Two things I HATE!

Lets start with #1 thing I hate. That would be hackers. Honestly....do you really have nothing better to do with your obvious computer skills? And lets get real for a second....do you think if I was stranded in London I would email people I haven't talked to for YEARS and ask them for money? Let's say I am crazy enough to do that, do you really think they are crazy enough to send it to you without talking to me or something. Do you not think I would call my husband and parents first to be taken care of. Aside from being totally unrealistic, it is a big pain in the ass. Yes, I said it and I mean it. They locked me out of my accounts, yahoo, gmail, and facebook and sent messages from all of them. Jim came home laughing about the email at 6:30am...but he wasn't thinking it was so funny at the end of the day. I had concerned friends give phone calls and text messages. And I had long lost friends offer to send me whatever I needed. Thank you to them. Here are a few (very few) funny moments of the day. When my sister emailed back and asked "where is Jim and why are you in London?" When I talked to her on the phone she said, "I was wondering why you didn't just ask mom and dad, I don't have $1300 dollars." Glad to know the limit of her love for me. haha. It made me laugh. Another friend, Alana emailed the hackers back and told them to go make their own money and quit trying to steal other peoples. I LOVE IT! I think I finally secured all my sites, but it still makes me nervous and I am locked out of facebook again....not sure why. It was such a diasaster. So be careful to all my friends cause now that they have your email address they will try to get you to give them more info so they can hack you. It will look legit, like from a bank, or yahoo or something, but don't give any info out. So sorry to all my friends!!!! PS. the phone number attached to my acccount was from Nigeria. WHAT?????
The next thing I hate is MICE...no sorry VOLES. They have destroyed my lawn. I see them running through my rock wall and through the tunnels in my lawn, as I type. That is right, I see them! Don't think we haven't tried to get rid of them, after I got a little crazy yelling about it to Jim.(Hey, I needed some action taken) I sent Jim on a 30 minute drive to get 2 farm cats. As soon as they got to our house they ran for the hills, not to be seen again. (although the cat food I have outside was gone this morning, so there is hope. Or the mice are eating it) Then Jim got some poison and put it in a few holes and rocks. He also raked our lawn, with mice running for the hills, to destroy their homes. But alas.....I still see voles running around our yard. And there are at least 5-10 dead ones in each of our window wells. Thank goodness for Jim, cause I can't deal with that. Please come back cats...I need you!
That is my rant, I am hoping next week will be better!

Thailand

Nagging works! I have been bugging Jim forever that we needed to go on a trip. So one day a few weeks ago he says, "What about Thailand?" I say sure. He booked the tickets the next day and we left the following Saturday. Cause that is how he rolls and I just take what I can get.
Yes, it is a LONG plane ride to the other side of the world. The culture is so different...they don't try to protect you from yourself. If you do something stupid, you can get in trouble. Glad we didn't have any problems with our stupidity....at least nothing that harmed us.
The weather was perfect. Sunny and 90's everyday. We started in Bangkok and did lots of touristy things. The drivers would always take you to lots of floating markets and jewlery stores, and pretty much any place where the owners gave them kick backs to bring tourists..
Here is us and our friends the Rowlans in our Tuk tuks, being carted around town to all the stores we didn't want to go to.
Here is Jim in front of Golden Buddah. Lots of temples over there, and lots of Buddah.

Here is the Grand Palace. To get in you have to be wearing long pants....if you weren't, you could borrow clothes. Don't we look sexy! Yes, those are elephant pants Jim is wearing. Sad but true, we didn't buy them.
We got to pet monkeys and have them sit on our lap. Then we watched their little monkey show. It was pretty funny. One of their tricks was supposed to be doing addition and subtraction....but lets just say they did not get the answers correct. They might want to reconsider having that in the show.



We fed elephants. I got slobbered on, which was discusting. We need to work on Jim's photography skills. He takes one and they are always when I look horrible. Seriously!


Then we went to a different place and got to ride the elephants. The driver got off and Jim drove the elephant a lot of the way. It was not comfortable for him at all, but he did great. Those Thai people are bendy and small.


We went to this zoo like place. They put on an elephant show and it was AMAZING! I mean, how do you even train an elephant to walk the tight rope and paint pictures. They also played soccer and I was totally in awe. You can also feed the giraffes and get your fingers eaten by monkeys and tigers. Totally different experience than at our zoos. Yeah that tiger wanted me for lunch.





Then it was to Phucket for relaxing. We did some snorkeling, swimming, Thai massages by the beach, and reading by the pool. It was fabulous.


And don't forget the highlight for the men.....feeding the wild monkeys on Phi Phi island. The monkeys loved food, especially cookies, chips, and pop. But I did see them hiss and chase people that were not doing what they wanted them to do. Our friend Stan was like a monkey whisperer. He had one eating stuff off the top of his head and was helping them drink water out of a bottle. Jim on the other hand was making the monkeys work for their food. He had them jumping or swinging upside down to get the food he had. There were so many monkeys. It was also interesting to see the hiarchy at work, first the men, then when they were done they left and the women could come, then last the little monkeys could come scavange for leftovers. The ocean was clear and warm and perfect.





Thailand was fabulous. Now.....where to think about going next?????????

Famous

Apparently when you live in a small town it is easier to become famous. Since moving to Logan I have been in the paper twice. Once as a school teacher, now as a pilates instructor.
One of my pilates clients took the pictures, she is talented. I teach her class at 6:45 in the morning....the night before the pictures were to be taken I get a text message from her. It read something like, "ummm, you might want to wear makeup to class tomorrow." Those that know me, know that I am simple and more natural. But I had to laugh about the warning, not to come looking like I normally do. So I tried my best, and it's all I can do. I only have so much to work with and I'm not that talented. The article didn't mention me, our pilates director was interviewed, but the pictures were all me.
This is my debut in the paper. Very exciting!
The close ups!
Christmas was good. So fun to spend time with my family. My little niece had to go to the hospital but she is doing better now. So relieved but still praying for her and her family. Other than that, my life is boring!
I wish everyone a Happy New Year!!!!!!

