Christmas Bears

Back on November 4, 2006 Jason proposed to me with 2 build a bears dressed in wedding clothes. They are super cute and I have had them up in our house(s) ever since. Well, it's been a while since we got married and I am ready to not have them be getting married anymore. As a friend of mine said "Yes, they have had a long wedding!" Anyway, they mean a lot to us so I don't want to just box them up so I thought of a good idea. Ever since Halloween I have been batting around the idea, but today we finally did it. I will buy different season/holiday outfits and have them change clothes to match the time of year. Genius!!

So today while we were at the mall we bought some really cute Christmas outfits and brought them home. I was laughing and giggling the whole time I was dressing them and Jason was laughing at me, but they are so dang cute!!! I am glad I thought of it and think it will be a really cute way to bring them into our lives all year long. I love Christmas and am glad to have one more way to celebrate and decorate. They turned out so dang cute!

They are now leaning on our tree, getting us ready for Christmas. It also snowed today which makes me feel even more like Christmas is here. Yeah!! I hope that you all have a very Merry Christmas!!

Giving Thanks and other random thoughts!

So Thanksgiving has come and gone and I would like to take the chance to say all of the things that I am thankful for. I am thankful for a new house that we adore. I am glad that we have the means to make this happen and for the blessings we have received in conjunction with buying this house. I am grateful to all of my amazing family and friends and for all of the things that they do for me. I love you all! I am especially grateful for my hubby and for the great man that he is. Thanks for loving me and making me feel beautiful. You are the best!

Now as we move on to Christmas I am super excited! I bought a Christmas tree today and all the ornaments for a pretty good price at Tai Pan and I love them. I am really excited to put it up. Maybe I will post a picture when we get it up. We are still trying to unpack boxes and get our house ready so we aren't quite ready to decorate for Christmas, but soon! I went this morning to Kohl's at 4 AM for the whole black Friday madness. Why I did this I am not entirely sure, and I can assure you I wont do it again! The lines were forever long and I waited in line for a while with my cheap Christmas tree and when there was a line mishap I decided to bail on the whole thing and go back to bed. Poor people who work retail, I feel very bad for you! I am not much of a shopper so I'm not sure what I was thinking :) I guess it was good to say I've done it. I went later today with my Mom and Sister to Tai Pan and struck gold so the day went well overall. I am a bit tired though!

Also, as you can see I have attached pictures of our new carpet and painting job. We really really love our house. We are really happy here tucked behind Jordan Landing :) Hope you are all well!

This is our living room, with red wall and the rest tan. Love it!!! Oh and part of our new couch.

This is our bedroom, we love it too!

This pic is the difference in the old carpet vs. new. It doenst do it justice how bad the old was, but the new is much better!

Update and a new book

So after reading everyone's exciting blogs about Halloween and thinking how lame we were for not really celebrating it, I realized something. We got the keys to our house on Halloween, so it didn't turn out so lame afterall :) With knowing I was moving I didn't decorate much and we didn't celebrate hardly at all. Next year we will decorate and have a dandy ol Halloween, in our own house! What a nice thing to say.
So yesterday with the help of some of my family members we painted our living room and our master bedroom. It went pretty quickly, thanks everyone who helped, and it is now ready to be moved in to. This Saturday is going to be our mass exodus and we will officially live behind Jordan Landing. We forgot to take our camera so I will take pictures on Tuesday and post them with the new carpet and walls. I am kind of tired of the only thing I can post about being our house. But all I can think about is packing and moving, so thats what you get! We went to our ward today for the last time which was kind of sad. Hopefully we will have as good of a ward in our new house. It's crazy to think that the whole "us buying a house"process is finally going to be over and it will be a done deal. It's exciting though. Then we will have you all over for a party :)

PS --I am finally giving in and am going to start reading Twilight today. I decided unless have it be ruined I had better read it myself now. I got all 4 books from my in-laws so that when I did finish one I didn't have to wait to read another. While it's probably not the best timing as far as moving is concerned, I have to have it read before the movie comes our or I will hear more then I want to.

