2 posts with in one month's time... please don't die of shock

Hi again. I know, I am writing again relatively soon for me. It's a miracle. :) Anyway, there actually has been a couple of things that have happened with in the last month that I wanted to share. I have found a new hobby. I love to cook! I have always known that I liked cooking, but the task always seemed somewhat daunting to me. Well, lately I have been doing better and have found that I love it more than I thought I would. This epiphany came to me a week or so ago when I had no idea what to cook for dinner. I hadn't been feeling well, so Rob and I had gotten fast food for the past couple of nights. I felt guilty and wanted to cook him a good homemade meal. Now, I have always envied my mother's ability to look into a fridge and see a meal. I look into a fridge and see eggs, milk, cheese, ranch dressing, etc... Well this night I looked into the fridge and actually saw a meal. I threw some chopped chicken, tomatoes, carrots, onions, broccoli, and seasonings into a frying pan and voila, I had this...
Looks good doesn't it? I enjoyed it, and so did Rob. That was a good night.
Recently I bought a crock pot cookbook. As students, Rob and I don't have a lot of time, and I thought a couple of crock pot meals could help out. Well I have decided that I am going to cook my way through this book. (yes I have seen Julie Julia, but I had this idea before I saw the movie, and I am not using Julia Child's cook book) Well the first recipe from this book that I cooked was a pot roast. It was sooo good. It called for brisket, but I had to use a different meat (I think I landed on a London broil) The recipe was way spicy too. I like spicy but this was almost burn my mouth, Rob LOVED it. It was really fun to do. I had to fry in a crock pot, didn't know you could do that, but I did. The next meal we had was barbecue baby back ribs. YUM! again, didn't know you could do ribs in a crock pot. So far I am loving doing this. I'll keep you updated on the good meals. :P Well that's everything for now. I hope you are not too hungry after this post :)

And We're Back...

Hello again. I am sorry that I haven't kept this blog up to date. For those who still check to see if their faith in me is worth it, this blog will reward their never ending hope. Lots of pictures. Pictures are fun, at least I think they are fun. And since a picture is worth a thousand words, I am really going to have my say this post....

Well, here's Dad and Nancy. This picture was taken at General Conference last year. I don't think that their engagement was generally known. The reason I love this picture is because my Dad has a genuine smile on his face. He has grinned occasionally in the past years, but they were few and far between. This picture shows how happy he is now. I would have loved Nancy for just that smile, but she is AWESOME! to boot. This picture shows how truly loving and kind Nancy is (it's in the eyes and smile).

This picture was taken at Thanksgiving. We went to a dinner that was hosted by Rob's mother's family. Taylor is just chilling with Grandma.

I really like this picture (I guess I really like all of them) but this picture is special. To me it looks like Laura's angel status is showing through to the camera.

Story time: Rob and I have a street lamp right outside our bedroom window. For the few couple of months our bedroom was REALLY lit up at night because of this lamppost. So, we devised a way to hang curtains to cinder block. The cloth we choose (we made the curtains ourselves) was a thick denim. We thought that the denim would not only keep out the light but also provide some insulation during the winters. The curtains do keep out the light, but they exceeded out expectations in regards to insulation. The following picture is of our bedroom window. Rob looked out it one winter morning to see what the weather looked like, and this is what he saw...

the crystalline structure you see is about a half inch of ice on the inside of our window. Yes, you read that right, the inside. The curtains worked well.... :)

This last winter I graduated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's play Where's Juli...

The following pictures are from Spring break, just this last week. Rob and I both had to work, and Rob had a lot of homework, so we decided to do things around northern Utah, and on the weekends instead of during the week. The first Saturday we went down to Ogden/Roy area and went to the Hill air force museum. We met Dad and Nancy, Dave and Becki with Mags and Josh, and Nancy's Dave and family. It was a lot of fun. Rob informed me that he had never been there before, so it was something new and interesting. It was also fun to go with Dad who knows so much about planes. Rob enjoyed it a lot.

This picture is of Mags and Josh (with Dave and Rob being headless in the background). It was a cold rainy day, but we were able to look at the outside planes before it started to rain.

Dave and Rob.

Rob was getting annoyed that I was taking all the pictures and was therefore not in one. This was my attempt at appeasing him. Silly me...

I really appreciated how big the planes really were. Rob and I and Dave and Becks were constantly picking up Mags and Josh to help them see inside.

The wing is a good four feet off the ground. So helping the kids up was a interesting exercise. And then both of them wanted to look in the windows. It was fun.

I like this picture as it shows the size of the airplane in comparison to my favorite person. He's short.... :)

Latter that day my Dad asked Rob if he would help seat a toilet. We of course said that we would help. Dad and Nancy had put in new linoleum (it looks really good). Well, we got to the house and found out that there were a few things that had to be done before the toilet could be put it. One was painting over old stained grout near the toilet (I got that job, it wasn't bad) and the new baseboard had to be painted (Rob got that one) As we didn't know that we would be painting, we didn't bring grubby clothes, so Dad let Rob borrow a one piece jumper. I loved it, and couldn't stop laughing...

I know, it's not that bad, but it still is funny to me.

The following Friday we went down to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. Rob's siblings and Mother were able to join us. It was a ton of fun.

There's the boys of the group.

The museum also had a learning hands-on room that you could go in and play. This first picture is of that room. The tube had air running from the bottom to the top. A piece of paper or a scrap of something could be slipped in and would shoot up to the top. That's why everyone is looking up.

The dinosaur museum had a cave like structure at the beginning that the younger of our group could play in. I think it took a while to get them out.

Rob LOVES his dinosaurs. We took a different car down not because there wasn't room, but so that Rob and I could stay longer and take more time at each exhibit. Rob has this amazing memory for all things dinosaur. I think Rob had more fun than anyone else.

I was a close second... :)

Taylor takes third.

We all seemed to love that Protoceratops (of the same family of the triceratops)

I just loved this picture for the size comparison. When we were walking past the T-Rex's I said that they looked small to me. Rob thought I was weird. I was comparing them to the T-Rex in Jurassic Park (probably not the best source of correct information) but I was looking at them from a higher point. Once we walked down by them, I conceded that they were big. They also had a skeleton of a baby T-Rex. It was interesting.

Well, that's all of the pictures. I hope you enjoyed this post. I know I liked making it, but that is not a promise that I will keep it up in a timely manner. I am still getting the hang of being married. Thanx for your patience. Love you all!

Sound and Silence

Because because I do not scream
You do not know how bad I hurt

Because because I do not kiss
on public squares
You may not know how much I love

Because because I do not swear
again and again and again
You wouldn't know how deep I care

You keep saying
How somehow our world must live by signs
But see how much we give away
Doing time in pursuit of signs
deprived of all meaning
and of all purpose
We break our words in two. Then we
Split each half into sounds and silences

by Kofi Anyidoho
(the formatting didn't come out just right, sorry)