Baby Shower

Today we had a baby shower at work for one of my co-workers.  I made a diaper cake for my gift and I think it turned out okay for my first.

Here is Wendy with all of her loot!  We had a great time eating and chatting and admiring all of the cute baby gifts.  Wendy is due to have a boy in the next couple of weeks.  I can't wait to meet him, I am sure he will be a cutie!

Audrey Laffan, Wendy Hennings, Judy Vetter, and Me.  Audrey and I work in the same department and I work closely with both Judy and Wendy.  I am so sad to leave them!

Tuesday Tell All - Hometown Favorites

With as much as I love Mesa, I still consider San Diego my hometown. These are my favorite places in San Diego to:

grab lunch: Pat & Oscars

They have the most delicious breadsticks that I have ever had and I love their salads. My favorite is the Lemon Chicken Greek Salad. Whenever we are in town this is someplace that we always stop by to eat at. Of course we always try to find a way to bring a bag of breadsticks home with us also!

go for Date night: Seaport Village

Lots of fun shops to explore right on the bay. It is so fun to walk around and look through the shops. There is also a restaurant that has a balcony that looks over the bay as well.

grab some creative goodies: Cool Scrapbook Stuff

Yes, that is the name of the store, and they really do have cool stuff.

keep the kids busy:

As I don't have kids I can't really say, but some of my favorites growing up were the San Diego Zoo, Balboa Park, Sea World, and of course the beach.

get wet: the beach

It doesn't matter which beach we go to, they are all my favorites. Of course it helps that my parents live 10 minutes from Torrey Pines. I love to lay on the beach and read a book. I was so sad to move away and try to go as often as we can when we visit.

buy a treat: Moo Time

This is on Coronado and is the best ice cream ever!

shop for fun: Carlsbad outlets

Crate and Barrel outlet, what else do you need?

get some fresh air: Balboa Park

It is so fun to walk around and see the different museums and in the spring the gardens are gorgeous.

splurge: Container Store

There is so much to splurge on when I am there but I love to shop at the Container Store. I can spend hours in there.

drive for a weekend away: Disneyland

This is always funny to me since most people go to San Diego for a weekend away, but we did always enjoy going up north to Anaheim to go to Disneyland. It really is one of the happiest places on earth!

Peppersauce

We decided to go camping this weekend with Todd and Emily and Steve and Amanda.  We drove down to Peppersauce and set up our tents:

Then we decided to build a fire and Steve helped us out with his Boy Scout skills.  Look how pretty:

  After a nice night of chatting around the campfire, and with only a few interruptions throughout the night, we had a nice rest.  In the morning Steve and Amanda made us delicious breakfast burritos at the crack of dawn.  Thanks guys!

Emily and Todd waking up by the fire:

Rick playing with fire.  It's a good thing he is a Junior Fire Marshall!

After breakfast we packed up and drove up to the cave.  We got our flashlights out and crawled right in.  Here we are waiting for our turn to go down the ladder to the water:

Christie and Rick

Emily and Todd

Amanda and Steve

At one point the boys all climbed up and popped out this hole for us to take a picture.  Of course my husband would be the one draping himself over the hole in the "ceiling" to give his wife a heart attack! 

We made it out!

Look how dirty we are!

Emily, Amanda, and Christie

Rick, Todd, and Steve

We had a lot of fun "adventuring" all over the cave.  We then went back to the campsite, devoured sub sandwiches that Emily and Todd brought us, then drove home for a much needed shower!  Thanks for a great time guys!

It's Official!

I know we already announced that Rick got accepted to dental school in Indiana, but we received the letter in the mail so now it is "official".  We will be moving to Indianapolis in the middle of June.  Thanks so much for all of the prayers, fasts, love and support!

Tuesday Tell All (One Day Late)

What makes you laugh?

