Martha and Me

Yesterday I had to cook for a meeting at work. I do this about every ten weeks. I think it's kinda fun to use the people I work with as guinea pigs. Mostly I like to bake... sometimes it works out, sometimes not so much. But about every ten weeks I'm up for cooking too. I've done a few of these, sometimes it's just hard to come up with the idea of what to do. This week was one of those times, so I got on good ole www.marthastewart.com.

So this meal was the winner. I was nervous about it because I didn't know how adventurous my co-workers would really want to be on a Wednesday afternoon but I thought it looked good - and something that hadn't been done a bunch before.

Rosemary Fried Chicken

Tomato Salad with Parsley Vinaigrette & Creamy Pasta Salad

Personally I actually really liked this - all of it. It was fairly simple to prepare, although I'm not so confident in the whole frying stuff realm, and I didn't feel like I had the right tools (kept pulling off the breading w/ my tongs). I'm not usually a pasta salad fan either, but I actually liked that one, I'm not sure why. I don't think it was all a big hit overall though. I think it was a little far out for some who probably would have rather had a sandwich or something. I still appreciate you though Martha - and John appreciated the leftovers!

Tag City

So I got tagged from two separate people with two slightly different list tags... so in uninterrupted fashion I have smashed them together and I know you're waiting with baited breath, so I will keep you in suspense no longer...


Four places I go to over and over:
1. Hollywood Video (We don't have cable, but we have MVP, so we go to get videos a LOT.)
2. Kolob Canyon RTC (work)
3. Walmart (I wish there were other options....there's not.)
4. Mountain America Credit Union (I'm there almost everyday for work.)

Four people who email me regularly:
1. Certain parents from my work (I won't name names for confidentiality reasons.)
2. Tiff (work)
3. Stef (work)
4. The owner (work) - other people call me, what can I say.

Four places I like to eat:
1. Costa Vida
2. Taste of Hawaii
3. La Casa Don Miguel
4. Samurai 21

Four places I would like to be right now:
1. New York
2. London
3. Logan
4. Here is good...

Four TV Shows I watch all the time:
1. Friends
2. The Office
3. Scrubs
4. Arrested Development

Four people I think will respond:
-I'm like the last one doing this...

My Joys:

1. John

2. Travel

3. My son

My Fears:

1. John dying young.

2. Anesthesia Paralysis (Saw it on 60 minutes, it's where your mind is aware during surgery, but you can't alert anyone!!)

3. Being in a bad car wreck.

My Goals:

1. Lose the freaking baby weight...

2. Take more pictures.

3. Save more $$ (wouldn't it be rad if someday we could retire?)

My Current Obsessions/Collections:

1. Chocolate Truffles (really helps w/ goal # 1, I gotta say)

2. "The Movies" computer game...

3. finding bedding for my bedroom

Random Surprising Facts About Me:

1. I HATE, like want to hurt people when, people scrape their teeth on their utensils.

2. I almost refuse to wear shoes I can't slip on.

3. I dislike bacon... seriously dislike.

I'm tagging:

-Yeah, I'm truly the last...

In Memoriam

So John and I went to Logan for Memorial Day. Obviously anyone who has kept up with us in the last year or so knows why we chose to make the 5 hour drive (each way, gag) for a three day weekend. We hadn't seen Leland's headstone yet, so we really wanted to do that.



It also occurred to me that today is exactly 4 months since Leland was born. Happy Birthday little man! I miss my little bud so much. On days like this I just wish I could have got to know him, I'm sad I can't tell stories like, 'Oh Leland did the craziest thing'... but I don't regret my beautiful boy, and lest I feel bitter I must admit that I did get to know the following that I would never have known had we chose not to carry to term:



In utero Leland wasn't a big fan of letting daddy put his arm around me. He'd start to kick at John's arm like CRAZY. We decided he was either very selfish where his mommy was concerned and didn't want to share, or he just had personal space issues.

Leland also seemed bound and determined to make the Dr's work a little harder, put the ultrasound wand up to my stomach and you'd see a black and white wavy thing start to move and shake like there were ants in his pants (had he been wearing any pants - how funny would that be?). Dr. Sanders would say, 'This kid will NOT stay still for a second!' And you could tell at first the Dr. thought it was funny, but then he started to actually get really frustrated. Ha! Go Leland!

One morning just before he was born, the poor little kid got a raging case of hiccups that made his daddy wake up and say, 'did you do that?!' (Make my stomach twitch? Yeah, I do that all the time... it's a talent.)

I don't think he liked seafood, because while he was being hatched if his mommy even looked at pictures of seafood (especially shellfish) on menus she'd start to dry heave.

