February Wrap-Up

If you've seen Tyson's recently added Facebook photos, no we haven't had a baby. ;) And if you haven't seen them, you should. :) His cousin Hallie and her husband Mike (who live in Michigan) adopted a baby girl from Utah. We got to spend time with them while they were here, and got to see and hold Eliza when she was just two days old. Tyson was able to work on expanding his photography skills, too, and take some pictures of her and of their son Landon. They are the sweetest kids! (even though Eliza only wanted us to leave her alone during her photo shoots - LOL) And it was so great being able to spend time with them again. :)

Since I last wrote, I saw an orthopedist for my knee, and he said that the MRI looked very similar to a torn meniscus, but that the indicators didn't "go all the way to the bone," like they should. And my symptoms weren't adding up, either. Then he pressed his thumb on the underside of my patella, where I discovered that it's quite inflamed. Ow! Hahaha! So, now I'm in physical therapy for patella femoral syndrome, which is basically unexplained chronic or recurring knee pain. But the physical therapist's observations and recommendations make sense, and I am hopeful for a future with reduced pain. :)

This week I've been struggling with a lot of discomfort in my neck, shoulders and lower back. I can't turn my head much, and I can't lie on my right side. Thankfully, my lower back is about 90% better, and I'll be able to see the chiropractor on Tuesday. Also, I still managed to do my PT exercises four days this week, of which I'm pretty proud! :) Hee, hee.

And, if I start to feel down about it, I think of my awesome visiting teacher who has had a brain tumor her whole life. She randomly falls down sometimes, and doesn't have enough balance to do any real physical activities. She also has to wear a hat and sunglasses all the time to prevent insane light-induced headaches. And she is happy and cheerful and enjoys life! :) (And trying out new recipes! I have a partner in crime! Muahahaha!)

Tyson's website, ArchitectureLinked.com finally received 100,000 unique visitors this month! While I don't understand what that means nearly as well as he does, I know that it will increase our clout with search engines so people can find us more easily, and it helps us make money through advertisers, since we have more potential customers for them coming to our site. Yay!

On the food front, since I last wrote I made Remick a fortress cake for his 25th birthday, complete with gummie bears (both attacking and defending), Tootsie roll weapons and a whipped cream mote filled with Swedish Fish. The cake was devil's food, with whipped cream between its four layers, and finished with a chocolate fudge frosting.

the beginningthe finished masterpiecechocolate catapaultgummie bear catapault
battering ramdefending archerwhat four of us could stuff down

For Valentine's Day I baked a cake recipe that I made into cupcakes, mini cupcakes, and a mini layer cake. I piped strawberry jam into the cupcakes and frosted them with strawberry buttercream frosting. The jam needed to be piped in a lot deeper, and the frosting was either too cold to pipe, or too warm to hold it's shape, but they still tasted really good. :D For the cake, I sliced each layer in half, then used a heart-shaped cookie cutter, and cut them each into a heart shape. I then made two mini-cakes, with strawberry frosting between the first two layers, and strawberry jam between the second two. Then I tried coating them with "vanilla melty" that I tinted pink. Not good! LOL! I was trying to imitate Little Debbie cakes, but I didn't have any idea what I was doing, and the stuff was just too thick. The result was more like a Sting song, "Fortress Around Your Heart!" Tyson and I just chipped it off and enjoyed eating the rest of the cake. :D


Oh, and mom, when you come out here (whenever I have a baby), we'll have to make some homemade guacamole for you. We just tried out a recipe for it last night, and it was a keeper! :)

Belated Happy New Year :)

'Ello! Today has been more exciting than usual. Tyson and I served our first day in Primary. We've been called to teach a class of four 8- to 9-year-olds. It was fun, but definitely took effort. :) Straight from teaching, we both spoke in sacrament meeting (Our ward is backwards and has sacrament meeting last). It felt like leaving the frying pan to go into the fire! :) The day went really well, though, and Tyson's parents came up from Spanish Fork to hear us talk and then had lunch at our place. It was great to talk with them, and it was fun to finally have people in our home. :)

The weather today has been beautiful, too. Over the last few days, the snow has melted, and then today has been beautifully sunny. :) The downside to the weather change, though, is that more than a handful of spiders have crept in and wanted to room with us. I'm not one to kill spiders, but I have made a few exceptions since we moved in. I've caught and released a few, too, but they are really fast, and my arachnophobic nerves can't take too much of that! LOL!

