A Buhr Blog

You had me at ..."Friend Request"

2012-01-27T10:11:00.008-07:00

(The title was really the subject of one of Ben's emails!! haha! awwh)

I think it's known I added my husband on Facebook. I seem to remind everyone when that time comes around to reminisce again because that was such an exciting [and mysteriously freaky] time in life. We'll be 85 and I'll be like, "remember 60 whatever years ago, today..." This time it's been three years ago today that I found that hottie in some Facebook album, and randomly added him. Score.

Then I denied it. lol

"Oh please, I think you should just admit that you won a bet and as a prize you were able to be my new friend! This whole 'I added you but don't remember' line is kinda cheesy! I've heard that the direct 'hi, my name is _____, so nice to meet you' works just fine but this not so subtle 'accident' is kinda fun too! Haha! Jk! Ok ...You have more shoes than many small countries, you have a ridiculously rad music video and like to lie about being an online predator. What else should I know, before I develop a crush?"

I wrote a [sappy slash boring] song and he wrote me a poem. The day I met him in person, 2/20/2009, he was sitting at the airport, hoodie zipped all the way up, baseball hat pulled down, totally scouting me out on the escalator before I could spot him. Truth!! And you thought I was shallow for adding him purely off his looks. lol

I like you a lot Ben. Thanks for giving this online predator a chance. :)

I think I've posted this poem before, but I think it deserves a spot in two blogbooks? My husband always makes me laugh.

"Uh oh"

written by Ben (on 2/3/09)

"Something is wrong,

Like a man in a thong.

I don't know what it is,

Wtf, what the shiz?

My mind can't focus,

On all my hocus pocus.

The mountain of work is calling,

But still I find I'm falling.

Where is my head at?

Plz come back, I need u stat!

Why can't I think?

Get me a drink,

I need some h2 oh,

I'm moving way too slow.

Oh wait, put down that tissue,

I know what's my issue.

The reason for my blank stare,

Its sitting right there.

I want so bad to take a look,

At my effing facebook.

To see if there's some emails,

From sexy sweet miss Hales!!

"1.27.2009" has a very creative name, indeed. The song has some tweaking/dynamic changes that one day I will work on, but it is the one I wrote at the time so it has some silly sentimental value. If I feel both ambitious and patient, I will one day orchestrate it.

Tomorrow is the 10k race and we have recruited some friends and it will be a lot of fun. I have never run in tights and Ben has never run in women's shorts. And I highly doubt Ryan has run in pink shorts before. Doesn't a Retro Run sound like fun?? You should join us!!

Have a great weekend!!!

LILASH!! I have eyelashes!!

2012-01-24T13:34:00.001-07:00

I did the math and I guess I lied. I started using LILASH on the 29th of December, so that puts me at less than four weeks using it!! I'm not sure, but I think it says about six weeks to your maximum length, and then you use it 2-3 times per week to maintain. A tube last 6 months, but I've heard people say it has lasted a year.

I FORGOT to take a "before" picture, but I pulled one from our cruise in November which is obviously before!! Poor lil stubbies.

So I used ZERO PHOTOSHOP here, besides blurring the rest of me out. It probably wouldn't have hurt to do an after picture BEFORE I worked out and got sweaty. lol Blurrrrr.

Isn't LiLash amazing?? Please don't tell me you can't tell a difference. lol

Thank you mom for the Christmas present!! I love it.

January Jabberings

2012-01-22T16:49:00.003-07:00

Some random, unconnected thoughts...

I have been following two stories pretty religiously for the past couple of weeks (just ask my dear hubby). The first one is Sherry Arnold, the missing jogger, and the second is the Concordia cruise ship (which I even dreamed we were on). Both are stories about devastating happenings, and they just make me sad. And to think how avoidable the cruise disaster could have been. As more information comes out about why and how the ship hit, I can't believe somebody could be so careless with a boat full of 4200+ people.

Sherry went missing while on a Saturday morning jog around her neighborhood. She was a cancer survivor which lead her to become a runner. This is a picture I found of her and her hubby. I had hoped and hoped for her safe return, but six days of searching later, it was over. Ugh her poor family.

Following image found here.

Two men are being held, and details have been pretty withheld, but I'm really hoping for as much "justice" as can possibly be served.

Following image found here.

I'm amazed at the damage to the hull of the Concordia. This happened even with all the technology we have at our hands, which is pathetic. That is not a little damage. It was avoidable and cost at least 12 lives, with possibly another 20.

Cruise pictures found here.

I walked in the garage and my eyes (they are like full time scorpion radars) instantly spotted mister scorpion, clear up high on the wall. Ben stood on the truck with the broom covered in sticky tape while I shrieked with shriekness. My phone froze so you never do get to see the big scorpion. He is squished now. I should have taken a picture.

You will have to wait and see what we came up with for Ben to wear to the Retro Run. lol oh ya. I give it an A+. Saturday he set a 10k PR of 47:49, with a 7:42 average pace!! My goal is a sub 55 with an 8:50 average pace. I would LOVE to run a 10k at an 8 minute average pace, but that's a little out of my range right now. Ben's buddy Ryan will be joining us for this race. I wonder what his attire will be.

After debating on which race for a long time, it looks like we're planning a trip up north, in April, for the Salt Lake City Marathon (hopefully it happens even after the whole director resigning issue...bah)! We have recruited my brother, Dallin, and my dad to run 5ks, and possibly even Liz and Colter, my inlaws. I am using Hal Higdon's Training found here, and just finished week five.

Ben will probably only run once a week between the Spartan and then, and run the half marathon with ease. To be a man...

If you want longer eyelashes and don't want to deal with the money and maintenance of extensions, try LiLash. I'm on week #5 and am amazed that my lil stubbies are actually long!!! I was afraid to try some of the others because of the chance of darkening my eye color, but LiLash doesn't risk that. It is one of the most pure lash extenders. I will post some personal pictures soon.

New shoes, new shirt, completely ready in Christmas attire! Seriously I went two week without getting all ready, it sucked. The joys of working from home in my jammies, and spending every afternoon/evening in my workout stuff. My hair seriously grew in that time. It needs a choppin'.

The Arizona Super Spartan Race is less than three weeks away. Currently Team Nemesis has about 11 on it (give or take one, I can't remember), and the only female is...ME. We had one other, but she was injured at the PF Chang's last weekend (sad!!), so now I'm flying female solo. This race has scared away the female CrossFit-ers here or something, but I think the race hype is more than it should be! It won't be that bad, and I would love to find a lady to join the team, or another female/s running the 11:00 heat. I don't think I can keep up with the men on the team; I guess we will see. Crazy enough, my dad might be able to come watch as the Motabs will be in town that weekend.

Image found here.

January's 100x challenge of running 100k is dwindling down, and February's challenge is 100 push-ups per week, which is about 15 a day. If you're wanting to work on your push-ups, head here to join and get the link to the spreadsheet.

We have a hard time dealing with the idea of having to get up really early to drive to a Saturday race, or having to mooch off somebody's hospitality since we live out of the valley where all the racing happens (a big thank you to those that have let us stay with you/at your condo time and time again). But we are quite blessed with beautiful "winter" weather here, which allows us a nice Sunday walk to the Post Office. The weather seems to be a constant low 60s and sunny.

I have already forgotten what it's like to deal with snow, and though we adore Salt Lake City so much, I hope we don't have to deal with driving in it again. It was stressful.

Did you see this video from YESTERDAY? It was circulating Facebook. Insane.

And "before" and "after" pictures of Ben's truck lights. Thank you Dallin! It looks pretty cool.

Happy Sabbath! And have a lovely week.

For the locals, mark Saturday, March 3rd for a local charity 5k run. $20. Fun and for a good cause.

2012 Resolution Time

2012-01-19T10:20:00.003-07:00

On NYE we set some goals/resolutions for 2012! Ben and I are quite alike in this area. We believe having detailed goals and tracking our success rates on a daily basis is just so thrilling. Spreadsheets and graphs are great tools for tracking things, and I probably succeed at many a goals solely (well maybe not solely) to see the graph/spreadsheet completely filled. That is a satisfying trophy and a motivator for the next goal!

Re-cap, re-occurring, and some newbie goals for 2012 (holy cow did we really get married in 2010). Insanity.

TWO ZERO ONE ONE

#1- Workout/ stay in shape- Success!!
#2- Scripture studies and prayers with Ben- Semi success!
#3- Cook dinner for Ben!- Success!!
#4- Get back into recording my music- Not so successful!!
#5- Make a specialized budget- Success! (Only one exclamation point though. We have to stick to it next...)

Sooooo 2012 New Year Resolutions:
#1- Scripture studies and prayers!!
Our 2012 goal is everyday. So far so good!

#2- Stick to our budget!! Save more money this year!
We liked to go over on groceries and it added up. Eating healthy is expensive (especially these days). We make grocery lists ahead of time, and we've started literally calculating everything as we put it in the cart (which actually weeds out all those extra snacks and unnecessary purchases...though somehow a pack of Monsters still made it in the cart). Sounds like a lot of work, maybe, but it's kind of fun to watch us save money, and we both love calculating things. haha

#3- Record my music (my goal)!!
All these songs in my head are going to be lost forever if I don't take the time to record them. I'm also still looking for that creativity boost that "bad dates" used to give me. And I'd like to actually 100% complete a CD one of these days.

