Winning Streak

So this last weekend proved good for me...

My good friend, Tera, that used to work with me before she ran off and had twins, invited me and Ryan over Friday night so I could play with her and her Bunco group (Ryan hung out with her husband, Jeff, and had fun of his own by going out with Jeff and buying a really expensive video game without talking to me first ;). It was her turn to host Bunco night, so she thought she could invite me :) I've never played Bunco before, but heard it was a lot of fun. All these women seem to get addicted to their Bunco groups. I figured why not give it a try? It's a dice game, sorta like Yahtzee, where you each take turns rolling dice and you get points if you roll the right number (this is a very condensed description :) Anyways, about 12 women showed up (all married, and most with children)...and Tera, I must add, was a gracious host and supplied dinner for everyone (yummy Chicken Enchiladas) and homemade guacamole and bean dip...YUM! The first round of playing I had NO idea what was happening. I trusted my teammate to keep track if I was supposed to keep rolling or not, and if I got points :) Finally, after a few rounds, I quickly caught on (it's quite easy, but VERY fun...it also has to do with the sociality of it all, that makes it so enjoyable). And guess what???!!! I WON! That's right...I had the most wins at the end of the night (see attached proof) and as the winner, I got this lovely crystal bowl from Tera! WOOHOO!

I loved the Bunco group idea so much, that I hope when I move to Idaho I either get a group started on my own, or find a group to join! It's so much fun to get together with a group of friends and play games!

ALSO, the other big win in my life....last night, Ryan and I went bowling down at Apache Lanes for our Family Home Evening together. Generally, Ryan and I both suck at bowling. It's not our best sport. Our night bowling is usually spent down the "Walk of Shame" (you know, that really embarrassed/defeated walk back to your seat when you roll gutter ball after gutter ball, and you have to pass all of your friends? That's the Walk of Shame). We decided to play 3 games together. The first two games stayed true to who we are...and that sure ain't bowlers! I broke 100 on the second game, and Ryan came up at 60. Well, something must have changed in the air, cause on the 3rd game, miracles started happening. Yes. Miracles. I'm up first....and I start off with a BANG! It was a STRIKE! Then my second bowl....another STRIKE! WHAT IS GOING ON??? Third bowl....you guessed it....A TURKEY! STRIKE! Amazing! Of course by the 4th bowl, I had to take a break, and didn't get the strike...5th bowl...STRIKE! This went on TWO MORE TIMES! I got 6 strikes total! AND a spare! 7 out of 10 aint bad folks! I had already hit 100 points on my 4th frame, and by the end of the game I got a 186! Holy cow...that's nearly 200! Ryan was in utter disbelief (as was I). I kicked everyone's butt that was playing around us...it was awesome :) I think Ryan being the man, took a hit to his ego a little bit, and the Walk of Shame seemed a little more painful for him in my glory...but he was a good sport as we left the building and he told me how good I did and that he was proud of me :) I have to journal this event, cause heaven knows it might not ever happen again :) Truly amazing.

Nothing much else new going on...we got a letter in the mail today from Ryan's old employer. When Ryan quit his job his boss didn't process his paper work, so Ryan got automatic deposits into our bank account on two paydays AFTER he quit. I finally had Ryan call down there and tell them what was going on so they would stop. But we still had his paychecks in our bank account, and obviously had to return the money ($2050!). We were smart enough not to spend it when it got deposited, so we cut a check and sent it back. They sent us a letter today saying they received our payment, were very appreciative of us taking the initiative to send the money back, and ended it by saying how Ryan's honesty was "admirable". That was a nice end to our day. Trust me, saying goodbye to $2000 to a couple getting ready to move to Idaho and are trying to save as much money as they can, wasn't the easiest...but it was the right choice...I couldn't have lived with myself knowing we had money that didn't belong to us.

Anyways, I'm off to make Spaghetti. Ryan called a few hours ago saying it sounded really good, and wanted me to make it and bring it down to him at work for dinner...he tends to get wrapped up in his computer game he plays before work, and doesn't eat. I'm sure he's starving by now! At least Spaghetti is something I can't really ruin, can I?

Garage living....

So, while I was home for lunch last Monday, Ryan's mom called and told us about her final plans. She is going to build this house (only probably not so much of the wood on the inside walls) and build on the attached three car garage with an apartment above it, for us to live in. The garage will be attached to the back of the house where the mechanial room and cedar shower and tub are, and our apartment will be above that, next to where the loft is. We can either go in and out through the garage (our own private access...she's building stairs through the garage, which will be nice in the winter) or through the door in the loft. She's also going to have the gazebo out front more swung around on the side of the house, and she is putting a hot tub on the gazebo! YAY! She thinks the grandkinds will like the little "Bonco" area below the loft, where they can read books in their own little nook.

