6 random things about me!

Tagged By Lacey!


1 – I LOVE to watch HGTV!!! If I could, I would stay home everyday just to watch House Hunters, My First Place, Deserving Design, Color Splash, Designed to Sell, Free Style, Myles of Style and all of the other great shows. I am especially excited for Design Star to start up again this week, designer reality show, what could be better. The only drawback is that it makes us want a home that we can fix up and we just can’t do that right now, but thanks to a great renter, aka my mother-in-law, who is kind enough to let us make a few “upgrades” in her condo!
2 – I HATE HATE HATE Bandaids with a passion!!!! GROSS!! The thought of them makes me want to throw up! Not joking! I will never use one, I hate to see other people wearing them, and I refuse to buy them for my family (bless whoever invented liquid bandaids)! I am also not such a fan of stickers. Once again the thought of something sticky like that touching my skin makes me cringe.
3 – I cannot handle cluttered spaces. I never understood growing up why my mom would get so upset if they house was a little messy when she got home, but now if our condo is even a little cluttered I get so stressed and I can’t focus or relax until it is clean.
4 – I am not a picky eater but I hate cherries, almost all seafood, and I’ve recently discovered I am allergic to bananas. Other than that, I’ll eat almost anything especially if it’s made with chocolate!!!
5 – Most days I enjoy my job and the dysfunctional people I work with. Other days I am convinced that anyone who decides to reproduce should be required to pass a background check, complete parenting classes and a mental health assessment.
6 – I love holidays! I love big celebrations that last all day long, sometimes days long! One-hour dinner parties do not suffice when it comes to celebrating holidays and I get really disappointed with small celebrations because it feels like the holiday is forgotten or unappreciated. I guess that’s what happens when you are from a small town and there isn’t a lot to look forward besides the holiday festivities. Everyone seems to put a lot more effort into the celebration when there isn’t any other form of entertainment around but I love it that way!


I tag Kim, Beth, Lisa, Marianna, and Laurie

Memorial Weekend / Wilson Family Reunion

Last weekend Jeph and I went to Idaho to hang out with my family for the weekend. It was tons of fun and crazy as always. Some of the highlights include the drive through the City of Rocks, well known as a great place to rock climb, however, only Jeph and Joel were brave enough to climb to the top of Bathtub Rock. It was quite rainy that day and made the rocks slippery, so the rest of us used that excuse.

We celebrated my brother Spencer's graduation from college. After 10 years of marraige, four kids, working full time all 8 years he went to school, Spencer finally graduated. We're all very proud of how hard he worked and all the other things he accomplished a long the way.

The family threw a birthday party for everyone who had birthdays within the last few months and Jeph because we missed the last birthday party so we had to wait til this one. Happy Birthday Jeph, two and a half months later!!!

I think the biggest shocker of the weekend was that Jeph and I actually helped milk the cows. (Growing up, I was always the one who wasn't tough enough to be a farm girl and the family agreed with me when I said 'I am really a city girl born in the wrong place,' so I married a city boy!) But they actually left us there without supervision to run the facility for awhile. We were pretty successful, I must admit, all those years of pretending I didn't know what I was doing to get out of the work seemed to catch up with me and I found I knew more than I let anyone think. Unfortunatly I didn't take my camera out with me so I didn't get any pictures of that event and my family probably still don't believe it really happened because there is no physical proof. I figured it was better that way. (This is a picture at our farm, just not Jeph and I milking)

Besides our wedding, this was Jeph's largest exposure to the Wilson family, which could seem a little overwhelming with almost 40 of us there, but he seemed to handle it very well. It is always fun to get to be with my family since some only get to come home once or twice a year. We love 'em all!!! (Sadly not everyone made it for this picture but, what could Kami do, she is in the Philippines, and Laurie's family of 8 showed up a few mintues too late for pictures. But we still love and claim all of them!!!)

