My Other Soul Mate

I think this is great news! We'd get along just fine...


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Tag!

So here's another tag where I get to try to come up with things that you'll find interesting about me, and then hope that at the end you don't think...wow, thats the best she could come up with? So, I'm just going to write random thought. Here goes...

This tag is just 8 random things about myself. First the rules,

The Rules: 1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves. 2. People that are tagged write a blog post about their own 8 random things and post these rules. 3. At the end of your post tag 8 people and include their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment on their blog to tell them they've been tagged, and to comment back and read your blog for the whole story.

1. I got a new EnV cell phone, kind of for mother's day, last Thursday. I really like it, but can't figure out how to make it compatible with Rhapsody (where I download my music from) and it's making me very frustrated and I feel very technology illiterate!

2. Our family recently decided to remove our entertainment unit/TV out of the family room (and into our really small office)and cancel cable. We only have one main family area and the TV was just controlling too much of our family's time and there was always NOISE! We also thought that if we can keep it from being a major part of our kids's lives now it won't be a problem when they're older. Instead of all of the electronic media, we really want to focus on the extra curricular activities, playing outdoors, and family time, etc etc. We already feel a better spirit in our home!

2. I have a very passionate dislike of doing dishes in a soapy sink. I will load and unload the dishwasher a billion times if I can avoid doing dishes in the sink. I've always had dry hands, and washing dishes makes them so much worse that I avoid it at all costs :-) Unfortunately, I just did a big sinkful of dishes...

3. I shave my arms and legs every single day. I started shaving my arms in High School because I get cold easily and I had A LOT of long (for arm hair) blonde hair that would stand straight up everytime I was cold and I was always really embarassed. As much as it's a pain to maintain, I don't regret it in the least. But I can not stand to not shave every day and start getting prickly....yuck!

4. Ryan and I have moved 9 times in the past 7 years (including moving into our first apartment together). I pretty much consider myself a pro at it at this point. However, I do NOT want to do it again soon unless I am able to upgrade into a significantly bigger house- in which case I would move in a heartbeat!

5. Taking my kids to childcare and having to find good childcare on what feels like a very regular basis is a massive stressor for me. And just to set the record straight for the fairly frequent misjudgements that seem to occur...if I could be at home with my kids and not working 40 hours a week, I would be all over it. At this point, it's not an option so I make the best of working and have been decently successful in my career with my employer.

6. I'm totally ok about going to the one grocery store in my little town even when I'm looking pretty tired/lazy/homely. Anywhere else, I like to be wearing something somewhat cute, my hair and makeup would need to be looking alright, etc. But here...eh...it's just such a different laid back environment and I just allowed myself to conform right to it! If I drive into Prescott though, that's a whole other story...

7. I just finished The Host by Stephenie Meyer today. If you're at all curious, it started out really weird and was hard for me to get my brain around and get into (but I kind of expected that when I initally heard what it was about). But I got pretty into it and it was an ok book. She's just a good author so it doesn't really matter what she writes about (vampires, aliens, etc.) her stories suck you in and despite my ridiculously busy schedule the last two weeks, I finished the 600+ page book in 11 days. It was a lot longer of a read than the Twilight series books, and I was really wanting to get it finished so I could get my life back. But now that it's over, I'm kind of sad and want more.

8. I wanted Amanda, not Parvarti, to win Survivor! And I'm totally rooting for Amanda and Ozzie! I was kind of hoping for a Rob and Amber type proposal at the finale episode! I'm just a hopeless romantic I guess....

Now I tag Dawn, Shiela & Mindy.

Called to Serve Him

I am beaming with pride as a big sister! My little brother (who is actually much bigger than me) received his mission call last night!

New York, New York South Mission- Spanish Speaking !

For anyone who knows my little bro, you know that when he was younger he was a royal pain in the rear- even moreso than other little boys are to their 2 older sisters! But I've been so impressed with him as he's grown up into a man...which is really weird for me to say!

He has really made the decision to serve a mission all on his own and not been pushed into it or "expected" to go. When I think about the other youth from my home ward, even over the years since I was still at home, very few have served missions and a lot are inactive. But David and his friends all decided a couple years ago about the path they wanted to take and they're all going to be leaving on missions around the same time. In fact his best friend got his mission call yesterday too (to Eugene, OR) and reports to the MTC a week after David! It hasn't been the easist road for him to take and he's had challenges to overcome and the criticism of those who don't understand why he would PAY money to go give up two years of his life, but he's held his head high and worked through those things and stuck to his commitment to himself.

