Inaugural Barbecue

One week after moving into our new home we hosted our inaugural barbecue. I was excited to have my entire family be together for a weekend to celebrate the little (much taller than me) bro's high school graduation. Tyler was excited to make his famous ribs for us and show off our big back yard--we love it despite my thinking that it's blasphemous to have so much lawn in the middle of a desert. Brian and his family picked up a slip-n-slide for us to play on while it was hot out and I tried not to look too much like a seal while I tried it out.

Even good times kind of stress me out a little too though because I kept wishing I could just sit and catch up with each of my brothers, but it seemed that every few moments something had to be taken care of. Most likely this is just in my head though and I loved that I was able to indulge myself in some talk about my growing belly and some honesty about growing up.

We wrapped up the party with a little Rockband, nothing could seem more appropriate than that.

Friday I'm in Love

Last night the HB and I saw The Cure in concert. I won tickets last fall on the radio. I wasn't feeling so hot most of the afternoon and I laid down for a bit when I got home from work. I'm used to going to shows at smaller venues, with smaller crowds, and figured there was no way they'd take the stage before 9 pm even though the show was scheduled to start at 7:30. We showed up about 8 and checked out the overpriced merch and then headed in. The Cure started playing right around 8:30 and played until 11:30! I couldn't believe they played that long but it was awesome to hear tons of my favorites, not just a few. And though I have no idea how much my brothers still listen to the Cure, hearing some of the older Cure hits took me back to when they still lived at home, and it seemed appropriate that just a few days ago I'd gotten the chance to hang out with them and reminisce a little about growing up.

This whole past week has been pretty exhausting though, even though I was having a great time, and I was totally worn out last night after the show. I went to bed around 1:30 and had three crazy dreams I remember before getting up around 11.

Dream 1 was about a camping trip with April and Bill's family. My family and theirs was following each other in the car as we climbed a mountain of slickrock that the road wound around. We pulled over for Tyler and Bill to look at something and as April and I stood outside the cars we noticed a rhinoceros on the slickrocks just above us. We were scared but all of the sudden it fell onto the road right by us and was somewhat debilitated. April and I then pushed it off of the road together onto the slickrock below us.

All I remember of Dream 2 was that my family sent me to check on a tiger that we had trapped in a pit and when I got to the edge I just kept thinking I would jump into the pit so that I could die.

Dream 3 was about my entire immediate family staying at a cabin-type place near a really clean, warm river. Brian was in the water with his girls as they rode tubes along a bend the river made. April came inside and I heard her tell someone that we hadn't been getting along well lately. That seemed really weird to me because we've always been really close and I felt really hurt when I heard her say that. Then she came into the same room as me and we were both changing and I asked her about it and she said that it was true and seemed really mad at me. I started crying. Then I remember offering to take Bowen with me and Caiden to Disneyland for a few rides. I guess we were closeby and I was telling April the night pass was only 5 dollars so it was worth it to just go and let them do a few rides. After that I don't know what happened. It seemed we weren't upset anymore.

Survival of the Stubbornest

Despite being temporarily homeless the previous week, the HB and I wanted to follow through with our plans to go to Canyonlands the first weekend in May. It was a perfect plan because it wouldn't be too hot or crowded, and my belly wouldn't be too big then.

Ever since reading "the monkey wrench gang" years ago I'd wanted to visit the Needles and Maze districts of Canyonlands where Hayduke hides out at the end. And already being an aficionado for the Utah desert, I needed to go there. But also, last year, my co-worker Joe told me about a place called Paul Bunyan's Potty where they were several Indian ruins to explore and that was fairly off of the beaten path.

So moving all the things from our "extended stay hotel" into our cars we headed out of town, signing the closing papers for our new house on the way down. I won't do a full trip report because the HB is really much better at that, but just had to point out a few things about our trip.

First of all, the "potty" arch was very cool, but I emphasized to the kids (Caiden and his cousins) how cool it was to see the ruins that we did and told them everything I could about the Anasazi. The corn cobs and pottery pieces we saw could have easily been 1500 years old.

I got a little sunburnt that first day on my thighs--they haven't seen much sun yet--and so when we got back I went for my aloe vera. I opened the pocket in my bag where I could find that to see a clear gooey mess, so I did my best to scoop it out and coat my legs when I realized they were lathering up with my shampoo instead! It was my clear shampoo that had exploded everywhere. At least my legs were clean after that.

The next morning we all re-used our plastic spoons for breakfast (the quantity was limited due to packing in great haste). It reminded me of when April, Bill, Tyler, and I all shared a plastic fork with a prong broken off to eat our dinners on Mt. Timpanogos.

We psyched the kids up for another 11 mile-day and I had to strongly resist the urge to tell them how badass they were for the day before, but I didn't want to be responsible for teaching them to cuss. The entire trail was stunningly beautiful as was Druid Arch when we reached it. The kids were beat but they still played all over the "hamburger" rocks at our campsite when we got back.

On our way out we hit up Newspaper Rock which was totally awesome and then spent a night relaxing in Moab and enjoying the great pub food. The next day we were back in town, a little worn out, but happy to throw our mattresses and things in our new house.

Spitting in the Same Sink

Today marks 3 years of marriage with the HB.

Here are a few of the things we've survived / put up with / enjoyed:

*camping and hiking trips
*football seasons
*concerts
*bike rides
*tears
*illness
*home improvements
*job changes
*sundance film festivals
*way too many family get-togethers and ex-encounters
*night school
*teaching primary
*being a step-family
*movie-making
*and just today, being picked up on at the Arby's drive-thru!

A few of these would probably explain why we don't look as good now, but I'm glad to be married to Tyler and I look forward to what's ahead for us.

I love you too Tyler!

Lime green

Call me pregnant, but today everything lime green looked good to me. I went to Home Depot at lunch to pick up some paint color tabs for our front room which is currently an ugly cross between clover and teal and old hospital green. I picked up several colors thinking not only of the front room, but of every room we might possibly re-paint in the house. One of the colors I picked up was various shades of bright, lime green, something I wouldn't normally imagine putting in a house, but that just looked incredible. Then I promptly stopped by 7-11 for a slurpee (which I haven't bought in years) because something icy sounded amazing and I of course picked the one that was bright lime green. Not only that, but I bought one of those sugar-coated sour cherry licorice straws to go with my lemon-lime slurpee. Mmmmmm. Is it just because I feel so good or is it all those mommy hormones?

Saturn hair

During my Saturn return, I've had numerous crises regarding the state of my life. The only real way of dealing with them has been to change my hair color. Call me materialistic, but changing my hair seems to be the only thing I have control over at this point in my life. So after the last few times feeling unsatisfied by merely changing the "streak" in my hair, I decided to go for an overhaul. It's not that I didn't like my hair, just needed something new.

The HB had never seen me as a blonde and after commenting that he really like this photo of me in Japan, I decided that I'd go for it. As every woman whose every tried to go from dark to light can testify, it's a crap-shoot. I think I stuck it out pretty well, but it turns out I didn't like it much, and at first I couldn't tell if I didn't like the color or if I just didn't like the stage of growing it out and growing my bangs out as well. I felt like the wife in Hemingway's "Garden of Eden" who keeps lightening her hair because she's at the beach all the time and liked how it looked almost translucent when wet--I really only liked mine wet because dry looked fried.

So last night I went back to black, and am happy to be that way. It suits me better now and I didn't have to adjust to like it, I just liked it right away. Pictures are pending due to the lack of an internet connection at our new home.