Closing

We are closing on our house today!!! We got carpet installed yesterday and it looks great. We are super excited! We hope to get our keys tomorrow and we can start taping and painting and be moved in within the next two weeks or so. Just wanted to keep you in the current news! If anyone is an expert painter or mover, we have a job for you :)

Update!

It is looking like things are going well in the
financing department for our house. Our mortage guy called and said it is going to underwriting and he hopes we will be closed by Halloween! That would be so exciting! We were expecting it to take a while so we are elated at how quickly and well things have gone. I guess that means we had better put our 30 days notice here at our apartment soon. I was thinking I would have to wait to post pictures until it was officially our house, but remembered the home inspector took some. Sweet. This is the outside with apparently our neighbors car outside, so picture it without the weird blue hurst looking car. :)




This is the back, our little pad of cement haha.




Here is the living room. Its got the 3 bedrooms upstairs and the kitchen through the walkway there. The door you can see on the right there.. well the handle at least is to the garage. I hate the carpet so we bargained in a capet allowance so we get to put new carpet in. Also the whole house is white and we like color. So we are planning to paint and get new carpet before we move in.






Here is the kitchen, cute huh?

I am excited to pick paint colors and do fun things for our very own house! When we are done painting I will post more pictures.



I realized I haven't written about the details of the house. So allow me! It is a townhome with 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms and a one car garage. The kitchen is nice sized as you can see, which I really like. It is located behind Jordan Landing in West Jordan. It is in a complex called "The Pines at Jordan Landing." We are really excited and can't wait to move in! Well, we can wait to actually move, but the being in will be nice :)

It's Official!!

We finally accepted a final offer on a house!!! We are on our way to buying it! Now we just get to wait for all the financing and all of the closing problems. Ugh. I want to just move in now! We hope that the financing goes off without a hitch but with the economy right now I am afraid it won't. We'll see though. We are really excited!!!

A few of my Favorite Shows

I have to quickly give a shout out to FINALLY saying poka (meaning buhbye) to boring rerun shows. A bunch of my favorite shows will be or have already been shown this season. I will now name a few, not in any particular order:

1. The Biggest Loser: Families

I love The Biggest Loser and wish I could go on it. I know if I worked out 6-10 hours a day and had someone tell me what I can eat I would for sure succeed. And people like me so I wouldn't get voted off... its a win-win really. On the down side I could potentially have Jillian yelling in my face and I'm not sure that would end up very pretty. But since I don't have that, I have decided to start working out and try to eat healthier. I have gone to the gym this last week and have been walking on my lunch breaks with a girl at work. It feels nice to do something about it. Way to inspire me Biggest Loser!

PS - Did anyone see Kim Lyons as one of the trainers on the Dr. Phil weight loss challenge thing? I am glad her stint on the Biggest Loser was a short one, she was too emotional.. she bugged big time.

2. Survivor: Gabon

Oh Survivor, How I heart you so! I am not sure why I am so drawn to this show but I just am. Maybe my Mom has instilled the love of it into me from a young age as she too never misses an episode. Its just a good show and I love to pick the people I like from the beginning and watch their cunning ways. Such brilliance. I can't wait to strap in this Thursday and get hooked to the 17th season. Thanks Jeff Probst for all of your fantastic hosting skills! Bring me your torch, the tribe has spoken, you will now be asked to leave the tribal council area immediately.

3. Chuck

Jason gave a shout out and a very good list of reasons to watch Chuck the other day on here. I standby most of what he said ;) I love this show. Thanks to the writers strike last year it ended without enough episodes to suit me. I am excited its back. Very. It makes me laugh and its adventurous without offending me with blood. Fine family fun! Well, for Jason and I at least!

4. Life

Thanks to my father-in-law I have gotten into this show and absolutely love it. It's creative and the main character is... well exactly that, a character. He is funny and I just love to watch what they will come up with next. The opening scene of the first season was him getting released from prison after being in there for 10 years for murder charges. He was obviously innocent so the rest of the season is him working as a cop again and trying to solve crimes while he focuses on who really did murder the people he was framed and charged for. I love it. Can't quite figure out the grip it has on me, but I love it just the same.

