Merry little merries

Oh Christmas goodies, how I love to make thee.....

In the clear

I guess I better update the blog, since the last time I wrote I was waiting to get an MRI.
Well you know what they say, no news is probably good news. And it was in my case. I called the doc's office just to make sure, and everything came back normal.

So now, now what? I guess I am supposed to start experimenting with medications to see if any of them will help "prevent" migraines. Ha. Yeah, have you ever heard of the side effects of Topamax or Depacote? UHH, No thanks.

But, on a better note, the doctor did recommend a natural supplement that I can take everyday that has shown to be effective in migraine prevention. That, and cutting out even more foods from the diet.....sausage, anything with MSG in it. Well, I guess that explains why I have lost 5 pounds already this month. Eh.


The next two weeks will be full of school bliss, yes I just said those two words in the same sentence, thanks to both my professors canceling class this week, and Thanksgiving is next week! And after that, only one more meeting of class, and the semester is officially over for us.
December here I come.


Also, I have a question for Kaytee, if she is still reading my blog....
You lived in the heart of Seattle way more than I did. For Christmas, I don't want to get my family "things", I want to spend time with them by going places with them.
What would you say are the top 5 places (minus the spaceneedle), to take them while I am home for Christmas break?
Thanks in advance for the input!

Take the bad with the good

The bad news is that I can no longer log into Blogger from work. I can't imagine why the state wouldn't want me updating my profiles on government time......


The good news is:
1. Only five, count em', 5 more class times before the END of this semester. Christmas break here we come.
2. I will get to be in Washington for what will be the LAST Christmas I will spend in Washington with my family as a single person for a whopping ten days. SO weird to say that.
3. Halloween is in three days, which means I get to dress up as something silly and not be a complete idiot for doing so.
4. This weekend is also my mom's birthday!
5. We are well on our way down the list of wedding plans, double woot!


The only other piece of slightly bad news..... I have more migraines right now that I can keep track of. My hope is that this MRI I am having next week may shed some light on what may be going on. Not that I want ANYTHING to be in the MRI, but, at least it will rule out possibilities, and I can look for a preventative treatment.


That's all for now, more updates to come after the Halloween, Sheriff and Bandit weekend, yeehah!

You know a man loves a woman when....

He sends her flowers just to say, "I love you".


And I love him too.

A shout out

Dear Sottero and Midgley,


I love you, and your dress is worth every penny.


Love,


Burks to be

Conversations with a stats teacher

A student from class says, "so on the code that we are supposed to use to make that graph, how do you do that?"

Teacher says, "Well I've already showed you how to do that, but I guess I will show you, again." (insert crinkled nose facial expression here)

Students in the class agree with each other that this was NEVER showed to us.

Another student from class says, "I tried to input the data like the book said, but it would not come out with an answer in the R program."

Teacher says, "Oh that's easy, it's because you can't put character data into R. You could have just used Excel and then imported the information."

Student says, "Well it might be easy for you, because you have done this before, but this is our first time using the R program."

Teacher says, "Well you just have to learn it as you go, but some of the stuff we didn't get to last class time, so we can go over it now."

Student says under their breath, "yeah, thanks for telling us that NOW one day before the assignment is due."

In session

I have been back in school for about 4 weeks now, which means I most likely won't be posting as much, thanks to the textbook reading and statistic assignments in a code based program that is nothing but awkward to use. I took my first quiz today, which I felt I did a little better on after busting through the first 15 questions and then realizing that there were only 3 short answers, yessss.


I am getting excited to see my bestest Amy Pepper and my mom, who are flying to Utah on October 2nd so that I can get my first experience of dressing shopping done! It will be a great girls weekend.


These are just a few pics of what has been going on the last couple of weekends. The Antelope Island Balloon and Kite Stampede was the first weekend in September, and since the drummer of the band I am singing in was the events coordinator, we got to play on Sunday. Chas' band played as the head liners which was cool too, except for the outrageous wind that picked up right at the end of the night.


Since we both had Monday off, we decided to take a little drive up to Bear Lake. I had never been up there before and wanted to see just how blue the water really was, and it was a gorgeous day, we even had a little picnic on the beach, so fun!


