Three Years Ago... and Today...

Three years ago, on November 24th, 2007, 

this boy...

and this girl...

walked out of this Temple...

married and sealed for time and all eternity!

Today they look like this.

And this.

And by the end of May 2011,

they will have one of these.

Baby.

May 2nd, 2010: Emma

Do you remember Amare? No? Well we got Amare in March of 2008. He has spent the majority of our ownership at my parents. After we got Deagan, we expected the two dogs to be best friends. So. Not. The. Case. He didn't want anything to do with Deagan. He hated him. Amare never ate, never did anything, just was grumpy all the time. So we went back to be my parents dog.

Boxer lab mixed puppies are very social dogs. So naturally Deagan was going to need a friend. A coworker of mine had a litter of boxer puppies, and we ended up purchasing a female from her named Emma.

I love Emma. She is so funny. She is definitely the top dog in the house. She eats the most, she gets the most privileges, she is so stinkin' cute too.

Emma and Deagan are in love. It is so funny. When one get in trouble and ends up outside, the other waits by the door until the other dog gets to come in.

Anyways. Emma and Deagan have lots of fun together. They eat a ton of food, go on walks to the park, and occupy us with sneak attack play time and cardboard box eating.

April 22nd, 2010: Work

I quit PostedProperties.com and am now a full time stylist at Ulta!

The end.

April 15th, 2010: Closing

At the beginning of April, I had posted about our home being built. We were super excited and super annoyed with the whole house process. Buying a home was a complete headache. I had also previously mentioned that we were expecting to move into our home at the end on April. Well the day after I had posted the original home buying blog, we were told that were would be closing on April 15th. Trying to pack two years of junk so quickly was not fun.

We closed on our home, moved our stuff in, and started the projects. I'm not going to lie, there are still some unpacked boxes, mostly random decorations and unused books. For the sake of this post I will give you a sample tour of our home. I am planning on posting some pictures that actually have furniture and paint, so you can get a better tour then.

 This is our front door and half of our living room, which is still empty aside from my piano.

Past the living room is our family room and kitchen. I will get updated photos soon.

Top of the stairs and to your left is the master bedroom. To the right and down the hall there is a full bath, and three rooms.

Inside the master bedroom. Behind is the master bath, huge.

Bathroom upstairs.

After reviewing my little tour I just realized it was very uninformative. But empty home are kinda boring. Anyways, our house is four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and 2198 square feet. I've been having so much fun decorating it.

For as far as we live from Phoenix, Brett and I really do love it. We purchased in Queen Creek, but it isn't too deep into the town. We live across the street from everything we need. More to come...

March 24th, 2010: Deagan

I'm doing some major back tracking. Today is not March 24th, but I need to tell you about that Wednesday evening nearly four months ago. Now I would totally just cheat and change the posting date to March. However, I don't think it is fair to cheat when it is four months past due. So the title for the next few blogs will reflect past events. Thanks for understanding.

Now, back to March 24th.

Earlier in March I had been doing some research on buying a dog. A bigger dog. Brett and I wanted a female chocolate lab. But, as Brett and I got deeper into puppy research, we kept finding out that lab puppies were puppies forever. So we moved our ideas on from buying labs to adopting... something else. Well, when you adopt a dog it is usually hard to find a) pure breed dogs b) not ugly dogs c) specific genders and d) puppies. So we started doing research on different breeds that we would be happy with and decided we wanted something that was at least a boxer.

So on March 24th, while I was diligently working at my desk compiling property information, I came across adoptapet.com, which had a fresh batch of boxer mixed puppies. I contacted the adoption clinic to make sure that our drive to the far side of Scottsdale would not be in vain.

After a good forty minute drive, we saw bouncing dark puppies with gorgeous giant eyes. Seriously after seeing these things, you can't just not buy one. So 175 dollars later, we went home with a way super cute poop smelling puppy.

So meet Deagan.

So here is a bit about Deagan's doggie pedigree. His mom was a pregnant boxer that was found in Blythe. She was found by a different shelter than the one we had contact with. The original shelter was going to euthanize her. However, the Cocker Spaniel shelter we were in contact with ending up coming across Deagan's mom and delivered all 13 of her puppies. Three didn't make it, but Deagan did. So, when talked to the shelter they had determined that Deagan was part chocolate lab.