It has been interesting the past couple of days to think about what makes me laugh. I mean I obviously laugh, but I had to stop and think about what makes me laugh. So here is what I discovered:

• I laugh with my husband. One of the things I love about Rick is his ability to make me laugh. I tend to be a more serious person and he is able to bring my "fun" side out. He is always able to see the “funny” side of a situation and helps to lighten up miserable situations. One of the funniest days of my life was when Rick had hand surgery. Rick under anesthesia is hilarious. During surgery he kept trying to hook up his nurse and the anesthesiologist. Let’s just say he entertained the whole surgery team. He was still “under the influence” as we were driving home and was cracking jokes the whole way. I have never laughed so hard my entire life.
• I tend to laugh at myself. I do silly things, many times without trying to, and I found it is just easier to laugh at myself. For example, I walk into walls. I’m not blind, I just think that I am usually not paying attention to where I am going and so somehow end up in a wall. I also sometimes say things without thinking and give my family more ammunition to tease me with. Their favorite is from when my mom and I were driving me up to BYU to attend school. Somewhere in the middle of Utah my mom was driving and I woke up from a nap. I looked out the window then turned to my mom and said, “Those look like ugly dogs.” My mom looked at me and said, “Those are sheep. Don’t you know what sheep look like?” Well apparently growing up in the city I didn’t have many opportunities to see sheep so I guess the answer is “no”. Needless to say I have yet to live this down even though it was seven years ago!
• I don’t find other’s embarrassment funny and sometimes make Rick change the channel on the TV if it is too awkward, but I do love the Office. Sometimes I cringe, but it is like a car wreck, you can’t look away. I love Jim’s antics and how un-PC Michael is. I am so glad this has started again.
• I love the try-outs for reality shows. I don’t like to watch the reality shows, but I laugh so hard at the “try-outs”. People tend to take themselves so seriously and have such unrealistic views of their talent and are so shocked when they don’t make it, that I have to laugh. Now I am sure there are some things about myself that I have an unrealistic view on, but I don’t go on national television to make a spectacle of myself. The most memorable one I remember was “Sex” (as he preferred to be called) on So You Think You Can Dance. I can still crack myself up thinking about his try-out.

These are just a few things that I came up with that make me laugh. If you have a moment let me know what makes you laugh.

Google Reader

I just thought I would share my new discovery: Google Reader. I'm sure you all know about it, but if you are like me and didn't, here you go. See the thing is I love when everyone updates their blogs ( not that I am so great at blogging myself) but I love reading about all you do. The only thing is I usually check these at work and I don't have time to run through all of the blogs that I like to stalk....so all of the sudden I hear about Google Reader (if you have Gmail it is listed up in the left hand corner as "Reader"). What you do is click on "Add subscription" and then copy and paste the link to the blog there. Once you have added all of the blogs that you stalk it will show you when someone has added a new post. That way you don't have to look at everyones blogs everyday. Also for those who may want to make it a little bit more, um...well "work friendly" I added Reader to my internet Google toolbar. The little icon turns green whenever there is something new. Neat, huh?

Tuesday Tell All

One of the reasons I am blogging is because I am horrible about writing in a journal. I heard about this blog called "Tuesday Tell All" they post the question the Friday before and you blog it on Tuesday. So hopefully this will help me record more. Today's question is:

For what activity would you want professional lessons?

As an adult I would love to have lessons to learn how to ballroom dance. I took a couple of classes when I went to BYU and I loved it. Rick and I tried to take a swing class together but the teachers wanted everyone to switch partners, of course there were a million more girls than guys, and the whole reason we signed up for the class was so we could dance together, so we dropped it. If we ever had the time or money I would love to take ballroom lessons with my hubby!

One of those days...

Seriously? Ok, I know I am crabby today, but it has turned into one of those days where EVERYTHING is driving me nuts.

To start with I woke up with a migraine today. I hate migraines! Unfortunately this is a result of the birth control I am taking, which I have to continue taking for health reasons, and so there is not really much I can do. Well unless I want to try to get pregnant which I really am not sure about (see previous post) so I continue taking the birth control; and wake up with migraines. This morning it was a bawl my eyes out as I get ready for work type of morning. I seriously considered taking the day off, like look at my phone and tried to remember my boss’ number type of considered it…except we are busy and I am taking Friday afternoon off so I dragged myself into work, albeit I was 15 minutes late, but I made it.

