Pillow Chewer

Where does the time go? Just yesterday I swear we were coming home from Capitol Reef. Oh well. We’ve done a lot since getting home from our trip.

Awhile ago my friend Jen and I started randomly talking about sleepovers from when we were kids. All the things we used to do, the food we would eat and the games we would play. Surprisingly enough slumber parties Utah and Ohio are very similar. After talking about them, we decided it would be a blast if we had one. Fast forward a few weekends and it was slumber party night. A couple of our other co workers Gina and Danielle came too to partake in the slumber party fun.
We started off the night with lots of pizza, candy necklaces and homemade cake batter ice cream (so good!). Played a game of Pictionary and then watched Wayne’s World. Because we’re still adults and kind of lame Gina and Danielle couldn’t stay the night but Jen did although I went to bed at midnight and she stayed up and watched Ellen without us. So much fun.

In other news our garden is doing super well. I’m so excited. We have one strawberry that will be red soon and a ton coming. I can’t wait! We also finally got the rest of the flower beds planted in our back yard so I can’t wait for those to start growing too. Even our roses are starting to bloom.

Last weekend was also super fun for me. I got to go up to Logan/Bear Lake to hang out with my girlfriends for the entire weekend. We had an absolute blast. I seriously love those girls so much. They have all grown up to be such amazing women. They are some of the best wives and mothers I have ever seen. There was much talking, laughing, shopping, eating and an awkward moment with a weird carved tree. Here are a few pictures I stole off of Ashlee’s blog because I’m not good at taking pictures.








When I came home yesterday both my hubby and puppy told me how much they missed me. Though since Shad then showed me a pillow Dublin managed to destroy while not being watched so I’m guessing Dublin had a very fun weekend.
This week I’m off to our ward’s girl’s camp so wish me luck. I can’t be as bad as last year was, right?

The Reef

Over Memorial day weekend Shad and I headed down to Capitol Reef with our friends Jen and Jared. I'd like to think vacation explains the one real post you got last month. Really work has just been crazy. In typical vacation fashion, the rest of this post will be mostly pictures.

Here's me infront of a mountain looking really excited to be there. It's probably just the eupohira of not being at work.

 

Here's Shad and Jared looking not so excited to be infront of Chimney Rock in the park. They get a half star for effort.

 

Some pretty cactus flowers on the hike up to Hickman's Bridge. I was surprised by how many wildflowers were blooming in the park. I guess I've never been in this part of Utah in the spring time.

 

On our way up to Hickman's bridge.

 

It was just a little windy for the first few days we were there. Jen and I just figured we could pay for mircodermabrasion or go for a walk in the sand storms.

 

We were pretty lazy on this trip which isn't a good thing when Jared is with us - he's really high energy. While we were laying underneath the bridge he wandered off and scaled a few cliffs, using a dead tree to climb up at one point (not smart). Jared took this picture from the cliff just as we were starting to wonder why Jared had "been around the corner for an hour." Jen and I then made the executive decision to send Shad alone (because everyone knows when one member of your party is missing in the wilderness - you send another person alone to meet his fate at well) to track down Jared so we could hike down and go on another hike. After that we instituted the buddy system. Shad kept track of Jared and Jen and I kept track of each other.

 

Jen likes to take candid pictures of us hiking and always yells at me for waving in her pictures. I was so close to getting in a quick waving candid. Better luck next time.

 

See those holes in the rock behind us? The boys just had to see if they could climb out of them.

 

Here's Jen and I waiting for the boys to finsh attempting to get out of the holes.

 

These pictures aren't in order. After just getting them grouped into the sameish days, I was too lazy to reorder them. On our third day, we went out to Goblin Valley which was so much fun. So many people had their dogs which made me miss our puppy. Jen made friends with a Labrodoodle. She's so friendly.

 

After bumming around Goblin Valley for a few hours we decided to go hike the wild horse canyon trail just down the road.

 

Of course after hiking for a bit Jen and I found a nice ledge to take a nap on while the boys contiuned on to the end.

 

There were a few points where we had to think skinny but we all made it out okay.

 

Jen really likes to take pictures of the group where my face is really close to the camera and everyone else is a reasonable distance away...

