Our Baby

Towards the end of the year X and I decided that our house was a little too quiet. We decided that it was either time for a baby or a dog. We went with the dog. :)

Introducing: Name to be Determined!

This is our new 3-year-old Welsh Terrier. She’s a hypoallergenic dog (doesn’t shed much, like a poodle), and she is very well behaved… Unless you make her do something that she doesn’t want to do; then she gets a little, shall we say, “bitey”. She also doesn’t get along very well with other dogs, but we’re hoping to nip that problem (and the biting) pretty quickly. We’re still working on some dominance issues, but once we’re over that we feel pretty confident we’ll be able to socialize her just fine.

We actually ended up getting her from a posting we saw on craigslist. It all seemed a little sketchy – one of those “too good to be true” kinds of things, but so far she has been super fun and has filled in that gap that our house was missing. She’s completely house and kennel trained, and has no problem staying inside while we’re both at work during the week. She doesn’t seem to really chew on things, and since she doesn’t really shed she is allowed on the bed and on the couch (although she does get down and sleep in her kennel during the night).

We’re still working on a name (her previous owner called her “Lulu Bear”, or just “Lulu”), but our friends’ dog’s name is “Lula”, and we’d just prefer to change it anyways. Some names we are considering are “Toffee”, “Reese”, and “Pepsi” (LOL all food names). Leave a comment if you like any of those or have another suggestion!

The Challenge is Over

Last year I blogged about the Cruise Lifestyle Challenge we were doing with my family and X's mom for a year. The challenge officially ended October 1st, and everyone had a good amount of success with completing their goals.

I ended up losing 55 of the 60 pounds I wanted to lose! Unfortunately I couldn't find a "before" picture (not sure if I even took one), so I figure an "after" picture won't be worth much without something to compare it to. Instead, here's a picture of 5 lbs. of fat, so you can just imagine what it looks like (and feels like) to lose 11 of these :)

I also successfully completed a year without sweets (minus the once-in-a-lifetime desserts I was able to try in Israel, Egypt, and Jordan). I had hoped it would be relatively easy to stay away from sweets after a whole year without them, but unfortunately Halloween proved this to be incorrect. At least I feel like I'm eating a lot LESS than I used to! Here's to keeping it all off - until the cruise at least!

Pumpkin Carving Extravaganza 2011

NOTE: For the most satisfying viewing pleasure, please read this blog directly from my website (not from Google Reader or another RSS feed). The before/after images won't work otherwise.

This year for Halloween we were in San Francisco for "Nevada Day", so we didn't have a lot of time to carve our pumpkins, but we still had a fun time picking them out at the local pumpkin farm and furiously trying to complete them before our trip. Here are our results! (Reminder: hover over the pictures to see the before/after images)

"Nightmare Before Christmas" Jack Skellington Pumpkin

"Despicable Me" Minion Pumpkin

Unfortunately when we got back from SF on Halloween Eve, our pumpkins were a little wrinkly, but nothing that a quick bleach bath couldn't fix!

While in SF, we went to a 49ers game, which was AWESOME! Check "Professional Football Game" off of my bucket list!

As a side note, if you have ever wanted to find out what it is like to eat a meal as a blind person, try out Opaque - Dining in the Dark. It is a "Blind Dining" experience where you basically get to eat a full 3-course meal in a pitch-black room! It was totally the most unique experience! They have locations in San Francisco, L.A., San Diego, NYC, and Dallas.

New Callings

Now that X has gotten settled into the area, the bishopric decided that it was time to put her to work. They were going to try to give her a calling that she could do remotely (calling for visiting teaching reports maybe?), but it didn't end up happening. Now that she's back we've heard that all the auxiliaries have been "fighting" to get her, but she ended up with the young womens. Here's the new YW 1st Counselor:

I've been the Elder's Quorum secretary for about a year now. The EQ President that called me had been in for about a year. A few weeks ago X and I were asked to meet with someone in the stake presidency (we weren't familiar enough with the presidency to know if it was the president or one of his counselors), but it ended up being the president! We weren't sure if it was going to be a new calling for X or me (it really could've been for either of us - it didn't matter that she was just called as a YW's counselor), but it ended up being for me. Prior to the meeting X teased me that I was going to be called as a bishop (there have been rumors about splitting the wards out here for some time now), and I was fairly sure I wouldn't be called as the EQ President since our current President has been in for less than 2 years. So any guesses?

I'm the new EQ President!

We both are a little overwhelmed with our new responsibilities, but I guess we got what we were looking for when we decided to get outside the Utah bubble and find opportunities to serve!

Stay tuned next time - we're getting our new furniture delivered this week and finally feel like we can show off our home!

Our New House

BIRD-House that is! We've had this plain, old, log/post sitting out in our front yard ever since we moved in and we've been looking for something to put on it. We were pretty sure we wanted to do a birdhouse of some kind, but none of the ones we found had the right "look" that we were after. But on our bike ride yesterday after a work picnic/carnival, we spotted a bunch of birdhouses for sale and found the perfect one. Here's the final installed product!

There's a tiny little broom leaned up against the door

Sitting atop the log/post

50 Down... 10 to go!

After 9 months I am almost at my cruise goal to lose 60 pounds! I still have 3 months left for the last 10, but I definitely feel like I have plateaued and it is going to be quite a struggle to go this last little bit. It is definitely easier though to resist sweets after all this time! I'll definitely post before/after pictures after the challenge is over.

The Honeymoon

I stumbled across some pictures from our Honeymoon back in 2009 and realized that I hadn't ever posted about them. Since I'm still dragging my feet on sorting through all the pictures from Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, I figure posting these might be a good stalling tactic for this week! :)

X and I were married on May 20th, 2009 in the Salt Lake Temple. We decided to do our reception the night before (at "The Point" at Huntsman Cancer Institute) which made things SO much easier - the day of our wedding was tons less hectic, and we were able to leave right after the ceremony and luncheon. Definitely the way to do it in my opinion! We decided to do a smaller honeymoon up in Park City for a week, and then for our first anniversary we'd do something bigger and better.

Since our reception was the night before, no one ended up decorating our car. Luckily my car was dirty enough for us to manage it ourselves!

We stayed our first night at the Stein Erikson Lodge, and had dinner at the Glitretind Restaurant. Since dinner was included in our Honeymoon package, we decided to be adventurous and try new and expensive things we wouldn't have tried otherwise. Our 3-course meals included raw elk (sliced paper-thin), foie gras (duck liver), quail, peanut butter and banana crème brûlée, and the most random flavors of chocolate truffles - including curry!

We spent one afternoon at the Utah Olympic Park. We found out they give free upgrades on ride passes if you are on your honeymoon! :)

X practices her form on the luge

I couldn't bear to watch

X enjoying a ride down the mountain

I'm not sure if I was enjoying this or not...

Before going down the zip-lines

Waiting for the gates to open

I smiled to trick X into thinking I was going to let her win in our race down the lines

Of course we couldn't leave out the "Alpine Slides". We'll never forget the little girl in front of us on our first run who rode the brakes the whole way down. We would literally wait a few minutes in hopes she'd be at the bottom by then, and then catch up to her in like 10 seconds! Fortunately they let us ride again for free.

I snapped this shot when we were waiting for the slow-poke