Year in review

I think it is that time of year to do my year in review. I am still standing by the fact that if I make goals at the beginning of January I am automatically setting myself up for failure. So here we are getting ready to start February, so I think it is time to review last years goals.

Here were my 'wants':
Get off of the phones at work - switched departments. Check and check! I have to cover phones every once in a while for 'breaks' It comes down to twice a month. can I tell you that I absolutely hate it! I do not miss that job! Every time I have to go up there it is a nice gentle reminder to be grateful for what I have.

Go back to the Paiute.. yep! We did that. Paiute - 2 us - 1. We will be back with a vengeance this year. Paiute will not kick our butts!

Go back to Island park.... did that too! It was such a great time, yet a harder time leaving. I'm considering moving up there.

Do something fun and different for myself. As I stated last year, I took a cake decorating class last year. I also helped my sister photograph a wedding... quite an experience. I also took my friends family photos... Cherry hill, Moab by rzr... I am sure there are many more things to add to that list but that will make one very long post!

Get back to grocery shopping bi-weekly. I did ok on that. It made it extremely difficult not having an oven. I got a new stove the week before Christmas. it wasn't a complete fail but it wasn't a complete success.

Now on to my goals:
I want to lose 20 pounds and keep it off. What I didn't know was that about a month after that I went to the doctors for a routine check up. Sad to admit that the year prior I gained 20 pounds. Can I say emotional eating. Do we need to mention work??? Yeah - scary point in my life. It was awful! I made myself an agreement that I wanted to drop that 20 pounds before island park. I did it! It was a success. I was hoping to kick another 20 by the end of the year. I have not done that. but I have kept off the 20 that I gained...

Get back to kickboxing - not to lose weight but to enjoy myself. Check! It was the best thing I did last year. I love kick boxing and it has helped with my stress levels. There are weeks that I don't want to go, there were weeks that I didn't go... but I went on a regular basis.. enough to say that i did it!

Wear make up once a week. I tried that, I did really well at the beginning of the year - then I forgot about it and once again, that 10 minutes extra of sleep became more important.

Start 'my favorite things' post. Yep! did that too... I still have more coming, don't worry!

Buy a new pair of shoes every other month. I got through 4 out of 6. 4 great pairs of shoes... but I sucked at taking pictures.

Try a new restaurant every month. FAIL!

Goal as a couple: Dress up, get out and do something together. Last year was a tough year for us and we did not do this. Kinda sucks to look back on that goal and realize that it was probably the most important and we failed miserably.

Now for the past month I have been racking my brain of new goals that I want for the new year and only one comes to mind.

Be Happy

I spent far too much time last year stressing and worrying about the 'what ifs' and 'could bes' It effected me personally and professionally. There are things that are out of my control and at the end of the day it is up to me of what I make of it. This year I am not going to worry about the small little things. I am going to embrace life and enjoy it as it comes. Sounds pretty easy right? Well only time will tell.

Now that I have that out, here are a few things I am going to do this year:

Bi-weekly lunches with my dad
Island Park
Piaute
Cut back on hair - just cut back on days
Kickboxing
change my hair style (just the way it is colored....)
facials
Get my first hand gun (pink! nothing wrong with being powerful yet girly there)
massages
spend more time with my sisters
More niece/nephew dates (scary frankweenie was a HUGE success)
get a new car (SUV actually - already in the works. SO. FREAKIN. EXCITED!)
rzr trips
camping
backyard bbq
redo the kidney bean out front
Last but not least... love my man and spend more time with him.

Sounds like lots of fun??? Yep, this year is going to be epic.

what have we been up to???

