My Application

My local scrapbook store called Green Tangerines (so super cute!) is having a an open call for new Design Team members. From what I understand, basically that means that they are going to give me free scrappy goodies and then I do projects for them. Um, yes please! So I am applying. I don't know how many people get in, and once the store selects 25 people, its based on customer vote. Chances are I'm not going to make it, but hey, I'm going to try!

So here is my "application". It's called "You are my Missing Piece":

I think it turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself. My favorite part is the puzzle pieces with Nick and Cait's faces on them. :) I loved these pages and I love the book that it came from, The Missing Piece meets the Big O by Shel Silverstein. Once I saw the puzzle pieces at the store, I knew I wanted to do for my application.

Hopefully the workers there like it enough to display it!

DUDE! I love Baseball {Players}!

Last night was sooooo much fun! Let's just say that it's nice to have friends that get awesome perks to their jobs!

Yesterday I got a call from my friend Michelle and said that they had an extra ticket to the Rivercats Baseball game last night and invited me to go with them. She sews their uniforms and so a perk is free tickets to games.

We weren't sure where the seats were, so we were expecting them to be way on the side of the field. Nope! We got just right of home base, row 24! Awesome!!!

Alyssa and I started off by taking lots of fun pictures of the "view." Michelle had brought her fancy camera with a huge zoom lens so we got some nice close ups of the players, er, warming up. It was so hilarious!

This is Kevin being cool with his aviator glasses.

Michelle and Alyssa goofing around.

I took this picture with my phone. Turned out pretty good!

Alyssa was so excited because she was able to get the mascot, Dinger to autograph her shoe.

Yeah, the Rivercats slaughtered the Aliens (Las Vegas 51's-ha!) 13-1. The pitcher walked in at least 2 runs, and maybe another (I kinda wasn't paying attention during that part). They were kind of having a rough night. But it was awesome!

The Saga Continues...

My office is a sauna. Just so you know. This is what the temperature was when I walked in this morning:

Then, this is what the actual therometer said:

I don't know why the difference.

Anyway.

Now it is over 88 degrees. And humid. And no fresh air. And that is with all the doors open and a couple of fans going.

Supposedly the guys working on the AC said they should be finished in about an hour. We'll see. I sure hope so!! I'm getting a little loopy and tired. And apparently my co-workers think its funny. Not good news. :)

It was kind of funny (but not really) this morning because one of the attorneys came up to me and apologized for say that the AC problems were my fault. Ha! They weren't my fault! Good to know that people trust me around here. sheesh.

update: thankfully the AC guys were awesome and got the air on. By the time I left the office (I took the mail, so I left a little early), it was already a chilly 83 degrees. Yeah!

And I'm sure when I come in tomorrow, I'll be freezing, because that is what usually happens. But I'm not going to complain. Not one bit. :)

"Words To Live By" Mini-Album

I heard about a fun little scrapbook "competition"/project and so I thought I would enter and make the project.

The theme was "Words to Live By." And I loved it. I picked up a couple of cute little 6x6" mini-album kits from my favorite local scrapbook store and used those as the basis of my mini-album.

Front Cover:

 Wonder

 Cherish

 Enjoy

 Give

 Less

 Nest

 Share

Embrace 

 Live

 Moment

 Play

 Free

Be

"Be" actually wasn't one of the words, but I had an extra page and so I thought I'd throw it in. :)



I loved this theme and how the little album turned out. :)

The Day the Office Turned into a Roasting Oven

Well if today had been Thanksgiving, we could have Roasted a whole bunch of turkeys in our office. Oh wait, we did. I should say, apparently I did it.

I'll give you the short story. No, I'm going to sum it up.

Our Air Conditioners (we have 3) are broken today. It is sooooo hot in our office. All the walls are basically south facing windows letting in all the summer sunshine. Meaning it is hot, hot, hot!
Like so hot, I don't even have the energy to make this into a funny story. And somehow all of this is my fault. We got an email from the boss-man telling us to reprogram the AC so that it was not turning on at night. And some how I was voted to be the one to reprogram them yesterday. And I did say that I didn't know what I am doing. But I did it anyway. And I thought I did it right, but now they won't turn on. And everyone is complaining. They've been complaining all morning. It is so irritating. And the heat isn't helping my patience.

