3/30/14

I think I hit the jackpot today. Like seriously.

Haha it all started 5 weeks ago when I was asked to give a 15-20 min talk in church. Yeah they gave me 5 weeks notice. Yikes. Luckily I pretty much forgot about it the week before.

So anyways I wrote my talk saturday night, and my fate was sealed.

I love public speaking, but for some reason talks in church make me so anxious/nervous.

So when I walked in and the 2nd counselor came down to let me know my talk would need to be shortened because we were getting a new bishopric I was more than willing. Then I went up to the stand to sit. The 1st counselor came to tell me that not only would I need to shorter my talk, but that I should not make it any longer than 5 mins.

SCOREE!!

I told the most compelling story from my talk and bore my testimony. haha As much as I don't like actually giving talks. It was good to prepare one. sadly I am not the best at just straight studying the gospel and talks always make me think deeper about topics and my beliefs.

We had sunday dinner with Travis family and played this really fun game called stone hedge. SO FUN!

I can't figure out how to flip this, but its so funny. I was reading a book about population growth and it mention that EVEN mormon families have gotten smaller. hahahaha

Things I want

Just doing some sunday morning blog reading and I am itching to buy some new stuff.


Seriously, how beautiful is this bathing suit?
http://www.albionfit.com, $128.00

This bag
jototes.com, $119.00

These yoga pants, I love the ruffles
http://www.albionfit.com, $68.00

A trip to this place (Or really any tropical paradise)
expedia.com, $1345.00

3/29/14

Today was CRAZY! I got up at 8 and ran with Megan till 9. Mostly we walked and talked but there was some running mixed in there too. Travis and I got up, I made some eggs with avocado (I am obsessed with avocado, don't get me started, in fact every meal I had today had avocado in it... haha)

Travis went to ward basketball and I did some yoga/tv watching. Then we crazy cleaned the apartment when he got back because his nieces were coming over to hang out with us for a bit while his brother looked for a suit. We helped them eat lunch and watched Frozen. Lunch was quite the challenge. Ashlyn 3 didn't want to eat chicken and Janelle 1 didn't want to try apples. I am pretty stern when it comes to food, especially healthy food, and they ate more than we expected. Janelle even liked the apples once I convinced her to try them

After we went and picked up my cousin Bryce and his fiancé Melissa. Actually Melissa and I have been friends since last winter so we will say my friend melissa. haha we went to the aquarium. FINALLY. Travis and I have been wanting to go since summer but decided it would be better if we waited to go to the new building. It was.

The aquarium is AMAZING. So many cool exhibits and animals. A lot of the exhibits are still under construction, but because we went the first week our ticket allows us to go back again for free before september.

After that we got some Betos and Travis worked on his paper and went to his soccer game while I worked and wrote my talk for sacrament tomorrow. Pretty exciting night I know! hahaha

3/28/14

Travis cracks me up. Last night his exact words to me were, "This weekend will be extremely busy with homework." He finished his homework by 2:30 and has one paper to do tomorrow. I don't think he knows what a busy homework weekend is. But to be fair he is extremely efficient and always gets his homework done during the week on campus. To him it really was a busy homework weekend. haha

We decided to go out to dinner. We were supposed to go to the aquarium, but apparently it closes at 6pm even on opening weekend. So we changed our plans. We went shoots, this asain restaurant in the river woods. To be honest we mostly chose it because I won a Facebook contest for a free half dozen macaroons earlier this week and wanted to pick them up. They are in the same shopping center, so it seemed logical.

Shoots was delicious and we got this super cool appetizer thing that has fire in it. OHHH oohhhhh ohh.

Macarons were delicious. We got: peppermint, almond, salted caramel, chocolate ganache, and raspberry lemon. YUM. We then came home and watched Travis to win it all march madness team get defeated. Sad day. I was mostly working on my computer next to him the whole time and looked up when he wanted to show me something cool.

I decided I wanted to run in the morning so I pressured megan with a little macaron incentive. She caved... okay she was pretty okay with the idea from the get go. there wasn't that much convincing. But I have to get up at 8 tomorrow (:/) and travis just started the pursuit of happyness. Hello being tired tomorrow!

Can't take off repeat.

