Why I Relay:

Relay For Life is incredibly important to me and I'm not even sure I can explain why. I've never been a caregiver or a survivor and I pray I never will. My uncle was diagnosed with terminal cancer when I was 18. About three months after his diagnosis he lost his battle. Other members of mine and Nick's family have suffered with cancer and I guess it's my way of celebrating them through Relay for Life.

The American Cancer Society has become the official sponsor of birthdays. By being part of relay for life I can help celebrate with those who were given a chance to have another birthday. There may not be a cure for cancer yet, but I'm helping FUND a cure, and that's pretty cool! In breast cancer alone there are 11 different types of cancer styles. And with each person there are different aspects to the disease. With that it means there can't only be one cure for cancer. Each person needs their own cure which means lots of money and research.

The first time I was touched by the importance of relay for life was in an assembly in my high school. We were all told to stand and as three questions were asked if we were able to answer yes to any of them to take a seat.

1. Do you know anyone who has died from cancer?
2. Has anyone in your family suffered from cancer?
3. Do you know anyone who has had cancer?

Out of 2,400 students, not a single one remained standing. Cancer literally effects everybody in some way and that's when I decided to fight for the cause.

I relay so when someone hears the words "you have cancer" it doesn't mean it's a death sentence.
I relay so my family won't be afraid of fighting cancer.
I relay so one day cancer can be as easy as getting rid of the stomach flu.
I relay so if the time comes for me or someone I'm close with to fight cancer, there will be a cure.

At 211 degrees water is hot. 212 degrees water boils. With boiling water comes steam. And steam can power a locomotive. One extra degree makes all the difference. Belief fuels enthusiasm, and enthusiasm explodes into passion. It fires our soul and lifts our spirit. I believe that there will one day be a cure for cancer. I don't want the water to just be hot; so close to finding a cure, but short by one degree. I want to be part of the degree that makes the water boil; the degree that changes HOPE to CURE.

Vegas Trip!!!

I had a seminar/training meeting/retreat in Las Vegas this past weekend for Relay For Life. I was gone friday through sunday and had to leave Nick and Wedge behind, so before I went I left Nick a little surprise.

Each sticky note had a different reason why I love him written on it. Let me tell you, it took a REALLY LONG TIME to do this! Writing the reasons took maybe an hour, but trying to put them on the wall took FOREVER!!! I thought the sticky notes would just stick to the wall, but they didn't so I had to roll individual pieces of tape for each one which wasn't a quick process. And then trying to get the shape of the heart with square pieces of paper wasn't easy. And trying to make all of it look proportioned was kind of hard. All in all I think it turned out pretty well. By the time I got to filling the heart in with post-its I was pretty much done dealing with this project so I just started slapping them up there! Patterns and organization no longer mattered at that point.

Here's a picture of the whole room to kind of see how big it is. The picture really doesn't do it justice. I lost count inside the heart, but there's close to 200 post-it notes.

As for the trip to Vegas it was really good. I took another girl from my committee with me whom I had never met before so I was a little nervous about that, but my fears of how our 8 hour drive would end up turned out to be really silly. We hit it off right from the beginning and I'm pretty sure we never stopped talking the entire way there!!! And it turned out that we were roommates for our two night stay which worked out nicely because we were both a little nervous who we'd be roomed with.

We were in meetings all day saturday. Our day started at 8:00am and was non-stop until 5:00pm. We learned SO much about how to make our Relay For Life event successful and the overall goal of holding relays. There were several different schools there including USU, UofU, Reno, and UNLV. It was really helpful to learn what other schools have done with their relays.

This is my third year being on the committee for Relay For Life at USU and my fifth year overall. The past two years at USU I was the Sponsorship Committee chair, but this year I really wanted to try something new. I might be in over my head, but this year I am the Team Development Chair which is going to be a lot of work, but I'm really excited. The girl that carpooled with me (I don't want to mention her name because I haven't asked for her permission to be on my public blog) is the co-chair with me. I think we're going to make an awesome team working together and I'm confident we're going to have a successful Relay this year. I'm definitely not saying the last two years haven't been successful because the absolutely have, but this year is going to ROCK!!!!