We don't have an exact date for his birthday, but we got him at about 6 weeks old. So as of right now, I declare his birthday to be February 10th, 2010.

And today... Deagan looks more like a lab than a boxer. He still has his white paws and white chest. But he totally has the face of a lab.

He is completely awesome. We completely love him. He loves swimming. He loves running. He loves other dogs. He loves other people. And he loves his rope.

More to come on doggies...

Yeah, I know. It's been awhile.

It's been several weeks since I blogged.

Oops.

So I decided that since Krista (my sister in law) was moving around the same time I was moving, I'd get back to blogging when she did. Well, she started blogging like a week ago, and moved into her new house a month ago, couple weeks after Brett and I moved. And she has three kids... And she is pregnant... And that makes me a slacker.

So. I guess this means I'll just get to blogging at some point. I've already procrastinated this much, so I will put it off till tomorrow. One more time.

Ha.

Announcements, Stories, and Shreds of Unimportant Information

Apparently it's been awhile since I sat down to type a blog. Ironic as it may be, I have hours of free time in front of a computer; I choose to watch The Biggest Loser and The Office. Because of my lack of blogging, I will soon be flooding my computer screen with meaningless words in an effort to document the first quarter of 2010.

Get ready for our announcements, stories, and shreds of unimportant information. I promise that it will be mostly boring, but you will find at least one sentence that will bring a bit of excitement/happiness to your heart.

Announcement.

When Brett and I purchased our Costco Membership for the first time, we took a step towards growing up. Costco is kinda a big thing. It was a little scary having to be responsible for the $100 minimum purchases we would be making for the rest of our lives, but we have acclimated to shopping in a giant warehouse. But, at the end of April, we really have to start calling ourselves adults. Real grownups. Homeowners.

And I'm excited.

We are in the process of purchasing our first home and are set to be in it by mid April. As for the location, I choose not to disclose any more of my not so personal life on the internet than necessary. You know how to reach me if you really want to know. For now, I'll just say for most people, it's far.

We decided to build our home, which is a process that takes forever. Lucky for you, I'll be posting boring pictures of my framed house, followed by carpet-less floors, and finally some finished walls.

If you are wondering why you didn't hear about this news sooner, Brett and I had a mess of paperwork to sort through and didn't want to announce anything until we were 100% positive we really wanted to do some growing up. If you heard from someone other than us, I am sorry I didn't get to tell you the exciting news and we can talk later. If you are just as excited as I am, then come over and help me paint, lay tile, and landscape a backyard.

And if you ever meet President Obama, tell him things for the eight grand for me.

Story.

Like most people, we spend the majority of our money on food. So we decided to really focus on making a dinner menu and try our best to stick to it. Brett has been the most wonderful husband and cooks dinner as much as I do, if not more. However, as much as I would love to continue to praise him in all his awesomeness, I can't help but drench this blog entry with the worst dinner he has ever made.

The recipe is called Hunter's Style Chicken. It's something that my mom got from an aunt of mine, and it came along into our little family of two. It ends up being this sort of tomato "slop" on top of rice. This recipe is as follows:

Cooked rice

2 large chicken breasts cooked and cut into bite size pieces

1/2 pound of bacon 

1 large onion 

28 oz  diced canned tomatoes

1 bottle Heinz 57 steak sauce

1/4 cup sugar

Cook bacon, drain and set aside. Using 1 tablespoon of bacon grease, cook onions until tender. Add chicken, cooked bacon, tomatoes, 57 sauce, and sugar. Stir and let simmer on low until warm. Serve over cooked rice.

One evening brett gets home from work. The kitchen is a complete mess and dinner isn't made (I was probably being lazy that day). So, I offer Brett the privilege of dishes or dinner. He chooses to cook dinner since the dishes are bad, really bad. He pulls out the recipe card and starts to make dinner as I clean the kitchen. Brett gets out a cutting board and a knife, and in his best Julia Child voice gives instructions on how to properly cut an onion. I laugh.