#4- Stay fit!!
Just stay fit somehow during the next year. It's important to be fit for our own selves, and for each other! It makes us feel good and it is addicting.

#5- Figure out and work towards where we want our permanent residence to be!!
We originally planned to transfer to Phoenix, but it seems there isn't a lot of positive feedback regarding working at the company headquarters (unless, of course, stressful 80 hour work weeks sound pleasant). We are in a bind. Do we try our shots with Phoenix? It doesn't get anymore laid back than Ben's office here, but we. need. the. city. Chipotle. Oh I miss Chipotle.

Anyways, I follow a great blog about making changes in life, etc.: The Change Blog. It has some really great posts about patience, going after something in life, honesty, setting goals, making career changes, etc. It is a blog I feel like I gain some knowledge after each time I read it.

Other miscellaneous goals:

Read 25 books (that would have been an easy goal before I got an Ipad)
Set PRs in all distances
Put more $$ in the Porsche fund for mister Ben
Keep a more organized house (I've been following tips from here, especially "put it all away everyday," the second #5...there seem to be two #5s.)
Journal once a month (LDSJournal.com)
Show how grateful I am to others
Remember how happy life is and be that person with the "glass half full."

2012 is going to be full of lots of goodness for our family of two, AND full of Summer Olympics yay. Here's to hoping for all around SUCCESS.

Year 2011!

2012-01-16T10:43:00.002-07:00

I was going to do a "quick" year end post but ended up looking through lotttts of pictures, then blogbooks, then the wedding pictures, and then the wedding videos. Blogging really is a great invention. I always say I wish my parents had blogbooks for us to look through. I wonder what they were like before us kidlets came along.

2011 was awesome, busy, chaotic at times, but I think it was a lot more chill than our absolutely crazy 2010 was. I'm sad to see another year go by so quickly, but 2012 will be awesome!! Who knows where we'll end up this year?

February: Ben and I celebrated two years since we physically met in Vegas, February 20, 2009.

March/April: We road tripped to Vegas and Arizona. The day before we left to head home, Ben got a job interview request phone call from that same area we were visiting. Random.

April: Playing the piano at ...I always forget the name, Apple Village? A rest home in South Ogden with the cutest old people.

April: Easter egg contest with the family. I won for the first time ever.

April: Shortest hair cut of my life. Too bad it grows so fast. I will do it again.

April: Rode bikes out to Antelope Island with the fam.

May: We visited my mom on Mother's Day up at Snowbasin where she plays the piano.

May: Hollywood Undead Concert at Saltaire!

May: New tires for the truck. Ben had drooled over them for a lonnnng time.

May: Learned how to shoot HDR. This is Daybreak.

May: My last day at work after five years. Turns out I still work for them via satellite, so ya.

May: Packing my shoes. Packing more shoes. Lottts of shoes.

May: Last fam trip to Park City before we moved.

May: Trip to the Kenecott Copper Mine.

May: Preparing to leave my sweet Mini Italian Greyhound in Utah with my family. Ugh.

June: Moving from Utah to Arizona just in time for the heat!

June: Turns out AZ is beautiful.

June: St. David memory trip for my hubby.

June: TOMBSTONE

June: Hanging with the nieceys.

July: Arizona MONSOONS and thus fire

July: Lake Powell trip with the fam!

July: Turns out the 24th of July is huge out here.

July: My hot man turned 33!

August: We bought a new car!

August: We continued to live in the pool/water!

September: Quick Utah trip for work/my birthday.

September: Hubby took me to Valley Ho for my birthday!

September: We began racing in our new area. 9/11 Freedom Run

September: Visiting Ryan in Flagstaff.

October: We moved from our lil apartment to a house.

October: My mom flew in to visit us for a week!

November: We cruised for our 1st Anniversary! It was so so so much fun!!!

November: We ran the Turkey Trot with friends!

December: Ben and I started the Spartan WODS to prepare for February's Super Spartan.

December: My husband was [a skinny] Santa!!

December: We ran the Jingle Bell Run and set PRs.

December: Utah Christmas with all the familia!

Last day of 2011: New Year's Eve Resolution Run

Here's to a happy 2012! And happy Monday!

I didn't know it was supposed to rain around these parts, but it's a change in pace.

2012 Running Goals

2012-01-11T12:16:00.012-07:00

A month ago I set some great 2012 running goals but found I've been hesitant to post them because so far January has been challenging, and I have suddenly felt intimidated by my own goals. Publicly posting them may be added motivation for me to get back on track, so here goes...

2012 Running Goals:

Run 1000 miles this year- preferably all outdoors!
Run 12 half marathons- they don't have to be races
Sign up for a marathon- I say sign up because of the three I really want to do, one is this weekend, one was a couple weeks ago, and the third one is sold out until 2013
Remain injury free even if it costs me a goal.

Up to now:

I bought the Asics 2170s and they are comfortable. I like a minimalist shoe, but I like happy ankles and knees more. It feels like I'm running in cinderblocks and the first running week of the year was slow. I had one decent run, but I think I'm adjusting!!

Saturday I woke up puking and I didn't stop until evening Monday right before I was teaching my first RIPPED class (didn't use my barf bag- wahoo!). I haven't been that sick since I can remember. I even took a pregnancy test because it's not like me to be so sick.

I can keep food down now, but the bug has moved to my head so I have balloon head/etc. The goal is to not fling snot in Ripped tonight when I quickly move my head!

I was 1.4 miles short of my weekly goal for the first week of 2012, and I'm on my way to missing the goal for week two. Week three I'll hit it hard!

There is the 43 year old jogger that disappeared while jogging, and it has stuck in my mind and has kind of put a damper on things running-wise. I really hope they find her soon, and that she is okay. I feel horrible for her family, and after five days officials are still at a loss of what could have happened. These scenarios are why I have always chosen to run on the main street, and I always, always run with jogger's mace strapped to my hand.

I joined Christine's 100x challenge, and this month it is 100k. It's still not too late if you would like to join, especially if you're already logging runs. She'll send you a link to the spreadsheet and you update it as you log your runs, and you can see other's updates and their blog addresses.

This schedule I took this from the club's website, so I believe it to be the updated one! So locals come work out!!! (Click to enlarge.) They have made some changes to the interior, and are continuing to add classes like CrossFit and Spin!!

Happy 2012 fitness and running. :)

The CHRISTMAS Post!!

2012-01-08T16:45:00.003-07:00

The first attempt at the picture above I must not have been paying attention because it turned out saying, "Merry Christy." haha I'm smart.

So I get a little sad on Christmas Eve just knowing the end of the season is so near. I wish I wasn't one to think like that, but it all goes by so quickly and you almost have to focus to soak it all in. Looking at pictures and reminiscing of life's enjoyable moments is a wonderful way to quickly cheer up the post Christmas blues.

Christmas highlights...And I apologize to my mom and sis because I don't have pictures of you two from Christmas day? I guess most of my picture taking occurred Christmas Eve. Kind of a bummer.

So you're probably wondering what that jellyfish picture has to do with Christmas. Well I got stung by a Portuguese Man of War in 2000..something, the first time I ever got in the ocean. Like less than five minutes is all it took before that blue thing was wrapped around my arm...then hand as I tried to peal it off...and then leg. My family had been swimming alllll week long, but I have always been afraid of the big ocean so I choose to sunbathe. I finally got in!!

So the joke lives on and my sis blue screened the above pic. The welts/scars on my arm faded almost two years later. Permanently visible scars would have been sweet, but oh well.

My dad surprised me with this awesome jellyfish tank. Haha. And it looks pretty realistic too. Awesome!

My family always talks about the days BONBONS were sold at FJH, so I tracked them down for my brothers. Turns out I should have bought some for Jolie too, because she was excited about them!

Ben got me drinking Monster. I got Dallin and James. James got his BYU friends...like KEI. haha

I bought Ben a personalized by Brandon Sanderson, hardcover set of the Mistborn trilogy. He loves Brandon Sanderson's stuff.

I love my dad. He pulls the tree out each year, sets it on a box, and nobody even bends the branches or decorates it. It's fiber optic so it sparkles at least. He also doesn't label or color code the presents to nobody can guess which ones are theirs. He goes strictly of his memory.

We got a new knife set. Ben was so excited that he cut his finger open the first day we used them. Hahaha I love my special hub.

We bought my dad the Lord of the Rings Extended Version Blu-Ray box set because he wanted it. When we got to Utah we saw the Lord of the Rings Extended Version DVD box set sitting there and were like, "what! he already has this?? Dangit, that kind of sucks."

Then my dad opened it and was so excited!!! I guess he has to have the Blu-Rays. haha My cute dad and his technology.

I came out of it all with some sweet new kicks for the shoe room. I really ought to count my shoes about now.

The tree is still up (taking it down enters the final phase of post Christmas blues). Turns out my mom and Jeff had a lot of fun at Hobby Lobby and thus the tree came out with 20 more shoe ornaments. Since the tree is yay big, it is dripping with shoes. Awesome!

We went up to Logan the day after Christmas. It was nice to see Ben's family and it seems everyone is doing well. He has a really large family, so people are getting married and having babies what seems like often, so you miss a lot in a few months of living elsewhere (two weddings and two hospitalizations/accidents in five months).

But Logan was freezing as. I thought I might die. Props to the cold weather runners. Props to you. There were many out and about this day. How do they do it. (Check out my sweet new round Teno ring.)