The dream is over

Tonight, the Jazz faced the LA Lakers and even with the completely embarrassing first half, managed to take the game down to the very last seconds. In a rare home loss, the Jazz were eliminated from this season's Playoff competition. It was a good run and the Jazz should be proud of what they accomplished this year. Although it was a heartbreaking end, it was well faught and there is no shame being eliminated by the MVP and future 2008 NBA champions.
Anyway, now to the real post. We were able to get some fairly cheap tickets to game 3 of this series and had a blast. It was initially Venita's idea to go (I think to see David Archuletta sing the national anthem) but I couldn't turn down such an opportunity. The game was great, we got free shirts and Venita caught some weird paper clapper thing. After the game we decided to go down to the lower bowl to listen to the post-game interviews and we were allowed to have our picture taken at center court. I was very excited and as we were leaving we ran into former player Mark Eaton. I couldn't pass up the opportunity for a picture.
Anyway, the season is over and now I must look back at the fond memories of the season. Watch out though, next year is ours!!!

Venita is Pregnant - Part 2

So as you may have read in the previous post, Jeph thought he was very clever making everyone else think I was pregnant. Well, last weekend Jeph got a taste of his own medicine. After all this joking around about me being pregnant, I just so happened to wake up sick Saturday morning with what we assumed was just the stomach flu. I basically lived in the bathroom all day Saturday and Sunday. Monday rolls around and I am still not feeling too well so I took the day off and again spent the majority of the day being very sick. When I called in to work, my supervisor jokingly said, "You know what it means when someone from this office gets sick with the stomach flu for more than two days: it generally isn't the flu." We laughed, I assured him it WAS just the flu and that I would be in tomorrow. I told Jeph this funny joke but he didn't think it was funny. As the day went on and I failed to get better, Jeph became increasingly worried because the flu does not generally last that long. Jeph wasn't concerned as much for my health, because he knew I would get better, as he was that the rumor he had spread wasn't as funny when the joke is on him. Finally around 11:30 pm, as I was reassuring Jeph there is no physical way I could be pregnant, I jokingly suggested going to Walmart right then to get a pregnancy test to help him feel confident that we have nothing to worry about. The next thing I know we are both staring at a stick, waiting for the results. Jeph finally took a breath as the minus sign became prevelant. I think out of everyone that might have thought even for a second that I might be pregnant, Jeph had the best reaction. Little did he know the joke would come back to get him.

Another little side note about Jeph, I think he is pretty great for finishing his first year of school! We still have a long way to go but I can't help but be proud of how well Jeph has done in school this year. Jeph flew through his classes ending two semesters with only one B and the rest A's. Way to go Jeph!

VENITA IS PREGNANT!!!

Well, not really. Every once in awhile, I will send random texts to an old friend (we'll call him Nick Dall) but to my disappointment, he never writes back. A few days ago I decided that he needed to stop ignoring me and that something needed to be done. I came up with this genius idea to text him and tell him that Venita was pregnant and that we had decided to name it after him. I thought he would definitely respond to this one! For a few days I never heard back from him and got a little worried that maybe he had a new number that I didn't know about. Fearing that maybe such a rumor might spread around to other friends, I eventually decided to write him again saying that she really wasn't pregnant and that it was just a joke. Well, he finally replied to that one feeling a little foolish because he had told his whole family that Venita was pregnant. They were all so excited for us, especially his grandma! He now gets to explain to his family what had happened we just get to laugh about the whole story.
Venita really liked this story and wanted me to post about it with a title that might trick a few of you as well. Sorry, Karla if we got your hopes up, it was her idea!