I can't even remember who posted this to Facebook but I opened and started listening and I can't stop!!!

Ever heard of The Brave Life Project? Yeah I hadn't either

Okay well have you at least heard of Keds? Okay good.

So Keds started this project, called the Brave Life Project. Basically they are encouraging young women go for their career dreams and Be Brave. Cool right?

Since I follow Keds on Facebook, I saw their application, the prize was $1000 to use to further career goals. I saw it and thought, hey this is cool, might as well apply. Since it was a national campaign I applied, and forgot about it. I mean who ever wins stuff like this? Not me. haha

I got an email last week detailing that I was one of the 50 girls to win. I was shocked. SHOCKED. Really excited but shocked! The brave life project will feature my story on their webpage sometime in the next couple weeks. Finally I will be famous ;) not really. haha

The coolest part is that I get $1000 dollars to do the two things outlined in my application which were:

1. Half of the money to put towards a project I am working on with some of my classmates. It's called Move Well, its an app, and its gonna be cool (social impact cool). With some money we have won through other grants and competitions we have enough money now to hire a programmer to create the beta version as well as conduct a mini trial to find out if our incentive idea actually works.

2. Half of the money to fund me attending some kind of grant writing class, conference, or workshop. Anyone have any ideas? A lot of my job with the project/ my current job has to do with grant writing. I am not the most confident writer and really want to get better and more confident. I am thinking about attending one of these conferences somewhere cool. DC? New York? Where should I go?

It feels pretty cool to get recognized by a national program!!! Excited to see where this can take me!

I also love that Taylor Swift is the poster child for this campaign. I won something endorsed by her. COOL.

How will you be brave this year?

I love Parks and Rec way too much

3/27/14

Well today I went to School. Finished some homework. Headed to work... and stayed there till 6.

At least there was Chipotle for Lunch!

Also while I was at work, I sent a hilarious group text to my family (inside joke, you wouldn't get it) and my mom accidentally let out a secret that was supposed to be kept from my sister. Kates has wanted to see Wicked for like 10 years and they are finally coming back to utah this summer. My mom didn't realize it was a group text till after the fact. HILARIOUS. I was dying laughing. I had to leave the room.

Travis had his first internship interview today, at his first pick too! The great thing is that he only had one competitor. I really hope he gets it. He has been really stressed about getting an internship, and I have not been helping with that. My selfish self keeps planning trips and telling him I wish we could book them but can't cuz we don't know his plans for summer. Fingers crossed!

I came home to a adorable husband cooking one of our faves, taco soup. We have two tipper wheres full of leftovers. TACO SOUP FOREVER.

Then I watched Grey's with Adrienne. Which was kind of a waste of our lives we decided. The plot didn't move at all. haha Oh well we had time to chat after and that's my favorite part of our TV show nights.

I am getting so excited for summer. The tease of 70 degree weather on Tuesday made it that much stronger. I am excited for:

1. Graduating (hopefully)
2. My full time job, and my crazy awesome flexible schedule
3. Reading more books
4. Having hobbies again
5. Hiking, bike riding and running outside whenever I want
6. Vacations with family
7. The pool and beach!!!!
8. All the fun and possibilities provided by summer :)

3/26/14

Okay where else does it go from 70 degrees one day to snowing the next.

Utah is crazy.

Utah weather is the worst.

Some days you just need to take the morning off and read blogs for hours... Heh. right? Well thats what I did with my morning. I also planned fantasy trips to mexico and Puerto Rico. I need to travel somewhere right now. To be fair I'd be working until 8 pm cuz Travis has class till then. I felt justified. haha

I also decided I wanted to bike to the cherry lane boutique to get out of the house for a bit. BIG MISTAKE. As I left it started sprinkling... I thought about turning around, but being my stubborn self I was like... NO! so I kept going and the consequence was riding back home in the freezing rain. Bleh. What a metaphor of life tho. Stubborn pushing through the rain. haha

I did come home and gobble up some hot chocolate. YUM. good news is we still have a lot left.

I finally started working after this delicious sugar jolt. I got a lot done too, which is good. We submit the grant i've been working on in a week. YIKES. scary.