I love Christmas. Debbie Downer says January wins for the depressing month of the year. Mid winter, post Christmas, broke as, vacation usually a ways off, family visits far off, and spring break hasn't applied since college. Since another Christmas has come and gone, we'll be looking forward to the Retro Run in less than three weeks!! Meanwhile I'm really trying to adjust to my new shoes by then. That might be a separate post itself. How January so far has been out to get me and my running goals.

I hope everyone else has fun things to look forward to. Makes a difference. Christmas is the best. Thank you everyone that helped make this one so wonderful.

ChristmasEVEtime was here.

2012-01-05T10:00:00.002-07:00

This was taken on the drive back home. It was uneventful and lovely.

This year for Christmas we decided to drive the 13+ hours to Utah. It was horrible. lol We left in the evening and were originally planning to stay the night in Flagstaff, but that fell through a couple days earlier. At last minute it was either get a hotel or just keep on driving...so we kept on going! Ben and I can be really cheap sometimes.

We pulled over in Page and slept for three hours, and then we pushed on full of Monster and blasting Sirius CHRISTMAS...at least part of the time. Seriously I was enjoying myself at this moment. Christmas music rocks.

The mountain pass from Panguitch to I-15 was just a blizzard. I-15 was worse. We drove in a blizzard for four hours, mostly darkness. The lovely Arizona car dealer filled our wiper fluid with water, so ya, frozen. That didn't help. My old car was All Wheel Drive and our Honda is front. But it did pretty well I'd say.

We pulled over on the ramp by some trucks and slept another hour and hoped to wait the storm out. We woke up in the light and the plows were out. Once we hit Provo there was no sign of snow at all! Just our dirty car and memories of the worst drive we will never attempt again.

We were in the car 20+ lonnng hours. I don't know, next time we'll UPS our gifts home and then fly or something. Or maybe we'll live a couple hours closer by then.

But onto pictures. We had to fit a whole ton of things into our vaca. Time was ticking. So leading up to Christmas Day...

Reunited with my puppy, Rykar! When we got there, he could hear me in the garage and was whining and scratching at the door. I love reunions!! I played for him to sing numerous times. I sure get a kick out of it, especially now that I don't live with him anymore. :(

Dallin needed more money for Christmas presents, so my dad put him to work in the house. Hmmm this was at like 10pm the day before Christmas Eve. Haha.

Disneyland actually let Jolie come home for Christmas...gasp, but awesome. She brought her mini Greyhounds Savvy and Comet! We trained Comet to slither through the box. It was quite hilarious. The things puppies do for treats!!

We are lucky that my parents will both come to dinner for the sake of us kids. I think we at least went out together twice as an entire family. It was awesome!

Christmas Eve we got up and went to an early (10:00) breakfast at Ihop, and then the day was spent at my dad's with his side of the family doing traditions, and the night was spent at my mom's house doing more. Traditions rock.

Below is Kei (pronounced "KAY"). He is from Japan and is friends with my brother at BYU. Flying home for Christmas is too expensive so he was going to spend it alone and so James invited him up. We LOVED having him!! He was so gracious and fun to be around! He was so surprised we even bought him presents. It was cute.

One thing about Kei is he was born deaf. My aunt Tracine happens to be an interpreter, and James also has learned, so Kei was able to participate in all of our family games. My aunt read the traditional Left/Right game, WHILE signing it, and Kei was able to enjoy all of our traditions. Luckily I know my alphabet, so I could communicate. lol But he reads lips/English quite well (especially for being Japanese), and at church he would read James' lips while the hymns played, and he would sign the words. It was really awesome. Kei rocks. He currently teaches at the MTC and is an RM.

My dad cut his hand (as he is showing) and it wouldn't stop bleeding so he bandaged it and wore a doctor's glove for a couple hours. Hahaha I was going to take a picture of the glove so he hurry and ripped it off.

This is Steve and Lacey's little Violet (they are below). She's a doll. And that Ivy sure is a mature and smart lil thing. She made me smile. It was nice to see some of the family we haven't seen in awhile.

The guessing game. How many Christmas Reeses are in the container? The total was 55. Dallin and Ben guessed 54, and Lez and I guessed 56. Four way tie!!

Christmas Eve wouldn't be complete without pajamas. Disney pajamas...of course. :)

Race Day - New Year's Resolution Run

2012-01-01T14:31:00.003-07:00

Happy New Year!! 2011 was a great great year, and 2012 is going to be even better as we set some good resolutions/goals!! Ben and I got home on NYE evening, so we spent the night alone with sparkling cider in our champagne glasses, watching Breaking Bad and eating Chinese take out. It was lovely!

The Resolution Run was Saturday morning in Gilbert! We had taken a week off of running and working out so we could travel and visit family (and eat), so we were feeling a liiiittle leary about this one. Ben came in with another PR of 20:43 anyways! Nice job!!

My average pace was 8:14, which put me at 25:33. I wanted to keep my miles between 8:05-8:10, and I got a side ache at about 3/4 miles from the finish which hurt my third mile time. I tried sprinting after my side ache diminished, but I didn't quite make up the lost time.

But it was fun and the route had some steep inclines which made it a little challenging! When I hit the 1 mile mark my Garmin registered 1.07, so it ended up being .08 long, but this time Ben and I both had Garmins. I think .08 is quite a bit to be off, but this was the first time for this race so the route was new. It was a fun time!!

Standing on the sides of the finish line watching people cross! Races are fun times.

Turns out my husband will always kick my trash. But oh well!! It's not a competition. Oh wait yes it iiiiiis.

After the race, Ben and I went over to Road Runner Sports to gear up and get fitted for some new shoes!! I overpronate, so I decided on the Asics GT-2170. They aren't the most beautiful, but they aren't horrible either. They're a lot more shoe than I'm used to, but I have hopes they will ease some of the ankle pain I have had. I'm pretty stoked for my first run in them!!

Ben ended up with the Saucony Kinvara 2 since he has more of a normal pronation. I was originally going to look into the Kinvara for myself. It has great reviews.

I feel like they make my feet look biiiig. But they are a comfy run (well the laps I took around the store at least), and they have more room in the toe box so hopefully no running toe. :/

The first race of the year is in four weeks! It's a 10k.

Mister Arm Update

2011-12-29T12:00:00.004-07:00

Tuesday we were in Logan and had a follow-up on Ben's arm. It's been close to 14 months since the accident. The xrays show the bone graft is at 75%, so that's really, really good news!

In another 6-12 months Dr. King will re-evaluate. The hardware may or may not come out, but that surgery probably wouldn't happen until 2013 after the arm is completely healed. Dr. King says we will wait to determine all that.

Pretty much it all sums up to...we're blessed. Ben has a near full functioning arm/hand, and I have a husband. And the most wonderful one at that.

And Christmas was beyond awesome. Each year it somehow is better and better. I'm officially depressed it is over and I miss Christmas music all day long!! Thank goodness for family, pictures, memories...and my new awesome pink Garmin which I'll be going on my first run this afternoon with. Wahoo!

100 Mile Challenge - Complete!

2011-12-21T09:08:00.006-07:00

This made me laugh!

I completed the 100 miles from Thanksgiving to Christmas challenge!

Here are my splits. I'm proud that I made the time to do it. A suuuuper good feeling!!

I finished 124/502. I posted this pic (below) to show that somebody ran 470 miles in time I ran 100. Intense.

Time to get fitted for new running shoes and some more attire (anti-chafe body glide?). I sure love shoe shopping, but not for running shoes- you run that risk of having to buy ugly ones!!, and lately I've chafed and bled in places I never have before (hello bra and waistband areas). It's hard to find the perfect attire and pair of shoes, and I have been developing some ankle pain in my current ones. I think we'll go to Roadrunner Sports after our race next week. The last one of the year!!!

But now it is officially Christmas time. And 4 days until Christmas Day!!

Merry Christmas!

Race Day - Jingle Bell Run

2011-12-18T20:00:00.002-07:00

The Jingle Bell Run was Saturday morning in Glendale. Ben and I were both feeling pretty pumped about this one (we love stuff like this). I bought some bells and a Santa hat/beanie for our holiday festive-ness. I read we had to beat Santa to be entered into the raffle. Santa was pretty hilarious running in his suit and beard. I don't think he could see very well with it bouncing up in his eyes.

I like to run distance, but I'm not very quick. Recently I decided to work on pushing my pace and start focusing on setting some time PRs instead of distance, especially if I'm going to be doing more racing this upcoming year. The fun thing about this is I have PR'd each race as I push myself a little harder. The Garmin has been a huge contributor to me beating my times. We'll see how long until I plateau. The next race is New Year's Eve, a Resolution Run.

Here are the bells on my ankles. They gave us little bells to safety pin around, but the bells I ordered from Amazon were suuuper awesomer. And the tee shirt designs were suweet.

Ben shaved 19 seconds off his Turkey Trot time and came in with a 20:55 with a 6:40 average pace (geez mister!!). Not too shabby for somebody whom hated running until last year.

I shaved 2 minutes 11 seconds off my Turkey Trot, and 41 seconds off my latest PR. I came in at 25:29 with an 8:13 average pace.

I came out of the shoot too quickly (oooof course) with a sub 7 minute, and the last 1/2 mile I definitely paid for it. But it was lots of fun, especially after. It's so fun to cross with my hub there cheering me on. And one of my favorite things about races are all the people cheering you on, even if they don't know you. People are great.

People are also amazing. I was beat by like a 70 year old! If that's not motivation for the next race, I don't know what is. 70 years old, seriously? A-mazing.

