I AM A BAD BLOGGER

Yes, I know I am a bad blogger. I have an excuse though - I really have nothing going on in my life or in my mind that is exciting or interesting enough to blog about. If you have a problem with it then start praying for me to have a cute baby (or even a not-so-cute baby for that matter) and then I'll inundate the internet with posts about him/her to the point that you'll rue the day that you wished for me to have a baby. Until then, I'll probably remain more or less MIA in the blog world. However, I do still love to check all y'all's blogs, so keep 'em coming!

Deco

Ok so this is a little belated, but I wanted to give a little birthday shout out to Deco.
What to say about him...Deco is so incredibly unique. I'm certain that anybody who knows him would agree with me that he is completely his own person. He doesn't conform to others' opinions. He doesn't base decisions on what others think is cool - he just does what he thinks is best for him. Deco is an incredibly hard worker. When he played football in high school other players and coaches were constantly saying how he always gave 100%; even though he was not one of the big guys on the team he played as tough as the big guys. He still works that hard in life. At times in the past few years he has worked three jobs at a time (maybe more?). He works very hard to provide for his family and give them a good life. He is a very loving father and one of the most patient people I know.
Deco and I share a special bond. I think this is partly because of how close we are in age (one year and six days), and also because we served our missions at the same time, speaking the same language. We traveled to Brazil shortly after I got home and we had an awesome trip. He is really good about speaking Portuguese to me...I'm not so good about speaking it back to him. Because of him I haven't completely lost the language yet.
I hope he knows how awesome he is. Love ya D!


In this picture we're standing on the border of Brazil and Argentina and you can see Uruguay in the background...pretty cool.

I am a tired person...

So anybody who knows me very well knows that I require a pretty ridiculous amount of sleep in order to function in a normal way. I have always envied people who can consistently sleep four to six hours a night and still get things done. If I get less than six hours of sleep in a night then it takes me a good week of eight to nine hour nights to start feeling half decent again. I have learned from experience that I really need a consistent eight hours a night in order to think clearly, but even then I'm ALWAYS tired. I probably average about 7.5 hours of sleep on weeknights, which isn't ideal for me but I make it work; then on the weekends I need to sleep a ridiculous amount in order to store up a little bit for the coming week of work. My whole family (minus my mom) is notorious for being able to sleep anywhere anytime. It's not possible to live a productive life and to sleep as much as our bodies want us to sleep, so we have all come to accept the fact that we just have to be tired constantly. I have had to find the happy medium where I get enough sleep to be able to function properly, but not so much that I sleep away all the hours in the day to the point of having no time to get anything done. I have slept through more classes (especially in college) and work meetings than any respectable adult should in a lifetime. I am not even one little bit kidding when I say that I think I might have a slight case of narcolepsy or something similar. It often gets to a point where I have absolutely no control over falling asleep, regardless of the amount of caffeine or anything else that I take into my body. And that can happan at any time of day in really any situation, even if I've gotten a full good night's sleep the night before. I'm not sure why I'm putting this into a blog post, other than I want the universe to know that I'm not just lazy - I really really want to be awake more and be more productive, but my body won't let me.

My seester

First of all I wanna say happy Mother's Day to my mom, mother-in-law, grandmas and all the other moms who influence me. I have been blessed to always be surrounded with fabulous moms who are such great examples and support to me.
Besides being Mother's Day, today is also Kristi's birthday so I wanted to give her a little shout out.
When I was young I remember being taught in church or in school (can't remember for sure...probably church though) that we should pick good role models to try to model our lives after. So we made a list of people that we admired and who we thought were good examples. I don't remember anyone that was on my list except Kristi. She has always been such a fun person to be around and I don't even remember her being mean to me when I was a little annoying girl trying to follow her and her friends around.
Kristi is one of the bravest people I know. Her and Camryn are in the process of breaking Camryn's new horse (Stella) right now. The other day they were in the little round pen and something spooked Stella and she took off at a sprint going in circles. Kristi got right in her path and started waving her arms. I'll tell you what, I would have been finding a way out of that little pen...ain't no way I would step in front of a semi wild horse who was running at that speed. But not Kristi, she just stepped in the way and Stella stopped and calmed down. Kristi used to rappel a lot, which I've done a few times but it scares the crap out of me.
Kristi is a HARD worker. She is an awesome mom and devotes a ton of time to her kids' various activities. Very rarely is she doing only one thing at a time. She usually has her computer doing her coding stuff while also attending to her kids' every need, answering my coding questions and laughing at Jeremy's jokes all at the same time. I hope that someday my kids turn out half as cool as hers. I have absolutely loved living so close to Kristi and her family ever since I moved to Blanding. I'm glad she married someone who my husband can be such good friends with. We love hanging out with them.
I'm so glad to have Kristi as my sister and friend. I love her guts! Happy Birthday Kris!

It's a Boy!

That's right, we're the proud new owners of Elmer; he is a CUTE black shi-tzu puppy. He's the son of Ellie (my mom's dog) so we've known him since he was born. He is so sweet and so far he seems pretty laid back. There are two exceptions to his laid-backedness - He does not like it when his mom bullies him around and he fights back. They get into some pretty ferocious barking/biting matches, but he never starts the fights. Ellie is a really laid back and sweet dog too, so I think she just feels threatened by all the attention he is getting and she'll calm down once we all get used to each other. The other exception is when we leave him in his little sleeping area all alone at night. He yaps and cries like the world is ending. It is the saddest thing ever, but he is not potty-trained nearly enough to let him sleep anywhere else yet.
Camryn named Elmer when he was born and we think the name fits so we decided to keep it. Taylor tries to act like Elmer doesn't completely melt his heart but they totally love each other and he hates it when Elmer cries when we have to leave him alone at night. We love our new doggy!

Calling all foodies

I have started a new blog. If you spend any time in the kitchen, whether you like to cook or not, then check it out here What's for Dinner?. I love cooking but I usually hate deciding what to make for dinner/events, so my vision is that a bunch of us can post delicious recipes and help each other out with ideas of yummy things to make. If you would like to be a contributor to the blog and I didn't already send you an invitation, send me your email address and I'll add you.

What ever happened to grammar and punctuation?

Warning - I'm going to step onto my soapbox for a moment. I was going to give specific examples of all of the common grammatical and punctuation errors that drive me nuts that I see on blogs, emails, FB etc. (and billboards and "professional" websites for crying out loud - if you're going to pay that much money to get your name/business advertised maybe you should have someone who passed the second grade edit it before you print it). Apostrophes (possessive & contractions) seem to be the biggest culprits. Don't even get me started on the messes that happen when people start mixing plurals and possessives; and beyond that are last names that end in 's'...always a disaster. Anyway, I won't bore everybody with a full lesson because I know that nobody cares and I'm not an expert anyway. But I needed to get my opinion out into the universe that as a society we're starting to look pretty stupid if we can't even put into practice the very basic and common lessons we learned in grade school. And no, I'm not perfect and I'm sure I've got my share of errors in stuff that I write, but I hope that I do better than a lot of things I read these days.

I'm going to finish off my post with a thought from my good friend Ross, who pointed out to Rachel that y-o-u-'-r-e means "you are" and y-o-u-r means "your."