I called the guy in charge of building maitenance and he said that he'll get to it when he can. He called back a little bit ago and said that someone is going to come out and take a look sometime this afternoon.

I think I'm melting faster than butter. A couple of people have gone home because its too hot. Oh to be an attorney and get to do things like go home whenever I want...

Okay. Actually. I don't want to be a lawyer. Let's be clear. No law school for me. Thank you. :)

The good news is that I got a Frogger App for my phone for free today. Just thought you'd like to know.

***

update: apparently someone tried to steal our AC units last night. the wiring was all cut. Good news is that this is not my fault! Bad news is that it isn't going to get fixed until next week. Wahhh!

2nd update: My boss let us go home at 3pm. Here is what my co-worker's thermometer looked like when we left:

Yes. That says 87 degrees. And that was in the "cooler" part of the office. Just so you know. :)

Happy 88th Birthday to My Nana!

Let's be honest here, basically my Nana is better than any other Nana in the whole widest world. She rocks!
Here she is at my sister's sealing a few months ago with her little brother, Uncle Bob:

Aren't they the most precious things EVER? Yeah, I thought so!

Here is a picture of the day after she and my grandpa were married. She was 19. I love how she pretty much looks the same! Right down to the smile. So beautiful!



So here are some of my top memories with my Nana (in no particular order). Happy Birthday Nana!!

1. I can remember when I was very little (turns out I was 18 months old-so this is my first real memory) Grandpa was sitting on their gold felt armchair (that chair was AWESOME!) and Nana jumped in his lap and they fell over backwards. They were laughing and it made me laugh at them.

2. I remember making 5-6 dozen oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and 6 loaves of homemade bread with Nana every week when we were kids. And then if we were good, she would let us eat some of the cookie dough! Whenever she would make bread, she would make us sopapillas for dinner and we'd have scones afterwards.

3. On Fast Sunday, Nana started the tradition of having Blueberry Pancake Breakfast for Dinner. So divine! We literally had this the first Sunday of each month for 10 years, at least. Love me some blueberry pancakes!

4. I'm suddenly noticing a trend, a lot of my memories with my Nana revolve around food. Ha! This one is about when she taught me to cook. I learned to read recipes from her. She taught me to make Cream Puffs (I'm drooling thinking about it!) and she taught me not to confuse salt with sugar. She made brownies (not from a mix) one time and did this. I've never tasted something like that before. It was terrible! And poor Nana, the most amazing cook I've ever known in my relatively short life, couldn't figure out what happened. Imagine 2 cups of salt and no sugar in brownies. Now imagine eating that. Yeah....

5. In the summers, sometimes my cousins would come to visit and for some reason when the 8 of us would get together, we'd fight and not get along. So Nana would give us "brownie" points and if we earned enough at the end of each week, and whoever got the highest would get to pick our special treat and she would make it for us (usually cream puffs)! The key to earning brownie points was that someone else had to see us doing/saying something nice about someone else and go tell Nana. I thought it was pretty clever!

6. When the weather was nice, we would all sit out on the deck and look out at the valley and hang out outside. Nana would crochet like nobody's business. I remember I was learning to crochet and was counting the stitches and she started listing random numbers so I lost track. It was pretty funny so I thought it would be funny so I did back to her. Yeah, she didn't really appreciate it and had to take out a third of the blanket. I didn't ever do it again. :)

7. My grandma has always clogged. She's a clogger. As in the type of dance, similar to tap dancing. In fact, when she moved to Idaho a couple of years ago, there wasn't a clogging class and so she started one! I remember we would get home from school and she would be so excited about a new step she learned that she would practice in the kitchen and show it to us and try to get us to do it. We just stared blankly at her. I don't know of any other Nana that STILL clogs at 88. Top that!