Our picture in the AZ Central (we're so famous lol), and a slide show of a few other pictures: http://www.azcentral.com/commphotos/azcentral/21053/11/

ONE WEEK to Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-16T10:28:00.001-07:00

Merry Christmas!

(+ my dad...this is my mom's card)

Jolie comes up with something cute every year.

9 days to Christmas.

13+ days to CHRISTMAS

2011-12-12T08:08:00.001-07:00

Cutest girls on the planet (perhaps I'm biased). They were happy these candy canes weren't "hot." They were at a baby sitters during the white elephant party, but it was nice when they came back home. I talk as if they are mine. lol But you know what I mean. And Elly is starting to get her teeth back in.

Ben chases them around and around. The couch is base, and somehow so am I. :) After awhile, Ben gets exhausted. He last longer than me though!!

They had their family pictures taken this morning, but I think this one depicts them ever so perfectly...all climbing around.

We had a visit from Santa...though he was a little skinnier this year. I don't know what Nate asked for, but I forgot to ask for something at all. I was busy diggin' the man in costume.

Pinterest continues to provide recipes for 4+ meals each week (mostly chicken because we eat a tonnnn of it). One recipe was Coconut Chicken Curry. Pinterest is the best invention. I read online a friend was going to hold a "Pintervention" for his wife. haha

Source: melskitchencafe.com via Christy on Pinterest

Ingredients:

2 lbs boneless/skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2-inch chunks or strips
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1-1/2 T vegetable or canola oil (we substituted EVO)
2 T curry powder
1-1/2 t paprika (substitute cayenne pepper if you like the heat)
1/2 onion, thinly sliced (we used 1 onion)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
4 medium red potatoes, cut into chunks (we substituted sweet potatoes)
1 (14 oz) can coconut milk, light or regular
1 (14.5 oz) can stewed tomatoes, Italian style
1 (8 oz) can tomato sauce
3 T sugar
Hot cooked Jasmine rice or brown rice (we substituted cauliflower rice)

Directions:

Season chicken pieces w/salt/pepper. Heat oil, curry powder, and paprika in a large skillet over medium-low heat for two minutes, until fragrant (but don't let burn).

Turn the heat up to medium and stir in onions and garlic and cook 7-9 minutes more or until onions are very clear.

Add chicken, tossing lightly to coat with curry oil and cook for 7-10 minutes, or until chicken is no longer pink and is cooked through or nearly cooked through (it will continue to simmer in the next step).

Add potatoes, coconut milk, tomatoes, tomato sauce, and sugar into the pan, and stir to combine. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 30-40 minutes. The sauce thickens slightly upon standing, but is great served piping hot (and a bit thinner), too.

Serve with Jasmine rice (or your favorite rice) and garnish with cilantro, if desired.

As found here.

I never have good presentation (hello paper plates half the time), but it is delicious. Next time we'll add more curry powder.

We made Smores Cookie Bars twice this weekend (once for the party). Delicious!

Source: lovintheoven.com via Christy on Pinterest

Ingredients:

1/2 C butter
1/4 C brown sugar
1/2 C sugar
1 large egg
1 t vanilla extract
1-1/3 C all purpose flour
3/4 C graham cracker crumbs
1 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
2 king sized milk chocolate bars
1-1/2 C marshmallow cream/fluff and NOT melted marshmallows

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars until light. Beat in egg and vanilla. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture and mix at a low speed until combine.

Divide dough in half and press half of dough into an even layer on the bottom of the prepared pan. Place chocolate bars over dough, 2 king sized Hershey's bars should fit perfeectly side by side, but break the chocolate to get it to fit in a single layer no more than 1/4 inch thick. Spread chocolate with marshmallow cream/fluff. Place remaining dough in a single layer on top of the fluff (most easily achieved by flattening the dough into small shingles and laying them together). (We rolled it out and cut strips to lay out.)

Bake for 30-35 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool completely before cutting into bars. (Or don't because you can't wait that long.)

As found here.

My one picture. =)

The Arizona Super Spartan is in less than two months and we're getting pretty psyched. The team, Team Nemesis, has about ten on it so far, and hopefully it continues to grow. I would like to see more girls join in.

Ben and I did a Spartan WOD on Saturday. A little south/east from here, there's a looping trail with pull-up bars. It's perfect. After the WOD I'm left with 36+ miles to meet my Christmas goal.

13 days to Christmas! 9 to Christmas break. 5 to the Jingle Bell Run. Wahoo! I think Ben should wear his Santa suit.

Product Survey

2011-12-08T12:00:00.008-07:00

This is a "product survey." I did it like a year ago and never got around to finishing it. Most of the stuff is still accurate. Moving to a small Arizona town hasn't introduced me to many new things (scorpions). :)

Face wash/cleanser:

Clean and Clear Oil-free Blackhead Eraser/Exfoliater + wash cloth

Face moisturizer:
Clean & Clear

Spot treatment:

10% Benzoyl Peroxide (I purchased a lifetime supply back when Grocery Outlet existed.)

Mask:

Anything oil free.

Self-tanner:

The best overnight face tanner is the Neutrogena Sun Fresh (it's like Mystic for the face in lotion form!!). I love the Banana Boat Summer Color for my legs.

They were both cheap from Walmart but harder to find these days. I bought a bunch of them on Ebay to stock up.

Toner:

Home Remedy, and what is it used for?

I'm really not very creative.

Tinted moisturizer:

I don't use any.

Concealer for blemishes:

Concealer for under eyes:

I don't really get bags under my eyes. But if I have use it, then it's BE.

Bronzer:

I love Urban Decay Baked Bronzer in Gilded or Two Faced Sun Bunny Light.

Blush:

I don't wear a lot. Usually Sephora brand.

Highlighter:

Bare Escentuals Clear Radiance or their mineral veil, the one with a dewy finish.

Mascara:
I think I buy a new brand each month. When I find one I like, it dries out too fast. Annoying.

Eyeliner:
Urban Decay 24/7 in Zero and Dime, MAC Superslick Liquid (doesn't come off). I alternate with drug store brands. As long as I have shadow primer (including on my lower lashline), they work lovely.

Eyeshadow:

I wear everything. My "go to" brand is Urban Decay probably because of their cute-ness and palettes. I collect UD, MAC, Two Faced, Lorac, Bare Escentuals, Sephora, Make Forever, Stila, and whatever else I can get my hands and wallet on.

Primer:
Best invention ever...Urban Decay or Too Faced. Without them my eyeshadow creases in just over an hour. With them sometimes it lasts 24 hours. Sometimes I'll sleep with it on the night before an early race, and wake up made up. (I also sleep on my back because of neck problems, and don't roll around on my face.)

Face primer:
Benefit and Two Faced. Love.

Lipgloss:
My favorite is the cheap and recently reinvented NYC Liquid Lipshine in Prospect Pink, or Maybelline's Lip Polish in Nude Flash. I can't keep track of them for the life of me. I also wore Urban Decay's Biker Chick on my wedding, but it's pretty discontinued...of course.

Lipstick:
MAC favorites: Saint Germain, Myth, Honeylove (matte), Cyber
And Tarte- Lively (super hot pink)
I still have not officially tried out red. Just pinks.

Chapstick:

Whatever is in Ben's pocket.

Product for scrunching hair:

I haven't scrunched my hair forever since it's been short.

Product for straightening/curling hair:

Thermal Setting Spray: Biolage

Leave in conditioner:
LOVE this. Used it a ton when my hair was long.

Shampoo&Conditioner:
Paul Mitchel daily, Nexxus daily, Neutrogena deep conditioner, etc.
Want to try out Bumble and Bumble next. Tis what my stylist uses on me.

Deep conditioning mask:
The Last Call smells delicious. I always want a taste.

Hairstyle for summer:

I think for AZ summers I have to have my hair long enough for a tiny pony because of the heat.

Hairstyle for everyday:

By 3pm my hair is in a ponytail ready for my run or a gym class (wherein it is usually drenched after). Weekends I try to wear it down. If you're local, come to Local Edge Fitness. That is my plug. =)

Hair accessory:

All of them!! I love them. Headbands, flowers, so forth!!

Any other random product/makeup to rave about:
Aveda's hair potion keeps your hair from falling flat at the roots. Big Sexy makes a cheaper version. Or there's a spray version my hair lady uses on me.

Aveda's Control Paste doesn't make your hair greasy like the rest. My hair doesn't need anymore oil in it!! Fine hair + oil = disaster.

Furterer dry shampoo...my favorite from Sephora.

TRESemme has a cheap $4 dry shampoo called "Freshstart" that can be found at Wal-Mart. It has a slight baby powderish smell, but it still is way cheaper.

I swear by Big Sexy root pump and recently Bumble and Bumble thickening:

Tadah. That was fun.

And another plug for our tree. I put on candy canes and added presents and am so happy about it I took another picture. It is cute.

Have a lovely weekend.

The end.

December Documentations

2011-12-06T11:15:00.001-07:00

We are no longer Scrouges!! We got a lil tree!! We're going to get a big tree at post Christmas sales because we're cheap and won't be spending Christmas here at the house, but I was dying not having anything to put my presents under. Isn't it cute?? My husband is too good to me. I am no longer devastated at the lack of tree-ness. =)

Speaking of shoes, these are cute. They would be perfect for a night out on the town (aka Copper Steer)! I'm sure I could make room in the shoe room for some more shoes. I'm a chronic heels.com and bebe.com shoe stalker.