Twenty minutes or so go by, the dish washer is running and I'm drying and putting away the remaining dishes. Pans go under the cookie making canisters, cookie sheets go under the spice jars. Brett is almost done with the "slop" part of the meal and is about to move on to cooking the rice. I bend down to put a pan away and as I come back up I notice that he left the lid to one of the canisters open (he always does that). Right and I am silently complaining in my head, I realize that the canister he left open was the once that holds the salt. I close my eyes and say to him, "You didn't just put salt in the dinner, did you?" Brett says with confused confidence, "No... oh crap!" Instead of following the directions for 1/4 cup of sugar, he added 1/4 cup of salt. I don't think we even go through that much salt in a year!

Brett leaves the kitchen crushed with hunger and falls to the ground. He just ruined dinner. My Julia Child husband ruined dinner. I get the guts to taste it, thinking it wasn't too bad. Nope, it was bad. Brett was on the ground still talking about how much that meal just cost and we aren't eating any of it.

So I did some thinking.

I poured our dinner into a colander and rinsed it off in the sink. One by one, I taste each remaining ingredient. Chicken, still good. Bacon salty but acceptable. Tomatoes, not bad. Onions horrible. So I needed to replace the onion, not a problem.

But I just dumped $3.50 of steak sauce and tomato juice down the drain. I go to the panty, tomato soup should replace the juice just fine, but dinner should have been done already and I hate going to the grocery store and I don't even have time to go to the grocery store.

Well, little does half the world know, but the internet has everything on it including a recipe for Heinz 57 steak sauce. Brett found a recipe and we were one step close to eating dinner. A little bit of ranch, chili powder, apple juice, ketchup, pepper, and Italian seasoning makes Heinz 57 Sauce. 

Dinner was served and tasted just fine.

Bon Appetite.

Unimportant Information.

I'm currently an Ulta Stylist.

I recently got a position as a stylist at an East Valley Ulta. I spent $17,000 on a cosmetology education and was doing nothing with it.

The salon is great, the girls are great,  the clientele is great. The tips are wonderful. My discount is awesome. It's close to my new home. But... I still have my full-time job with Posted Properties and am still enrolled in school full-time. I work weekends, and I occasionally clean the bathroom.

So, come see me and get your hair done!

Sunday in the Wrong Ward

I've reached a point in my life where I will find any excuse to not do homework. I have been so busy these days that any free time should be homework time, but that would make my life "all encompassingly" boring. So, as of right now, I should be doing homework. Blogging about Church today sounds so much better.

Brett and I stayed out late last night, late for us. And since our friends are all single, we live rather exciting weekends which land us home past midnight. And, like all single kids our age, church is scheduled past noon on purpose. Otherwise the young adults would become entirely inactive because it's hard to get up for 8 AM church.

So when we woke extremely late for church, we decided to just go to a later meeting that started around noon. I looked up meeting times in our area and mentioned to Brett that there was a ward that started sacrament at 1:30 PM, perfect. He got on the computer looked at some other times and agreed that we would go to sacrament at 1:30 PM.

We got dressed and went to church.

We had this awesome plan. Sneak in the back, sit in the overflow, sit through sacrament meeting, sneak our after the hour was over. This was going to be perfect. We were going to avoid that conversation where we were noticed to be new, but really we just slept in late and are visiting.

We walked into the chapel, no over flow. 

Then, this twenty something year old guy comes up to us and asks if we are new. At which point I realize that there are no children in this ward. Not one child. Not one old person. Just young adults. Brett, seems to be five steps ahead of me and answers to the "kid" that we are just visiting. And suddenly church starts and we are standing like dummies at the back of the room, drawing attention no doubt.

I look at Brett and panic slightly cause we are totally in a single's ward and we never liked single's ward.

We sit down, at which point Brett starts to make fun of me. "You really know how to pick 'em." The internet said this was a family ward. Great, I am in a single's ward and married. WERID. People go to the single's ward to get married and I am so in the wrong place. Brett says, "if anyone asks we are here to see Jason speak." I look up and infront of me is a girl I totally know, who also totally knows that I am married. Crap.

And we sit there.