Happy Birthday Wedge!

Wedge's first birthday was September 7th (the same day as my niece, Camryn who turned 12)! We had a birthday party for him on Labor Day with all of Nick's family. They get together every Labor Day for a picnic so we just threw in a birthday party too. I realize that it sounds a little silly to have a birthday party for a puppy, but if we didn't then I wouldn't have anything to blog about so I'm glad we did! Plus, nobody will ever really understand how much Nick and I love our puppy. His little personality is so perfect for us and we want to share him with everyone!

I made a confetti cake for the occasion, but it was hard to get a decent picture of it.

He got lots of fun presents for his birthday. Thank you to everyone that gave him a gift. I didn't expect him to get anything other than what Nick and I got him so we really appreciated it. And I don't think Wedge coul have been happier to get so many treats. He LOVES them and thinks he should be able to eat as many as he wants!



The party hat was my favorite part! He definitely didn't like it and as soon as we put it on he would get it off.


But eventually he gave up and at least let us get some cute pictures with him wearing it! Isn't he just the cutest thing you've ever seen?!?!

Happy Birthday sweet little Wedgie! I must say, I'm sure glad you're finally one and hopefully that stage of being a terror is finally behind you!!! :)

Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

Nick and I went to a free Red Jumpsuit Apparatus street concert last weekend. Niether one of us are huge fans of the band, but I really wanted to go since I didn't get to go to the Dashboard Confessional concert a few months back. I guess it was my way of making up for missing out on a band that I love!

We both felt a little out of place being there because it was packed with high school kids and single college students looking for an excuse to drink and party. I definitely hate moments that make me feel old! The band played song after song that Nick and I niether one knew or even recognized. It wasn't until the 4th to the last song that they sang "Your Guardian Angel" and following that song they played "Face Down" which completely satisfied my hunger to be there! After those two songs Nick and I left in an attempt to beat the crowd out of there, but apparently everyone else had the same idea. I felt kind of bad that so many people were leaving before the show was actually over, but not bad enough to stay until the end!

Here are some pictures from the night. I took a LOT of pictures in hopes to get some good ones, but it was pretty much impossible, so I'll just post a few of the semi good ones! The first one is us waiting for the show to start. We were there WAY too early!



He wore sunglasses for most of the show which I thought was silly since it was outside and at night, but whatever!

Prepare To Laugh...And Maybe Cry A Little!

I'm supposed to be doing homework right now, but I think blogging has become my new way of putting off the inevitable. Hence the reason why I've updated as often as I have in the past week! But today I can't help but post these pictures of Wedge. I think I laughed for 10 minutes straight and they never lose their humor. Every time I look at them I bust up again! These are my new "having a bad day and need a good laugh" pictures. I'm pretty sure they're gonna get framed or scrapbooked at some point too.

First a little background. My poor Wedgie has been very sick the last four days. His days have consisted of throwing up and sleeping. Wednesday and Thursday I couldn't get him to eat or drink anything. I thought for sure he would drink some chicken broth because it's pretty smelly and he likes smelly things, but he wanted nothing to do with it. Finally on friday I got him to eat a little bit of boiled chicken (there was rice too, but he managed to eat around it and what little rice stuck to the chicken he spit back out) and although he dry-heaved some, he was able to keep it down. He still wouldn't drink anything though so we've been syringing water into his mouth to try to keep him hydrated. We took him to the vet on friday and they wanted to take x-rays, but it was $96 so we opted for the next best thing. They gave him some barium for his tummy and said it should push out whatever is causing him to feel sick and by saturday he should be better.

