A Fond Farewell

So as some of you may have seen on Facebook this week, Jake and I have decided to call it quits with The Sweater Friends. We both kind of had a moment at a show we were supposed to play at on Monday night (we actually didn't end up playing) and after talking it over (more like emailing it over), it felt like we were both asking the question, why are we still doing this? I am really sad to close this chapter of our lives but I'm so glad we made the decision together instead of waiting for some sort of catastrophic falling out. Jake and I are still good friends and will remain that way for a long time. If you're interested in knowing more, head over to The Sweater Friends blog to read my last blog post there.

We will be playing our last show ever next Thursday night in Provo. Details can be found here. I can't convey how sincerely I hope anyone and everyone can come to our last show!

Vegas baby!

It feels like it’s time for another blog update so here you go.

Unfortunately for Dublin, he didn’t get freedom at his last Vet appointment. It was another month on the leash tethered to one of us at all times. Luckily for everyone involved, he had his final vet appointment on Wednesday and after being put out to get his leg x-rayed (yes our dog is always way too excited at the vet’s office to really do anything that requires him to sit still), he was given a clean bill of health and is now allowed to be off leash in our house and backyard.

I think I can speak for all three of us when I say it feels GREAT to have a somewhat normal dog back. I say somewhat because he literally sprints at top speed to get from any point A to point B. Hopefully that will stop once his energy level gets back to normal. I also hope to not wince every time he takes off to run anywhere at some point too. What can I say, the dog’s leg is easily the most expensive body part in our family at the moment and I really don’t want it broken again.

In other news, Shad and I got to spend last week in Las Vegas for a short trip. We flew down Saturday morning and came back Monday night. It was delightful, so nice and sunny and warm. It was exactly what we both needed as the cold drags on up here. It was also a pretty low key vacation for us. We pretty much just went shopping, saw a movie, met up with some friends down there and enjoyed some amazing restaurants. I almost always seem to come home from vacations more exhausted than before we left but this time around I definitely came home relaxed. I would share some pictures but I didn’t take any. Not a single one. Not even one with my phone.

In other news Shad and I both have new callings. Shad is the new Deacon Scoutmaster and I’m the new 2nd counselor in YW. Not really big moves for either of us considering I’ve been in YW for the past 2 years and Shad has had the 11 year olds but I guess it’s nice to have more church duties.

Lastly Shad’s brother got married a few weeks ago and it was a great time. And the best part in my opinion, he married a cute girl I got to go to high school with. Neither one of us would have expected we would end up related when we sat next to each other in AP English but I could not be more excited about it! Welcome to the family Monika!

That’s about all I can update on though some changes might be brewing at the Bracken house. Time will only tell. 

Freedom!

Next week Dublin gets to go to the vet for his 6 week post-surgery check up. We get to find out if he gets to be free at that appointment. Shad and I are pretty excited about it, Dublin cannot wait. Not only does he get to go to the vet again (THE MOST WONDERFUL PLACE IN THE WORLD) but he also might get his freedom back. He can be in the backyard unattached to one of us. He can wander the house unattended and he can go up and down stairs. This also means the MDF blocking both our staircases gets to go away too. You might wonder why we had to block the staircases when the dog was attached to one of us with a leash at all times. I would counter with you haven’t met my husband. The dog sometimes “gets the best of him” so in order to prevent the dog from re-breaking his leg if he did happen to escape, I felt blocking the stairs was necessary.

In other news, I survived the month of birthdays at work. There are a few birthdays in February one of them being my best Ogden friend, Jen. Her birthday requires more attention than most work birthdays. Of course there was a cake (cupcakes actually) and a present but this year was also her 30th. To celebrate, our friend Jared wanted to throw her a surprise party much like the one we threw him for his 30th birthday. Next time there’s the prospect of a surprise party on the table I need to dibs either being the surprised person (easiest option) or get to be the distraction person. This time around I was not that smart and ended up being the person that got to cook, clean Jen’s house for the party (because she didn’t know about it) and decorate. Next time I will be smarter. I promise.