We thought this was a great idea for her, first off, because it is a TON LESS than building an UNFINISHED basement for us to live in. And she will have an extra apartment that she can rent out to relatives (nieces or nephews, but the grandkids stay for free!) in the future if they want to go to BYU-Idaho...or a place for us to come stay at when we come to visit in the future, so we don't have to stay at a hotel. The only outstanding debt she'll have is her house, which she will pay off within 15 years (when she turns 65...perfect for retirement age). I thought she made a great decision to set herself up for retirement :) I think it will be a great investment for her. The builder likes the design so much that he thinks he can get away with building it in a REALLY nice subdivision, even though it will be far smaller than the other houses. He thinks the architectural integrity of the house will let them get away with building there. Which will also be a good investment for her to have the smallest house in a very prominent neighborhood. Should be easy to sell if she ever needed to.

Anyways, should be fun! She says if we start having a family while we are there, she would even switch us for the house/her in the apartment, since she has two bedrooms, and we'll just have the one bedroom in the apartment. I told her she wouldn't have to do that (it makes me feel bad!) but she said it would be plenty of space for her to live in while we finish out school there...I told her we would figure it out when the time came :) I'm alright putting any little ones in the living room for a while, while we finish up school there. We'll see what the future holds. But it's getting more exciting the more firm our plans get, like mom getting a house built! YAY!

http://www.eplans.com/craftsman_house-plans/HWEPL55632.hwx
http://www.eplans.com/traditional_house-plans/HWEPL64436.hwx

Sleep Talking

Ryan is a sound sleeper. Which is good, cause honestly, I snore...not a little bit...but A LOT. So I've always appreciated that I married Ryan cause he sleeps right through it all.

The other thing I appreciate about him is that he sleep talks. AND he's one of those who will respond right back to you. Usually he doesn't remember anything he talks about when I ask him in the morning.

Well, this morning, around 7 a.m. I wake up feeling the whole bed shaking. I look over at Ryan and see a HUGE grin on his face. Ryan is laughing hysterically in his sleep (yet completely out loud). This wasn't just a small laugh, it was a full-on hearty laugh, as if we were having a conversation and he was laughing. I decided to play with it a little bit, so I asked him what was so funny. He chuckles a little and says,"1-800-STINK!" and then busts out laughing again. :) Crack me up.

When I talked to him about it this morning, he actually remembered saying 1-800-STINK, but can't remember what in the world his dream was about. Too funny.

What can brown cookies do for you?

Late last night, Ryan decided to make our chocolate chip cookies. These are the type of cookies that come in a package, and all you have to do is add eggs and butter.

Not much to it....just the way I like it! I was so proud of Ryan cause he was in the kitchen making them all on his own...when he puts in his first batch of cookies in the oven and says,"I don't know....we'll see how these turn out....things turn out weird whenever I make them, especially baking." I wasn't sure why he was so pessimistic about it all (Ryan is generally a VERY optimistic person...enough for both of us, cause I am on the pessimistic end of things). As he was coming out into the living room to wait for them to bake, I decide I need a bite of cookie dough! How can you NOT take a bite of cookie dough when making cookies?? That's the best part! So as I pass by him and tell him I need a bite, he gets this kinda weird look on his face and says he hopes they turn out ok. As I go into the kitchen and look into the mixer bowl, I see this:

BROWN COOKIES!!!! WHAT??? These were just normal chocolate chip cookies....nothing brown about them, except for the chocolate chips! I was SOOO perplexed! I asked Ryan WHAT happened, and he said he didn't know! He said the mix was white when it came out of the package, but brown when he stirred it all together! HUH??? I just couldn't understand this, or why it happened. I SWORE he was lying to me, and just trying to play a joke on me. I kept bugging him over and over about what happened and what he put in it. I thought he might have put some cocoa in it or something, just to make me freak out or something. He promised me he did nothing to the cookies. The dough TASTED normal...it just didn't LOOK normal. The cookies were pretty flat, which we didn't mind, but they didn't rise very much. And after they were done cooking, this is what they looked like (and they WEREN'T burned...far from it!).

So weird!!! I'm still so confused as to what happened to the cookies...but they taste good :) Does anyone know what might have happened?

Ryan works tonight, so I'm off to clean the house to keep me busy until he gets home around 10 p.m. We are so excited cause Batman comes out this weekend! We're planning on going to see it Saturday morning (when it's cheaper and less crowded!). We can't wait! :)

Why does Walle have a roach as a friend?