Saturday night I didn't fall asleep until almost SEVEN in the morning. Crappy since our alarm was set for 7:30 to get ready for church. Allllll night long I thought I might as well just get up and make some jello and watch Despicable Me since we live in this house and Ben probably wouldn't hear. But I didn't, I indeed laid there all sad like that I couldn't sleep for no reason (I ended up with a four hour nap after church).

BUT living in a house is wonderful. We have spent weekends here because we aren't so crammed up and feel like we need to get out. Space=awesome (though cleaning three toilets sucks).

FYI- Blog2print.com, where we print our books, doesn't like PNGs and makes them look crappy, so that is a bummer. Back to jpg I guess.

Now that we live here, we see NB and the girls a lot more (even though we were only five miles east of here). We took the girls to the CABOOSE and in her cute tiny voice, Ragan requested that she get "spinkles and aerials" on her ice cream. So cute. (And that place really does have some delicious ice cream.)

I took the challenge: 100 miles between Thanksgiving and Christmas. One runner finished in FIVE days- that's crazy, and now she's over 200!! I put a fancy motivational tracker on the side bar as I try. I'm currently 187/499 runners.

The Jingle Bell Run is in less than two weeks. We've promoted the idea to fellow friends, but no takers so far. What could be more fun than running with jingle bells and a Santa hat? Hello people. We're also signed up for the Spartan in February and are in the process of building a team for that. Team Nemesis.

And it's cold. Winter has arrived even in Arizona. It rained here while Utah had its hurricane weather, but now it's just chilly and boot weather or not, we're ready for summertime and POOLS!!!

19 days until Christmas (if I did the math right).

Just My Exciterment

2011-12-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

This year we started our Christmas shopping early (last year I think we did most of it on Christmas Eve). Remember the Beleiber poster? The Kayla Barbie (named after Dil's gf)? JUMBO marshmellows? (We were on a just-spent-our-money-on-our-wedding, budget.)

We have about, I don't know, six...seven...HUGE malls right here in town, but we decided to do it all online anyways. :) We've had four packages in the mail yesterday and today so I'm getting so excited to give everyone their gifts! I'm horrible at secrets, I just want to post all the goodness on here since I'm so far away and can't just hand it out at this time. Killing me.

My dad/mom/hub have been asking what I want for Christmas. I don't know if I've made a Christmas List since, like, elementary school when I was dying for the Bake 'n Oven or that Jeep Power Wheel (once James asked Santa for an umbrella and his own garbage can).

After some thought (and hubbin input), maybe a pink Garmin Forerunner 110. We have one that when race time comes along we have to rotate who wears it. Running a race without it makes a difference.

We'll be missing the fam roller party this year as we head back to AZ on that same day. I hope to get the cousins together for a dinner (Red Robin again?) on somewhere abouts the 22nd/23rd if people are available. Times are busy, and Jolie rolls into town on the 23rd, so maybe we can work something out. Even lunch.

Miss you all. And I hope everyone is okay and didn't suffer too much damage after your hurricane yesterday. See everyone in Utah soon!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

2011-11-27T16:20:00.001-07:00

We ran the Pima Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning with 549 other folk. It was such a fun, fun time!! I'm kind of sad it is over. Not every day there's a big local race with friends!

Thanksgiving was spent with Becky's family here in town. It was my first Thanksgiving I've ever been away from my own family (I take that back, last year we were on our Honeymoon), but Becky's family is really friendly and we honestly felt right at home. It was nice of them to have us over and it was a really nice day, and they had a TON of pie to top it all off. Like, tons. And the weather was beautiful and sunny. It is actually starting to finally feel a little like Halloween outside.

I had to post this picture because it shows all the green tomatoes they were bouncing on the trampoline with. It was pretty funny.

The Howard's shoot off rockets on Thanksgiving and the kids run through the fields to catch them. This one happened to be ginormously long and the parachute only helped so much. haha

Our yummy pit roasted turkey, thanks to the Howards! We will be enjoying it throughout the next week+.

One day we drove past all these planes in Tucson and I was like PLANES!!!! So I went home to look it up online and sure enough there is a museum there. I've been telling Ben it would be a ridiculously FUN time, so Friday we went to the Pima Air Museum. It was rather awesome. Planes!!!

The Blackbird can go coast to coast in one hour and four minutes!! If I recall, it was somewhere around 2,100+ mph. That is so fast. It's the picture below.

Meet mister Super Guppy... the whale plane.

And Ben said this plane (below) looked like it was a Disney plane. The museum had quite a few "Disney planes," actually. It's weird to think they used to fly around in the air. Kind of like that bumble bee plane picture up top. It held a record for the smallest plane built.

There is something called, like, "Merry Main" or something along those lines, the day after Thanksgiving. Old Main is closed off and there are games/blow up toys and Santa. And I think they turn the lights on in a countdown, but we missed that part because we were still Museum-ing. But ya, the girls were cute, even if the picture turned out blurry.

I liked the Courthouse before they put Christmas lights on it. It just got even cooler!!

Other recent babblings:

We found our first scorpion in house which Ben thoroughly smashed with a soup can. Ben's black light search turned up no others. Creepers.

Next week we hit our goal of six months which means a transfer (to a city) is now an option. But will we put in for one immediately, we honestly don't know. We don't quite know what is right for us yet. We're trying to figure out a place that feels "right" to establish ourselves permanently. Thatcher is great to raise a family, but it is just so small. (Though living in a house in Thatcher has made a nice difference compared to the squishy/cozy apartment in Safford that we lived in at first.)

We went on a noteworthy Razor ride wherein I swear Todd almost ended our lives!!

We have a gecko in our house. Do they eat scorpions by chance?

We don't have a Christmas tree yet. I'm devastated!!! Though Christmas music is blaring on a daily basis.

We're looking at running a Jingle Bell Run and/or a New Year's Eve run (one option is NYE morning, one is NYE night where you cross the finish line shortly before midnight). They are all in the valley. Come run with!

I'm super happy with the winners of Dancing With the Stars! Though I've only watched like four episodes on Hulu, they were my favs from the start and he is inspirational. I followed along on good ole Zimbio.com, news for celebs.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir comes to Phoenix in 2+ months. You can get tickets here, or we can go together and make it a date night. In a perfect world I would drag my dad home afterwards to see our kickawesome town. :)

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!! And thanks to those that included us, we are truly appreciative! I can't believe another Thanksgiving has come and gone so quickly. Thank goodness for the next month of holidays and more family time. Love and miss you all.

Thanksgiving Thankfuls

2011-11-23T10:28:00.001-07:00

11 Thankful Fors:
I was going to list 10 but lost count and then couldn't decide on which one to remove. So simply stated:

The Gospel- Scriptures, prayer, standards, our LDS community, temples, eternal marriage, the prophet

Marriage- A genius idea. My hubby is my favorite person ever!!

Family/Friends- Those whom surround us and constantly bring us up. And our super cute nieces.

Jobs/Income- The ability to pay our bills.

Sunshine- A sunny day is such a happy day.

Music- My parents always had music on while growing up, and so many songs remind me of certain things/places/memories. I want to do the same with our family.

Animals- I love them! I miss my puppy. Manzanillo has some really sickly wild dogs roaming. Some had tumor growths and were diseased. I wanted to run and hug them. It made me sad.

Life- It has its trials, but the good outweighs the bad by a long shot.

Fitness- Staying in shape, jogging, Crossfit, Zumba, the natural high and feeling great.

Internet- The ability to stay in such close contact after having moved 13+ hours away.

Health/Health Care- We're healthy, and that is a huge blessing.

Cruising Along Singin' a Song

2011-11-19T18:30:00.001-07:00

We cruised the Mexican Riviera for nine nights on the Carnival Spirit, leaving the San Pedro (LA) Port, a port that I've never been to and was super amazing!! Ben cruised the Mexican Riviera in January 2009 (on a singles cruise... which is essentially how I found his pictures all over Facebook that same month). But alas, I've never been!

Our stops were Manzanillo, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo for two days, and Ensenada. Mazatlan isn't safe right now so Ben just had to tell me about it. Ah well.

It's like my camera threw up on my blog because there are lots of pictures in this post. The fun and anticipated trip has come and gone, but the pictures and memories still make me happy. Like my husband Ben. =)

But first...the San Pedro Port. A huge one.

Taking a picture with a sun hat on is hard when you're standing next to anybody. But this is at our first stop... Manzanillo.

Downtown highrise anyone? Penthouse suite maybe.

Manzanillo had really cool houses on the mountain/hillsides. I wanted a panoramic shot, but there was another cruise ship parked in front of our balcony. So we wandered the town and took a few shots.

Our cabin steward was a young guy named PUTU. I wish I had a picture of him. He was awesome. I think "Ben" was easy for him to say, so he'd yell clear down the hallway "Beeeeeen!!!" and wave all frantically.

Puerto Vallarta panaramic shot from our balcony...

24/7 ice creaaam!! I love this picture. It looks blue screened.

Doing the limbo around the dining room. Ben was too into his dessert to join me. Or just too cool. :)

Cabo was our favorite. It is pretty pretty and some of the yachts were amazing. I refused to take a water taxi to the walkable beach because it costs the same as these delicious drinks we had instead. =)

Ben took a picture of this because he was chuckling about all the safety hazards. And to get to the beach we had to walk right through the jobsite. I felt like we should have had hard hats.