Well it's saturday and he's still not better. I got him to eat more chicken AND rice today, but he threw it all back up. (And then tried to eat it again which was pretty disgusting!) We think there must be something lodged in his throat or something blocking his stomach so it looks like we'll have to get those x-rays after all. The crappy part is it means paying for the visit twice. Yesterday's visit consisted of the cost of the vet visit, a fecal smear, and two different medications for a total of $82. Now we'll have to get x-rays and another vet visit on top of that. We're holding off until monday to see if his condition gets any better and because if we take him in today we have to pay an additional fee for an emergency call-in because they're closed on saturdays. Lame. This puppy has been anything but cheap!

Anyway, onto the funny part of this post. So while Wedge was eating chicken and rice he was having a hard time with the rice sticking to his face. These pictures are seriously exactly how the rice stuck to him. Nick and I didn't stage them in anyway, honest! Brace yourself, you're gonna laugh!!!

Those are not his teeth, that's definitely rice! He's a little vampire. Awww, my very own Edward! :)
Here's a close up. Seriously, isn't it hilarious? And this isn't even the best one! But look how sad his eyes look. Poor puppy. I wish he felt better.
Hahaha! Doesn't that just make you laugh?!?! He looks like he's wearing halloween teeth!
And a close up of course. Oh my gosh... maybe it's just funny to me, but my eyes are watering right now from laughing. Nick says now we have pictures to show his dates when he's older!

And I'm over it, okay...

...onto sadder news. Captain Hook isn't going to make it. I took advice from some concerned readers to try to nurse him back to health, but I'm pretty sure he has terminal cancer.
Band-Aids don't fix everything regardless of what any child says! I also put a stick down in the soil to help prop him up since that's what you do to broken trees. But I think it only helped the infection spread.
Although there isn't much sunshine in this picture, at a certain time of day the sun shines directly on him, but it probably wasn't enough. And I was too afraid to leave him outside because he's in a glass vase and it's been really windy lately. Plus we have yard workers out there pretty much daily and I don't think they'd be too cautious of Captaion Hook or his health condition.
The base is completely black and working it's way towards the top. Before I know it there won't be any green left and that's when we'll pull the plug. I'm thinking we only have a few weeks left with him at best.

So there it is. I have a dying cactus and a very sick puppy. But to brighten the mood again let's take another peek at those vampire teeth pictures!!!

Blue and Brown!

So I changed my blog wallpaper background thing-a-ma-jig (obviously!) and I keep logging on just so I can look at it. I never planned on changing backgrounds, mostly because I couldn't remember how, but my sister informed me that my background was no longer going to be available so I pretty much had to change it. With her help I found one that I fell in love with and she changed it for me because I couldn't figure out how! The best part is we didn't even have to be in the same state for her to change it for me! Thanks Lacey!

Anyway... I love blue and brown and in case you don't believe me here's proof.

I painted an entire room blue and brown and made a window curtain and am working on a bedspread in those colors (which is becoming a life time project). My guests are so lucky to get to stay in such a cute room! I'm tempted to make it the master bedroom instead since I'll never get around to painting my room. Sometimes I lay on the bed in the guest room just to enjoy all the blue and brown. Brown is my favorite color. I just love it! The end!

You know what they say...

I'm pretty sure there's this world renowned, yet unspoken rule that before you can have kids you have to keep a plant alive. But let's be honest, who can actually keep a plant from dying? I mean, what's the life expectancy on plants anyway? I'm pretty sure potted plants are only expected to live a few weeks. If you make it past that you're doing good... definitely ready for babies!

Sadly, keeping plants alive is not a talent I have. No green thumb here. I currently have two plants that we've had since November which is probably pretty good. They have their ups and downs though. They get very sad and droopy and that's when I remember to water them. Then they're happy again! They currently have several dead leaves on them. I should probably pluck those off, but I'm doing good to water them regularly so I'll try to remember the next time I water them.

This is a good day for this plant. His name is Peter for those that were wondering. He has pretty big leaves sitting on tall stems so naturally they sag. But he probably needs some water too...!

Cute Wedgie face aside, notice the dead leaves on this plant! Her name is Wendy.