 I cannot believe Oct is over half way over. Lie has been a bit busy for us and I feel bad - I have only had the time to put up minimal WW. My weeks are going by faster and faster - I am dreading winter. I feel like they are going to go so slow. I have the attitude of, the faster it gets here the faster it will be gone and then it will be summer... maybe? This summer was way to short and I am already ready for it again. I didn't feel like I got one at all! Now here we are winterizing the house and getting last minute preps done on the house while it is still 'warm'. the past two months have been filled with work work and more work - oh and football. I have been working overtime (which I am grateful for!) but it really puts me late doing hair at nights. It seems like fast food has taken over my life Monday - Wednesdays. With the month of September came not only allergies but also football. Which also means fast food has taken over my life on Thursdays and Friday. I have been traveling as far as Ogden for tooele games. That brings us to Saturday and Sunday - my clean day and prep for the next week day. I haven't had much success lately. Thank goodness this is the last week of football! I love it and I love going out there but I haven't had much time with Bryce and I haven't had any me time. I thought I would post pics of his football games. I love that he is mainly the shortest kid on the entire team but he is a little go getter. He sure knows how to take a good beating. Sometimes when I am looking through my lense I just get antsy thinking this kid is going to get hurt - but he gets back up and does it again. I will post more later this week of his last game which is the senior appreciation week (still so disappointed in my family for NOT supporting him - I am still a bit upset with this, more on that later.)

Cam is right in front of #11. He made sure he got that tackle!

He is right in the middle holding his mask

 If you look at the next 5 in in a row - they don't look as brutal as it was in real life. I was standing directly behind the ref and I still don't understand how he didn't see this. I am quite surprised that I even got these shots. As I was watching it I just kept thinking that he was going to be seriously hurt or his neck was going to break.

Helping an injured teammate.

Making another tackle!

he is always one of the first out onto the field

at the beginning of the game against Grantsville they had skydivers to start the game. Here is the first on wearing granstville's jersey

Here is the second skydiver - wearing Tooele's jersey

Here is the 3rd carrying the flag. They also had the kick off football to start the game :)

And my brother was making fun of me for saying it was 'cold'. I wasn't the one wrapped up in a blanket!

Can you see how short he is compared to his other teammates???

I know this picture is so blurry but he was hit pretty hard in this pic. I posted it because you can see how powerful it was - and yet he kept on running after this. he didn't let it get in the way!

Talking with the coach

This isn't cam but it was one of his teammates. This last game I went to - they were playing dirty! The team they were playing actually took out 3 tooele players. This one took over 20 minutes to clear off. They had to call in another ambulance to take him to the hospital. When we had left the game he couldn't move from the neck down. 3 hours later i did receive a text that he was ok and he did take a pretty hard head. He will be ok but he is out for the rest of the season (3 games). I am glad he is ok!

For some moments in life there are no words.

This happened at one of our branches this week. Devastating. That is all I can say. I would try to express what I feel but it is just a jumbled mess and doesn't make sense. I couldn't put it down in words if I try. This can happen to anyone. it could have happened at my branch. We sound like a huge company but we aren't. We are just big enough to be well known but small enough to be a 'family'. Go home tonight and hug a light tighter, kiss a little harder, love a little longer and be grateful for what you have because tonight someone is missing their mom.

Island Park

Yesterday we spent the day supports my family at the outdoor expo for the Worlds Dutch Oven Championship. I will get to that in another post here in the next week when I have pictures. While we were there we took some time to walk around and see all the booths. We even bought some cinnamon almonds and cashews (they are good but they are SOOOOO easy to make at home. Click HERE for the recipe I use). Alot of the booths were booths for far away trips. Not the kind you think of sitting out the beach. The kind where are are aiming the gun at some animal and using them for food (or a trophy mount, whatever floats your boat). There were a few other things there (Bear world, catch and release fishing, dog diving, etc.), we ran across a booth for Island park. I have awesome memories of that place and long to go there often. The only problem is: It is a long drive for a Friday-Sunday trip.

I was only 12 when my grandmother died. I was only a few months when my grandfather died (on my dad's side). My grandmother lived in a completely different state and with being the youngest of 8 children, it was very difficult for my parents to take us to go see her: Gas, food, packing all of us up, not to mention where would we stay to fit 10+ people? I love my grandma Stella. She was the best grandma I could ask for. I was devastated when she passed away. Island park is the place that i have the majority of the memories of her. We only got to see her once a year and it was always at our family reunion in Island park. My grandfather built a cabin there with my father. When my grandfather passed away the cabin went to my dad. Having a new born baby (that was me!), 7 other children and living 6 1/2 hours away my dad thought it would be impossible to take care of it properly. With much regret (now) my dad sold the cabin but every year we still went to island park. This is what I remember of it:
The best memory was heading to mack's Inn lodge. We would always go into the lodge and get candy and other goodies. We would also get tube rentals, my parents (usually my dad) would drive us up the river and drop us off. We would float down the river past the lodge and go under the bridge. We knew when we saw that bridge the adventure was over. My dad would be waiting on the bridge for us, waiting to pick us up and take us back to camp. We would do it all over the next day, and the next until it was time to pack up camp and make the long drive home. In 1989 the Lodge burnt down but the memories still remain the same, only instead of seeing the lodge, we saw the remains of the lodge: a brick fire place was the only thing that remained standing in that fire. Here is what Island park looks like now:

I have never been there during the winter but I hear it is amazing. All the pictures of the lake is the lake that we actually stayed by every time we went.

My dad had the opportunity to go back a year an a half ago to see the cabin he built with his own hands. The people who bought it from them still own it. They not only kept the original structure but they added on to it since then. My mom described my dad "like a kid in the candy store" when he saw the place. The couple was even kind enough to invite them in and in return they got information about the original structure they have been wondering about all these years straight from one of the two people who help build it.

I am hoping very soon that I will be able to take Bryce back to the place that has stolen my heart so many years ago....

Moments to Memories

Today was a day that was productive... really...

I got some Christmas shopping done: 1/2 of Bryce's mom, 1/2 of grandma, all of my dad's, 1/5 of Bryce's done, and I even manage to pick me up an item or two.

The house is clean...

I have uploaded some 'recipe cards' into walgreen photo center to be developed for a gift for my brother and sister...

I also went through my camera and cleaned everything off of it...

Now I just need to go through and organize my computer desktop but that will have to wait.

I thought I would share a few pics I had in my camera.

Here are a few from my work Trick or Treating

Emi and Brooklyn (Fairy and Fish)

Kaleb and Jayce (SWAT Member and Transformer)

I also thought I would show some pics of my indoor decorations. I know I posted these last year but I have added a few new items! I love decorating for the holidays!

The 'Autumn' is new this year.

So is the acorn

Still love the not so new spiders

Oh and Last but not least I thought I would share some 'moments to memories' with you. This is not to bash on Bryce but to help myself from losing it I have to take a step back and laugh a little bit so I thought I would share this. Bryce is known for taking our tupperware and placing them in misc places for me to find. The last time I found some tupperware in some random place i took it upstairs to rinse out. Apparently it had been there for a while and when I opened it up the smell was so horrid that I literally threw up. He has been trying really hard to not leave them in 'random' places for me to find. Well as of lately this is what I find....


Oh wait lets take a closer look.....


For those who cant really tell, These Tupperware are EMPTY... and they had been sitting in the fridge for about a week... So instead of leaving them in random places for me to find all rotten he now sticks them into the fridge to keep them 'fresh'. As I said sometimes I have to just laugh to prevent myself from hurting him...

Have you ever???

I am such a huge sucker for pink!! I love her music and I guess you would call it my guilty pleasure. I find I can relate to her lyrics in her music.

Deja is an amazing person... you can meet her here and here. She posted on her blog a few weeks ago about a new song by Pink. I have heard it but never paid attention to the lyrics. This song now has a whole new meaning to it thank to her. I hope that Deja reads this post and knows just how many live she has changed. Check out her blog then read the lyrics....

Have you ever fed a lover with just your hands?
Closed your eyes and trusted, just trusted?
Have you ever thrown a fist full of glitter in the air?
Have you ever looked fear in the face and said, "I just don't care"?

It's only half past the point of no return
The tip of the iceberg
The sun before the burn
The thunder before the lightning
The breath before the phrase
Have you ever felt this way?

Have you ever hated yourself for staring at the phone?
You're whole life waiting on the ring to prove you're not alone
Have you ever been touched so gently you had to cry?
Have you ever invited a stranger to come inside?

It's only half past the point of oblivion
The hourglass on the table
The walk before the run
The breath before the kiss
And the fear before the flames
Have you ever felt this way?

La La La La La La La La

There you are, sitting in the garden
Clutching my coffee,
Calling me sugar
You called me sugar

Have you ever wished for an endless night?
Lassoed the moon and the stars and pulled that rope tight?
Have you ever held your breath and asked yourself will it ever get better than tonight?
Tonight