I made slow cooker honey chicken for dinner. It wasn't my favorite, but Travis Loved it. I wanted to watch a movie and Travis said I could pick! I chose The Vow, much to his dismay. HE was a champ, I even think he liked it a little. I teared up like 15 times during the movie. Marriage has made me even more of a crier. I put myself in a situation like that and I can't help it.

Also, my husband is the best. like the best. We were eating cookie dough ice cream out of the container during the movie. This particular brand is really weird. It has a ton of dark chocolate chips (which I hate). Travis spoon fed me all the cookie dough he could find. What a martyr, what an example of true love :) hehe

3/25/14

It was a pretty Lazy hang out with my husband day. One of my faves for sure.

I worked on and off from 9-1. Then I took a short bike ride around the neighborhood. It got to 67 degrees today! I started making lunch at 1:45 (travis suggested we have a picnic due to the nice weather). He got home and helped me take everything outside.

It was such a nice picnic. We just laid in the sun for like 20 minutes after we ate. Then we headed to the Provo Rec center!! That place is awesome guys. We did weights/machines for about an hour and then explored the pools. They have 2 slides, a pool rock wall, a huge diving platform, and tons of other fun stuff. We think we definitely want to get passes after schools out, when we will hopefully have more time and motivation to use them.

Travis had to head back to class from 5-7. I worked and took a lovely bike ride to the grocery store where I picked up some things for dinner and bought myself some flowers. Why not right? Dinner was super easy and WAY delicious today. I made french dip sandwiches in the crock pot. 2 ingredients people. Recipe here. 

We finally caught up on How I met you mother. I am gonna cry next week. Last episode ever??? tear.

It was a lovely day.

3/24/14

Best. Monday. Ever.

I don't know what the deal is but I was Incredibly LUCKY today.

I won three things:

1. A super cool contest I am not allowed to talk about until they release the winners in a couple weeks, but guys its cool. I am stoked.

2. I won a half dozen macaroons from one of my favorite places (Facebook contests are real)

3. I totally murdered Travis in Monopoly (we are now tied 1-1)

You could say it was a good day.

Also if you loved divergent, read this :)

3/23/14

Lazy Sundays.

We don't go to church until 1 so we have a lot of Lazy time in the morning. Relief society was really good this week. We talked about overcoming challenges. The teacher compared it to running a race. For a race you have to make a plan and Train. You don't just get up one day and decide to run a marathon.

After church Travis went home teaching and showed this video to his home teachies (Which I showed him). He said their wasn't a dry eye in the group. :) If you haven't seen, please watch, it has an incredible message about serving others.

Then we headed to my parents for my dad's birthday celebration. We had delicious roast with veggies! my grandparents came over too. I love my family we have so much fun together. I am lucky.

3/22/14

Saturdays are my favorite, plus its my dad's birthday so... awesome day.

Travis went and played pick up ball in the morning at the church and I did some yoga and got ready while he was gone. After a delicious lunch of turkey avocado panini's we hung out, talked and giggled, just being super lazy for about an hour :)

Then we started our busy awesome day. We ran to target to return something, buy my dad's b-ay present (we are celebrating tomorrow) and got candy for the movie. We decided to try the new white chocolate cad berry eggs. Pretty good, but milk chocolate will always be my fav.

Then we headed to the temple. I love walking through the beautiful rooms of the temple. Timpanogos is so pretty.

After the temple we headed to the traverse mountain outlets to exchange some things. Travis got two beautiful new ties. and I bought a present for a cute little girl who is turning 1 years old soon :) We ran into Travis' aunt at the outlets which was super random because they live in Idaho Falls. haha They had some time to kill before a flight. It was pretty funny.

We drove home to change out of our sunday gear and then rushed to meet up with Travis' brother and sister-in-law for a double date to outback steakhouse (I had babyback ribs, YUMMM) and to the movie divergent. After dinner we had about an hour until the movie so me and Brittany decided to go to the mall and the boys went off by themselves. I bought a new pair of jeans ($7.80) from forever 21. I love their jeans. Wear them almost everyday. It was fun to chat and catch up with Brittany too!

I thought Divergent was awesome!!! They did change a few things from the book, but not things that made me mad. I read the book like 3 years ago tho so it could have been more blatant than I remember. I thought the actors they chose did a surprisingly good job too. It was action packed and very entertaining! I highly recommend it!