I hate the summer in Arizona for numerous reasons...not only is the heat enough to melt your skin off, but the monsoon season brings more than just floods...it brings sewer roaches! BLAH! Seriously...I walked into my bathroom last night around midnight to get ready for bed, and as SOON as I turned on the light, my eyes gravitated to something dark sitting right next to my bathroom toilet...


"RYAN!!!!!! Help, I need you!!!!!" I yelled, while shaking my hands wildly and making noises like,"blahhhhhhh blahhhh blahhhhh". I was in a predicament. Stay there and stare at the huge roach, who must have felt my eyes baring down on him so he was scared to move an inch, and almost looked dead....OR run away and lose eye contact with him, which would lead to a roach disappearing to the unknown...if I did this would he end up in my bed? My clothes in the laundry basket? Where would he go? So many thoughts and questions, and choices that needed to be made. After standing there for a minute, full on knowing Ryan couldn't/wouldn't get up right at that minute cause he was in the middle of some quest in the game he was playing on the computer, and knowing that I wasn't going to actually APPROACH the roach myself (ha! I just said appROACH the roach) and didn't feel like standing there and staring at it all night, I took the chance that he might remain still for a bit longer, and I also might be able to coax Ryan away for a minute. So...I did it. I LEFT the roach. I went to the spare bedroom and kinda talked about how gross it was again to Ryan, hoping he might think it was really nasty too so he would come kill it, but no such luck. Ok...I'm gonna have to suck it up and kill it myself. I happen to have some Raid in the house from when we had an ant infestation a few months ago after Ryan picked off all the pineapple from his pizza and left it in the pizza box on the floor. The ants went CRAZY and must have been able to smell that sweetness from outside! Ryan woke me up around 2 a.m. and told me we had ants in our living room. Our solution that night was to vacuum them all up, since we have a bag-less vacuum. Worked quite well. We had about 3 different ant lines coming in our house that time...not fun. Anyways, so I decided to Raid this roach! I could do it! At least I had something to spray on him, so I didn't have to get close. I got armed with my Raid, and headed into the bathroom...only to discover, he was gone!!!!



I KNEW IT! I knew he would leave! AHHHH!!!! That created MORE screaming and flailing of arms and running back to Ryan. CRAP! Now I have a roach on the loose somewhere in my house. Ryan "protected" me by keeping me in the extra bedroom with him until he was done with his quest. I went on the couch and fell asleep until he was done, so we could go back to the bedroom together, and he could make sure there weren't any roaches in my bed. BLAH. I hate roaches. More than anything.


I pulled my free credit report today. My one free credit report that the government so graciously allows us once a year! I'm happy to say, I have great credit, and no one is stealing my identity :) YAY!


So tonight, Ryan worked, and I met up with one of my old friends, Trisha, for dinner. I hadn't seen her since before I got married too. She cracks me up...so many stories! We ate at Sweet Tomatoes (MMMM.....) and talked for 2 hours! It was nice to get out and be with someone, while I waited for Ryan to get off work.


Ryan just walked in, so I better go and hang out! Jay Leno is on, so we'll probably finish watching this. Ryan's surfing the fridge for dinner. He hasn't found anything he wants, but he did find our cookie mix, and we've decided to make cookies tomorrow :)

Ryan and I have been married for 7 months as of TODAY!!! Can you believe it? 7 months!!! Happy 7 month Anniversary, baby! I love ya! Time flies when you are having fun....

Monday, Monday....

What is there to say about Mondays? Your weekend is over, and it's back to work! The hustle and bustle of the world comes back into your life. I'll admit, I wasn't thrilled about going to work this morning...and I could hardly keep myself awake all day! But all in all, it was an ok day for us today!

I got up and left to work, as my cute husband got to lay in bed...ahhh...jealousy ensues...I brought a wheat bagel and some fat free cream cheese to work for breakfast today, trying to eat a little healthier and save some money by not going across the street and getting it from the cafe next to my work. As I told my salesman today when he asked how it was...it was fat free...how do you think it tastes? :) Can't even compare to the fresh bagels next door, with the mound of fully-fat cream cheese they put on it, but those bagels next door might also be contributing to that weight gain I was referring to a few blogs ago :) I thought it best to start eating my own :)

I text Ryan around 9:15 a.m., still expecting him to be in bed since school doesn't start until 11:20 a.m. I asked him if he could try picking up the living room a little bit, and load the dish washer since the repair man would be coming today to fix our air conditioner. To my surprise, he text back almost immediately saying he was already in the process of doing that :) YAY for my husband! I thought that was so good of him to already be on top of that....and I much appreciated it. (As a side note, he found out today he got a 91% on his math test! Good job, babe! I'm proud of you...summer math is NOT easy....).

