Monday, January 28, 2008

Snow Day!!!

It snowed last night (not much...maybe 6 inches) and our town is completely incapable of handeling snow, so they closed the school for the day! I was so excited when my boss called me this morning to tell me!!! Nothing like an extra day off! Last year we missed a whole week of school when it snowed--not so much because of the snow, but because when they plowed the parking lot and roads it all turned to ice! (I'm secretly hoping it'll snow more tonight so I won't have to go tomorrow either...I'm soooo lazy!)

I know it's a little late, but I wanted to post some pictures from Stevo's birthday. He turned the big 2-1 on the 7th!!!! Unfortunately I was sick so I wasn't able to do much for him to make it a special day. In fact, I kind of feel like I completely ruined his birthday (of course he assures me that's not true, but I can't help feeling bad)!!! I planned to make him a wonderful dinner and cake with candles and everything, but we ended up just ordering a pizza instead (I just had no energy to cook). But I guess having pizza delivered was a nice treat too. He'd taken the day off from work so he could just laze around all he wanted, and I tried to make it as special as I could (cleaning up the house, setting out all his presents before he could come out of the bedroom, and making a few surprise "presents").

Here's the birthday boy in the morning:

And here he is at night, after "getting wasted" on his "Alcoholic" Beer (I just covered up all the spots where it said Root Beer--silly I know, but he needed something special for turning 21!!!):

Sometimes Shadow likes to help me with the chores. One of his favorite games is "Let's Change the Sheets!" He loves attacking the folds and wrinkles as I try to smooth everything out, and he likes it when I throw up the sheets/blankets and let them land on him:


Nothing much going on here. School is keeping me extra busy this quarter, which is strange because I'm taking less classes than usual. I'm just having trouble with my calculus class this time...I have a different teacher than before and he's not very good at teaching!!! I actually have to read along and study at home (as opposed to my usual just doing some of the problems and being able to ace the tests). Math usually comes pretty easily for me, but I guess it helps to have a good teacher.

My other class is Intro. to Personality, and I love it!!! I really find psychology super interesting...I've loved it ever since my semester of psych. sophmore year of high school (Amy, were you in that class with me?) I've been going back and forth for the last few years on what I want to major in; it's been between psychology, acting, architecture, and interior design. I just can't make up my mind...I like them all!!!

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Further Proof I'm a Terrible Cook...


I again attempted to make a cake, and it's a pretty big mess! I had some cake mix to bake Stephen a cake for his birthday on the 7th, but since I was sick then I didn't ever do it. So I was thinking about making a cake today, and then Stephen inconspicuously set it out on the table when he left for work, so I decided to take the hint!!

I don't know why I am so bad at baking cakes! (I could probably do a sheet cake just fine, but Stephen likes the round layered ones better) I thought it would turn out ok, but then I couldn't get the layers out of their pans and they were all crumbly and breaking apart. I just slathered them with frosting to keep everything from completely falling apart! And the finished product is lumpy and lopsided and really ugly! Seriously, it's pretty bad!!! At least I have a sweet husband who won't really care what it looks like.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

sporting the side pony-tail today...

...and loving every minute of it!


(and obviously not wearing any makeup on my day off--sorry everyone!)