5. Eureka

This one is just seriously a good watch. It's on the sci-fi channel so unless you have cable you won't get to watch it. But its really funny and very creative. The characters are awesome and its just a fun show. Thanks Jason for introducing this one to me! I never knew I would actually really get into a show on the sci-fi channel, but I have and I'm not ashamed to admit it :).

6. The Office

I love this show. Seriously love it. From the moment it starts to the moment its over I enjoy every minute of it. It is witty and a little too close to home in some cases. If you work in an office you can appreciate it.. even if you don't I think you still can! One caution though: If they focus a whole episode solely on Michael, you might feel a little crazy. Otherwise sit back and enjoy the fun Thursday comedy. The first time I saw it I didn't get it, and didn't much enjoy it.. but let it simmer. You too will come to love Dunder Mifflin and all of its stellar employees.

One final shout out: I would like to thank my DVR which without it, I would not be able to maximize my total TV watching potential. I am officially addicted to it and am quite sure I could NOT live without it. Well, I would probably still be breathing but it would not be the quality of life and that I have become accustomed to.

Oh and if any of you would like to call me after one of these episodes, I love to talk about who got voted out or kicked off. It takes me all of the next day to recover. I'm still in shock how much weight some of those people lost last week!

Back on the Housing Scene!

Hey Everyone!! It's been quite a while since I have written anything. Jason has written a few so as to not make our blog totally outdated, thanks Jas :). We ran into a snag in our dreams to buy a house and I think I got into a bit of a funk about it. But I'm out now and happy to report we do believe we fixed the snag and should be back on the prowl to find a place again. We found one we really liked back before and will probably end up putting an offer on that one, but we are keeping our options open. I think until it's final it won't hit me that we really are buying a house because I got excited before and had the ol letdown. Despite all of that I really am excited though. It will be nice to be able to own a place, have a parking spot remotely close to our place and not have to walk up flights of stairs to bring groceries in... all things I am going to be very grateful for :). As soon as we put an offer on something and get the ball rolling I will post pics of the place we have decided. I am kind of looking forward to making a home of our own and have made a goal with myself to make sure that everything has a place and that its cute, functional and most importantly, feels like our Own :) I may need some cute decorating ideas from my cute decorating friends :) Even though we don't have a place I am excited to paint it fun colors. Hope you guys are all doing well!

Thoughts on the Day

Today started just like most Thursday mornings for me. I was about 5 minutes late for work, was bombarded by E-mails as I got to my desk and I ate a bagel. Today, however, at 8:00 am, my co-workers and I gathered outside to face the rising sun of a new day and silently remembered the fallen heros of seven years ago. It wasn’t anything grand. There wasn’t any speakers. It was simply a group of civilians, soldiers and airmen gathered together to reflect. I couldn’t help my thoughts from wandering to October 2006 when a similar group of friends and co-workers visited a rather mundane field made hallow in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. This is the final resting place of Flight 93. I remember thinking on that cold fall afternoon that this spot didn’t hold any spectacular beauty. In fact it wasn’t remarkable in any way, yet the feelings felt shall never be forgotten. I was overcome with a sense of sadness, resolve, patriotism, and awe at the heroics of that day. Glad that the rain hid my tears as I recalled the words of Lincoln given not two hours to the south-east, "...that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth." Today this is my prayer, my hope. That the prayers of the good and righteous shall continue to sustain this nation. That the banner of freedom and its price be remembered instead of ridiculed. May the Holy Ghost be our guide, may the light of Christ illuminate our path, may God bless the United States of America. - Jason

5 Reasons to watch Chuck

Hey, y’all, it’s me, Jason. For most of our avid readers, I’m probably the lesser known of the two of us. For the longest time I’ve been feeling the desire to share my innermost thoughts and feelings and what-nots on this blog. Don’t get too scared, I’ll keep things pretty simple... for now.