I came home for lunch around 1:30 p.m., just as Ryan got home from school. The repair man came promptly at 2:00 p.m. to fix our air. A process I expected to be long and drawn out took the man merely 5 minutes top to fix. 5 minutes!!!! He walked in and knew what to do the second he came in. Wow. Apparently we had too much gunk in our bathroom sink (toothpaste, etc) that it was clogging up the pipe that also drained the water from our air conditioner (who knew it was attached to our bathroom sink! So much for cleaning the living room....the man went into our master bathroom! EEK :) It wasn't too bad, but we weren't prepared for him to have to walk through our bedroom to our bathroom. At least nothing embarrassing was laying out...

So...we now have a fully functioning air conditioner! YAY! No more pot, and no more leaks :)

Today was my nephew, Brandt's, 8th birthday, so Ryan and I went over to my sister Michele's house with my parents and other sister for cake and ice cream! Woohoo! Ryan and I stuck around for an hour, and then we took off to go get some dinner (around 8 p.m.). We made a stop first at a Whole Foods store to find a new grain that we were introduced to when we visited Idaho...it's called Spelt. Never heard of it? Don't worry, neither had I. It's a sort of wheat/oat type grain (looks like wheat until you cook it, and then it opens up into an oat type look). It's really healthy, and REALLY, uh...cleans out your system. :) We thought we would try it again and see how it makes us feel, since both of us are trying to eat healthier.

As we were getting back into our car after leaving Whole Foods, I heard about 6 loud "pops". Being from the valley, I knew EXACTLY what that sound was....Ryan, on the other hand, had never heard those sounds before, and didn't know what it was. "Get me IN the car! Those were gun shots!" I eagerly urged Ryan. He was casually like,"Was that what that was? I've never heard gunshots before" :) We drove over to Qdoba in the same plaza to get something to eat. As we were finishing up at the cash register and looked out the window, we saw an ambulance and several cop cars on the other side of the plaza. Holy Cow! I didn't realize it was THAT close...freaked me out. Can you say ghetto? EEK. I won't miss that part of Arizona when I move to Idaho :)

Ryan ordered a burrito for dinner...but made a HUGE mistake. One thing about Ryan, he HATES tomatoes. I mean absolutely HATES tomatoes. He cannot swallow food if it has tomato in it...his tongue is super sensitive and he can taste whenever there is tomatoes in something...he can even just taste the left over FLAVOR if there WAS a tomato on something. It had been a while since Ryan had been to Qdoba, and forgot what salsa was what. When he asked for mild salsa, he didn't realize it was pretty much pico de gallo. Yes. LOADED with HUGE tomato chunks. As soon as he saw the lady putting it on his burrito, he panicked, realizing what he had done, but felt it was too late to say anything. As we first sat down to our meal, I had a distraught Ryan on my hands, where he felt like he couldn't even eat his burrito, and thought his whole night had been ruined.

So that's when the operation began. With fork and knife in hand, he sliced open that burrito straight down the middle, pulled it apart delicately, and began removing the tomato pieces. He had steady hands, and was able to remove all of the bad tissue :) After about 5 long minutes of diligently hunting through the burrito, he sewed his burrito back up and all that was left as proof of his hard laboring efforts, was this mound on the table:

Ryan was able to enjoy the rest of his burrito, besides that ONE time when he stopped cold in his chewing, and leaned over the table...I panicked for a minute, asking him if he was ok cause he looked like he was choking or something. He barely got the words out that he wasn't ok, so I continued to be a little worried, when finally he squeaked out that he tasted tomato in his mouth (mind you, this was just the FLAVOR of tomato...no actual tomato was in his mouth). :) Oh, my little Ryan. I love you. After a swig of his drink, he was back to normal, and finished up his burrito.

We headed back home, singing to Weezers new album, and then got in our nightly positions with me on the laptop in the living room, and him playing his game on the computer in the spare bedroom. Ahh...life is good.

P.S. Did you hear about the Indymac Bank closing, and tons of people losing their hard earned money they saved for retirement? So sad....I couldn't imagine what it would feel like to lose the money you saved to keep you going throughout your life. That's why it's so important to DIVERSIFY, DIVERSIFY, DIVERSIFY your funds!