Now that I am here, yes I am typing this while at work (naughty, naughty, but not sure I care) I am wondering why I did this to myself. We are busy at work. The temperature has started rising here in sunny Arizona and so everyone and their mother and their bother and their dog is ordering air conditioning. Not that I can blame them, but I have never figured out why they wait until it is hot. So besides the fact that we are busy and my inbox keeps growing no matter how fast I work, we are also training two new people. One of which is wonderful. He works hard, tries to figure out what is going on by himself, and is doing a great job. The other is driving me nuts. I have a few personal pet peeves, which I understand are my personal issues, but she seems to do all of them, at once! She stands and looks over my shoulder as I work and then when I try to explain to her what I am doing she consistently cuts me off. This wouldn’t be so bad if she cut me off with some meaningful question about what it is that I am doing, but it is always a “right”, “I see”, “ok”. But she doesn’t see and ten minutes later I have to explain it again because she didn’t listen the first time. Which means that my inbox continues to keep growing.

I am also crabby about this whole “moving” thing. Don’t get me wrong, I am so proud of my husband that I could burst. I am so excited for him to move on with his education and I am thrilled that he has the chance to go to school so that he can have the career that he wants. I don’t understand why he wants to be a dentist since I do everything possible to avoid going to the dentist and my eyes tend to glaze over whenever he tells me something “interesting” that he has learned, but since this is what he wants that means I will do everything possible to help him achieve it. This includes moving to Indiana. Not that I have anything against Indiana, as I have never been there, but I can’t say I am looking forward to moving there. (They don't have a beach, at least Mesa is close enough that I can visit the beach!) Unfortunately, or fortunately, whichever way you want to look at it, everything keeps falling into place. The latest is that one of my co-workers is in Clarksville for training and met someone from the Indianapolis office who mentioned that they are looking for someone to fill the same position that I have here only for the Indianapolis office. She passed on my name and the Indianapolis office has now contacted me. I should be ecstatic, right? I hate looking for jobs, applying, and then trying to “sell” myself, but I can’t seem to generate any enthusiasm over this. Hmmm…anyone want to pack up my belongings, find an apartment and move across the country for me? I would really appreciate it!

The bright side of my day is that I got an email that a book I want to read is available for me to pick up from the Tempe Library. I can’t wait to get home from work to lie out in the sun and read.

Thanks for letting me vent!

Undecided

With Rick and I moving to Indiana we have many BIG and IMPORTANT decisions ahead of us. One of them has become the question for me.

Do I go back to school and get my masters?

As many of you know my dream is to continue my schooling all of the way up to a doctorate. (Personally I think Dr. and Dr. Farnsworth sounds way to irresistible to not go for it). Also I have continually felt like my education is incomplete. Fortunately the school Rick will be attending has a masters program that I can try to apply to.

“There are other reasons why it is important for our young women to receive a proper education. Education is more than vocational. Education should improve our minds, strengthen our bodies, heighten our cultural awareness and increase our spirituality. It should prepare us for greater service to the human family. Such an education will improve a woman’s ability to function as an informed and effective teacher of her sons and daughters, and as a worthy and wise counselor and companion to her husband. Some have observed that the mother’s vital teaching responsibility makes it even more important to have educated mothers than to have educated fathers” (Elder Oaks).

OR

Do I make babies?

Rick and I would both love to have children. I know Rick will make an amazing dad with the patience we will need if they are anything like the "Farnsworth Boys". I love the stories about the boys, but I was a much different child (I never had the need to become a Junior Fire Marshall)! We have been married long enough with plenty of "getting to know you" time that we would love to start our family.

"Motherhood is a holy calling, a sacred dedication for carrying out the Lord’s work, a consecration and devotion to the rearing and fostering, the nurturing of body, mind, and spirit of those who kept their first estate and who came to this earth for their second estate to learn and be tested and to work toward godhood" (Spencer W. Kimball).

So which do I (we) choose? Decisions, decisions!