3 out of 5.

I finished reading The Host yesterday. It was pretty good, actually. Cheesy, yet strangely addicting... like her other books! I'm a sucker for happy endings and I was worried that this wouldn't end the way I wanted it to... but I was pleasantly surprised :) I give it three out of five stars.

best bday ever.

...i woke up to my fancy camera first thing in the morning :)
...sean took me to breakfast.
...my desk was decorated with balloons, streamers & a sign when i came into the office. and flowers came later!
...my nieces called me and sang happy birthday over the phone.
...erika stopped by the office to wish me a happy bday.
...the dagleys gave me the cute lunch pail & cards that i put on this list forever ago!
...we had yummy birthday cheesecake at work.
...my momma made fondue. yum! and heather made lemon bars. double yum!
...i never thought i would ask for and be excited to get a cake plate or a tea jar... but i did... and i WAS :)
...i received lots birthday wishes by way of text message, email, phone calls, blog posts, flowers, cards, etc.
...we had birthday cake with lyn, shannon, steph, kelty & teagan.
...it was nice & sunny & warm most of the day.
...i got spoiled rotten by all of my family & friends. thanks to sean, heather, annette, mom & dad, lyn & paul, shannon, stephanie & fam, jaimie, erika & arbinger for the fun gifts!
...my birthday week isn't even over yet! this weekend we're headed to st. george for a little get-away before sean leaves to russian & italy next tuesday.
...i feel like a very lucky girl to have such wonderful friends & family. love you all!

23 reasons.

23 years ago the best thing in the world happened to me, my wife was born! I thought I would list 23 reasons why I love my wife. I could list off a thousand but she is not that old.

Today she is 5 years younger than me
Her beautiful green eyes and the orange dot her right eye has
She can name of the entire roster of the Utah Jazz
Best Choir director I have ever had
Our slumber parties in our front room watching Lost, CSI and yes….Gilmore Girls!
Her love of singing
She will eat my food that I don’t want when we go out to dinner and eat my food that I do want.
No other partner I would rather have than her in a game of badminton
The best kisser ever!!!
Always humbles me in a game of Battleship
My best friend
Always nice enough to let me know when the garbage is full & the Dishes are clean
Makes the best Sheppard Pie in the world
Thinks it’s the end of the world when she sees a spider (real or fake) I have to kill both
If she’s going to take a picture of something…prepare for 5 pictures of the same thing @ different angles
Always has to have a bucket of Popcorn at the movies
Has a weird obsession w/ the Wizard of Oz
Will read a book by my side while I watch a basketball game
Has a pair of tennis shoes for every vacation we’ve been on
Her guilty pleasure of GG…XOXO
Going to watch her sing solos and telling everybody that is my wife!
Will help me when I have a hard time pronouncing a word like “Worcestershire”
Makes me feel like I’m the luckiest person in the world!!

Happy Birthday Ariel!!

it feels about the same as 22 did. i bet sean's glad that i'm closing the gap back to 5 years between our ages :) for a whole month he was 28 & i was 22! whew! my bday is going GREAT so far! i woke up this morning to a present waiting for me on my night stand. it was my camera :) thank you, sean! and good job taking all of those hints...

why?

every time i do one of these celebrity face look-a-like things, it brings up a bunch of asian women! and ALWAYS that Zoe Tay lady {whoever the heck that is...}. what's up with that??? do i look asian? be honest.

noisy.

here is a little video i took of the sea lions... they were SOOOO loud! i was so entertained :) this is my first time posting a video from my camera... hopefully it works!

on repeat.

everything on this album. especially medicine man & the boys are too refined.

california.

We got home from California late last night & crashed! We packed so much into those 4 days of travel! It was so much fun. On Tuesday we started out the trip in our signature way... with a delayed flight :) Paul & Lyn should have known better than to travel with us! We have bad luck with airports. We flew into Oakland and rushed to get some dinner before everything was closed for the night. We got to the resort around midnight. I was so tired until I got to to our Bungalow... and then I was giddy. The bungalows are so beautiful! They are individual little houses with kitchens and fireplaces and beautiful wood floors and a little patio with amazing view outside of the french doors... and the bathroom... amazing! I took about 50 pictures of that bathroom alone :) Anyway... I was excited, to say the least.