Last weekend we finally got to go down and visit Annie, Steve and Tommy. Tommy is absolutely adorable. He looks so much like Steve right now and has a full head of dark hair. He pretty much slept the entire time we were there so for me to say he is so sweet may not be true, but I think he is so sweet. And even though being parents seems to have shocked their systems, Annie and Steve are being fabulous parents. Seriously Annicka Sue, you are doing such an amazing job as a new mother, I could not be more impressed!

I’ve also been in training at work all week this week, for 9 hours each day. I am also getting a cold and trying my hardest to fight it off before it becomes a full-fledged cold. That combo really isn’t working. By about 10:00 every day I’ve had a raging headache and the biggest urge just to put my head down. Training is a good reminder why I say I don’t ever want to go back to school. Ever. Except in work training, I can’t just go to sleep like in thermo because instead of me paying to sit in the class, someone is paying me to sit in the class so just going to sleep and figuring it out later really isn’t an option. Just two more days left. I think I can make it.

Update

So I’m a little torn about apologizing to the people that actually read this blog because I haven’t posted anything recently but honestly, I’m not feeling it. We’ve been busy having fun and taking care of life so I’m not too sorry for the lack of updates.

The past two months were filled with lots of coverage at work for me and lots of good times spent with family and friends. There were also a few sad moments for us too.

This year was my family’s turn for Thanksgiving and we had a great time. My sister and her hubby came from California and we had a delicious meal and good conversation and even a couch to lay on after the feast (I dare you to spend Thanksgiving at a place with no couch to lay down on after the meal and then not count that as a very important part of your subsequent Thanksgivings).

The day after Thanksgiving my family got together for some family pictures. Stacy Marie that did our wedding and our last family pictures took them for us this time at Wheeler Farm. I have them to share at some point in time. They seriously turned out so cute.

The first week of December brought Dublin’s second birthday. Due to the extreme amount of coverage I had been working (and by coverage I really mean serving nachos until 11:00 at night for a few nights that week – I’m so glad I went to school and got a degree so I could use my mind to serve people nachos. Nachos – chemical engineering at its best.), our poor puppy only got a store bought cake but he didn’t care. One bite people, our dog ate his piece of cake in one bite. There were also no presents – I’m a bad mom.

Our December weekends were filled with dinners with family and friends. There was even a night reserved for making gingerbread houses (okay graham cracker houses) with some of my favorite Ogden friends.

By mid-December, I was done working for the year. Woot! That’s what happens when you work as much coverage as I did last year. I’m not quite sure it was worth it, I would have much rather had more time off when it was warm. Despite the cold, I got a bunch stuff done around the house that had been neglected for a ridiculous amount of time.

Christmas Eve we spent with my family having our traditional fondue dinner and watching movies and Christmas day was spent with both of our families which is always so much fun.

Speaking of the puppy, a few weeks before Christmas he managed to injure his back leg. Long story short, it ended up that he had completely torn his ACL. I guess on the bright side, he had impeccable timing since I had time off work to take care of him but really the optimal option would have been him not competely tearing his ACL.
Sad cone of shame puppy.

Gross post surgery puppy leg.
He came home from the vet new years eve so instead of going dancing like we typically do, we spent the evening on the floor in the family room keeping him calm and resting. Right now we're half way through his recovery period which basically consists of keeping our dog calm and rested. This means that whenever he's out of his crate, he's on a leash connected to one of us at all times. Needless to say, we've gotten pretty inefficient at our house lately and I can't wait until he's free again. He can't either. He has cabin fever in a bad way. Just imagine our 75 pound pit bull that used to get a run every single day to control his energy and make him a happy dog, confined to his bed in the family room for 2 months. That's what we're dealing with at our house. At least the cone of shame is off now.

So there you go. That's what we've been up to.

Dew Tour

So did you notice that I managed to gloss over some pretty significant happenings in my last two blog posts? Yeah me too. Shad and I celebrated 2 years of marriage in September and Shad also celebrated his 28th birthday in September too.