Last weekend, Chas and his band Cheatwood played up at the Spur in Park City, one of the top hot spots to play if you are a band in Utah. I posted a couple shots from the night.


Lastly, most of you know, but I finally got another car! As much as I loved the Honda and it has been so, so SO good to me over the last 7 years, she had a lot of miles and was starting to need a lot of work, so I had to put her down. I am very happy with my 2007 Mazda 3 purchase though and am glad I know people in the dealership industry.


Here's the pics from the last couple weekends...

getting back into it

Singing, that is. Chas and I took a little drive up to Wanship (ok it really took us over an hour because it was pretty much on top of a mountain) for a music festival at Big Canyon Ranch. It's kinda up there in the middle of nowhere, but still close enough to Park City that we stopped in for dinner on main street.

At first we had no idea where we were going to eat, because we know most places on main street in Park City are expensive. But, we got an excellent tip from the bartender of The Spur (a lovely cowboy-esque bar that Chas's band Cheatwood will be performing at in a couple of weekends) that during the off season, many of the restaurants run 2-for-1 deals on their dinner entrees. Well he was absolutely right, and we picked 350 Main Street Restaurant. Let me tell you, the coffee rubbed pork that I had was THE best birthday dinner I have had, ever. This piece of meat was tender, had amazing flavor, and came with tomato Bearnaise sauce, salted greens, mashed potatoes and carrots. Every bite was filled with flavor, if it wouldn't have been such a huge meal, I would have eaten two. And, since we got two meals for the price of one, Chas's wallet wasn't hurting too bad either. It was a very enjoyable weekend birthday meal, and I was so happy to be able to spend time with him for my birthday, but not on my birthday, heh.
Here are a few pictures from last Saturday....

I was getting very excited to sing. My cousin Eric even came up to see us play, how nice, and he took the best picture of me, right?

I like Chas and his facial expression in this one, he always gets a little crazy when he starts gettin really into what he is playing.
Not really sure what we were smiling about, maybe I said something that was actually funny while being nervous on stage, like always.
And a few of the birthday dinner, great action shot of the bite Chas got...
Can you see the tenderness oozing out of that pork? Can you smell the aroma? It is oh so heavenly.
So this weekend will be full of more singing, Saturday and Sunday. The Antelope Island Balloon Festival is this weekend, and both my band and Chas's band has been booked to play Sunday night. It sounds like it is a pretty big event, which means I will probably be getting nervous around 3pm to get ready to go on stage if that is the case. Either way it will be a great time and something new that neither one of us have ever done before. If you are in the area, and want to come check it out, do it! It only cost $10 per car (limit 8 per vehicle) to get in, and they will be having all kinds of festivities going on throughout the day.

And of course yay for a 4 day weekend!

Just a few

Last weekend Chas and I went up to the mountains of Wyoming to perform and celebrate with my old roommate Michelle at her wedding to Mr. Beau Miller. The weather was less than cooperative, but it didn't seem to put a damper on anyone's mood. We had a great time chatting it up with everyone around the campfire, and luckily the storm that rolled through on their wedding day didn't happen until after the ceremony and pictures. Here are just a few from the weekend.

Nicole Winters enjoying the fire, maybe a little too much.

It's a little fuzzy but it still works. :)

One thing about being so far away from civilization is that there is much more of nature to see. There were hummingbirds just flying around everywhere! I was waiting for some random animal to come out of the woods behind me at any second.

Just after the ceremony when the family started taking pictures. I thought this was so cute of Michelle's little niece holding her hands out for a hug, so cute!

Time for a poll

Now you get to interact with my blog, and I expect lots of feedback.

Time to do some wedding polls :) Come on, you know this is going to be fun.

I am starting to get some ideas for flowers and wedding cakes, and I need some feedback on what YOU like :0)

So, let me know which one of each you like the most, your help is greatly appreciated.

Flowers #1

Flowers #2

Flowers #3

Cake #1

Cake #2

Cake #3

Ready, vote!