Wednesday was the first Relief Society activity since I moved in. The first half hour were some uplifting talks, and then we just ate soup, salad, and breadsticks, and just talked. We have the best people in our ward, and I had a wonderful night getting to know more of the sisters! (AND they had potato, broccoli cheddar, and artichoke mushroom soups, so I actually had vegetarian options. Sweet!)

I've been subbing a lot at work lately, and I'm so grateful for the opportunities. Class is always an adventure. In fact, one my girls in my oldest class had a meltdown Thursday night because I asked her to face the barre for the degage exercise. She began to cry because she would be able to see herself in the mirror, then suddenly claimed that the rest of the class were mean to her and said things about her when she wasn't there. I'd be moved, except that I'm not convinced that she meant any of it! Oy! A few more times during the class she would call out girls for saying things about her. The poor other girls were quite surprised by all this. And now they probably will indeed talk about her this week. Sheesh! What a night! :)

I have a couple pictures I wanted to share from Christmas baking. I made a simple yule log for Christmas. I've wanted to make a jelly roll cake since I was quite young, and I finally did it! It was really fun, and quite tasty. Thanks for letting me take the jelly roll pan, mom!

Playing Catch-Up

So, in the more than a month that has past since I last wrote, we had an awesome Thanksgiving with Tyson's family. Everyone - except me ;) - loved Mike's turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Caleen made delicious green bean casserole, frog-eye salad, and this cranberry compote instead of cranberry sauce. It has dried apricots, golden raisins, and cardamom - yum! I experimented with pear pie and "Hooray for the Pumpkin Pie" from the Lion House Bakery cookbook. The latter was quite large and had to be carefully moved into a casserole dish, hee, hee! (See pictures) It was a wonderful day of gratitude spent with family. :)


Tyson and I then moved up to Bountiful into a four-plex. Our location is phenomenal. We're so close to everything, and yet we feel totally safe. I still can't wrap my head around it! I love our apartment, too. We finally have our own washer and dryer, and we have a second bedroom in the hope that kidlings will come soon. Our neighbors across the hall, and the ones just above them are members of our ward - which, by the way is awesome! And our neighbor above us is a quiet man who works nights. I'm beginning to hang now pictures on the wall now, too, and it feels more like home all the time. :)

Right after we moved, Caleen very kindly arranged things so that I could have my knees MRI-ed at her work at no cost to me. It turns out I have a tear in my right medial meniscus. Ha! Take that doctors! I knew there was something of significance wrong! Okay, so it's not much of a victory, because now I can't dance and have to see and orthopedist and probably undergo physical therapy, but I'm hoping that it will be a victory long-term. :)

Also, I love my job teaching ballet on Thursday nights. I have three classes, and two of them make me want to pull my hair out with frustration (!!!), but I still love my dancers and I love preparing for and teaching my classes! :D

We had a sweet Christmas this week. Tyson's work has kept him for such long hours lately that they gave him Thursday off in addition to Friday. It was so great to spend so much time together! :) We had a quiet Christmas Eve with just the two of us. On Christmas Day we drove down to Orem and visited briefly with his best friend Chris's family, then continued on to his own family in Spanish Fork. Remick and Amelia and her sister Beth joined us there. We opened gifts, ate a large and delicious lunch, then all went to see the latest Narnia movie. We returned home and ate desserts - pumpkin pie, apple pie, my black forest pie, and "ugly duckling cake." When we left last night, we stopped by Chris's home again. We sat and talked for a few delightful hours with Chris and his mom, then went home and collapsed into bed. :)

I hope you all had a sweet and Merry Christmas full of joy and love!