For an hour.

In single's ward.

Where we don't belong.

And where we never even belonged when we were single.

To make Sunday all the more awkward we were completely trapped after sacrament meeting. In order to keep the "kids" at church for all three meetings, Sunday School starts immediately after the closing prayer. Like right after, no visiting, no chit chatting, no bathroom break. So sneaking out the back in nearly impossible. Brett claims to need to use the bathroom. And our get away was a success.

Needless to say the speakers, including Jason, did a great job. They shard some funny stories. And a small part of me is no longer scared of the single's ward.

Now, back to homework.

Caffeine

I'm up. I'm wide awake. It is 10:45 PM and I am not sleepy!

This is going to be a problem come tomorrow morning as I sit at my desk and pour over the endless rectangles that make up my Excel database. 

The last time I was wide awake at night was when I was nocturnal and jobless. Tonight we can blame caffeine and my self-diagnosed almost brain aneurysm. Don't panic, I said self-diagnosed not actual.

Yesterday at about five o'clock, as I was watching The Biggest Loser via hulu.com, I started to feel a headache come on and within about fifteen minutes it was in full force. So I stumbled to my bed to take a quick nap hoping it would help. About and hour later Brett came home, gave me the magical migraine pills and I was function again. However, the magical migraine pill only lasted like three hours which totally isn't how it normally works. I gave up and went to bed.

Sleep did not come.

Those magical migraine pills are loaded, I mean loaded, with caffeine.

So I spent the night with my head throbbing, and sleeping every thirty minutes or so. When it came time to wake up for work, I got in the shower, got dress, and then spent thirty minutes bent over the toilet contemplating how this would effect my work performance. I eventually called my boss about to cry in pain and explained to him that work was out of the question.

I then text Brett and told him to call me in two hours to make sure I was still alive. I was convinced I was going to lay down and have a brain aneurysm right there on my pillow. I took a caffeine migraine pill and some how went to sleep.

I woke up 1:00 PM shut all the blinds and did some light reading. I totally felt fine till about 6:30 PM when the slight throbbing in my head returned. 

I took another migraine pill drank 32oz of Dr. Pepper and now I am screwed cause I'm never going to get any sleep for work tomorrow.

And I promised I am not a drug addict. I hate taking pills, I gag on them.

Renting Via Red Box

Let's just start by saying that Red Box and Netflix are the two greatest inventions ever. Kay, not ever, but they come pretty close to it.

We watch a lot of movies. One, it's cheap and two, it usually calls for chocolate. I promise that this story isn't going anywhere. So please don't expect some life changing moment to form onto the screen. I just wanted to share a story.

Remember when you were a little kid and Circle K was on every corner. Fine, not every corer, just on two out of the four given corners at an intersection, plus one Circle K less than a quarter mile away. You remember that? I guess it wasn't when you were just a little kid, it has pretty much always been that way. Store that mental picture of your favorite Circle K convenience store to the side in your brain somewhere.

Now. A few days ago Brett and I rented a movie online from Red Box. If you didn't already know, you can rent online and pick up your movie later, we do this for the popular movies. So after renting online, we got in the car and drove to the Circle K behind our apartment to pick up our movie (this is our normal Red Box location and it is literally right behind our apartment). 

Brett gets out of the car, walks up to Red Box, swipes his card, swipes his card again, and walks back to the car without a DVD. He then proceeds to explain how retarded he is for going to the wrong Circle K. He rented our movie from the Circle K of off Williams Field, and we were at the Circle K off of Pecos.

Okay. Williams Field it is.

We drive to the Circle K off of Williams Field. He gets out of the car, walks up to Red Box, swipes his card, swipes his card again, then walks back to the car without a DVD. Again, he tells me that he is retarded, and since we are on the west side of the intersection we are now in Chandler and Williams Field becomes Chandler Boulevard. So we still haven't made it to the correct Red Box of off Williams Field.

We soon realized which Circle K we needed to be at. For reals this time.