So I’m going to say the fact Shad’s birthday was almost 2 months ago and that it’s 2:00 in the morning explains why I have no idea what we actually did to celebrate his birthday. I know I bought him his new Ipod since the one I got him for his birthday 2 years ago died a couple months ago. And yes I did wait until after he visited the Apple Store to see if he needed a new one before I thought about what to get him for his birthday. That’s not being a bad wife, that’s called planning people. Now not remembering what we did for his birthday that might mean I’m a bad wife.

For our anniversary we went up to Park City and did the Alpine Slide and Coaster. As we were driving up the canyon, I was shocked to find out Shad had never been to the Alpine Slide before (Seriously, what did his family do for fun?) so it was his first time and he was nervous. While we were in line for the chair lift a group of 3 guys butted in front of us in line to get on the lift, one looked like Shawn White but I wasn’t sure. When we got off and realized one of the guys was a photographer and that the Dew Tour was in town that weekend, our suspicions were confirmed. Since Shawn wanted to go down the slide with the photographer filming him, that left his friend from the Dew Tour to race little old me down the mountain. A quiet girl Mormon engineer vs. some kid from the Dew Tour, it should be no contest, right? Wrong! I kicked that kid’s butt and apologized when we got off the slide as I heard Shawn and the photographer lay into him for letting a girl beat him. After taking a ride on the Alpine Coaster, we drove into town and had dinner then stopped at the outlet stores for some quick shopping. It was a fantastic anniversary.

Then I did some coverage – my favorite type – backshifts! We took our trip to Escalante. Shad went camping with the boy scouts and Jake and I had a photoshoot for our next album. You can see the pictures from that here.

I did some more coverage. We had our Halloween party (I promise next year I will remember to take pictures). I got to do some more coverage. We finally made it down to SLC to see Annie’s new house – it’s seriously so cute! I couldn’t be more excited for them! And to make it even better they had a Halloween party of their own so we got to see so many friends I haven’t seen in the longest time. So fun!

That pretty much catches me up to this week. Whew. Maybe next time I’ll have a picture of Dublin in his Halloween costume. I made him wear it for at least 3 days straight so you would think during that time I would have thought to take a picture of him. Nope. I guess he’ll just have to wear it one more time for me. When I have kids, they’ll put their costumes on after Halloween so I can take a picture of them too, right?

Escalante

I promise at some point this blog will get back to our day to day boring lives it used to be instead of a bunch of pictures of me in the wilderness without make up. Until then, here are pictures from the trip to Escalante we took over conference weekend.

You know you would have sat on the giant lizard and insisted someone take a picture of you too.

Sometimes I'm a little irresponsible when it's warm outside and I can wear flip flops. I forgot to grab my sneakers before we left on our first hike. Luckily for my hiking in flip flops is no big deal.

Cryptobiotic Soil!

Naptime.

Mmmm. Petrified wood.

Hiking to Calf Creek Falls.

Waterfall!

Shad took the effort to hike closer to the waterfall so we had to take his picture. You know, to prove that he did it.

My arm runing Jen's picture of the swirly rock.

I make that rock look good.

Jen's self portriat.

We climbed into that hole all by ourselves.

Naptime part 2.




Stream hiking - it was freezing and had fish in it. Gross!

I only got my one shoe wet once.

Hiking!

To end our trip, it decided to rain the entire night. Here we are waiting out the storm in the tent.

Sailing...takes me away

I’m back to document yet another little trip we’ve taken recently. Over labor day weekend, we finally got to go sailing with our friends Jen and Jared. We’ve been waiting literally years to take this trip and have tried to plan sailing trips before but because of one reason or another were not able to follow through with actually sailing. We went on other vacations instead – see our Moab and Great Basin trips last year.

Going into this trip we all knew it was a bit risky. Jared tends to have adventures when he goes sailing. We all went fully expecting an adventure of some sort and hoping it wouldn’t be too major. It’s never a good sign when you’re driving to the airport and your soon to be captain asks if you have to be back at work Wednesday (we were scheduled to fly home Tuesday evening).

