Chicken Noodle Soup

For all you Friends watchers out there, I have to say writing this post I heard Joey in my head saying, "Grandma's Chicken Salad". I know this isn't salad but... oh, never mind. I'm just going to take a moment to show the whole blogging world that I did it. I made homemade Chicken Noodle Soup, noodles and all!

Halloween Murder Mystery Night

Last year I really wanted to host a murder mystery party and the day of the event we had to cancel. I was so disappointed because Don never had time off and the one chance we got, fell through. So this year I decide come heck or high water we are having a murder!

It was a Roman theme. Don was a Centurion and I was a Vestal Virgin. We invited his coworkers to play with us. It worked out well because Peter, the one in the green toga, shares the same birthday as Don...Oct 18th. So we called it a birthday murder. Caryn and Paul Vanderstein, some good friends from our single ward days, were good sports and came also. It was a load of fun!

Thanks for the fun memory!!

Fall is in the Air

I have been terribly busy these past few months with life but wanted to post some pictures of the apartment fall decorations. I haven't really decorated much before for fall so these were all new ideas for me.

Because we are on a tight budget, I tried to get most of the decorations from Mother Nature. I don't know how well you can see from this picture but there are these unusual looking nuts at the base of this vase. I searched all over Salt Lake for a tree that dropped acorns, we have none. But we do have these strange trees, I believe there are only two in the whole town, that drop these green spiky balls. When the nuts are mature, they break out of these balls. I did notice I had some allergy problems after picking up the green spiky balls but didn't think much more of it until a few days later when I saw them on the news! Apparently, before those nuts mature, they have all these seeds inside that are great for a little "buzz". The reason this made the news was because two U of U students ate too many seeds before going to class. Long story short, they got an expensive trip to the ER instead of going to class.

I just wanted to point out the leaves. I picked them up at Memory Grove Park. Don and I had our engagement pictures there and that is where Don proposed to me. I decided to get leaves from that spot and put the leaves throughout the apartment.

Don's Birthday

The night of Don's birthday, just as we are drifting off into sleep it occured to me that we didn't have a single picture of him on his big day! No candles were blown out, no birthday song sang... What kind of a wife am I? His whole family was here from Idaho and my dad and stepmother were in town, and yet not one of us thought about it.

That morning, Don and his brothers went to the batting cages for some testosterone time, came back and we ate lunch and then we headed off for the zoo. Don and I have said for years that we were wanting to go and since we will be leaving for Florida soon we thought we better make it a priority. Plus, we had a few added bonuses, several babies were finally ready for the public. My favorite, the elephant.

Is she not adorable!

The giraffe is also a baby but because the mother went back inside by the time I could snap a photo, we have nothing to compare. He's still cute though.

Believe it or not, this is the only human in a picture that we have at the zoo! The camera was being passed around by people and nobody was paying too much attention to anything but the beasts! Sorry Don. We still love you!!

We did go back to the apartment for cake and ice cream and to open presents. Just that nobody sang to him. Lame.

Dentist

This morning I went to the dentist. It was a fairly normal dentist appointment, nothing really special, but I couldn't help but think of my friend Bill Cosby. Most of us have seen Bill Cosby Presents and his clip about going to the dentist. Seeing smoke come from his mouth, him yelling fire at the dentist and nobody understanding him. The spit that never ends from the rinse bowl to his mouth... oh the wonderful images Bill paints!

Like Bill, I too had a memorable experience once. It was Christmas break 2002. I was home from college and mom had made me a dentist appointment. I remember I had to switch dentists that year. I can also remember at least in my minds eye, yelling out "Smoke" and "Fire" just like Bill. (In fact this happens EVERY time I go to the dentist. That just happened to be the first year I had those images because I had just seen the video weeks before.) Well, that year, as luck would have it, I had a cavity. Instead of setting up another appointment, we ended up filling my cavity that evening.