The topic I’ve chosen for my very first addition to the Laura and Jason (life is only fun if you share it) blog, is something I have a strong emotional connection to. Chuck. That’s right, his name is Chuck. Lest your imaginations get the better of you (sickos) I’m talking about the NBC TV series Chuck. For those who are still yet unaware, Chuck is a show based on a simple concept. Our main character is Chuck Bartowski, a run of the mill Star Wars lovin’, pocket-protector wearing, computer geek who works for the "Nerd Herd" inside the local "Buy More" electronics store. One day Chuck receives an E-mail from his ex college buddy Bryce. Earlier Bryce framed Chuck for cheating and got him kicked out of Stanford University. So Bryce is pretty much a nice guy. This cryptic message pretty much freaks out and embeds all the US Government's secrets into Chuck’s noggin. Oh, did I mention that Bryce was a rogue CIA agent? No? Well he is... sorta. Anyway, Chuck’s got all these secrets bouncing around his melon and naturally the government wants them back, right? How do you get information out of a nerd? You use a real live girl of course. The NSA and the CIA find a super model who just happens to be secret agent to pose as Chuck’s new "girlfriend". Together they save the world from uttermost destruction. Told you it was simple. Anywho, Laura and I love it. So in tribute to the start of Chuck’s second season which is supposed to begin on September 29, 2008 (check your local listings for times and channels) I give you my 5 reasons to watch Chuck.

5- Espionage. Who doesn’t love a good spy story? All the suspense and action. My adrenalin’s pumping just thinking about it. Move over James Bond, it’s Bartowski, Chuck Bartowski’s turn to save the world.

4- High tech gadgets. Not since Fox’s 24 (also a favorite) have we seen so many cool spy gear. Take that room in your local electronics store that’s set up with the 82 inch super HD quantum-plasma TV and the heavy duty won’t-be-able-to-hear-for-a-month surround sound system; combine it with the latest and greatest hidden spy gear and you have yourself the makings of great TV.
3- Sarah. This is Chuck’s sexy "girlfriend" who works across the way at the "Wienerlicious". (That’s pronounced wee-ner-lish-us.) She’s actually a government agent and is tasked to protect our hero from any danger. Not an easy task, believe you me. Basically she’s the type of woman that could kick the living snot out of a guy and he’d just turn around and thank her for it.
2- Chuck. I feel everyone deserves a theme song. I know sometimes I hum the theme to Indiana Jones while I’m driving to work or brushing my teeth. Why? It helps me feel like I’m about to do something dangerously adventurous. Let’s face it, "skating on small pond is big excitement." (Yeah, I sure did just use a quote from a movie about figure skating.) For all of us who dream about one day downloading important info that will save the world into our brain, Chuck’s our man.
1- Relationships. This is for all you star-crossed lovers out there. Chuck and Sarah are only pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend, or are they? Every now and again their eyes meet and forbidden love is in the air. Ah, but Chuck is caught in that ever tragic "friend" position. Damn!Guys, raise your hand if you’ve ever been there? It takes a lot of persistence and a not so small dose of trickery to get yourself from the friend role into the boyfriend role. If you don’t believe me, ask my wife. Wait, don’t. I think she still thinks "us" was her idea. [EVIL LAUGH]

Well, friends, that’s all I’ve got. Actually, I do have more as this was supposed to be a top ten list, but I’m starting to get carpal tunnel. I hope you check out Chuck and more importantly enjoyed my nonsensical rambling. Vaya, pues.

Movies

Last night we watched one of the cutest movies I have seen in a long time. I know a lot of you have seen it ages ago, but since we don't have kids these aren't exactly the types of movies we choose. We got from Netflix, Meet the Robinson's. The whole reason that made me really want to see it was my nephew Connor, who is 3 (and has an adorable little lisp) quoted "You are now under my control...." and then went on with the whole thing... "excellent, excellent." I laughed when he did it and went home that night and added it to my netflix queue. We finally watched it and the whole time I was looking for that part and had no idea it was a frog who said it all. :) I laughed double time when I saw it in the movie. Anyway, if you haven't seen that movie, do it. It is cute and Jason and I both really enjoyed it. What a cute little movie!