Lover's Beach is beautiful!!! I couldn't even read my book because I just felt like I needed to be looking around the entire time we were there to soak it in. And that's what I did. So pretty!! I only brought my little Canon because I worried about the water taxi ride (this was Cabo day #2). Good thing because some ladies were full on belly flopping out of the taxis. The whole water taxi system is hilariously a joke. Ha.

Below is the other Carnival ship that was in Cabo on day one. If you recall the Splendor, the ship that had a fire a year ago and spent four days being tugged back to shore while out of electricity, food, etc. We met a lady in the hot tub who was on that ship. The cruise we were on was her free one Carnival had given her after that disaster. She told us quite the story about that "vacation" of hers.

We were in Ensenada on our Anniversary, but it decided to storm like a lot. I think we spent the entire day in the hot tub and then napping. Vacationing is hard work. :) Then we went to the steakhouse for deener. Wahoo!

We both bought each other anniversary gifts from Teno without knowing it. It's kind of turned into our jewelry brand that we adore. And I had to throw some shoes in there. They were on sale. :)

This is what it looks like since you can't tell from the picture above.

We snapped pictures each time Ben had an ice cream. Well, I missed 3, 4, 5 or so, but now he can print this off and bring it proudly to Crossfit and inform them of the true fatties we are. ha

All in all it was soooo fun being together 24/7 and we're glad we were able to go! We're going through major withdrawals and reality hit us in the face super hard come Monday morning. Ya. But that's basically our fun Anniversary trip! Happy weekend before Thanksgiving time! Hopefully everyone has fun plans!

Meh-hee-co

2011-11-14T08:08:00.003-07:00

Our Anniversary/Honeymoon redo trip was soooo much fun. I can't believe it's over. Really?

We have lots of pictures to share, but first I have to catch up from being gonzo. Back to reality! Happy Monday!

Married a whole year!!

2011-11-03T08:03:00.005-06:00

Next week is our first anniversary, on the 12th! We will be celebrating, so I'm posting this now. I really cannot believe it's been a whole year, and I can't believe that we have moved twice since then, and to Arizona. But it has been the best year of my life by ten million billion fold times infinity million. Hopefully Ben can say the same!

Not that it really matters, but the real invites had "12" written out.

I debated posting some of the journal entries from those couple of days leading up to and the big day as a "grand finale" post to our first year married blogbook, but as of now I think they won't make a public appearance. I feel like those days were exceptionally unusual "pre-wedding days" in the fact that we were dealing with some extra and unexpected stress.

A year later looking back, I kind of can't believe we chose to go spelunking six days before the wedding. It's true accidents rarely happen, but they can and they do ...and did. Family had just started coming into town, so we planned a fun spelunking trip which as of now I view with absolute hilarity (and maybe still 25% wtf). My sweet husband was on morphine, lortab, gaunt, green and not totally himself on our wedding day, and we lost a lot of money missing the first week of our honeymoon. But it's funny because those things really don't matter. It was still the happiest day and the ceremony was a complete tear jerker. The ring exchange on the other hand...hilarious. I don't know why we even bothered.

We started out with a bang and this past year has been breezy compared to what everyone tells us about the "first year of marriage," though I worry a lot more about him and I have him go to the traffic light instead of cross directly across the highway traffic, etc. :) Things are in perspective, I think. My priorities have changed in this past year. Happiness has soured. The fragility of life has made itself clear. All I want is to succeed, and I'm pretty 100% sure I speak for the both of us. This eternal marriage is where we belong. We belong together.

Here's to one year of marriage, nearly three years together, and an entire eternity ahead of us! I love you sweetheart!!!

I think it appropriate to post our videos again. Great memories of a great day. Awh, I loved that fun day. Good thing we bought all the raw video footage, because Ben probably doesn't remember it all. lol

The wedding video and pictures were our best investment we are always going to be grateful to have.

http://www.vimeo.com/20039883

Ben {+} Christy // Reception // Canterbury Place from Chris McClain Productions on Vimeo.

http://www.vimeo.com/19882195

Ben {+} Christy // Salt Lake Temple Highlights from Chris McClain Productions on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/16781338

Ben {+} Christy // Salt Lake Temple// Teaser from Chris McClain Productions on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/16794504

Ben {+} Christy // Salt Lake // Love Story // Date from Chris McClain Productions on Vimeo.

Happy Anniversary, Ben!!

Buhr Favorites

2011-10-31T12:00:00.000-06:00

Some current favorites in the Buhr household for this fall time of year:

Our cute nieces in their Halloween attire after trunk or treating, and Elly who has like six or seven missing teeth. They are so cute!!

STILL eating edamame like candy. Our favorite recipe is the Soy Sesame Edamame. My mom really liked this recipe when she visited. SO good. You shall try.

Carving pumpkins with Nate, Becky and the girls. Much harder to do after inhaling a ginormous dinner, but a fun time none-the-less.

These Shayla boots that look good with leggings, skinnies, and pretty much everything!! Not a part of the shoe room at this time. Though if they were, they'd probably be hard to find. It's only over half put together. It's a little overwhelming opening the door to the shoe room.

Our reading area!! We need another bookshelf already. We love to read. We look forward to it each evening after dinner. We are just so exciting.

Running! Though his pace is quicker than mine. Here we are readying for a 10k.

We are seeing some fall weather, but it's beautiful right now!! Yesterday after [suuuper early] church Ben brought the recliner outside and we laid out in our backyard. Ha.

My first visit to Sprinkles ...finally!, thanks to a Scottsdale trip Taleah and I took.

Parks and Recreation...Ben sure gets a kick out of Ron. He laughs and laughs and laughs.

This quick past year of married life with mister hubbins (in his snake bite protector thingys for the Adopt A Highway clean up a couple weeks ago). He is the best friend I've ever had. I love him and am excited to celebrate! Where does time go?

That's all for now. Happy Halloween!!

The Madre's Visit

2011-10-25T13:03:00.001-06:00

My mother came down to our small town to visit and check out all of the excitement!! :) She helped put the house together (shoe room), we Zumba'd, and I think she enjoyed the time at the pool in the Arizona sunshine. It was so fun to have her here!!!! Yay. We had a lot of fun!!

I decided to give her the town grand tour of tours! We started at the Town Hall and a nice lady there looked up the town population for us (for 2010). We're curious.

5,500-ish for Thatcher, even less for Pima, 9,500-ish for Safford, and about 20,000 for the whole area including surrounding small towns. I thought we had 40-50,000 people here. That's what I've been telling everyone back in Utah. Graham County has 40-something thousand altogether. I was off!

My mom loved Taleah's Zumba class and requested we go again the next day, so we went to the Zumba Toning class of hers. Zumba rocks.

My mom and I went to Tombstone while Ben was working. My mom has never been so it was really fun seeing everything with her, and the weather was so nice to walk around in. I didn't realize how many pictures we took. We had a blast just laughing and having fun!! Next time around we want to dress up like everyone else there.

We took the Tombstone tour in the "original stagecoach wagon" around the streets, and to get a little bit of the history of the place. I know very little about Tombstone.

"Do you like my shirt?" "No I don't like your shirt!" Boom-boom-boom... lol seriously. Death by blue plaid shirt.

The guys there loved my mom, it was funny. The one on the left picked her out of the crowd and then walked us across the street to be "hanged."

We went to Squaw Peak Resort for a weekend getaway and to show my mom the valley areas. Squaw Peak is in Phoenix. We also took her to Fashion Square in the pretty Scottsdale, and saw a fun little fashion show on a runway set up there. It was fun!!

This picture cracks me up. This is Ben going down on his belly, head first. It looked like he was riding on his face. Haha he makes me laugh!!

We bought this monokini swimsuit for our honeymoon almost a year ago. It is one of our favorites, a cute Betsey Johnson.

We had the Becky and the lil nieceys over for dinner one night so my mom could meet them and see how cute they are! Ben built them a fort out of boxes, complete with multiple windows. They LOVE their uncle Ben.

That's the gist of her visit (I only posted some of the many pictures!!). We made lots of fun memories!! Hope you had fun, mom! I'm sad you're gone, but see you at Christmas!! =)

We moved...again!

2011-10-18T14:08:00.004-06:00

This weekend we moved to a house in a nearby town. The apartment was a nice, cozy place, but we couldn't deny we needed much more room, so when this house became available we decided it was worth packing up (though half our stuff was still boxed) and doing the move thing all over again.

I took pictures with three different cameras during the weekend, so this is a smorgasbord of pictures. Here is before we took over the first load. The floor needs a scrub, but this was before we made a mess of the place. We're slowly getting back to organized!

I asked Ben to pose and "SAY CHEESE," and this is his pose. lol What a goober. But a cute goober none-the-less. He got off work early to get a work out in before the move. Me, on the other hand, I sat home and drank a Monster and thought about packing and probably cookies. Moving is a work out enough.

Our nieces probably each took twenty loads, or so! Sure each load was only like a shirt or two, and I had to give them the dark shirts because they'd be dragging half the time. haha

Click to enlarge this panoramic picture to get a gist of the living area (yes we need blinds):

I know I have problems, but at least they are in the form of shoes, right? When I asked my husband if my shoes were a problem, he said, "only when we move." So there ya have it. They all stay!

They have been through a lot of squishing and have taken a beating during the past six months of movings. It has made me quite sad because I baby them all. I sound like I'm talking about animals or something. I wish. I want a cute puppy. (Rykar.)