Happy Feet, I've Got Those Happy Feet

On Wednesday I got a call from the owner of the aforementioned dance studio saying she wanted to hire me! Yipee! So I drove up to Bountiful the next day and watched and took notes during the classes I'll be teaching (three instead of four, but I can also make money subbing for other teachers), and got the run down on everything from Diane, the awesome teacher I'm replacing. It's a great studio and I am SOOO excited to teach these classes!!! I also can take the adult ballet class on Thursday nights for free, and yesterday I took the barre portion of a master class taught by a dancer from Ballet West. I am just thrilled to be doing what I love again!!! Woo-hoo!

Late Tuesday night I thought I might be getting sick, and sure enough I've come down with a cold. However, I'd already scheduled a deep-tissue massage for Thursday morning (with a gift certificate from last Christmas, hee, hee), and if I rescheduled less than 24 hours before I'd have to pay an extra fee. So, I got the massage (so nice!) before going up to Bountiful, but the next day the after-effects of the deep bodywork coupled with body aches from the cold were too much! Ow! LOL. (Note to self . . .)

This morning I woke up to snow on the ground, and it made me smile. (It will stop making me smile promptly on January 1st - hee, hee!) Lots of people are sick around here, and I filled in for the teacher in Relief Society today. We have such wonderful sisters in this ward, and the things they shared made it a really sweet and touching meeting. Just another reason for me to feel happy and so blessed! I will, however, stay home from choir tonight. I'm feeling too crummy (physically) and I don't want to get squished between a bunch of people and breathe all over them. :P Additionally, the snow that melted after church was followed by hail that covered the ground in white, which is still being followed by more snow and some crazy wind. Yep, indoors sounds good. And maybe some hot chocolate . . .

15 Minutes of Fame

So, if you've perused the pages of the November Ensign magazine, you just might have recognized a familiar face on page 113. On that page there's a photo of our group of sisters that attended the General Relief Society Meeting in Salt Lake on September 25th. One of the gutsier sisters called the Ensign cameraman over and asked him to take our picture. We thought it was fun, but never thought that anything would come of the solicited photo op. But, ta-da!

Yesterday I drove up to Bountiful for a job interview at a dance studio. They need a teacher for four ballet classes on Thursday evenings. I don't have much experience teaching dance, yet, which makes my chances quite slim. However, the interview went well, and the owner and I liked each other a lot. It seems like a great studio with a nice, healthy approach to dance, yet with high-quality instruction. AND it's 2 MINUTES from the apartment we're moving into. Oooh! Me wants it!! :)

Aside from that, there's really been nothing noteworthy this week. I am SOOO excited about moving into our own apartment - and getting our life out of storage - in three weeks!!! That keeps me pumped during the days. :) I'm also reading The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, which is pretty interesting (and keeps making me think of Tim). The rest is just business (or busyness) as usual. :)

Daylight Savings Time . . . Oh, Yeah

So this morning I rolled over and saw that Tyson's clock said 8:34 am. Distressed, I jumped out of bed, got ready, and zoomed over to the church with a few minutes to spare. As I pulled up to the church, though, I realized that there were very few cars in the parking lot. I checked the time on my phone, and realized what I'd done. Ah, daylight savings time! I had completely spaced the fact that the change was this weekend. LOL.

As some of you already know (thanks to Facebook), the big news is that yesterday we put down a deposit on an apartment in Bountiful, and we can begin moving in on the first! It's less than ten minutes from Tyson's work (instead of over an hour which he's been driving since February), and in a cul de sac of four-plexes near an elementary school. We're just around the corner from two grocery stores and our bank, too. I'm so sad to move away from our amazing ward, but I just can't describe how elated I am to move into such a perfect place!

Last weekend, we were about to put a down payment on another apartment in South Jordan. But neither of us felt like it's what the Lord wanted us to do. I was too excited about moving to really listen as I should have, but thankfully Tyson was in tune, and we called back to say we couldn't move in after all. Now I am extra grateful for the Lord's guidance, because the apartment we will have now is better in so many ways. :)

Also last weekend, everyone did their trick-or-treating on Saturday out here, which was really cool. I took a little time to carve a candy corn jack-o-lantern, which I'm pretty proud of, since I didn't know how I was going to do it ahead of time. That night, in the middle of trick-or-treating, a crazy hailstorm pounded down on us! One of the cats got totally freaked out by the noise and curled up on the stairs and just kept meowing. After the hail stopped, though, there was a huge double rainbow we could see from our backyard! Tyson and I both did our best to take pictures of it. :) The next day my celebration consisted of making some tasty Halloween cupcakes. :)