8. When I was in college, Nana and my sister, Erin went and played tennis one morning. Nana was probably 81-82 at the time. Erin hit a the ball at a bad angle and Nana LITERALLY DOVE to return it. And she did. And won the point. So AFTER the game, she realized that her hip "twinged a bit" but didn't do or say anything about it. She was leaving to go to France for a month and didn't want to mess up her trip. So after she traipsed all around France, she came back and found out that she had fractured her hip. There was nothing the doctor could do because it had already begun to heal. Yeah, my Nana rocks and rolls and dives and runs all over France with a fractured hip!

9. When we were kids, we loved to play outside. We had lots of room to run and play. Our (at least my) favorite was when played outside when it was raining. The crazier the weather, the better it was. This was awesome because it Texas we were never allowed to play in the rain (you know, because of Tornados). So anyway, I think the best part was when we were done playing and completely exhausted, Grandpa would have a roaring fire going in the fireplace and Nana would make us hot chocolate to warm us up and then we would sit around and read books or color or whatever. I can remember even hanging up our clothes next to the fireplace to dry them out. Drying them next to the fireplace was soooo much cooler than using the dryer.

10. My ALL TIME favorite memory of my grandparents is so awesome and hilarious! It's more about my grandpa, but Nana is involved so I'll share it here. This story deserves to be shared. So here is what happened. I was probably 17-18 and our family was at church and the sacrament was being served. Nana and Grandpa and Erin were sitting in the row in front of us. Mom handed out peices of listerine strips (which were very strong breath mints) to everyone, including Nana. Nana ripped hers in half and shared it with Grandpa. Grandpa "whispered" to Nana and asked her what it was. She actually whispered and said that it was a breath mint and panomimed putting the strip in her mouth. Grandpa did. His eyes buldged for a moment and then very loudly, during the sacrament, said, "What did you just give me?!?!" and then tried to spit it out for several minutes. Only our family knew what had happened and we were laughing hysterically. Nana tried to calm him down, but she was laughing too hard. We're so distruptive! Every single head in the chapel turned and stared at us trying to figure out what had happened. So completely hilarious! I would have been embarassed if it hadn't been so darn funny. I wonder if anyone that was there remembers an old guy yelling during the sacrament...

So there you have it. Some of my favorite memories of my Nana. She is an incredibly special lady and I have been truly blessed to have her as my Nana. And I hope that she is around for a long, long time. And I'm pretty sure she will be. I think she is going to live forever!

Happy Birthday Nana!!

YSA Conference 2011

A couple of weeks ago we had our annual YSA Conference. It was AWESOME! I didn't got to the activity that Friday night, but I did go to the workshops on Saturday, and the fireside on Sunday.

My roommates didn't make it so I thought I would be brave and go by myself. Which is VERY brave of me. I didn't know anyone else going. Fortunately I did find some friends once I got there, but I still did my own thing. I'm so grown up. ;)

Anyway. When I got there, I got great parking right in front of the temple and the first thing I did was take this picture:



 It was such a gorgeous day!

I was late and missed the opening talk so I snuck into the cultural hall to listen, but then saw Sister Smith from my ward's bishopric working on the quilts (which were the service project) so I went back and helped. I was so helpful that I broke a very large needle in half. I am just that good. I spent the next couple of hours quilting and by the end my fingers were swollen and painful, but it was all good because I helped finish 2 quilts! Because we were working so hard on the quilts, I missed the first workshop session. I was kinda bummed because there were a few I wanted to go to. That only left one opportunity and 5 classes to pick from. My Bishop suggested that I go to one by a former Stake President and so I did. I won't go into everything that happened, but let's just say that the Bishop was inspired to suggest it to me. It was perfect! :)

Afterwards, we had dinner and time to kill and so I walked around the temple to enjoy the beautiful evening and the quiet. And then I accidently walked in on a guy proposing to a girl. Uhhh, awkward! My bad. I snuck away as quietly as I could. I don't even know if she said yes.  :)

Saturday night was another fireside with Elder Trythall, our area Seventy authority. It was fabulous and I took lots of good notes. One of my favorite thoughts from Elder Trythall was, when speaking about being reverent in Sacrament meeting, he said, "The still small voice will not come in a text message." Brilliant!