 

 

Here I am getting yelled at for trying to wave in the picture.

 

 

Jen, Jared and Shad were all climbing the walls in Goblin Valley like little monkeys. I don't really have the upper arm strength to do those things. Jen helped by picking me up and placing me on a ledge awkwardly. I was lauging so hard I almost rolled right off.

 

 

Jared took this picture at our campsite and promptly said afterwards, "that was the worst picture ever, Jen looks like she's stripping and Allyson looks angry." So there you go. Worst picture ever.

 

On day two of our trip we went and hiked up to a lake in the mountains outside of the park. Once we got to the lake, jen and I found an ideal rock for a nap (I wasn't kidding when I said we were being lazy this trip.)

 

Shad and Jared joined us on the rock for a bit after they tried to catch trout in the stream with their bare hands. That was pretty entertaining to watch.

 

 

Then when we came home on Monday, Jen, Danielle and I made Danielle's goodbye cake. I talked her into letting us make her a Unicorn cake. I'm pretty impressed with the results, it actually looked like a unicorn.

 

Okay fine

Okay, now I think I'm ready to give you a real update.

Easter for us was pretty uneventful, which really it should be when you don't have kids, right? We listened to conference then went down and had dinner with my family.

I thought conference was wonderful as usual. I especially liked Pres. Henry B. Erying's talk called Help Them on Their Way Home. How could I not when he talked about personal progress, the calling I currently hold in our ward. As I listened to his talk, I hoped just a few of the mothers and daughters of our ward heard his message and truly understand why they should be working on their personal progress. I won't lie, it took most of my self restraint not to print it out and send it out to all of my young women's parents but I figured that might offend a few people.

Over the past few weeks Shad has also made awesome progress on the garden. He laid down ground cover and covered the paths with mulch. He ordered a bunch of top soil to fill the rest of our 18 garden boxes and he fixed two surprise "water features" that popped up when the secondary water was turned on. Now if our weather would just warm up a bit, I can actually start planting the rest of our plants. I was really hoping to get stuff in before we left for Vegas but with the chance of snow while we were gone, I didn't want to chance it.

Vegas was a lot of fun. We went down Wednesday morning and went out to Lake Mead to go hiking. That was really fun until we had to turn around. It was super windy and blowing right at our faces the entire time back. We checked into our hotel and headed down for the buffet. It was pretty disappointing but after hiking in the wind we didn't want to search for food elsewhere on the strip. After dinner we went and walked to strip. Because of the wind though, nothing was working so that was kind of disappointing. The next morning we went and did some shopping along the strip (Oh H&M how I missed you!) then went back out to Lake Mead that afternoon. Because I was sore from hiking the day before, we just walked along the beach while Shad threw rocks in the lake. That night we opted to drive out to the M resort for the buffet out there. It was a little bit of a drive but so totally worth it. It was easily the best buffet I have ever had. The dessert buffet alone was worth the $20. Seriously if you are in Vegas and want a buffet, drive out there!

We drove home on Friday just in time to go out to dinner with my family for my Dad's birthday and Mother's Day since my parents will be moving my sister to California next weekend. That was good times as always and it was good to be able to see my sister again before she moves.

The rest of our weekend was pretty quiet. I cleaned the house and worked on a few projects and Shad worked in the yard.

The mass exodus out of our plant and back to Wisconsin is continuing which means that Jen and I made a cake Monday night for the latest couple moving back home. They had requested chocolate cake with ganosh. Jen and I are pretty sure they had no idea what ganosh was when they requested it, but being good friends we googled a recipe and moved forward. Not too bad if you ask me. We opted to whip part of the ganosh and use that instead of butter cream in between the layers then we also sprinkled the outside with non-whipped ganosh and crumbled Heath bars. It was delicious. On another good note, Jen and I were able to assemble this cake without any tragic cake deforming accidents. I think it can go on record as our best looking cake yet.

New post

So Shad and I have been busy as usual. We even took a quick trip to Las Vegas last week. Hopefully I'll have some pictures to share. In the mean time I'm getting a new computer at work this week (Praise the LORD!) so I've been having to back up files etc. I found this adorable video of Dublin with a balloon in our basement when he was about 4 months old. So cute. Hopefully this will help tide you over until I have Vegas pictures to share.