3/21/14

Fridays are my finish up everything I didn't do the rest of the week day.

I had a meeting with my research group, worked on a section for the grant for my job, did some homework, responded to a million emails, etc.

Then Travis and I came home, he left at 4:30 to go skiing with his childhood best friend, Bryson. I didn't really have any plans. I decided to go off the grid from work for like 5 hours and just do some stuff I wanted to. BEST IDEA EVER. I basically never stop doing or thinking about work these days.

I started out watching Twilight, don't judge, it happened. I made myself some delicious chicken and rice complete with salad and a red pepper with hummus. I also watched 500 days of Summer. Then I decided I wanted to go to Hobby Lobby to figure out some way to fill up the empty space above our bed. I thought that getting a T and a J to put there could be cute. I got to hobby lobby at 7:40 not knowing they close at 8. Whoops. So I had to make decisions fast. I decided on big black letters. I could have got much cheaper wood ones and painted them, but decided I liked the convenience factor. I also got some command strips to put them up. This is how it turned out:

I LOVE IT. After the creativity. I cleaned the house and did the dishes. Then I addressed my graduation announcements. Then I commenced reading, The Rational Optimist. It's making me a big fan of GM foods, and despised those that lobbied against them. haha still got a lot of pages to go. I haven't read a physical book in a while tho so its exciting :)

3/20/14

Work. work. work.

Right now its all I think about, I guess that happens when you have 3 jobs. I can't wait until I have one and I can leave work at work (let's be real i'll still think about it all the time). But I am excited to have my hobbies again. I am excited to read books in less than a month maybe even a week again.

At the same time, I am excited about where I am right now. I love the crazy, always have. Today I went to school, finished a homework assignment, went to work, came home, worked more, ate dinner that my amazing husband prepared (chicken tacos with freshly made guacamole, yum!)

Then we watched a little transformers. My bestie adrienne came over to watch a little Grey's Anotomy. We apparently only really hang out for tv shows. haha we are gonna try hiking soon. We need to, we always talk for at least an hour after we watch shows and we both get behind on stuff. We usually check the time and are like AH how'd that happen??

Now I am cozily curling up with a book while my husband is off playing soccer. His games are super late sometimes. I don't like to try falling asleep without him, but he won't be in bed till around 1am. ugh. At least I am reading a physical book :)

Here are some delightful pics of my office, in case you were wondering what it looks like (it's very well decorated..)

Apple computers for dayssss

3/19/14

I'm at 100 posts people. Still going strong. Today was pretty exciting. I worked from about 8am- 6:30pm. I went to the post office, wells fargo and to costa vida for lunch. Went running with Megan. and cooked dinner with my Honey.

Dinner was delicious by the way we made spinach and artichoke pasta. Sauce from scratch! Recipe here.

Doesn't it look delicious??

3/18/14

I have a love hate relationship with working from home. I like being able to sleep in and start work in my bed..... but I also get bored, lonely, and claustrophobic in our tiny apartment all by myself for 8-10 hours a day.

With that said I was doing pretty menial tasks(waiting for lots of stuff to download, organizing folders, etc) for work so I simultaneously watched way too much hgtv. I probably watched 6 episodes of Property Virgins. I thought it was fascinating. I feel like people were trying to get away from their spouse in their new house. The participants kept saying stuff like we need bigger, we don't want to be getting in each others way. haha I don't know I just kept thinking do you even like your spouse? One couple even broke up through the stressful process of buying a house. yikes.

I also was really active and ran 3 miles and did an hour of yoga. I am going to hurt tomorrow. I finally made it through the entire DVD (as in finally did all of the poses and sequences without stopping or cheating). I am so happy that Travis does these things with me :) he is so supportive.

3/17/14

Mondays are fun huh? Luckily I get to sleep in on Mondays so it is pretty alright.

I spent most of the day at work, where I got crap done. Then came home to my wonderful husband who had gone grocery shopping. We cooked dinner together :) we made this thing called gnocchi's its an Italian dish that Travis ate in Paraguay on occasion. They look kind of weird but they are DELICIOUS. We put marinara sauce on them. YUM.