Pictures coming soon of the put together SHOE ROOM. My favorites are in the upper portion of the picture, above the white boards, but you can't really see much.

We didn't have a stove for a couple days, so we used the one back at the apartment for omelets.

Miss Mallory found my hardhat (note her inside out and backwards pjs- lol), and the girls all loved the "big boxes." It was pretty entertaining! It is nice to have room for the lil nieceys to run around.

Elly and Ragan disappeared for a minute, and then I heard heels clinking on the floor around the corner from us. They had found the shoe room and were pretty hilarious and freakin' adorable with their huge grins. They had helped me pack the shoes back at the apartment. They sure are naturals in heels. :)

In separate news, I wonder how many shirts they can make out of this. No wonder allergies are bad around here these days. This is COTTON. So much cotton around here!

That is the gist of the move. I plan to take some pictures when we're all organized, and I'll probably hold off on a front elevation for now. This has been a fun change. My favorite part is the double shower heads in the master shower, and being able to turn up my Clavinova and play my Christmas music in October as loud as I want without worrying about the neighbors hearing. It echos so loudly. It is great!!

Have a good week! We're headed to Tucson this evening to pick my mother up at the airport. Excited!

Some October Act . . . Oct . . . ivities

2011-10-10T12:00:00.012-06:00

We went to the Graham County Fair this weekend with Nate/Becky and the girls. It was absolutely freezing. Utah wasn't the only place that had a cold front move through, yikes. Ben had to dig out some jackets from boxes.

We had been planning on going all week (or month!), FAIRS ROCK, but I was kind of exhausted from a stressful week of doctors appointments and frustrating run arounds, and I didn't feel like County Fair-ing. But all is well and I'm happy.

So here are our adorable nieces Elly, Ragan and Mallory. Fair rides are so spendy, but they loved them. Mallory especially! She would just light up when the ride started moving. Sooo cute.

Ben just finished the biggest quarter closing of the year for Freeport, and we enjoyed hanging around our place for one last weekend. It was one of those of reading, finishing Season 7 of The Office (ha Creed!!), visiting the new house and making more devil brownies. We're moving this week (church is still at 9?) and next week my dear mother will be in town to help us get settled and to visit. =) I'm trying to talk the rest of my family into visiting us now that we'll have more room. So yes...COME VISIT!

Ben and I get excited about books. It is awesome. We buy hardcovers for $4 on Amazon multiple times a week. The book I finished this weekend was about John Walsh (America's Most Wanted)'s sweet little boy, Adam. Only briefly familiar with the case and the Goodread reviews were the reason for this read. Sometimes I still wish I'd have doubled my major with Criminal Justice, especially after reading books like these and learning what a difference John Walsh has made in bringing down such evil people in this world.

This is my super cute dad!! About a month ago he was up for President of the Utah Medical Association and was elected! I'm so happy for him!! He always has such great accomplishments. Love my dad and miss him!!

Here are a couple of pictures from conference weekend. The girls LOVE Ben, and Ben LOVES to rile up the girls. It's exhausting to watch. They are so funny!! It's hard to even remember the days Ragan wouldn't talk to Ben because she'll just gab away now. And miss Mallory is even starting to say a few things. Fun to watch them get older. They grow like weeds.

Tis all for now in Arizona. Hope you had a nice weekend! Happy mid-October!

Goodbye Mister 4-Plex

2011-10-06T16:25:00.002-06:00

We're moving again. That means I can post a picture of our cute 4-plex we've been in for the past 4+ months. Aside from being squished, it has really been wonderful and cozy here! The full time landlord lives in the house next door and he is magnificent about keeping all his 4-plexes pristine (and as scorpion free as possible) while not renting to any college students or problematic folk.

Hopefully we're making the right decision because we're giving up a great lil apartment, even if it IS on the oldest street in the town. We've had good memories here. Goodbye town.

Our Town! Pt II - & so forth...

2011-10-04T11:22:00.001-06:00

A.
There's a beautiful temple right here in town. The Gila Valley Temple, dedicated in May of 2010. It reminds me a little of the Bountiful temple, and it sure is pretty.

I'm no genius by any means, but I believe these fields below to be cotton fields. Just a wild guess based on the white fluffy stuff.

We have a pretty cool courthouse. It's all big and grand, and I want to work there just because it's the coolest building around. Maybe I should put on my resume that I took a couple criminal justice courses in college, and go apply for something ...like a judge. =)

My plan was to take some pictures of Eastern Arizona College, but something about men in orange clothing just doesn't jive with me, so better luck next time. Aside from this picture, it seems like a pretty nice campus. I believe it only offers Associate's Degrees, though. Pretty small. And what is up with the awesome stormy weather.

I call the house on the left the "Jerusalem house," and you can see the mine in the background on the mountain. Tis where Ben was when I took this, actually.

B.
Pinterest is awesome and I think it is going to make us fat. It was a wonderful Conference weekend full of great talks and treats, and even some listening in bed. It's refreshing to hear from our sweet prophet every six months, along with the other inspired speakers. However, I'd be lying if I didn't say General Conference made me a little bit homesickly this time around (but then I checked the KSL weather and saw it is supposed to snow this weekend...and I felt a little better). =)

Source: insidebrucrewlife.blogspot.com via Christy on Pinterest

Our Oreo Marshmellow Brownies turned out to be about as tasty as the Pinterest picture looks (that rarely happens here). I'm sure we will repeat. "These brownies are the devil!!" -Ben

The cookies turned out to be good, but not as good as expected from the pin picture below...

Source: tendercrumb.blogspot.com via Christy on Pinterest

I guess when it called for two LBS of chocolate, it really was serious. That become obvious with the result. But they are good still.

As far as healthy food, the Hawaiian Grilled Chicken, Coconut Milk Marinade meal is to die for, though we decided to bake ours at 350 for 30 minutes instead of grilling.

Source: adashofthyme.com via Christy on Pinterest

We marinated the chicken overnight and had mashed sweet potatoes alongside.

C.
A downside to Arizona is we're an hour time behind Utah (at least right now), so it gets darker here earlier during the summer, which makes evening jogging harder. But at least we have our headlamps from that time we had this idea to go spelunking six days before our wedding.

I've been told we don't have Daylight Savings here, so at least it won't be dusk at 3:45 like it was in Vegas during the winter.

We are trying to get friends to run with us the Turkey Trot, though so far I think nobody around here seems too interested in running. Boo!! Come run!! Or walk! It shall be fun.

FUN!
Have a good first week of October!

FALLing in Flagstaff

2011-09-27T12:00:00.002-06:00

Flagstaff, Arizona, from the top of the mountain in HDR...

Flagstaff is beautiful and doesn't feel like Arizona if you think it's only desert-y and hot. It was mid/low 70s during the DAY and it's like living in a forest. Though they get snow, it's just 4+ hours north of the heat here.

We visited Ryan, Ben's good buddy. Oh the weekend was so awesome. We live for them! Here are some forest-y views from the back door slash driveway where we basked in the sun with gourmet smoothies they made while I read about Chinese immigration (it's quite an interesting subject).

We ventured to the downtown shops and restaurants, and visited this Hopi Indian thingy going on (that dancing is cool). It was a nice time with superb weather and company. I love a town of people and busy-ness. Flagstaff isn't really that big, but it felt like this grand and massive town this visit. Probably since we live in a smaller town.

We brought some clothes in case we decided to hike. Ryan mentioned a four mile round trip or thereabouts. I took a picture of this sign really quickly without really registering the mileage on it because I had to catch up to the guys ahead.

About two hours into this rigorous mountain hiking I asked some down mountain travelers how far we had to the top, and they said possibly ONE to TWO more hours, depending on speed at the steeper parts ahead. Uh.

I decided to pull the Humpreys Trail picture up on my camera to see how far the mileage said it was. Oh round trip 9.6 miles. When the sun sets at 6:20, it's a hike probably suited for a much earlier starting time than 2pm. Hum.

I really like my hubbin. He makes me happy and he's so hot. He carried my tripod the entire day. What a pain I am...his wife. Or "wifflesnapper."

I guess I didn't make it clear that I set up the tripod to get all three of us in a shot. lol Oh well. Those apples were indeed delicious.

We left the top just after 5...and went quickly to make it out before dark but almost failed at that. It was pretty creepy in those woods at dark. We got to the car at 6:45. But don't worry, I'd put us on the hiking register in case we got "lost at hike." =) Hey, you never know.

Ben, Derrick, Ryan

And we visited my cute MIL, Minda, in the mountains somewhere. I'm not exactly sure which town this was? It was her friends' house.

Hopefully everyone had a good weekend and the week is already well on its way to another one. Happy Fall (officially)! This weekend is conference and the official turn to October. Crazy.

Summery September

2011-09-20T20:26:00.001-06:00

We floated the Salt River this past weekend. I talked alllll week about getting a waterproof camera, and then we didn't and I think we totally regretted that. We brought our cooler along full of Monster, and cruised the river for 3-1/2 hours. It was so awesome, and we saw some pretty funny groups of people.

One family had a tube that was probably as big as our master bedroom (not that that's saying much) and his entire family was just chillin' on it, floating down the river throwing those giant marshmellows at people. People even put systems on tubes to have some music along the way. Fun.