We arrived in Long Beach Friday evening and took a Taxi to the marina, got settled in for the night and went to bed early in preparation for sailing the next morning. Our initial plan was to sail Saturday morning to Avalon on Catalina island, spend Saturday evening on the island and Sunday day snorkeling and other things. Monday we were to go around to the back of the island for more ocean/beach fun then sail back to LA Monday night just incase we were delayed a bit we left plenty of buffer time to make our Tuesday evening flight.

Saturday morning the girls got to walk to the grocery store to get food and supplies. The boys needed to go to the marine store to get a few parts the boat needed. No big deal, right? For Jen and I we got to take a 3 mile walk to the store and called a Taxi to take us back to the marina since we had perishable items. The boys got to take a 6 mile run to the marine store and a 6 mile walk back. I’m so glad I’m a girl.


We got this train to honk at us while we were walking. That's worth at least 1,000,000 points more than a semi truck.

Waiting for the taxi.

Once we were back from our errands, it was time to set sail.
Jen found out on a previous boat trip that she gets sea sick, Shad also knows that he gets sea sick too. Even though they took their drugs like they were supposed to, they still got really sick. I was actually fine which surprised me – I’ve recently developed getting car sick over the past year. Why, no one knows.
Here I am enjoying a PB & J sandwich en-route to Catalina. Jen was jealous I was getting to eat so she took a picture.
We got to Catalina by 5ish and because of the holiday weekend, there were no moorings left. We opted to drop our anchor outside of the harbor and take the water taxi into the island.
After give Shad and Jen sometime to get their appetites back, we enjoyed a wonderful dinner and walked around for a bit. Then we headed back to the water taxi to take us back to the boat. That’s when things got interesting.
The water taxi took us back to the spot we had left our boat, only our boat wasn’t there. By this time it was dark outside so then Jared started explaining what kind of boat it was and the water taxi guy started thinking where he had seen boats like ours. Luckily he recalled seeing a boat like ours way out tied to a buoy with the harbor patrol next to it. He took us out there and low and behold there was our boat, tied to a buoy with a not too happy harbor patrol man next to it.

As it turns out, our anchor wasn’t exactly set properly and the boat started to drift dangerously close to some other boats near it. The other boats decided to call the harbor master to come take care of the boat that was trying to “bump and grind” (that’s a direct quote from the harbor master – our boat is dirty) against the other boats.

For some reason that still eludes me, the harbor master was not able to get our anchor up and decided to just cut it off. He then towed it to the buoy in the middle of nowhere to keep it safe. It turns out the boat didn’t have current registration stickers or proof of insurance so he suspected it was a derelict boat. Luckily though, he felt bad enough about cutting the anchor that he didn’t ticket us for the registration or insurance. He let us use an emergency mooring for the night and told us he would be back at 9:00 to check on us.

At that point it was decision time. Should we stay in Avalon for the next day or two and go snorkeling like we had planned or just go back to LA? The rest of our plans were out since we no longer had an anchor. Not wanting to tempt fate anymore, we all voted to go back to LA. Plus that meant we wouldn’t have to deal with sick Jen and Shad for the next two days.

Mmmm. Marshmallows in the morning time.

Motoring back to LA - the wind was seriously lacking.

Catalina before we left.

I'm a sailor.

Jared is too.

Naptime on the boat.

Ocean

Sometimes you have to get your foot into it.

Sea lions.

Pretty cute picture of us.

Boats at the marina.

Playing at the beach.

It's a tradition. Shad and Jared build a sand castle, Jen and I destroy it when it's done.

Jen finishing off the brownie at Yardhouse.

Us at dinner in Long Beach.

For my birthday Jen and Jared got me some bump-its (for the big hair I have always dreamed of), SPAM (because I’ve never had SPAM) and a booty pop (because I am a white girl). It was like a made for TV wonderland on the boat that night. And now I look so good all the time.

Tuesday we took the boat out one more time and sailed around the harbor for a few hours. It’s too bad we had to go back early, we were getting pretty good at sailing by Tuesday but that might have been because in the harbor it was smooth and Jen and Shad didn’t get sick. Whatever.