I can't get over how little he was! I guess at least the clumsy is still there. :)

How does your garden grow?

Fun things have been happening at the the Bracken house lately.  A few weekends ago Jen, Danielle and I got together to make another cake for our coworker Aimee that was moving to Tennessee.  She was the wonderful lady that introduced us to the marshmallow fondant and it seemed right to make her a cake to send her off.  Plus we really wanted to eat some cake.  As usual there were a few snags in the process.  Namely me managing to mess up a white cake from the box.  I don't know what happened but my 9" round cakes were about half the size of Jen's.  We pressed on and the cake ended up being a bit special but still tasted delicious.  I'll hopefully find the pictures I took of it to share next week. 

 

After making the cake, I got to take some of our young women down to the conference center for the General Young Womens Meeting.  The meeting was fantastic and our girls were pretty well behaved.  I'm not quite sure it was worth the 2 hours of driving to sit in the 90 minute meeting but I'm sure a lot of the girls loved it.  Next year I'm voting to do a PJ party at one of our houses to watch it on satellite.

 

The next week I was able to successfully install a new project at work and a successful install means my 5 days of coverage was cut into 4 days and a partial day.  It worked out nicely since Friday Jake and I had a show down in SLC scheduled.  We played at the Vertical Diner in SLC.  It's a Vegetarian and Vegan restaurant.  When Jake had initially booked it he told me it was a hippie restaurant which made me a little bit nervous but it's a really awesome place and we had a great time playing there.  I hope we get to go back soon.

 

As for Shad the majority of his spare time has been spent getting our garden ready to plant in.  Here's kind of what our garden looked like last year (after the random garbage left by the previous owners was removed).  Just look past Jake and I.

 

Notice the nothingness in that nice fenced off area in our back yard?  Yeah we did too, it was just low on our priority list for things to do with the house.  We pretty much just planted plants in the mounds of soil left by the previous owners garden boxes and called it good.  The garden last year was kind of successful.  Most of the plants grew and produced fruits and veggies.  Pretty much all of them except the ones that I wanted to grow and produce things.  We had a couple pumpkins that got off to a good start and were then consumed by mold (which we've heard of is almost impossible but whatever).  The peppers we planted didn't really get watered by the drip system so they grew maybe 5 peppers all year.  The squash (gross!), peas, beans and tomatoes (double gross), all produced a lot which was a little bittersweet since I wanted nothing to do with most of them and left that responsibility up to Shad (read: we threw away a bunch of veggies last year). 

 

This year the garden had made it up to the top of our list.  So that's where Shad has been for he past few weeks.  He's been building garden boxes (we figured out a way to make vinyl garden boxes for $25 each which is a total steal compared to paying $100 for one from the fence company).  Digging, running sprinklers and tilling soil and putting down ground cover to keep the weeds down (we have awesome secondary water which is nice but brings all sorts of weed seeds with it.)  It's pretty close to being done.  My raspberry,blackberry and strawberry plants came on Saturday which means I spent a few hours planting those in the boxes that were ready to go.  I can't wait to see if I can get some good things to grow that I will actually use when they're ready.  Wish me luck.

 

 

We're Really All the Same

So I have the pleasure of working with two lovely lady process engineers named Danielle and Jen.  They're both young engineers just like me so they're the first people I turn to when I need to vent or when something frustrating happens at work.  Jen is originally from Ohio and I'm sure you recognize her from a bunch of my other blogs about our trips.  Danielle is from Utah I've also blogged about her a few times as well.  They are easily my best friends up here in Ogden.  In 2008 we even took a trip to the Grand Canyon together since none of us have been.  I think that was the best organized and easiest camping trips I have ever been on.  Here's a picture of us on that trip.

 

As you can see, we all look pretty similar.  We're all younger ladies.  We're all kind of tall (I'm the shortest at 5'9").  We all have brown hair and lighter colored eyes.  We're all on the skinnier side.  We're all white.  And to top off the look alike contest, we all wear the same uniform to work everyday. 