Done ditty done

I am doing a little dance in my chair right now.

I turned in my last assignment for the summer semester, and that means I have a whole month of no reading, no assignments, and no papers.

So now, on my list of things to do in the next month.....

Take one of my bestests out for a birthday lunch.

Go see baby Jane for the first time, finally.

Attend Stacy Bair's baby shower. Oh boy, a bundle of joy is coming! Hee hee.

Check out Cheatwood at Roy Days

Clean, clean, clean my house.

Check out potential reception sites. There are three on my list that I have my wedding radar on: Davis Conference Center, Eccles Conference Center, and The Wight House

Hang out with my dad :) He is coming for a visit in a week for his birthday, yay!

Drive to Wyoming and sing for my old roomie Michelle's wedding

Attend Michelle's wedding reception in Utah

Bake my heart out

Run my bootie off

Put some new work out songs on the iPod, this is so needed

Sing at the Big Canyon Music Festival- more details on this coming soon!

Start looking for wedding decorations, fun fun! This is so exciting, he he

Purchase books for my fall classes, in enough time to get them before class starts this time

Celebrate my birthday, woot!

Hike Mount Ogden

Backpack in the Uintahs

I don't know if I am going to have enough to do during my break from school :)

These are special times

So here's our story....

Chas and I had planned to take a trip to Knoxville to visit his parents over 2 months before the 10 day vacation was to take place. In the process of planning, his mom suggested that we take a driving trip with them down to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. This is a great place for families , retirees, and golfers to hang out and soak up sun on the beach all day. It was very secluded and it was nice because you can ride bikes on the beach, catch crabs, and visit all the different ports around the small island. I was sold.

About three weeks before we left on the trip, Chas and I started reading questions from this book,

It was a great way to have meaningful conversations at the end of the day and just find ways to connect with each other. And no, we weren't reading the booking thinking that after 101 questions we would get engaged like clockwork (obviously, since we are engaged now, ha!)

So I took the little book along with me on our trip, only to realize that I left the book at Chas's parent's house in Knoxville and wouldn't have it during our stay on the island. No worries, I would just come up with my own intriguing questions to ask.

So I am sure by now you are wanting some pictures, so I will flavor the blog with a few.
This is the day we left Knoxville for the 7 hour drive to Hilton Head. Notice the fog around the camera.....it was so humid that day my lens fogged up when I opened my camera. Talk about a hair humidifier.

So, fast forward a little bit to the second night we are on the island. We had spent the morning hanging out on the beach, and Chas's parents treated us to a very exquisite dinner at a place called Red Fish. Best Mahi Mahi I have EVER had. Hands down.
Here we are on the way to dinner, hanging out in the back seat of the Audi.
After dinner we all visited one of the ports that had amazing ice cream and cheap sunglasses. Of course I bought a pair. Chas was acting himself, so I totally didn't expect anything.
I thought we were going to end the night with a bike ride on the beach, like we had done before. Little did I know, previously in the month he shopped online here and found the perfect ring for me. It was exactly what I had hoped for.


So, back to the book. Since we didn't have the questions from the book to ask each other, I had decided the night before to come up with a random question on my own. I thought I was getting pretty good at it. Well, Chas decided to run with that idea while taking a stroll on the beach after our lovely little bike ride up the shoreline. While getting ready to walk back from the beach, he told me that he kind of had a question for me that he had been thinking about.



No sooner had I turned around and saw him pull something out of his pocket was my heart beating profusely out of my chest as I managed to get an "oh honey" out of my mouth. He was knee down in the water, holding that little black box. This was it. I couldn't believe it. THIS was it. On the beach, in the moonlight. How could the moment be more perfect. He said he screwed up the words when he asked me. I was too awe-struck to even remember. All I remember was jumping up and down, crying like a baby, and saying yes while I held his face in my hands. Yes, of course I will marry you.