As we drive to the correct Circle K off of Williams Field we drive past a unnamed gas station that has a Red Box. And you would not believe this, but one parking lot over, at Sonic, there is another Red Box. You can totally stand at one Red Box and see another. Meanwhile I am thinking about how dumb it is that we have to drive to three different Red Box locations when there are probably six Red Box machines within walking distance of my apartment.

Here is the moral of the story. 

Actually, I don't have one. I just remembered this wasn't a life changing story.

Someday, you are going to forget all about Circle K. They'll no longer be the dominating feature overpopulating our streets. The only association Circle K will have with your brain is the fact that Red Box is most likely located there. And at your local grocery store. Most likely at Walgreens. Sonic too. Red Box has taken over, and there is probably going to be one assigned for every neighborhood by 2012.

We eventually got our movie.

The end.

PostedProperties.com

I figured that since I finally know all my responsibilities at my new job, that I'd quickly blog about it. A few weeks ago I had posted that I had just gotten offered the job. At that time I was a bit confused as to who I was working for. I thought it was RedBrick Reality, it's not.

I work for a company called PostedProperties.com. They are a bidding service for clients who want to purchase foreclosed homes at auction. We do the majority of the research for our clients. Then, they offer a bid for a property and we take it down to the trustee sales and place their bids. There is a lot more that goes on than just that, but I gave you the condensed version.

Now about this job.

I had my first day of work the week of Christmas. It turns out that December is the slowest time of year for foreclosures.  As a result, my first two weeks of work were extremely boring. But let's not move too fast. 

Week one at work was extremely confusing. Everything they showed me to do on the computer was easy. Research sales dates and times, and check for IRS liens. But it's never easy trying to catch up on the lingo your job uses. Your coworkers get so used to using acronyms, nicknames, industry specific terms, and inside jokes that you are always fives steps behind. But the work it self was simple. I was pretty bored after about three hours of work though.

Week two was completely different. See I have like three bosses. Well maybe four or five, I'm not sure. There is Doug who owns RedBrick Reality and PostedProperties.com, then there is "Laser" who does all the operations and office stuff, Damon who deals with the clients and makes everyone laugh. Steve, he is a bit intimidating, he is the bidding manager and is usually out of the office when I am in, but he's cool too. Everyone I work with is cool. There are few other employees but they aren't current to this story right now. So for the duration of week one Laser wasn't there. He was away for the holidays and he know what my job is. So when he decided to finally show back up to work I wasn't so bored anymore. He made my job a little more clear and gave me more things to do. So I guess if anyone is my manager, Laser is. 

And now weeks three is over and I think we are back to being fully functional. Apparently January is the busiest month, or so I hear. So you bet that when Monday came, I actually had to work. As a matter of fact I put in over 40 hours of work this week. It's been a long time since that has happened. 

I like my job, a lot actually. I saw an old friend this weekend and we talked about my new job. She called me a nerd and said I would be one to like a desk job with lots of computer time. It's true. I really am a nerd. I even enjoy my video games and wear glasses, sometimes.

The end.

Dear 2009.

I wrote the date earlier today and at the moment the New Year finally sunk in. I guess it took a day and a half to hit me cause as December 31st became January 1st, I was at home on the couch with my husband laughing at the New York City broadcast. Two minutes into the New Year... we went to bed.

There was no big celebration for us this year. To be honest, it's just another transition. We spent the end of 2009 together and started 2010 together. I guess that is all that really matters. But after I wrote 1/2/2010 today, I wondered where the year had gone. I was having a hard time remembering anything at all that had transpired the last twelve months. And like I always do in such a confusing moment, I panicked and felt like I wasn't living enough of my life.

So 2009.

I would hate for 2009 to be the year I zoned out on, so I will take some time to reminisce. Here are a few of the accomplishments, events, and moments of 2009.

We moved into our second apartment.

Brett turned 23.

We got a super cute nephew.

Brett got a new job.

I turned 21.

We bought a new car.

We lost a faithful car.

I graduated from hair school hell.

We got a 105 year old piano for free.

We took our car on a road trip.

Brett got employee of the month.

I refinished a kitchen table and bed bench.

We dressed as nerds for Halloween.

I got a new job.

As you can see it was so incredibly eventful that nothing will ever top it. Happy New Year.

Love.

The Days.