You're a WINNER (part 2)

Not too long ago, Venita posted about the fun prizes that we recieve when we get those flyers in the mail from the local car dealerships. So far we have recieved 3 MP3 players (they have made great gifts) and our running tally is now $20 dollars to Wal-Mart. On Tuesday when I got the mail, we had another flyer in our mail box from a dealership I had never seen before. On this one though, it didn't say what prize we won after we scrtched it off but had a number code that we would have to match up at the dealership. This afternoon we went down there and they of course tried to make us all comfortable and offered us drinks, had us sit down, etc. As I looked around though, I saw the sign that had the prizes with their respective number codes. I looked at our sheet to see which one matched and it was the 3 day/2 night vacation getway!! When the salesman came back, I decided to humor him for a little bit and let him show us about why Haundai is such a great car company and whatnot. After a few minutes, he took us over to the prize desk and both employees there were excited to see that we were the big winners. They handed us our information packet and with a few congratulations, we were on our way. Later, when I had a better chance to go through the packet, I saw that there was an extra voucher for a 7 day Florida vacation/cuise package!!! Needless to say, with the free flights that we are supposed to be getting from T-Mobile, we are very excited about the possibilities for this summer!!!
Moral of the story, if you live somewhere where they send out these promotional offers, don't just throw them away! Either go check it out for yourself and you'll recieve a prize and a great experience, or if you live in SLC, give them to us!!!

Tourists in Salt Lake City!

Last weekend we got to hang out with my little brother David. He was kind enough to come visit us for the day and even bring his cute girlfriend so we could meet her before she went home to Texas for the summer. We had a great lunch at Rodizio Grill and then to see the sights at Temple Square.

We had to take the typical pictures in front of the temple and also in front of the Home of the Jazz - Energy Solutions Arena!!! (Unfortunately we all forgot our camera's so all we have are cell phone quality pictures.)

To end our day, we headed over to the Dodge dealership to collect yet another MP3 player. Since we decided to let Kimberly have the player this time, we let her and Dave go inside to collect it. Jeph and I had a good laugh as the salesman tried to convince David he needs more than just the MP3 player. Good Job David and Kimberly!

Home Sweet Home

Thanks to my sister Lynnette for sharing this awesome clip with us. I just wanted to pass it along to all of you who don't read her blog. I remember many mutual nights spent Christmas Caroling and delivering bread and fruit baskets to the lovely Idaho Youth Ranch homes since it was technically within our ward boundaries. More exciting, however, was to hear of the kids being on the run because that's the only time the neighbors within a ten mile radius locked any doors whether it be cars, houses, tractors, barns (sheds).... Gotta love them small towns!!! Here's to Rupert and the goodness that exists therein!!

Al Roker lends a hand

YOU'RE A WINNER!!!

I'm sure that all of you have received one of those classic postcards in the mail from the local dealerships saying you have won a prize at least once in your lives. Well, Jeph and I must be pretty lucky because we get about one per month. And I am sure most of you look at it, see it they are just trying to get you to buy a car and throw it away. Well not us! We always take our card to see what we've won. Jeph loves to walk in tell them we are not interested in buying a car and that we are only here to collect our prize just to see the disappointed look on their face and one last attempt to talk him in to some great sale they are running right now! So far we have won three Walmart gift cards (each worth $5, so we're going to keep saving them up til we can make a big purchase), and two 1gb MP3 players.

Someday we hope to win one of the bigger prizes, like a vacation, or the $2500 Walmart giftcard, or the $25,000 cash reward. Luckily they keep sending them to us so we'll see what our luck brings us next month. In the mean time, both Jeph and I already have MP3 players so if anyone is in need of a 1gb, be sure to let us know, I think we could find a way to spare one or two of ours.

Anyone Noah Plumber???

Monday morning as I was just about to walk out the door to go to work, I heard the sound of water running somewhere in our apartment. Much to our surprise, it was raining. Unfortunately the rain was not from the clouds outside, it was from the upstairs neighbors’ toilet overflowing directly into our bathroom. So for most of the morning we stood under our rain cloud catching as much of the brown water in our buckets as possible to prevent more damage then necessary. For some reason the plumber thought it would help to keep flushing the toilet to unclog whatever was causing this problem, but it really only increased the flow of water into our apartment. In the end, we were informed that a piece of carpet had somehow found its way into the drain pipe which had been creating a dam sending all the flushed water back up the toilet and down into our apartment. After a morning like that, I decided to take the rest of the day off and clean up a little. Though it was an excuse for a much needed day off, it is the last thing I would have chosen to do if I didn’t have to go to work.