Unfortunately, my non-existant green thumb is about to get a little browner. Browner? Is that even a word? Uh, more brown? I guess that's better! And would brown be the opposite of a green thumb? Does brown represent death and green represent life when refering to plants?? We'll pretend! So, possibly the easiest plant in the history of history to keep alive; takes little to no attention, doesn't need watered hardly ever... and I mean hardly ever, likes months apart, and pretty much just soaks up the sun all day, I managed to kill. And I'm actually REALLY sad about it because it's my favorite, most thoughtful gift Nick has ever given me. I managed to keep it alive over a year which is good, but still very embarrassing when I reveal what kind of plant I'm talking about.

If you haven't already guessed...

...it's a cactus.

He once stood straight up and down. Now He's fallen over. And if you shake the vase the cactus wiggles. It didn't used to. His name is Captain Hook. Random side note: look at my cute puppy in the background. He always perches in the window and watches people outside. Awww! He's so cute! ...and a little creepy! :)

Notice all the needles are brown. Pretty good sign He's dying.

And what the heck is that??? I don't remember much from my Arizona history slash learn about the desert classes, but I'm pretty sure cacti don't have goop inside them. Maybe I should google it...!

I was missing home one day and feeling kind of in limbo wishing I could see my family. They were facing some tough times and I knew it would be 2.5 years before I would get to see my brother again. I wanted to be there to support him and his family and be there for my family with what we were all about to go through. It wasn't the first time we were facing the situation at hand, but going through it twice didn't make it any easier. I probably took it the hardest because I'm not there and because I think I probably carry the most compassion for others in my family. I wanted to shelter Nick from what I was feeling and going through, which is silly since he has WAY more life experiences than I do, but this one was one he hadn't gone through and I wanted to keep it that way. He knew I was struggling and longing to be home, but we weren't in a position for me to go and there wasn't anything I could do or change once I was there so there was no point in me being there. Instead of telling me everything would be okay and trying to fix things, I came home one day to a cactus.

My parents thought I was crazy when they saw my cactus as my dining table center piece and I told them it was my favorite plant. My dad reminded me how much I hated the desert and longed to be back east where it was green and rainy. Growing up he would say, "The desert has it's own kind of beauty," and I would whole-heartedly disagree. I didn't think there was anything pretty about it. Now that I'm no longer there I appreciate my dad's confident opinion and can see it for myself. Although a cactus is less than inviting, they mean a lot more to me now. And in a way, I owe it to Nick for opening up my eyes a little. His one simple gesture made me appreciate something I once deemed ugly and now I'll probably always keep one in my home!

If I can't find a cactus doctor who can help nurse Captain Hook back together I will probably hold a funeral service for him if his condition gets much worse. All are invited. And I guess if it comes to that then I'm probably not ready for babies. After all, killing a cactus has got to be the ultimate sign that I still need more practice. And I know some of you are thinking that I've kept a puppy alive... he's pretty independent. Captain Hook lasted a year and a half and I haven't even had Wedge for a year yet. Let's just hope a year and a half won't be the longest I've kept something alive!

Stand-Up Comedy

Here are some of my favorite stand up comedy moments! Nick and I really like watching stand up comedy, but it's hard because you just never know what you're gonna get. These three comedians are our favorite along with Brian Regan, but Nick likes him a lot more than I do. Demitri Martin and Jeff Dunham use some language in their shows so be warned if you decide to look them up. Don't worry though. I didn't quote anything with language for this post! Demitri Martin is known for his randomness, Jim Gaffigan is known for voicing what the audience is thinking, and Jeff Dunham is a vantriloquist, enough said!

First a few from Demitri Martin:

There's a small, but important difference between peeing IN the pool and peeing INTO the pool. Location, location, location.

I want to buy a bunch of hermit crabs and make them live together. People will say, are those hermit crabs? I'll say, not anymore. These are mingling crabs. Very rare.

They must have named oranges before they named carrots. What are these? Orange, those are oranges. And what are these? Ah, crap. Long pointies?