Leland was super strong. As soon as you get a diagnosis of Trisomy 18, every Dr. and specialist you see will beat you over the head with the fact that your child probably won't even make it to term. I guess the point is to keep you realistic. But cute little Leland made it - he even survived a traditional delivery - which to me sounds vaguely like some disturbing form of torture. Ok, not even vaguely, that is just an insane way to come in to the world. What sort of welcome is that?

He had a cute little squawk for a cry, like a little bird.

He had curly brown hair. (Just what I always said I wanted!!!)

He had perfect tiny little hands. The trisomy definitely caused some physical problems, but his hands couldn't have been more perfect, and they looked graceful and beautiful. (Not sure where he got those from, not mommy!)

He definitely had his daddy's lips! Ask anyone who was there, one of my first comments was, 'he's got Heywood lips!'

HAPPY 4 MONTH ANGEL DAY LELAND!!! MOMMY AND DADDY LOVE YOU!!!

Motivate Me

I just have a question. Is it possible to go from looking like this...


While eating this...


Washing it down with this...


And end up looking like this?


If anyone has any secrets please let me know... and don't you DARE say diet and exercise. It never ceases to amaze me that people think that's some type of secret. We all know all about that... we just don't want to do it, obviously.

Can Someone Send Over Their Decorator?

I usually know what I want, my problem is how fast I lose motivation for finding it. Plus which, internet shopping can be really misleading. So the situation... I want to redo my bedroom due to the fact that after I got new furniture, I didn't like the decor that was in there with it. And then John was able to trade with another guy in the art department for these ceramic vases that I thought were really really beautiful and perfect for our bedroom - but they didn't match the current decor either. So the plan is to change everything out with a decor loosely based on these vases...

This color isn't quite right in this picture,
the blue is a little lighter than that and the
base color is also lighter than that.

This is our new bed in our room as it looks now.
(And by new I mean year old.)
So we're talking I need new curtains,
new bedspread, sheets, pictures... It's a snowball effect.

It's very hard to take pictures of my bedroom, it's just too small!

This is the color scheme that's been floating around in my head.

So I went online, I surfed by so many duvet covers my eyes started blurring. Finally I found something I thought would work, it didn't. With it I ordered some sheets I thought would match, they didn't. So I sent them both back. Then I ordered some new curtains, they made me feel like I was decorating a Best Western, and again - wrong color. So I sent everything back except my lamp. I love lamp.

So now my room is just still an idea, and I'm really tired of surfing the internet, plus which it's too frustrating when you get the item and it's not the color you thought it was from looking online. If only there were a few more places to shop in this crazy town. And by few, I mean any. And by any, I mean - Walmart, you're not the boss of me. I'm open to making my own curtains, but I really have to get some bedding first so I know what I'm matching the curtains to. If someone else would like to find me some amazing stuff, that would be grrrreeeaaaat. Thanks a lot. Oh and by the way, John also says I can't spend $350 on sheets... I don't know why? So I guess he's envisioning spending less than my monthly paycheck on all these renovations. Silly goose.

Moab

Delicate Arch at Sunset

John and I went camping for a long weekend in Moab with some friends. We had a great time. We rafted the Colorado river and hiked in Arches National Park. It was a nice change from our usual weekend of house cleaning and grocery shopping. After all the cool weather it felt a little hot. I had trouble hiking after a very short amount of time, and I was obliged to blame the heat for my gasping and wheezing until we got home and I looked at the pictures. *Gasp of horror here* I knew I was still quite heavy, the scale told me as much, but looking at the pictures I felt sorry for my poor knees and ankles for forcing them to heave that mass attached to them up trails all weekend! Help me! Something must be done! I haven't lost a single solitary pound in months.

Resting... gasp, gasp, spit.

I thought this was a fun silhouette picture. It's 'the boys'
at Double Arch.

In the Beginning

I'm by no means the best employee in the world, but there are a few lines even I won't cross. One is blogging at work, and so for as long as we didn't have Internet at home I decided not to start my own blog. So today of all days we have saddled ourselves with a new bill, home Internet. I'm really not sure about this as it could turn into all sorts of unpleasantness: the ability to check my work email when I'm at home, doing even more online shopping than I already do (and at least not feeling guilty that I'm at work, only the remaining 'I can't afford this' guilt), and of course being more closely monitored by the ever present government who tracks my personality and movements through my bills (anarchy now!!!). But what's done is done. If John was going to continue his real job hunt then it became imperative that he be able to look when he got home from work, because as it turns out, he also has lines he will not cross and one of his happens to be looking for a new job while you're working at your current job.


So Internet check mark, but then there's the time honored question of, 'do I have anything important to say?' Then it finally hit me, the answer so apparent -- No. I really really don't! But why should that stop me, having nothing to say has never stopped me from talking in the past. Regret of things I've said I wished I hadn't plague me sometimes at night to the point where I come up with 1000 item list of things I wished I had said instead, including things like, 'Excuse me, where's the exit?'. So why on earth would I not start blogging? I can not think of a single reason.