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Turning a New Leaf

Well, it's a new year, and a time to start posting more regularly. Hopefully I can do better this year than only writing about once a month :)
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I'll try to do a quick recap in pictures of all of December...
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I called Stephen to come pick me up one night after I finished either a rehearsal or performance of my play, and he said he had a surprise for me in the car and that I couldn't get mad at him. I get in the car and find a big dog sitting in the backseat!!! Apparently there was this dog running around the parking lot at Star Video all day so the employees (probably instigated by Stephen) brought him in and put him in the back room. By that time the Humane Society was already closed, so Stephen offered to take the dog home for the night and take him over there in the morning (not the first time Stevo has taken in a stray--he has a soft spot for animals).
So we kept this big guy for the night, which meant Shadow had to stay in our room with us, which also meant we didn't sleep very well (the cat gets a little crazy at night). Stephen took him over to the Humane Society and they were able to scan his microchip and get all his info. His name was "Blue" (which totally suited his quiet, sad-ish personality) and his owners had already reported him missing. We were relieved that he had a home that wanted and missed him (so we didn't have to give him to the pound and feel bad about not keeping him), but we were kind of sad to see him go. He was a really good and sweet dog.
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Here's a picture of me from the play. It went really well and it made me happy (as always) to be on stage and feel like I did a good job. Three of us were nominated to go compete at the regional festival, but our director only wanted to actually have two of us compete. One guy and myself have already competed twice and we both were kind of ready to be a partner instead so our director left it up to us to decide. So Colby will be the nominee/competitor and I'll be his partner. I'm really excited!! I make a much better partner than the one to hog the limelight (not that Colby does that). So we'll go to Wyoming in February to compete and hopefully do a little bit better this year than in the past. Colby and I work really well together, but we've never been able to be partners for the competition because we've both been nominees. So I think our chances are a little better doing it together!
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Stephen and I flew down to Fallon as soon as we finished finals (it was the most haphazard packing I've ever done...I literally had to just throw stuff in a suitcase because we were in such a hurry...and my obsessive personality had a REALLY hard time being ok with that!). We went over to Sacramento with my parents for a couple days to visit two of my sisters and their families. That was so much fun...I loved seeing them all again and having time to just hang out and visit and relax. Here's Nancy and Tyler, who is such a big boy for his age (he's only about 1 and 1/2, but he looks like he's 2 or 3)!!! He was a cutie!
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We spent a couple days with my parents and got to spend some time hanging out with my other sister and my brother and their families. More fun family time...lots of laughing and relaxing. Benjamin loves to play the "take a picture of me making a silly face" game, so we did lots of that, and I played too! Here are some of our silly faces:

Sarah is so adorable!!! I just kept wanting to hold her and give her kisses. Now her hair is long enough to have two little pigtails, which just makes her even cuter! Here she is playing with "Papa's" lips: And here she is playing the piano...maybe she'll follow in Auntie Susan's footsteps:
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Stephen and I celebrated our 2-year anniversary while we were down there!! He took me out to dinner (Mexican--our fave) and we bought each other new shoes because we were needing them badly!

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We also spent a couple days with Stephen's parents. We visited with them, had dinners with the Achurra grandparents and the Van den Heuvel grandparents, and got to visit a little with Stephen's aunt and cousin. And we spent to night before we left in the Atlantis because it was easier than driving back up to Reno the next morning for our flight after being in Reno for dinner. One of the rooms got upgraded, so Stephen and I got to stay in a suite with a big whirlpool tub and with access to a special lounge for breakfast (all thanks to Grandma Achurra's free room she won)! We considered it an extension of our anniversary celebration!! Paula got me all suited up in her skis one night...it was really fun and probably the closest I'll get to skiing! I'm not a fan of being in the snow, but maybe I'll be brave and let Stephen teach me sometime.-----
We came home to have Christmas as our own little family...it was just really nice to be alone and relax together. On Christmas Eve we watched "It's A Wonderful Life" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (why not have some Halloween too!?!?) and drank lots of hot chocolate. Here's our cute little tree and presents:And here's the traditional Christmas morning picture:Our stockings...Shadow's was filled with fun little toys that he loves, and Nellie's was filled with a huge wad of lettuce!!! She was very pleased!We spent the day lazing around and watching more movies ("Back to the Future: Part 3" and another one that I can't remember). For dinner I roasted a ham and made barbecue sauce from scratch, and we had rolls and green beans and apple juice with 7Up. I was going to make a pumpkin pie too, but I just forgot to ever do it that day. I'll have to make it some other day soon.


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We didn't really do anything exciting for New Year's Eve...just watched another movie (do we do anything else!!) and drank some sparkling cider. We had a fun time just being together, though, and it was nice for both of us to have New Year's Day off together.

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Classes started today...uggggh. I really wasn't ready to go back yet, but I guess I'll manage. I'm technically done with my AA degree, but I'm just taking two more classes (Calc. 2 and another Pych. class) so that I can get the Honors degree. I figured I might as well do more since we're here and since it gives me a job through work-study. Stephen is still trying to decide what to do about his classes. He just needs one more humanities, so he's signed up for an online Lit. class and he's also signed up for an online Chem. class so that he can get the Honor's degree too. But he might appeal to the dean to be able to use some of the other classes he's taken as the humanities credit he needs. He just doesn't really want to take 2 online classes at once, so we'll see what happens with that.

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I guess I've gone on too long already. I should probably start doing some reading for my class and maybe I'll be motivated enough to also get some housework done!