I remember a day when I stopped by my parents house on a weekday around 4:00 in the afternoon after school got out and no one else was home except my brother and one of his friends who were sitting in the living room reading the Book of Mormon together until they had to leave to go to work. I was quite taken back and really impressed to see two teenage boys spending the afternoon studying the gospel.

David has worked hard the last few years at QT (the convenience store) and has saved enough to pay for his whole mission on his own and even some extra to buy some of the things he'll need to go out. No offense to my little bro, but 5 years ago I would have bet you money that he would never hold a job- let alone be Employee of the Month and get recognized for going above and beyond on a regular basis.

I know he's going to be an awesome missionary because he has a strong testimony that the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is true and wants to share that knowledge with others so that it can bless them in their lives.

I know that you don't hear me say it enough, but I really do love you Dave!

Twilight

For those of you who don't already know this about me (in case there are any of you out there...), I am a very big fan of the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. Now I'm not a hardcore Twilight fan, but a fan nonetheless. At least fan enough to be reading the books for a second time in anticipation of book four- Breaking Dawn, which comes out in August (and, yes, mine has been pre-ordered). And at least a big enough fan to have checked www.stepheniemeyer.com on a very regular basis to watch for updates. And at least a big enough fan to have seen all of the mtv.com videos about the movie Twilight coming out in December.

But in my Twilight wonderings online, I have run into some Twilight fans that are FAR beyond the norm. I recently saw an "official" Bella braclet that had a crystal heart and a wolf head that cost $90. Really? Are you kidding? And would anyone really wear that? The T-shirts and baby bibs and all that are one thing...but $90 for a bracelt with a wolf head? Anyone who hadn't read the books would think you were insane- although even if you had read the books and wore that I would think that you were insane. Maybe it's just because I'm not a Jacob fan...

Anywho, for the benefit of anyone who hasn't already seen these videos, or at least for my mom's sake (I finally got her to read the books!), here is a video from the MTV.com Twilight video site. This isn't my favorite of the videos, but it's the only one that would load directly to this post. Go to http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1585900&vid=226476 (sorry it wouldn't create the hyperlink for me) to see all of the videos. The first one "we killin some people today" is the best and my most recommended if you're only going to watch one.

• MTV
• Music Videos
• MTV Shows
• Entertainment News

I will admit that because I am such a fan of these books, I'm really concerned that the movie will suck, that's what everyone who hasn't read the books will see and the whole series will be put to shame by this one movie. So I really hope that instead, this movie is really well made and creates quite the buzz and they continue to make movies for each book. Although I hate that I would have to wait that long

Thank you AGAIN Uncle Sam!!

So I'm super duper stoked to wake up this morning, check my online banking and BAM! a triple payday plus! I got paid, Ryan got paid and we got our economic stimulous check- or whatever it's called! Too bad this doesn't happen every week! :-)

Tomorrow we're going to go order our block to make a retaining wall across our backyard, which will take up pretty much all of our IRS check ::sigh:: but then we can have our back yard leveled out, then Ryan can do our sprinklers, then within a month or so I should have GRASS!!! Wahoo!!

We have a 10x10 dog run that the puppies live in for the most part, but the rest of our backyard is just dirt, dusty dry dirt. And between the dogs coming inside the house and us going in and out of the backyard taking care of the dogs, my house is now dry dusty dirt and I'm pretty over it! I want my grass! :-)

I would post pictures of the mess our backyard is currently, but it's pretty ghetto- so I'll wait until we have "after" pictures too! We had to rip apart the siding on our hot tub to fix a leak and put new siding on that we still haven't painted, We have piles of landscape materials all over, we have many many of those blue water storage containers in our side yard, our flagstone patio to the hot tub is only 1/3 of the way done. The list goes on and on!

I feel blessed on a regular basis to have a husband who is so amazingly handy at so many different things. In this case his landscaping skills are going to pay off for us HUGE! He's done our front yard landscaping (including the drip/water systems) and his parent's front yard in Surprise- and now he gets to do our backyard! The money that we're saving on having the know how and ability to do it ourselves is awesome! I guess the year and a half of landscaping for a living has paid off (even though it didn't really at the time)!!

Speaking of, Ryan is really wanting to get a side business of landscaping going to bring in some extra dough. If anyone in the Prescott Tri-Cities needs ANY kind of work done...give us a buzz! Or please if you hear of anyone needing work done- give them our info! I promise that he knows his stuff!