On another note...of not so cute movies... we saw Dark Knight. All I can say is holy cow! I left the theater and was like wow. Heath Ledger deserves an Oscar! He did such an amazing job. I really enjoyed it. It was a little dark, but the plot was good. I don't remember names very well in movies like these so the whole plot was a surprise to me, not much of a suprise to Jason. We both still really liked it though. Way to go Batman!

An amusing addendum

So I was looking through our pictures of our trip to Brianhead and saw these pictures of a pond and I had to chuckle to myself. In Cedar Breaks my brother in law Jason heard about a cool pond that we needed to go see. He said that it wouldn't be a bad walk and that it wasn't very far.... Right. Although it wasn't too far in "hiking in the woods"terms, it was far enough. Nor was it a gingerly paced walk. I, hearing it was just a "walk"opted out of changing into my tennis shoes and wore flip flops. It wasn't bad but my ankles got pretty sore and there was a lot of ups and downs and rocks. When we got to the pond it was like .... we walked all the way for this??? But now looking back at the pictures it was actually pretty so I am glad I did it. Even if I did have sore ankles. What did we learn from this little extravaganza? Don't listen to our super motivated (and in shape) brother in law when it comes to "walks" :)

Brianhead

Jason and I, and most of my family, all went to this awesome cabin in Brianhead. That is in Southern Utah near Cedar City/Parowan. It was beautiful up there and the temperature was awesome. My sister Jen found this awesome cabin and it was seriously so nice. It was huge so we didn't feel too crowded... which, if you know my family isn't that easy to do! We got our own room and had to share a bathroom with just one other family. It was really nice to be away from work for a while and just veg. That was probably my favorite part... just doing nothing at all! We played a lot of games and we went and saw Cedar Breaks which was beautiful. (See Pictures). Anyway, it was awesome. We had a lot of fun. Then we both only had to work two days this week and have been off. Working 2 days out of 14 isn't such a bad gig. :) Hope you all had a great 24th!!

Laura and Jason

Mortgages

So the other day we finally decided it was time to apply for a mortgage so that we could get a pre-qual letter to actually put an offer on a townhome. We have looked at a few and have only just begun our search. I am just writing to say how freaked out the idea of us having a mortgage makes me!!! Having a house is great, I know! But looking through the 26 page mortgage application makes me nervous. I know it will be all good and we will be glad we did it, but I am nervous in the meantime!! The end.

An Ode to Chief

This is Chief. He was Jason's Jeep until this last Thursday. We decided it would be best to sell it and get something with better gas mileage and lower miles. We got an awesome new car, but that doesn't make getting rid of Chief much easier. Well, ok maybe a little :). It's been a great car for us. So it was bitter sweet to see it go. Let's all have a brief moment of silence for Chief. :)

We bought an '04 Nissan Maxima from my brother and we love it. We are now the Nissan family! Jason still has to name this car so that we can feel attached. I found some pics online of what ours looks like, but its not our exact one. We need to tint the windows and then it will be a perfect car!

Wedding Cakes

As tradition says we are supposed to, we froze the top layer of our wedding cake. It was supposed to be eaten at our one year anniversary. I didn't so much as think about it when that time came. My Mom called and reminded me about it so the next time I went over there I got the cake from the freezer and took it home. I let it thaw for a few days and then we decided to eat it. I unwrapped it and when I saw it I thought hmmm this doensn't really look like the cake I remember. But I figured it had just been a year and that I didn't really remember. The ribbon along the bottom looked black but I thought maybe the purple just faded to dark over that year. I also thought the frosting was awfully hard like fondant but again, maybe I just didn't remember it very well, and afterall it had been frozen for a year!! So I cut us a piece of it and realized one crucial thing, my cake had beads all over the side. This cake had no beads. I was like what in the.... then it came to me. My brother in law's sister got married a year before I did and I think they put her cake in my parents freezer too. And her colors were Black and she had fondant....thus explaining this cake. We decided it was too late to do anything about it so we ate our pieces of someone else's wedding cake and called it a day. It was actually pretty good. :)

So the next Sunday we got our real cake and had that the next day. This one looks a little more sad then hers did with the fondant, but its ours :) It was pretty on the day!! It was pretty tasty one year later too!!