The other pictures are of my favorite recent food conquests. I have fallen in love with Paula Dean's Baked Acorn Squash with Brown Sugar and Butter - it's like having your vegetables for dessert! Also, I've loved Olga's Kitchen's spinach pie since I was a child, so I busted out the phyllo dough again and made Emeril's spanikopita. It has a more pungent flavor, more authentic than Olga's, and it's one of the simplest recipes for spanikopita I've found. I just devoured them! I also tried a recipe for spaghetti squash, which was pretty good and can be easily tweaked. The trick was just getting the knife out of the squash after my initial stab into it - I feel like someone should crown me king for finally getting it out! I tried out a recipe for pumpkin cake, too, and baked the batter in Caleen's awesome pumpkin-shaped mini-cake pan. They were so light and soft and moist! It was like they melted into creamy pumpkin pie in your mouth!


This past Friday night, in order to use up leftover pumpkin and some aging apples, I made some apple-pumpkin muffins with streusel topping for Saturday's breakfast. They were fabulous! Next time I'd like to use all whole wheat flour, so I can feel a leetle less guilty about eating all that sugar. ;P


I apologize for not writing the last two weeks. Tyson and I have been working on compiling a ward directory with photographs, and so our Sunday time between church and choir has been absorbed doing that. Also, after ward choir from 4pm to 5pm, we've been attending the stake choir from 5pm to 6pm, which started two weeks ago. And then more often than not family comes over for dinner. But of course, with the holidays and moving both coming up, I make no promises about the future! :D

Scares and Snuggles and Stupidity

Monday and Tuesday were pretty ordinary this week. However, Wednesday Tyson came home from work early . . . while I was in the shower. You guessed it: he stealthily opened the door and flung open the shower curtain causing me to leap into the air, flinging the shampoo in my hands all over. Quite literally the most exciting part of my week . . . punk.

Thursday I visit taught one of my sisters - she's a talker and I was there 1.5 hours! In the afternoon I went over to harass Rem and make his life miserable. A job well done, I might add. That night I made veggie pot pie for dinner, which allowed me to use up some odds and ends. It turned out beautifully, half-whole-wheat crust and all. :)

Friday I made tomato soup using tomatoes from the garden. It was pretty good, but for some inexplicable reason it has quite a spicy kick. It only has 1.5 teaspoons of pepper, two cloves of garlic, and one onion - the recipe even called for two, but we only had one. I can't figure it out.

Anywho, after dinner we went over to the Websters to play some Beatles Rock Band. Before we go started, little Sammy toddled in wanting to give me "loves." She climbed into my lap and snuggled up for several minutes - it was just divine! We played Rock Band, ate pie, and then talked until after midnight. It was a great night.

Yesterday I dragged Tyson out hiking near Sundance. It was an exquisite day. However, when I met him after his game of ultimate frisbee, I forgot to bring the camera for him to experiment taking pictures. :( And then it cost $6 a car to get into the park - and of course we had driven separately. And after two hours of hiking through gorgeous fall colors - to a waterfall and back - I realized that I had locked my keys in my car. After trying to figure out a solution, we finally called AAA and they wound their way into the canyon to unlock my door. :P Once we got home, we didn't do much. :) However, we did watch "The Business of Being Born," which was pretty interesting and sparked some good conversation. :)

Today I filled in for a teacher in Primary. It's definitely harder than just sitting through Sunday School and Relief Society, but it was also quite fun. :)

This week Tyson came to me and said that it was time we got out on our own. At first I was a little sad because I really love the people here. But almost immediately I was elated at the thought of having our own home again! So, we're looking at apartments again, and Tyson is filling out the paperwork to make it so that our monthly combined student loan payments aren't more than 15% of our income (right now they're over 34% of our gross income). Of course, it will still be tight, and we'll have to budget even more carefully, but I'm really happy about it. :)

That's it for this week!