 

You can imagine we get mixed up at work quite often.  We've finally come to the conclusion that we really are the same person to everyone else here (except our other fellow lady engineer Carolina - She also has darker hair too but she's originally from Columbia and a mechanical engineer so it's harder for her to be thrown into the mix though it does happen sometimes).  We've hypothesized different ideas why it's so hard to tell us apart for our coworkers.  1)  They're always just looking at our chest (ignoring the name embroidered on our uniforms) and thus can't tell the difference.  2)  They never see us in the same room together since we typically are working on different things so we really might just be the same person (one amazing person at that!).  3)  Remembering names are hard (especailly when said person literally wears their name around on thier shirt all day).

 

Regardless of why it happens, it makes for some pretty funny conversations.  Like one I had this morning with a team leader.  The team leader saw me walking in the hallway and stopped my by saying

 

"Hey, I was just bragging about you and what a good job you're doing." 

 

Cue my first skeptical thought since I haven't talked to said team leader in a good 3 weeks but maybe I've done something for him without knowing.  I respond with a,

 

"That's good, what did I do?"

 

"Oh I was just telling you manager how great it was that you went through my board (as in status board) with me and asked some good questions."

 

"That's great

 

By this time I'm certain he doesn't really mean me but after having this happen so many times, I've learned it's just easier to play along for now then relay the information back to the person that really needs it.

 

I figured it out a few hours later by asking both Jen and Danielle if they had talked to the team leader recently.  Danielle and Carolina had last week so I relayed to good news to them.  I can't help but wonder now if he thought I was Danielle or Carolina though.  Good times. 

 

It really sucks when you're sitting in a meeting and they get the name wrong.  I can't count the number of times one of us has panicked when they've said Jen will be covering this trial (on a material she doesn't own) or Allyson is on backs tonight (I am, really?  I better go home then...)

Good Job!

You guys are great guessers. I am in Paris. See here's a picture of the tower with me in front of it.



Oh yeah. Paris, Texas! Look at me rock my uniform too. Sexy.

So I'm in Paris for 2 days this week for work. The mill here is one of two plants in the city (town?) so as you can guess it's kind of small. But the Eiffel Tower replica with a giant red cowboy hat is quite charming. Maybe today we'll go find the Jesus statue wearing cowboy boots in the cemetery because everyone knows when I picture Jesus, I picture him in cowboy boots (doesn't everyone really?).

Other than it being a small very spread out town (it has to be big, it's Texas, right?) I've felt like I'm living in an episode of King of the Hill and the majority of locals I've met all sound like Boomhauer so there's been kind of a language barrier (I should have used that as a clue yesterday!).

In prep for the trip I got myself psyched for all sorts of large amounts of meat (something I truly have to physch myself up for since I really don't like meat). None of the restaurants have disappointed. Monday night - Steakhouse. Tuesday - BBQ place for lunch, Hibachi grill for dinner. I can only dream what today will bring!

So what happened on Monday to make it the second to worst travel day I've ever had? The day started off well, we got on our flight to Phoenix, left on time and arrived on time. Loaded onto our flight to Dallas without issue then proceeded to sit on the plane on the tarmac for 3 hours (the actual flight is only an hour and a half!) because of a "sticky switch" then because we had to change out the "sticky switch" then when that didn't work they had to try "something" else. Then just as the got the problem fixed, they announced there was a huge storm in Dallas and all the flights going to Dallas were grounded until it cleared. Cue time to refuel so we could wait out the storm on the tarmac. Fast forward an hour and a half later to the storm clearing out of Dallas and us finally moving towards the runway. Then our hopes of leaving were squashed by having to wait to burn off a few HUNDRED pounds of extra fuel we were carrying because we would be too heavy to land. I know the American people are fat but really, the plane can't land when it has a few hundred extra pounds in it? Thank goodness we didn't have a few more POS (people of size) on the plane because it sounds like we could have all died in a fiery crash landing due to their extra weight. And isn't plane fuel the main reason it costs so much to fly anyway? I now understand why, we're just burning it for no reason!

After a fairly pleasant flight to Dallas, we landed and got our rental car. Because my coworker and I were starving we opted to eat somewhere in Dallas before starting our 2 1/2 hour drive to Paris. Enter the random steak house we found open at nine on a Monday night.