On Wednesday Sean tried to get me to sleep in... but I hate doing that. So I got up early :) We were pretty lazy all day. Paul was in meetings all day. Lyn went with us into Morgan Hill for some lunch and then we just layed around the room all day! They put binoculars in your room so you can watch the golfers (the bungalows overlook the golf course). So we spied on them for a while. It was sort of funny to watch because it was extremely windy and they were all struggling. At 8:00, we went to an American Idol finale party. The other people that were there for Paul's meetings stayed in a larger house with 4 bedrooms and a common area. So we went to their house and watched the finale with a bunch of the most unlikely American Idol fans you could imagine :) And of course, we were all disappointed. BOO david cook!
On Thursday, we left CordeValle (sad) around 11:00 and headed to Monterey. We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium which was really fun! Then we drove down the "17 mile drive" all along the coast and down to Carmel. This was probably my favorite part of the trip. It was sooo beautiful. We didn't get out of the car much at the first few stops because it was SOOO cold and windy. But as we got further down the coast, the weather mellowed a bit and we got out and took pictures. One of the scenic stops was called Seal Rock (I think). There was a rock out away from the shore that was covered in seals. And they were swimming all around. It was so fun to see. We also drove past the Lone Cypress and Pebble Beach. After the drive, we headed back to San Francisco to the hotel. We took a detour through the countryside to avoid the fire that was up in the Santa Cruz mountains. It was so pretty. Northern California is one place I think I could live. It's so green!
On Friday we headed into downtown San Francisco. Our first stop {and this was 100% Sean's idea} was to go see the house that the Tanner Family lived in. Yes, we are aware that Full House wasn't actually filmed in San Francisco. It's just the house that they show on the episodes. And let me tell you... it wasn't that exciting! After that lovely detour, we went down to Fisherman's Wharf. We walked all around and down to Pier 39. This was another of my favorite parts... because of the sea lions! They all just hang out on these wood floaty things all day and bark. I seriously spent a good 30 minutes just watching them. They were funny and LOUD :) Then we walked around and looked at all the shops on the pier before walking down to Pier 33. This is where the Alcatraz ferries leave from. Alcatraz was really fun & interesting. It was beautiful on the island, too. All the buildings are decaying and have moss growing all over them and there are flowers everywhere. The audio tour through the cell block was awesome. Usually I get bored history tours like that pretty quickly, but it was really fun.
After Alcatraz, we ate some yummy burgers at Hard Rock and then hit the road again. We went down Lumbard Street {the crooked one}. It was kind of fun. But it was just a curvy street. I am amazed, however, at how steep all of the streets in SF are! It's kind of scary going down them. After Lumbard, we went down to the Golden Gate bridge. We drove across, took some pictures, and came back. Then we went to the Bay bridge to get to Oakland so we could make our flight on time! It was a verrrry busy day. We walked a lot, drove a lot, and got a lot of sun. But I think I got to see pretty much everything I wanted to in San Francisco {except for Alamo Square & Ghirardelli Square}. I am so glad that Paul & Lyn invited us. We had a blast!

don't worry, david.

you're way better than david cook. and guess what... you'll still be super famous! and i'll buy your album when it comes out. so get right on that. oh AND you sounded awesome on that song with one republic. that was the only enjoyable part of the whole ridiculous finale :)

p.s. don't you love how i said i was on a vacation from blogging... and here i am... sitting in my hotel room... writing a post... ?

farewell.

I'll be taking a brief vacation from blogging {and just a vacation in general...} this week. We're off to California to play until Friday. Somebody please text me the numbers for David Archuleta tonight when it's time to vote :)

legacy.

Sean and I bought bikes a couple of years ago... only to realize that there is nowhere to ride them around here. Unless you want to ride on busy roads. Or around the neighborhood. So today we got out our bikes for the first time this Spring and ventured west. We thought for some reason that we would have to sneak back to Legacy... climb a fence or something... but we really just rode right out there :) It was fun! And I took lots of pictures, as usual! We rode over the over-passes and all along down the highway and felt like trespassing rebels. We went past our house... and suddenly realized how CLOSE the highway is to our neighborhood :( We also realized on our way home how out of shape we are... that was quite the workout! Sad, I know.

It was kind of beautiful out there, too! A much better view than the freeway :)

magic on the sidewalk.

Tonight we headed to old main street in Bountiful to see the chalk art all over the sidewalks. I have seen some of the drawings on my way into the post office in previous years, but this is the first time we have actually walked around and seen them all. It was SOO fun! Even Sean had fun... and he usually doesn't appreciate art :) Here are some of my favorites.
This one was by a featured artist... and it was amazing. This picture doesn't do justice to how HUGE it was. It just amazes me what can be done with sidewalk chalk!
I looooved this one. Again... my pictures don't do justice. As most of you can probably tell, it's a drawing of 5th South in Bountiful in the rain. So awesome.
I decided to add my own masterpiece to the sidewalk... and 5 seconds later we found out that this little strip of drawings was all from an elementary school. I felt dumb.
I love this Norman Rockwell mural. So sweet :)
This is my favorite. Probably because I love taking blurry photos while I'm driving at night {see here}.
There were lots of great little bits like this one. HA! Old people & llamas... :)
Here we are looking weird & tall.
Love this.
And this one was Sean's favorite. Oh wait... that's just a handicap parking spot. :) We had so much fun and there were SO many amazing murals... I pretty much took pictures of ALL of them... see here. You all should go see them before they get washed away!