So lets recap, this is my first time with this dentist (no relationship of trust established) and now they are staying late to fill my cavity. That is AKA for lets run through this procedure as quickly as we can because lets face it, I'd rather be home with my family for dinner. The real question: Am I going like a lamb to the slaughter?

This is when the fun began. The hygientist was in a bit of a rush. She was doing all the prep work and messing around in my mouth, like they do. I remember her rinsing out my mouth with that water pick thing and then going in for the kill with a needle the size of Texas. If you couldn't tell, I didn't have much confidence in her abilities at this moment. And then it happened, just as she was injecting who knows what into my eyeball, I felt a pop followed by an odd sensation that moved down the right side of my body. It started at my shoulder and slid down my back. I knew right then and there I was temporarily paralyzed on the right side of my body! I knew it would take hours, maybe even days to wear off. I was terrified and the worst part of it was I could only scream the words "stop" and "paralyzed" inside... she had the Texas sized needle still in my mouth! If I moved, she could poke out my eyeball!

Finally, as she is pulling out the Texas sized needle, she looks at my eyes that are now the the size of Texas, and asks if I'm okay. Before she can get a response, she gasps! (That's usually not a good sign.) She flings her arm across my body that is lifeless in that chair and shuts off the water pick. The water pick! It is at that point that I put two and two together and start laughing. The water pick had somehow gotten stuck on and was spraying water on the back of my chair. It was the water that was running down my back and it was the water I was now sitting in. I hadn't wet my pants AND I could move the right side of my body!

I LOVE nice people

Don was at work yesterday when the mail delivery man came by on his daily run. Yesterdays run was a little unusual though in that it included a package for Don from a Secret Admirer! It included this adorable card along with three letters. I don't know if you can read it but the card said: Enjoy an evening away from it all... (on the inside) Someone thinks you truly deserve a night to relax and enjoy! Then they included free movie tickets for two, a gift certificate at the Cheesecake Factory, and gift certificate to Blockbusters!

As if that wasn't enough, they put all of it in this cute basket with treats to die for! So if our Secret Admirer(s) follows our blog, we just want to thank you for the amazing package. You made our day and several fun date nights!

Wiped Out

So August turned out to be a tough month for us. I got an infection and went on home IV's for ten days. We went to Chuck E Cheese the very next day and on Monday Don came home with the flu. This is a man who works 30+ hours even when he is sick and he was in bed two of those days. As luck has it, I also got the flu and went back on IV's after only a 5 day break! I am still running IV's at home and today is the first day I am starting to feel any better.

Unfortunately, we have missed several get togethers with many of you. We are so sad we missed all of the fun catching up. Please know we are thankful for your friendships and look forward to catching up as soon as possible!

Where a kid can be a kid

There is this crazy phenomenon that exists in the children world. I don't know why or where it is written but every child needs to experience a few things in life such as snow or riding a bike. Don missed one of those rights of passage as a kid...Chuck E Cheese... so we decided to rectify that. Of course what good is Chuck E Cheese without being a kid? So we did the next best thing, we stole two.

We somehow convinced our friends that we could be trusted with their children. We had Joseph 3 years old and Joshua 2 years old. This is Joseph with us just before leaving for our adventure. Joshua isn't in the picture because he still wasn't too sure of us at this point.

Joseph meeting Chuck E Cheese between a soda break. I'm not sure he ate any pizza but he sure liked his root beer!

Joshua pretty much hating this Kmart ride. Not really his thing as you can tell.

He's more of the cowboy type. Poor kid. You can see the slide just behind his head in this picture. He loved that thing. Well, until we lost him in it for about 10 minutes. Don finally found him in one of the windows crying because he got stuck. Uncle Don climbed up there though and got him out. Thank You Turners for allowing us to all be kids for the day!

Next stop: the circus followed by Disney Land!

FYI

Did you know.... When planing a family reunion, you should plan at least two years in advance! Who knew? Does anyone own a large cabin? =)