And just to give you a scenic picture of where we were that magic filled night, here is a day picture of the beach where Chas proposed. It was nice at night because there were hardly any people out at all, probably since it was totally dark and we were under the moonlight as our only means of lighting. Well, except for the flashlight he brought so he made sure I could see the ring before saying yes.
We spent about 5 days total at the island, and before heading back to Knoxville, TN, we took a small detour to Savannah GA (yes we stopped for fresh peaches on the side of the road. Delicious). There is a restaurant there called A Lady and Two Sons. We didn't eat there, but we did get to take some pictures with famous TV people. Like.....

Paula Dean! Ok just kidding, it's only a cardboard cut out. But, I did get to meet her son Brian, for real.

Once we got back to Tennessee, Chas was determined to show me the ways of the southerners by taking me to Dollywood, the Dolly Parton/cowboy theme park of Tennessee. It really was a lot of fun, here is a picture of us on one of the rides with his sister Andrea and fearless niece Gracie Kate.

We ate lunch at the Chicken House, only to be serenaded by the "chicken lady" who made Chas do the chicken dance, it was the best part of visiting Dollywood by far.
This year we continued the tradition of running the Pilot moonlight 5K by the University of Tennessee. The only difference this year was that it was better because Chas's sister decided to join us. And we all finished!

We spent 4th of July morning up in the Smokies at a park that has camping and picnic sites with Chas's family and his great Aunt Sue. What a sweet lady she is, and even for being in her 80's she is still getting around like she was 60. We had a great time, and it definitely was hard to come back to Utah after the chain of events that took place on our vacation adventure. But the nice thing about being home and back in our own world is that we are starting to envision what life will be like togeher, for the rest of our lives.

When you vacation for ten days

You get a little behind on things, like homework and blog postings. I know I promised pictures from my trip with Chas to Tennessee and S. Carolina. Most of you have probably seen them on facebook anyway, but I will post some on here soon, like this weekend.

For now, I will leave you with a picture of my favorite souvenir from our trip :)

I was wrong

It got better.

SO much better.

Details when we get home. :)

Dollyworld here I come

The assignments are done, turned in.


The bags are packed, almost.


I have a little tan, not enough.


I will be in Tennessee tomorrow, with my fabulous boyfriend.


I will be in South Carolina Saturday, with my fabulous boyfriend and his family.




It can't get much better than that.

It's a party

A surprise pary that is. Check out the video here of when we walked into Rooster's for Chas's 30 birthday party, set up by yours truly. There was about 45 people there, it was an awesome turn out. And he was completely surprised, he had no idea, he just about fell over.

In other news, I will be heading to Seattle this weekend on Thursday for a wedding of my brother's best friend Jeremy and his fiance Sherah. Jeremy and Travis have known each other and been best friends since 7th grade....so that's about 17 years. Crazy. Jeremy is like a brother to me, of course I couldn't miss his wedding.

After that, Chas and I will be heading to Tennesse and South Carolina for 9 days for a summer adventure. A much needed vacation for this school crazy girl. I can't wait.

Time....

is not on my side right now. Boo. At least I am getting time and a half at work for overtime, the state hardly ever approves overtime. But we need it, in a bad bad way.
School is kicking my butt, due to trying to get the assignments done which will be due during the 9 days that Chas and I will be in Tennessee/South Carolina at the end of the month.

For now, a picture of a lifetime memorable moment.

I surprised Chas for his 30th birthday, the turnout was great. He was so surprised, he was completely speechless for about two minutes. The video should be coming soon.

In the meantime, here's the video of when I surprised my mom for her 50th last year, in case you haven't seen it yet. I must be good at the surprise party deal. I am two for two.

Just a few things

Well the last couple weekends since school has been out have been pretty jam packed, so I will just post a few pics of some of the happenings that have been going on around Ogden during April and May.

This is a wedding reception I sang at for Geoff and Cassi Cash. It was a lot of fun getting to sing some Diana K., Nat King Cole, Frankie, and some others. In fact, the guys liked it so much that we are going to be performing at Rovali's in Layton this Friday at 6:30! So if you are in town, make a reservation and come check us out!

This was at the Good Times Saloon, kind of a ghetto place I know, but Chas' band Cheatwood performed there so of course a few of us came out and supported.

