Sweater Friends!

Hello Friends! This last week has been very exciting. I got to work back shifts at work which left me with some spare time during the days, which is always a nice thing. I took the opportunity to get some house stuff done. Monday while getting ready to start backs, I painted our loft/office area. It looks so much better. Then Thursday was my turn around day so I was able to go down to SLC and have a delicious lunch with my sister then we headed off to IKEA to purchase new furniture for the office.

Now I'm always excited for a good trip to IKEA but rarely do I get to go to IKEA to really purchase stuff. Usually I come away with a few kitchen utensils and a lamp or something but today I was after the big stuff. Thank goodness my sister was able and willing to go with me. Just loading the stuff onto the cart was a task larger than myself. But the real fun didn't start until we got out to the loading zone to load up the Forester.

We had some large items but I had measured before hand to be sure it would fit in the car somehow, it all seemed like it should. So we started, long boxes go here, let's put this box in this corner, now this chair can go here. After our second try at getting things to fit, we both started to get a little frustrated. Fastforward an hour and we had finally solved to puzzle and gotten everything in the car. Here are some picures-we were pretty proud of ourselves.

I think my favorite part was the IKEA employees walking past us with looks of doubt. Take that IKEA employees - we did it. I think that ride home was easily the most uncomfortable ride ever but totally worth it. I'll take pictures of the finished office for the next blog.

The next day was Friday and my first day of days at work. Luckily it was communication day so there was no thinking required - just a bit of embarassment. A few weeks ago I received a call from our HR person. She was desperate to find someone willingto be in a training video. I like Gina so I said yes. Now any of you that know me, know I don't act. Here's some proof if you don't believe me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqGE7Ap9A3o

Luckily the maintenance and fellow engineers were too busy laughing to hear what we were saying. That helped.

Friday night Shad and I had planned a date with my friend Jen from work. Jen wanted to go to the Cowpoke - a BBQ restaurant in North Ogden. I wasn't too keen on going since I don't really care for meat but Shad and Jen were excited so why not. It ended up being not scary and pretty tasty minus the giant platter of meat Jen and Shad shared.

That brings us to Saturday - the real reason for this post. For those of you that don't know, I'm in a band called the Sweater Friends. This last Saturday we were able to celebrate our 2 year anniversary of our first show together. It was a total blast. For once we were able to put together the line up so we picked two people we love to play with us - Marci Thorne and Colby Stead. Both are amazing musicians and made for a great night. We finished up the night with a longer than usual set including 2 new songs. It was great here are some picures.

Hair Color?

One of the operators at work today told me, "you need to change your damn hair color, we can't tell that it's you anymore." What do you think he meant by that? I first tried to think, compliment? But not being able to tell who someone is doesn't count as a compliment in my book. Okay. How about insult? Probably not, I mean he wants to be able to recognize me. If he hated me, I would think he would desire just the opposite. Hmm. Maybe he was commenting on my inch and a half blonde roots. I do have an appointment with Marci on Saturday. I doubt he was being that observant. I guess I'll never know. People are confusing.

Anyway. I guess I'll update you on my week. Friday night was great - my husband planned an entire night for my Valentines day surprise. When I got home from work there was a little scavenger hunt ending with instructions to be looking "so good" (teen girl squad anyone?) by 6:40. I did just that. We then proceeded to one of my favorite Ogden restaurants Bistro 258. After sitting down at a table for 10 people he finally let me in on what we were doing. He had called a bunch of my girlfriend's husbands and planned a nice dinner get together since I don't see them very often since we've moved to Ogden. It was a delightful surprise. I love those girls so much. Here's a picture I stole off of Ashlee's blog (I didn't bring my camera).

After a delicious dinner, everyone went back to our house for fondue. That was great, not only do I love fondue, but none of the girls had seen our house yet. All and all, it was a great surprise.

The next day was the same old routine, I went tutoring and then down to SLC for band practice. When I got home we started Shad's Valentine's day wish - order pizza and watch a movie. He rented Kelly's Heroes - a movie all of his brothers love and he has never seen the whole thing. I thought it was going to be really funny, but it was mostly really dumb. We paused in the middle of the meeting to attend the adult session for our stake conference.

It was a wonderful meeting. They reorganized the stake presidency so we had an area seventy and an apostle there. They both gave entertaining and touching talks.

After the meeting we came home and finished the movie. It was a wonderful Valentines Day!

Hello World

I'm normally against blogs but since it's the way I catch up on what all of my friends are doing, I'm going to give it a try.

As a quick introduction, Shad and I were married last September in the Jordan River Temple and have since started our wonderful lives together. We just bought a new house which we're in the process of adding some personality to an annoyingly blank slate. We've already added some color but we're no where near done. Our next task is to paint the huge vaulted walls we have in the family room and entry way. I'm not excited but it will be worth it.

We're hoping to get a puppy in the next few months (something I've been dreaming of forever) to really get our family started.

Since a blog isn't a blog without some sort on rant, I have a small one. This past Sunday Shad and I had the pleasure to do our newly married - new to the ward talks. Because I'm the wife I had the pleasure of introducing us to the ward. I took 2 minutes tops to give everyone the vital information - where we grew up, where we went to school, our majors, how we met, when we got married, what our current jobs are and where we live in the ward.

A pretty comprehensive introduction if I may say so myself. Now fast forward a whopping 2 days to our mutual night (I'm the personal progress advisor for the YW's) where I received several compliments on my "wonderful" talk on Sunday from my fellow Young Women's leaders. Those lovely ladies then proceeded to ask me every single question my brief introduction easily answered. Now I could be wrong but this experience drove me to two conclusions:
1. My count of 6 people (not counting my family) that appeared to be listening to me seems spot on. It's sad to think people's attention spans aren't long enough to pay attention to the first 2 minutes of a talk before they tune it out but I won't judge them for that. I will judge them for my second conclusion.
2. The wonderful compliments I received were lies (in the church!). In order to compliment someone on the talk they gave - I think you should listen to the talk. If you didn't listen to their talk, a better compliment might be, thanks for providing me with 15 minutes of background noise while my mind wandered aimlessly during Sacrament meeting on Sunday. Now there's a compliment I can appreciate and know with certainty that the person is being completely honest with me.

Thanks for letting me rant!