Wyoming is a miserable State!!

Ok so I am finally posting a few things. You will get to read a few things about our lives lately and I will try to keep better up on it. I have been keeping a running list in my mind about things to blog about so now I actually need to. The first one: Bon Jovi trip that went rouge. For Jason's birthday/our anniversary we decided it would be fun to go see Bon Jovi in Denver. Jason has always been a huge fan and he's always wanted to go to a concert. I like them too so we looked up the tickets and bought them back in November. Of course the good tickets were sold so we had to pay a little more, but we thought it would for sure be worth it. Also, we found out Daughtry was opening for them so that was even cooler. What an awesome concert it was going to be! Right!

So on March 30 we got in my car to drive to Denver. The concert was Monday, March 31st so we decided to enjoy Denver for a day (including a tour of the US Mint). So we drove for about 4 hours with no problems at all on I-80 until we got to Rawlins, WY. There the lights were flashing that the road had been closed due to inclement weather.... What???? It's almost April!! So the news report said that maybe it would open so we parked at the side of the road with all the other punks waiting for the road to open. That was about 1:00. At about 8:00 we finally heard they weren't opening the road until the morning. Luckily Jason had his Ipod so we listened to Lost podcasts and watched some movies. That helped pass the time but either way we were dying. Which, of course, was awesome news. Amazingly there are a lot of hotels in that small town (I guess this happens a lot!). Jason called his Dad and he looked online and called a bunch of hotels for us and, par for the course, all hotels were booked. We decided to drive up to the truck stop and make sure they really weren't going to be opening the road but we had a feeling it wouldn't be as it was snowing and crazy windy. As we were driving up a guy pointed to our tire and said "Your tire is flat". Of course it is, why wouldn't it be? :)

So Jason goes into the truck stop to find a fix a flat which was really our only option at this point. He finally found one (which was an ordeal all in and of itself) and he put it in the tire in about 2 feet of snow and then we had to fill it up with air. The air pump was right between these two semi's so Jason had to direct me in to it and we filled up the tire. His Dad had found that the only available hotel was back 110 miles in Rock Springs. After realizing that was our only option we decided to go for it. We both felt like we should pray but hadn't yet. As we were pulling out my car suddenly died. We were able to coast to a parking lot and in much humility a prayer was said and we were on our way. Amazingly we made it back to Rock Springs on that tire and in the weather conditions and we were finally in to a hotel by about 11:45. Not all hope was lost and we knew we could make it to the concert if the road would open up. I had to kiss the tour of the US Mint goodbye which made me pretty sad but I was glad we were safe.

So we woke up in the morning and called the WY roadservice hotline (which was programmed in Jason's phone) and the road had opened!!!!!! Wahoo! But, the road to get from where we were back to the original trouble spot was closed. At this point we were really losing hope. We had to fix my tire so we went to Wal-Mart and had them fix it and by the time we fixed it the road had opened. We heard the road conditions were a little sketchy but we decided to try it. So we took the 110 miles back to Rawlins and as we were approaching, it became really scary windy. The snow was blowing across the road and we could hardly see. When we made it to Rawlins the road had closed and there were a bunch of accidents on the stretch to Denver. After some tears (from me) we decided it was best to just turn around and go back home. :( I'm not sure if you can tell how windy it was in that pic of us, but it was crazy!!! We were very blessed to not have been in the accidents but were really sad we had to miss the concert. So we turned back around and drove back home to Salt Lake. The only consolation was we went to a movie and Cheesecake factory the next day. It wasn't Bon Jovi, but it would have to do!! So, I've said it once and I'll say it again, Wyoming is a miserable place!!!

My First Time

Ok, Ok, Ok! By popular demand (and with some begging and pleading) we have finally decided to join you all in the the blogging world. I think this is going to be a lot of fun! I know I have learned a lot about my friends lives reading theirs so I hope to keep this spicy and exciting. :) I already have two things in mind I need to share but those will have to come later. We have had a few interesting adventures lately! I will post more later but I am excited to start my blogging life. :)