Not sure how to describe it. They had french toast and pancakes, bacon and sausage, omlets, pasta salad, fruit, and all sorts of things. I ate a lot! I came home from breakfast and hung out and read my book for an hour or two which is exaclty what i wanted to do. I love reading. Around 4 me and Cisco got ready to go up to the new Nordstrom Rack in Sandy. I had been wanting to go there so Cisco decided to take me shopping. I found a million shoes i liked and wanted to buy but ended up leaving with two new shirts instead. We met LuAnn and Brandon up there and helped them pick out some stuff for their wedding. After an hour of shopping we decided to grab some food at a bakery in the parking lot and got bundled up for the soccer game. We had been deciding if we really wanted to go because it had snowed down in Provo before we left and had been raining all day. As much as i love soccer, sitting in the rain isn't my favorite way to watch a game. (thats what we did last time we went to a game).

It stopped rainging so we decided to go and I was so glad!!! It was such a fun game and one of the best I have ever been to. Real scored 6 (yes 6!!!) goals in the 2nd half of the game. My voice was bad after the game and my throat was so itchy from yelling. Real Salt Lake beat New England Revolution and won the game 6-0. What a fun birthday.
I just have to say that I miss birthdays when you are younger. I loved planning "what should i do for my birthday party this year?" and picking out what cake i wanted. I think my all time favorite cake was my cake that looked like a ladybug. My mom was so creative. Even when you are in High School everyone says happy birthday to you and sings to you and you feel like queen for a day. Birthdays are sort of less exciting as you get older. haha oh well. Although I didn't get to open any dolls or Barbie's I still enjoyed my birthday.
Oh and by the way this was my big 21!!!