When they were naming the vitamins they must have thought there were way more vitamins then there ended up being. They're like, okay let's just start at the top. Vitamin A. Keep going. Vitamin B. Okay, slow down, we've got a lot to cover. B2, B3, B4, B5, B6, B12. Then they got to E and were like, oh crap, we're pretty much done. We've got all those B's. Let's just skip to K and get the heck out of here.

Sort of is such a harmless thing to say, sort of. It's just a filler. It doesn't really mean anything. But after certain things sort of means everything. Like after I love you, or you're going to live, or it's a boy!

To me swimming is a confusing sport because sometimes you do it for fun and sometimes you do it to not die.

I want to put a sign on a revolving door that says "pull" just to see how obedient people are.

I got some new pajamas with pockets in them which is great because before I had to hold things when I slept.

I wonder what the most intellegent thing ever said was that started with the word, dude. Dude, these are isotopes. Dude, we just removed your kidney, you're going to be fine. Dude, I'm so excited to win this nobel prize. I'd like to thank my friends, Turtle, Digger, and all my homies.

I like to stand behind people at the ATM and when they put in their pin yell, "got it!" and run away.

I want to make a jigsaw puzzle that's 40,000 pieces and when you finish it it says GO OUTSIDE!

Jim Gaffigan:

My wife always says it was a tradition in her family to go camping. Well yeah, it was a tradition in everyone's family to go camping until they invented the house! My parents never took me camping, you wanna know why? Because they loved me! If it's so great outside then why are all the bugs trying to get in my house?

Has anyone ever really been a happy camper? Because whenever we use that term we're being sarcastic. He is not a happy camper. Why don't we just call him a camper? You know who's a happy camper, the guy who's leaving the campsite. He's the happiest camper. He gets to take a shower.

Last time I went camping I got this pamphlet that said if a bear aproaches you're supposed to play dead. Really? We're gonna rely on my acting skills? Play dead? Who came up with that... maybe the bears? Play dead, cover yourself in honey, climb on a large white plate, don't try to run away from us... I mean the bears.

Jeff Dunham:

Walter: I want to be a greeter at Walmart. "Welcome to Walmart. Get your crap and get out. Have a nice day."

Jeff Dunham is super funny, but after trying to post things he says I've realized it's the personalities of his puppets that make him funny. Just quoting a joke of his without any background takes away from the humor, so I guess I can only really quote one joke from him.

Anyway, hope you laughed at least once while reading these.

Transitions At Their Finest

This started out with my friend visiting from Arizona over 4th of July weekend and became a really random post about pretty much nothing. See for yourself!

I feel inspired to blog and yet I have nothing really exciting to blog about. And of course I have no pictures which makes it even less exciting to read. My best friend since elementary school came and stayed with me for three nights and four days which was really exciting for me, but not exactly exciting for others to read about. But I'll talk about it anyway!

She came up here on a whim and it worked out almost perfectly that I was able to rearrange my schedule so we could spend as much time as possible together. I found out on Monday that she was going to be in Salt Lake on tuesday, but I didn't get to pick her up until Thursday due to work and school. Although it was 4th of July weekend and we had plans with Nick's family on friday and saturday, missing out on the festivities was a sacrifice I was willing to make to see a friend I don't get to see often enough.

It felt like we were in high school again. Not that being in high school is necessarily a good thing, but there are definitely things about "that life" that I miss. One is having friends where conversation comes easily and reminiscing is shared in rather than explained to people who don't really care because they weren't there to experience it. I definitely miss being able to talk about the past with people who were actually there!

My friend has the sweetest little boy who's only 3 months and let me tell you... if I didn't want a baby before, I definitely do now! :) He seriously is so dang cute! And he smiles ALL the time. It was almost harder to see him leave at the end of their visit than my friend... almost! And now that they're gone I can't stop thinking about how precious he is and how the next time I see him he'll be crawling and holding his own bottle. It makes me sad that I miss out on those things in her life because we used to dream about growing old together and raising our kids together and being next door neighbors. I know, every kid says the same thing, but we meant it and somewhere along the way my life took me to Utah, never to return to Arizona again.