I had told my mom that Elder Trythall was speaking so she told me that I needed to go introduce myself to him and his wife because they are friends with my grandparents. I wasn't going to, but I told a couple of my friends what Mom had said and they dared me to. So then I had to. And so I did and Elder and Sister Trythall were so sweet and asked all about Mom and Nana. I explained that I was Sybil's granddaughter and Elder Trythall said, "I didn't realize how old we had gotten. No way Sybil is old enough to have grandchildren!" I didn't tell him that she has 22 (with one on the way!) great-grandchildren. :)

Oh and after the fireside, we had a dance. And I stayed for it. Impressive, I know. 

Sunday was another fireside with President and Sister Murphy (my stake president) and they were so funny. I loved their talks.

So all in all, it was a wonderfully uplifting weekend and I felt very inspired and happy afterward. Love!

The Day Tabetta Bit Back

This is my car, Tabetta. Isn't she lovely?

Her name comes from the fact that I couldn't decide which name I wanted to name her. Either Tabitha or Loretta. Both seemed appropriate. I had votes for each suggestion. So I combined them. Thus "Tabetta" was born. :)

Anyway, moving on...

So today my car bit me. Actually she caused a blister to created on my index finger on my right hand. Quite an inconvenient spot.

I went and grabbed lunch quickly so that I could get back to the office and eat and read my book. Instead, my steering column decided to lock up so that I couldn't turn the steering wheel or the key at all. It was physically impossible.

This had happened to me before in my old car, so no biggie. I jiggled the wheel and tried to turn the key again. Nada.

I tried again. And again, and again and again.... Nothing.

So I called my mom to make her fix it, via phone when she's currently living 10,000 miles (rough approximation) away. She ignored my call.

I called my sister who wisely suggested that I jiggle the wheel. I explained that I already had. Her sage advise? "Uh, try it again." I did and nothing. Then Cait said, "I don't know. Call Nick." So helpful. Nick suggested the same thing. Though he does get points for even picking up my call while he was working.

Then I checked facebook (logically). My finger was starting to hurt because I had been trying to turn the key for about 20 minutes at this point. Erin was on facebook at the same time and so I quickly asked her if Mom was around. And then said hello. :) Erin said my mom had gone to a movie with my aunt. Of course. I explained what was going on. Erin's suggestion? Jiggle the steering wheel. I tried to sigh in exasperation via facebook chat, but it came out something like "huhhhehhegghmemhghfff" which doesn't translate well when written out. So I just did it out loud.

Did I mention that it was aproximately 146 degrees in my car? When I was talking to Caitlin, I said something about how hot it was and she suggested that I roll down my car windows, something that requires the car to be ON. Which it wouldn't do. Nice, Cait. Real Nice. She kinda laughed when she realized her mistake. I rolled my eyes.

I tried again and again and again, well I tried a lot. I called my office to let them know I was going to be back late. My coworker offered to come pick me up since I was close, but then said that my boss, who is a smart car guy was going to come and try to save me. I was already embarassed enough, I didn't want him to come and have to rescue me.

By now, the blister had already formed on my finger. It was actually quite painful. (Don't worry, I'll live). I thought to my self, "Self, I don't want Sam to have to come rescue me. I'll try one more time."

Of course, that was the time that it decided to work.

Fortuantely, I caught my boss right as he was leaving so he didn't have to come get me. And then my car has worked like a charm since then. But for that 45 minutes of torture, I thought I was going to break my car.

But don't worry, I love it again-well I will as soon as the blister goes away.

Monterey Scrapbook Album Part 2

This is the other half of my scrapbook mini-album of my trip to Monterey that I took for my Birthday. For the first half, click here. And sorry, a couple of the pictures were kinda blurry. I really need to get a nice new camera...but until then...enjoy!

Since I've decided to do more mini-album type books for my personal scrapbooks (it seems easier to me and I actually feel like I'm accomplishing and finishing something) I've wanted to display them in a cute way. So in a basket they went. :) (FYI, the one behind my Monterey Album is my Album from my trip to Alaska last year.) Thanks for looking!!