Pam's Fantabulous Saturday

I was getting dressed yesterday afternoon to meet up with some girlfriends for lunch and a pedicure, and as I was doing my hair in our extra bathroom, I kept hearing dripping. This was odd, I thought, because we never USE the extra bathroom for showering, EVER...so I didn't know why dripping would be going on in there. As I checked behind the shower curtain I FOUND.....nothing. What the heck? So I walked out of the bathroom to head to our bathroom to check if the shower was dripping in there (after all, I HAD just gotten done taking a shower). As soon as I walked out of the bathroom, I felt something wet hit my head! Huh?? I looked up, and saw water dripping out of our airconditioner unit in our hallway. GREEEAATTT....only a few more months living here and things couldn't wait to break down AFTER we left. I put a pot underneath it to catch the drips, and asked Ryan if he would go open it up to see what the problem was. "Sure", he said, while playing a game on the computer..."It's probably just condensation or something". After several more minutes of asking him to check it, cause it was REALLY dripping...a steady stream of water...not condensation...and I was worried it might cause water damage, and heaven forbid, a pipe break that is going to flood our house or something (this is my over dramatic worry-wart part of my mind) I finally got the folding chair and our screwdriver out, and hopped up to open it myself (of course this finally got his attention where he knew I meant business, so Ryan finally came into the kitchen...funny how that works :) When I opened it, you could see water streaming out of a VERY rusted pipe where the water flows in to the airconditioner. Every time our air is on, and water is pumping through, it comes out the pipe. Great. So, we are trying to keep the air off as much as possible (thankfully it's not that hot here this week, with all the rain, but it IS humid). We'll go down to the office tomorrow morning to have maintenance come change the pipe. Hopefully this is an easy fix, and not something that drags on. As for now, this is what we are using for protection:



And this is our rusted out airconditioner...if you look closely, on the right, you can see water dripping out:







So I finished getting dressed to head out with some girlfriends I haven't seen since getting married (almost 7 months ago!!!). We ate a late lunch at Applebee's down on Gilbert/Baseline. It was fun to catch up on gossip from our old singles ward, and find out who is dating/marrying who! :) Afterwards, we went to Diane's Nail Salon (or something like that) just down the street on Gilbert & Southern, in the northeast corner of the plaza. This was where my friend I was with goes at least once a month for the last 3 years! They all know her by name there :) They were all SUPER friendly, the place is clean, and they rub your legs and feet FOREVER! The lady I had had to work on my feet a little longer to remove all my nasty calluses...one of the down falls of wearing heels all the time. I got a nice French Pedicure, and the lady did a great job...so great, that she even (and I'm not sure if I should share this or not) TRIMMED the hair on my big toes :) HA! I thought that was great. While I was over drying my toenails, she came over with some cream to give me a BACK MASSAGE!!! It was heaven! I think it was quite honestly the best shoulder massage I've ever gotten. And the cream was the menthol kind, that kept on going after she was done. So fabulous. And that was all free of charge, and standard there. Can you believe it? I've never been to a place that does all that, just for a pedicure. Here are my cute toes:



After that, I dropped by my parents house (Ryan had to work yesterday night from 4-10 p.m., so I was looking for company) but they were out to dinner, so I headed over to Walmart to do some grocery shopping. Ryan and I hadn't been in almost 2 weeks, and we were literally on our last two sheets of toilet paper, last blob of toothpaste, last drop of contact solution, and down to bread and water in our fridge :) It was time. On the way out (after an hour and a half of shopping...I hate grocery shopping, especially when I don't know what I'm going to do for dinners) I picked up my girly splurge by getting a Star Magazine....I love gossip magazines! I get to tell Ryan all the gossip going on, like they are all our best friends. He loves it just as much! Plus, Star has crossword puzzles in them, and Ryan and I like to do those together :)




I came home, had some cereal for dinner....

(my favorite meal...even on our honey moon, when Ryan went down to Downtown Disney for both of us after a long day being at the theme parks, I had him buy me a bowl of cereal to bring back up to me at the hotel, from WOLF GANG PUCK'S EXPRESS. HA! Here is this world renowned chef, and I have Ryan come back with a bowl of cereal. Poor kid, he said the guy at the register just looked at him like,"REALLY? Are you really buying cereal?" Hey, the way I look at it, why serve it there if you aren't trying to sell it! :) I really wanted it! Of course, once we discovered Wolf Gang's 4 cheese macaroni and cheese the next night, we were hooked on that instead :)



I finished my magazine last night, Ryan got home, we watched some Mad TV and Saturday Night Live (switched between the two, depending on who's skit was the stupidest or not), and fell asleep. It was a good day.....