I used to pretend that Nick and I would one day move back to Arizona. In fact I once said the only way I'd have a baby is if my first child was born in Arizona... where we lived. (He tried to convince me I'd spend my last trimester at my parents house so my family could be around for the birth. HA!) But Nick and I have been married for 4 years and Arizona doesn't look to be anywhere on the radar and I'd like to think babies aren't that far away for us. Althought I've been thinking that for the last 4 years now so who knows?!

The idea of actually having a baby scares me a LOT. Some friends were over for book club tonight and of course child birth became a topic of conversation (even though it had nothing to do with the book, it's just what young moms talk about!) Anyway, the things they said tied my stomach in knots. I guess it's not so much that I'm scared for the delivery, but more it just gives me anxiety because I've never done it before. And it didn't help that after I heard their stories I read this blog slash horror story of the after effects a friend of mine is going through and she didn't leave anything up for the imagination to decide! Although I'm grateful for her honesty because I feel the more I know the less nervous I am, at the same time it introduces new fears about things I wasn't aware could happen...!

Oh who am I kidding? At the rate we're going we'll never have kids so no sense worrying! We still have 2 years of school each at full time schedules and with stupid work schedules it makes it hard to go to school full time and have time for homework. I wish we were willing to take a leap of faith and put school first, but it makes me nervous to find jobs that will work around school when we're comfortable where we're at and know how things work. I don't understand how young, married couples can go to school full time and work part time and raise a family. It just doesn't make sense to me!

School is really hard for me lately. My parents never cared about the grades we got in school so in turn I didn't care much. I never really learned good study habits or discipline when it comes to homework. My math class is homework overload and I can't plow through it because I struggle to understand the concepts so it's really hard for me to sit down for 4 hours a night working on the one subject that brings me to tears faster than any other thing on this planet. Seriously! I HATE MATH!!! But I think I hate it more when I hear people say they enjoy doing math because I just can't fathom the idea!

Lucky for me, Nick is a math genious and can help me understand it, or rather help me get through my homework, but it's really discouraging sometimes that it comes so easily for him and is so foreign to me. It makes me feel stupid when I don't get it. And I don't get it a LOT! And taking this math class is making me relive my high school days when I would come home from school and try to do my homework and instead just cry because I didn't get it and there was nobody there to explain it to me. Ugh, I definitely don't miss those days!

I guess it's time for me to realize what my strong points are because when I focus on my weaknesses I get discouraged and right now I'm feeling that way with school. Nick thinks I need to major in something that does with being creative and helping people because I enjoy creating things and doing community service, which makes me sound like I have no real talent at all. Unfortunately I don't think a major like that exists! And I really enjoy the classes I'm taking for my major, it's just the stupid general classes that get in the way of my happiness! But we talked about that too and the importance of having a general knowledge in several things rather than a plethora of knowledge in one thing. (It was our sunday school discussion.)

I think it's safe to say this post is incredibly random and pointless. That's what happens when all you do is go to work and school, and do homework. Sorry to bore you with the details!

Wedgie Tales

Wedge finds some of the silliest places to sleep! He apparently thinks he's human.

Normally we wouldn't let him ride on Nick's lap while he's driving, but if we didn't give into him every now and then we wouldn't get such cute pictures!

Sleeping on my lap in the car. He looks so much smaller sleeping on Nick.

He loves sleeping on Nick. If Nick sits down Wedge crawls up in his lap and makes himself cumfy.

Snugged up under my chin! He loves to cuddle.

During the winter he would sleep on the heater whenever it would kick on. If he randomly went missing I could usually find him laying on the vent in the bathroom.

Under his gorilla. Okay, he's really just wrestling with his toy, but it looks like he's asleep so I had to include it!

On Nick's shoulder. This one has to be the most random place for him to fall asleep!

Just a close up of him on Nick's shoulder!

How can anyone not love a puppy who's so loving?!?! Seriously!