After dinner we headed to my family's house to finish celebrating Travis' birthday (my parents gift for him hadn't come till that afternoon. They got him an awesome watch! its seriously way cool. They were super worried he wouldn't like it.



Then we headed to magelby's so they could finally eat dinner and me and travis coule get birthday dessert. It was a fun night

Summer Goals

I am a huge advocate of goal setting. Goal setting is part of the reason I have motivation to get things done!

Here are my summer 2014 goals:

-Finish my MPH project
-Finish the systematic Review I am working on for the Doris Duke Foundation

Starting June 1st
-Practice guitar 15-20 minutes per day 5 days a week
-Volunteer at least once a week
-Attend the temple twice a month
-Work in my garden
-Go through clothes and take stuff to DI

Vacations
-St. George/ Mesquite for Jaimie's wedding- May
-Havesoupai with friends (anyone want to come)- May/june
-Cruise/exotic location with my love
-California with my Family
-Reunion- Travis' family
-Reunion- My mom's family


I LOVE SUMMER!!!

3/16/14

It was Travis' Birthday on Sunday so we celebrated all weekend (He hates his birthday so i didn't even get through one verse of happy birthday)

Friday night dinner an Mi Ranchito

One of his presents was a trip to petco where he got a fish and a little tiny frog

My family took us skiing and out to lunch on saturday

Birthday breakfast on sunday, recipe here.

His other gift from me was a rubix cube, which he spent most of sunday trying to remember how to solve

Birthday dessert: thin mint truffles. They turned out so pretty!! Recipe here

His mom made all of his favorites for sunday dinner: BBQ chicken, asparagus, artichoke, oriental salad, etc. He also opened presents from his grandparents and his parents. He got a gag gift of a box of olives, which is great, we love olives. haha He also got a new iPod, which he is really excited about! 

From me he also has another surprise date coming in 2 weeks :) 

I find this HILARIOUS

Happy friday people

Also, I wish the bloggers I follow updated their blogs more often. Come on guys, I need distractions when I need them, not when you have the time to write, psh. 

3/13/14

I got a 96% on my GIS midterm!!!! YES! Last test of my graduate program. Don't ask me how I am actually doing in that class though because I have no idea, none of our 15 assignments have been graded.

We cam home from school around 2 and decided to take a nap since we got up at 7. It turned into a 3 hour nap. whoops! after our nap we took a walk in the sunshine. I love walks around our neighborhood because its real time to just talk without technology.

Travis made delicious spaghetti for dinner. Then I watched Grey's anatomy while finishing up some work. I'll be so happy when my 3 jobs go down to 1 so I can stop working at 5 or 6 everyday.

At least I am still finding plenty of time to be with my babe. This weekend, Travis' birthday weekend, is going to be a blast! Temple, dinners out, skiing, and perhaps a new pet in the works!!!

I am not you, you are not me and that is great!

 I've had this post on my mind for a while now.

The media and the world we live in today want us to be enemies, and to be jealous of each other. This idea is mostly thrust upon women. We need to be enemies when we are single because another woman could get in the way of who we want to date. We need to be enemies as mothers because someone else could be doing something better than us. We need to be enemies in the workplace because another women could take something we want. Stay at home mothers and working mothers have to be enemies because they are living their lives differently, right? Wrong. This issue is exacerbated by TV and the media in general that shows women in opposition and never as friends. Why do we buy into it?

I fell into this awful lie when I was a teenager, and often still have to stop envious or awful thoughts about women that I see beating me in one area or another. I realize now that the time I have wasted on jealousy, envy, and comparing myself to others could have been used to do some great things and foster wonderful new friendships.

I need to remember that every woman has a different set of skills and talents than me. I don't need to be the perfect studier, speaker, crafter or photographer like some of my amazing friends. The great thing is that I have friends who have skills and are willing to teach me. Friends and the relationships we have can be our greatest source of learning.

I don't need to feel bad about myself if I do not currently have a quality or attribute that a friend does. I  can always work on those parts of me that aren't as strong as I would like them to be. I am done comparing myself to others. I need to be the best me and that's all.

I need to always remember that God created me differently from every other woman on this earth. I have a unique set of skills that my friends and family don't have. I have something to give my family and the world.

We are all so very different, and isnt that wonderful?? Let's build each other up instead of tearing each other down!