Crafty

It has been a while since I've blogged....because October has been a month of excitement and heart break all in one and although lots of people I know share inspiring stories of enduring, I just sit back and keep the faith in silence. At the same time being so thankful for friends and family that are there through it all...especially an amazing husband.
Plus, I usually use my blog to show off cute nieces and nephews and fun trips I am blessed to go on. But not today....today I am showing off my craftiness.
I tend to get excited/proud of myself when I have finished making cute cards, examples to follow. I think it's just the sense of accomplishment. I actually have a hard time giving them away sometimes.

So you can imagine my excitement after making fabric pumpkins with my friend Mindy. Mindy gets the Martha Stewart magazine and she let me crash her craft idea and make some too. Let's just say the instructions took up less than half a page...so we had to be creative for some of it but they turned out darling! I think we might make more....we also went to a craft fair and decided, why pay for crafts we can make ourselves...so maybe we will try something else next time. Not saying I could make them as fast or cute...but I can certainly give it a shot.
The green one was our practice pumpkin. Although it turned out pretty cute, I realized it wasn't stuffed enough. On the second attempt with the bigger orange pumpkin...I found the fabric wasn't the best, so it was challenging to get it closed tight enough. Pumpkins were almost thrown...but I took a breathe and persevered and I won in the woman vs. craft challenge. It was a lot of fun and I look forward to future craft adventures.

I may have a problem!!!

I can't stop eating the delicious peach salsa I made yesterday. My sister-in-law Holly brought me some peaches for my birthday and I used her recipe to make the salsa. It was my first salsa attempt and even though Jim, my sou chef, and I had some differences on how it should be done, it turned out really tasty. Today I took some to my teacher friends cause I was subbing and they loved it too. I ate a ton last night, it was basically my lunch today, and my after school snack. I think I need to walk away.
Here is the link to the salsa. http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Peach-Salsa-II/Detail.aspx. We changed it a bit. We didn't put in as much cumin, vinegar, jalapenos, or garlic and left out the pectin and last 3 1/2 cups of sugar.

Also, some special shout outs for other people that made my birthday special. My sister-in-law Suzanne took the September birthday people out to dinner. So Suzanne and Mike took two of their nieces and me to dinner to Texas Road House. It was fun and all 3 birthday girls took a turn on the birthday saddle. I love Texas Road House, it is delicious! She has some funny video on her blog, it's the Biker Diva blog in my friends list, check it out.

#1 birthday winner was my husband Jim. I told him I had bought my own birthday present, so I wasn't sure he was going to do anything. He got off work early, got me beautiful flowers and made dinner and baked me a pumpkin cake from scratch. He was sweating to get it all finished by the time I got home from teaching pilates. He had a problem getting the cake out of the pan, so half of it was in pieces but he tried his best to ice the rest and write Happy birthday on it. It wasn't the prettiest cake but it was delicious! He was so sweet and it meant so much that he tried so hard.
It was a great day! It's nice to be special for one day!

Green at last

So last year for my birthday I said all I wanted was to have my yard finished.
Yeah....that didn't happen. So as spring rolled around I start begging my husband for a yard so I can enjoy being outside in the summer. He promised we would have it in by Sept. That was not soon enough for me. Then, typical to building a house, the powers that be started suggesting that they would put the yard in, in June. June was too rainy....okay, July....NO. So they really started sounding like August was going to be the month. I think, great, just in time for my family to come. They worked on my dirt, weeds, rock wall, and sprinklers....but still only had dirt for my family.
Then, like from the heavens above, the sod showed up a few nights ago...so this is the picture I took because my dreams were about to come true.
Hallelujah, my husband was true to his promise and I did get my lawn before Sept. Yesterday I went from dirt pile to yard full of lush, green, grass. OK....maybe it will take awhile for it to be lush...the sod was a little dry, but it's grass. Hooray for grass! This is the finished product. Now I can have friends over for BBQs and other fun things. Now I can sit on my porch and enjoy the quiet peace while surrounded by grass. Now, I can stop bugging my husband! I'm sure he is thankful!

MY LOVE! MY LIFE!

This is dedicated to my husband, even though he scoffs as I write it! Tomorrow is our 2nd anniversary! It goes by so fast. So to celebrate he planned a weekend away in Park City. We drove through Salt Lake and ate at The Melting Pot, which was delicious! Then on to Park City to relax, and we did. We stayed at a great hotel on top of Park City, hiked in the morning, got massages, and read books for a while on the patio over looking all the ski hills, then did a little shopping, and ate dinner. It was a fabulous lazy day. But as cheesy as it is to say, everyday is great with Jim. Honestly, waiting for him to come in to my life was worth it. We have so much fun, but we also appreciate each other. I love being around him cause he is always positive. He has a great attitude about life, he works so hard, is honest and tries to be fair with everyone, he lets things go, he is good to me, he likes to travel, he is amazing, he is my best friend and my favorite person to be around!
Here are a few pictures of us the weekend before in New York with his sister, Heather and her husband Don. Also, in Boston for a soccer game, so we did a duck tour before....and I needed duck lips to do my duck call.

This is us at the beginning of July with his family on the Oregon Coast. It was chilly up there but a great time.
I love you and feel so lucky to have you in my life! Happy Anniversary!