This was the annual bonfire at Chad's house, the pictures were in night time setting so they are in that kind of blurry feel, but kind of cool none the less.

We attended Allison Wynn's wedding reception...wait, we can't really call her that anymore now that she is married. Bummer. But, she will always be Wynn to us :)

I went up to Logan for a day to USU to meet with some of my professors for my Masters and get a final project set up for my last year of school. Crazy to think that this time next year I will be one semester away from graduating with a Masters...but SO cool. It was a beautiful day up there on Monday so I couldn't resist taking a picture of the mountains.

This was up at Snowbird this weekend with one of my favorite co-workers Trudi. We attended a Troubled Youth Conference, and it was really informational and very cool to spend two days up at Snowbird Resort since I had never been there before. The mountains were absolutely amazing with the view outside my room, and I even took an evening run up, yes up, Little Cottonwood Canyon. Rest assured I didn't last long and my legs were burning like crazy after, but it was nice to get out and enjoy the mountain after an entire day of being indoors.

So those were just some of the happenings that have been going on the last couple weeks. Summer semester starts up tomorrow, I will say that I am very thankful that our program has been designed to have only online classes during the summer. This means five hours of class time that I won't have and can hopefully take more time during the week to catch up on readings and still have somewhat of a social life on the weekends.

When I fall in love

It will be forever.

Life is crazy sometimes. Wonderful, and crazy.

There is a peace in knowing that events in your life can only be explained by the one and only God of all creation.

Sometimes you know deep down you have something good, you just don't always know how to show it in the right way.
But God is a gracious God. And, he is also a God of second chances.

I am glad we got a second chance.

Me likey...

The music player.

When you have facebook

It seems that the more I use Facebook, the less I use blogger. Mostly because what I do on here, I can usually do on there. And, most of the people who actaully read my blog (at least I think people still read it...) are on facebook as well. I post pictures there, so, if you want to check them out, the last two weekends worth are on there. If you aren't a Facebook-er, well then I guess you will just have to deal with an update without pictures this time, sorry.

My brother came down two weekends ago and we spent most of our time on the mountain. He turned 30 in February and had quite the turn of events in his life during that time, so we decided to wait a couple weeks for him to come down and spend some time here snowboarding for his actual birthday present. Because he is currently not working (thanks to lay-offs, oh so fun right now), it was a great time for him to be able to come down and get away. He also had just a few weeks previously found out that he was going to be a dad, but, that also has changed. The girl that he was with ended up losing the baby, so for now he is just trying to figure out what he is going to do now that he is not working and can possibly look into going back to school, maybe for something in math/teaching.
But his time here was really fun, we ate a LOT of sushi, saw Slumdog Millionaire (which I enjoyed though some of the parts were kind of gruesome), hung out with some family, went to Wolf and Brighton, the Wine Cellar, and just overall hung out and caught up on life. The day at Wolf was a lot more productive for me compared to Brighton, I was an idiot and tried to use different boots with the board that I was borrowing, and it didn't work out so well. Because the rented boots were smaller, they wouldn't fit right into the bindings, and I had zero control over my board. I ended up getting only one run in because it took me soooo long to get down the mountain! But, I had a nice little nap in the car while my brother and my friend Ryan took a couple more runs after lunch. It was a great day for boarding and I am just glad that Travis got to have a good time while he was here.

Since Travis was here over Spring break, I really didn't have much to do for school, which was great. Then one of my teachers decided to give us a mid-term and tell us that we had five days to get it done, on top of also starting to write a 20 page research paper and complete 2 15-20 slide powerpoint presentations. Fun. We have just under a month left of school, and though I have really enjoyed my classes this year, I am ready for another break. I think the coolest thing I have done for my classes so far is the parenting case study. It was cool to actually see a parent impliment some of the parenting suggestions you give them and actually see them work. This is why I love what I do :)

Last weekend was the Women's Ministry Gathering Place at church, which Amy Smith spoke at (Mac Smith's wife, who is in charge of Intervarsity at Weber). I was asked to sing which was awesome because the two songs that I eneded up doing (Grace and Still Love You, originals from last year) fit really well with what she spoke on. God is awesome that way!

I went on a hike up Waterfall Canyon on Saturday due to the amazingly nice weather we had for about a day. It seems that I always forget, even though I have done it at least once a year for the past three years, that climbing the canyon does get difficult in some spots.....especially when there is still snow and you end up sliding around everywhere. But it was really nice getting outside and enjoying the weather while it lasted, since I am now looking out the window watching it snow. Nice.

So that is my update for now. I am really enjoying my new job working with youth and definitely looking forward to getting into it even more when we start up the Summer Youth Employment Program coming up shortly!

And then there was this thing at the end

Updates, schmupdates.
I really do like them, I just don't get around to doing them as much as I would like.
But here are a few for now. (Thanks to Melissa I am now hooked to lists....they are just so much more easy to read)

1. I started a new position at work yesterday. I am still in the same office, I am just doing something a little different now. Instead of working with people that are on state assistance, I will be working with youth, who are in school, or trying to get into an occupational program. Essentially they will be looking to get state supported training funds to be able to get more education so that they can, hopefully, find a better job.

2. Since we are on the work topic, let's just roll with that. The Department of Workforce announced last week that they are closing, yes CLOSING, one of the state offices. Wow. This created quite a stir in our office, since just days before the news did a segment on "how everyone except DWS was making layoffs." Well, so much for correct news. It will be the Roy office, and they expect to have it closed by November 1st. Which means, all the people that go to that office will either come to Ogden or Clearfield. Since my office (Ogden) is currently the busiest office in the state, it's going to be interesting to see how they are going to fit that many more people into our already crowded lobby.

3. I am very, very, very thankful for my job. No, it's not the job that I would like to do for the rest of my life, that's why I am going to school. But it is a steady job and it is helping me get a higher education, so, thanks DWS.

4. I am loving school, learning tons, and losing lots of sleep. One of my professors decided that it would be fun to read 12 research articles in one week this last week. But I love everything that I am learning about and I know that I am using it now and will be using it even more when I am done and hopefully find my ideal job, which is working as an adoption counselor.

5. Is the building where Posh and now Bleach Grafitti (soon to be no more) sesriously cursed? I mean really.....that salon has had more turmoil in the last 2 years than most places I go.

6. I am officially addicted to Rooster's wings. I am pretty sure I have eaten them once a week for the last 4 weeks. And I still crave them.

7. If you are going to talk smack to Shquille O'neal, expect that you are going to be humiliated with a through the legs pass and a dunk to shove it in your face. It's watching these kinds of things that make me wish sometimes that I had cable. But then again, how would I ever get all that reading done?......

8. Though I am losing a roommate soon, I am in no way losing a friend.I love you very much and I am very proud of you.

9. My goal this year (I really don't want to call it a resolution) is to venture out and get to know my neighbors more. Especially the cute little old German couple that lives at the end of our condos. And help them as much as possible.

10. I am going to be an aunt. uhhhh, what?

Cancer free......the way to be

Our family got awesome news over this weekend.

My cousin Eric, the one I posted about a few months ago about having Mixed Cell Hodgkins Lymphoma, had a PET scan done. And he is currently cancer free!!

Woot!

This is a huge praise and we are so excited to know that the cancer is currently considered in remission.

The twins are very excited to know that their brother is doing so well, and he should be back to work soon.

God is good!

When life gets a little crazy...

That's a good indication that you just need to be a little silly.
Insert personal photo sesssion. You just gotta, you know.

I look normal enough right?
riiiiight????.......
A little suspicion brewing.
Insert scary music here....

oh yeah baby that's right! Life is so surprising sometimes I just can't help it!
Ok ok, back to being normal....
He he, you really thought I could do it, heh?
I try to look smart by reading textbooks for fun.
But then I get soooo bored sometimes when I can't understand half the words.
And then my brain starts to hurt.
I then I just want to lie down and take a nap.
Ok no more bookwork.
Seriously, don't make me.
Did I just eat something sour?
I don't know who I was looking at, but there was no one in the room......
And don't forget the kiss goodbye! :)