I spent a little time with my new filters. This one is the polarized filter. I didn't do a before picture purely out of laziness, but I did two exposures below (no Photoshop used) and I'm happy about how blue the sky is in them! Usually the sky seems so washed out on film compared to reality and it makes me sad so I make it happy/brighter in Photoshop (see Photoshopped pic below them):

One of Ben's favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson (LDS from Orem area), recommended a series of horror books written by another Orem and most likely LDS buddy of his.

They looked pretty horrid, and the first one was somewhat dark at first, but tasteful with clean language and a fictional plot. Creepy? Fairly decent ratings on Goodreads.com (find me). I read book #1, and am definitely reading the next two because I am a creeper. And Ben is reading the first one right now as we speak, so he is too. CreeperS.

I went back to low-lights for the fall, and a little shorter/more stacked A-line...though it's in a tiny "ponytail" for working out. Guess you'll have to wait to see it done (though I'm sure it's killing you). It is cute I think! Here I am trying to model my hair for you (Ben).

Doesn't fall start this week? Happy end of summer (sad) slash fall time! And I think we will be moving in three weeks, so that's super fun for us if we do...the not moving part but the living somewhere new and bigger. An entire room for my shoes. Glorious.

But happy...Tuesday night, Wednesday/humpday! I'll leave you with the "virtuous triangle" from Pinterest. I love this.

That is all for now. =)

Happy Birthday Mom!

2011-09-16T10:41:00.000-06:00

Happy Birthday to my wonderful, most beautiful and extremely talented mother. She's my favorite, ever, and I'm so happy I get to call her my mom! She is one of the kindest, easy going and always happy people that I know. She has always supported me in my activities, sports and life in general, and we have made so many memories together, and I look forward to so many more.

Love you, mom!! Happy Birthday and wish we were there at Disneyland to celebrate with you! Hopefully Dee embarrasses you!! =)

Freedom Running

2011-09-12T08:01:00.003-06:00

We ran the town annual 5k Freedom Run, in honor/memory of [the 10th anniversary of] 9/11. I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news of that first plane crash. Those moments stick with you for a life time. I can't believe it's been ten years. God bless the U.S.A.

I had a solid 3 hours of sleep the night before and didn't really feel like running but rather punching our new neighbors that kept me up all night (but we may be moving). Ben was super pumped! The intense Crossfitters were trying for sub 22:30 to pass off a level 2.

Ben wore the Garmin which proved extremely helpful since the route ended up being a 6.07k, and everybody had whacked times while thinking they were running a 5k. Those who ran with Ben could pace their 5k time off his to at least know if they were sub 22:30. And the guys are soooo competitive so some of them were neck and neck.

The route, however, was pretty weird. It doubled back, repeated, and half of it was through gravel?

The route was marked the night before and it had rained so we all ran an extra 2/3+ mile after the leader missed a turn. I was pacing myself with my music and I just assumed I must be going slower when I hit an extra song. Meh. Running in the heat has a frustrating record of slowing me down, so I assumed twas that.

The lady who was in charge of the race was cute, though. She offered a refund because of the extra length. Haha.

It was a nice time and Ben rocked it with a 22:15. I wish we had two watches so I knew my 5k time.

Happy Monday!!

Videos - New/Old/Awesome

2011-09-09T12:10:00.006-06:00

My sister and the awesome composer, Jared Ong, sold the rights to this song and ARUP used it in their GIVE BLOOD commercial. It first aired during the football game last week and people recognized her voice but, of course, she didn't tell us so we didn't know if it was her!

And I don't know if I ever posted my brother's Chinese Game Show clip, but he didn't tell us about it either at the time. What is wrong with my siblings. lol He's in the blue STRIPED shirt.

Since I'm posting awesome videos that unfortunately I have no part in other than relation to these awesome people, the Maury Povich clip with my mom and aunt. I think I may have posted this one before.

If you're feeling extra bored and want to see the long Story of Ben and Christy from our cruise last year...

My brother made a hair video before he chopped his hair for his mission. LOL

And there's a 20 minute video from 6th grade of KALEIDOSCOPE that I would like to post, but I'll have to upload it later. But I'm out of awesome videos for now. Have an awesome weekend!

Busy Birthday-ness, Utah, The Valley...so forth and on

2011-09-07T21:10:00.000-06:00

You will need a Monster for this post. I needed like four just to do it. Things have been so crazy busy, and this post is busy long...if that even makes sense.

Last week I turned 27. Time is quickly passing. It's exciting but also a tad sad. There are so many things we still want to do before we have to officially "grow up."

My birthday couldn't have been any better. I really lucked out. I spent part of it with my family, part of it with my Mini Italian Greyhound, and I flew home and spent the evening with sweet BEN. (Don't mind the kind of creepy dog eyes. Rykar is a sweetheart!!)

Becky and I [woke up at 3am and] flew to Utah on Tuesday-Thursday. She for work and family time, me the same. It was such a quick and busy trip that we didn't even see each other the entire time, but alas we were travel buddies. Ben only had sick time off for the first 90 days, so he couldn't come along. Big bummer. But his 90 days are now up.

I went straight to my office for a meeting, and they greeted me with a cake and balloons!! I never would have imagined they would still remember my birthday. It made me really happy. They have been keeping me working nearly full time. It has been wonderful to stay so busy.

The dad, brothers and I then took a trip to Happy Sumo for our favorite sushi! It was such a fun but LONG day, I was so exhausted and melted!! I think my visit to see everyone on my bday made them feel obligated to buy me presents. haha =)

I sure love my family!! I'm happy James came up from BYU to meet us all for dinner. What a nice surprise. We chat frequently in the cyber world, or "hang out" on Google+ (awesome).

A storm blew in and the umbrella we were sitting under almost blew over. I reached up to steady it and instead it about took my finger off. My dad barely caught it as it blew over. Happy Sumo gave us $40 off dinner...which cash I got to pocket for my battle wound. I think they were all worried we were going to sue and they were going to pay for stitches or whatever. I was bothered they had a broken umbrella out there though. Pretty negligent.

But the sushi was delicious and I made $40 ...so I spent it on MAC lipstick, Saint Germain, and liquid eyeliner. =)

I spent gobs of time with mister pup (taking tons of pictures). He was my slumber buddy. I took him on a walk, played for him to sing, and just basked in his cuteness like when he moves down the couch as the sun moves...

This is him when I first got there. He was so excited and he ran straight to the piano. He turned around here to see if I was following. I'm slightly obsessed with my pup, yes. If my hub will allow it, we'll have a house full one day. Maybe Rykar's offspring. :)

Wednesday I was able to have lunch with my mom, and then we stopped by the Real Estate office to say hello to the grandparentals and I said hi to DI who informed me she was married on the same day that we were!!! Di worked in the office when I did, so we got to know each other back then.

My grandma is so cute in her new pink outfit. My grandpa bought it for her the day before. She is so cute.

Dil and I headed over to mom's house for a birthday celebration. My mom loves to go all out on birthdays and holidays.

She purchased me a copy of the book called "A Stolen Life," by Jaycee Dugard. She's the one kidnapped and held for 18 years. I'm excited to read it.

Dallin is the artsy fartsy camera man. :)

Thursday the first was my official birthday, and that morning it was back to the airport. I came upstairs to see Dallin had decorated my dad's kitchen. :)

Southwest didn't cancel our flight home like they did our flight to Utah, and all arrived safely. I got home and the house was decorated!! It made me smile. I don't want to ever take my sweetheart for granted.

We headed to the Hotel Valley Ho for a birthday slash Labor Day weekend stay! It was a Ben specialty surprise. He's a lot better at surprises than me (I just explode out loud with excitement). These first two shots I stole from their website.

The entire wall opened up to the balcony!! But I guess I'll mention it was 110+, so ya, we didn't just LEAVE them open all afternoon like we would have loved.

We love getting dressed up and our opportunities to do so have declined over the years, unfortunately. Ben made reservations at Mastro's City Hall Steakhouse on Saturday night, so he put on his smokin' hot suit, and me a skirt, and we went to overload on STEAK and lobster mashed potatoes. I was full until lunch time the next day. The uncomfortable fullness kind!!

I wish I wouldn't look so AWKWARD in pictures. ha But look at BEN. He looks so great!

During the day time we birthday shopped at Fashion Square and pooled at the OH pool. The Valley Ho has pool parties with a DJ and they got SUPER crowded with the holiday weekend. It was such a fun time that we didn't even read our books that much. (So ya, still trying to finish that book #3 of the Hunger Games.)

Before heading home we took a detour to Porsche of Scottsdale. Ben was excited to be surrounded by all sorts of Porsches, it was rather cute. Our Porsche fund probably would fund a tire right now (yes we have a Porsche fund), but alas, at least the medical bills are finally paid off.

It was such a great time seeing my family and celebrating. I missed Ben, but it was a nice visit back home still. We'll be back up for Christmas to see both of our families and our friends and everyone that I missed. Thanks for making my birthday memorable. Love and miss you all already.

Have a happy Thursday!!

Summer Life in the 928 and 520.

2011-08-29T15:35:00.000-06:00

I introduced my husband to Goodreads.com because he LOVES to read, and this is where I find him. =) I think it's adorable he's logging all his books into his online library. He has no idea I even took a picture!! I'm so sneaky.

We had some friends use Hotline to get an awesome hotel in Tucson the other weekend, so we decided to try the gamble ourselves and we put their same exact info into Hotline, knew we had a 33% chance at it ...and got something totally different. Ha.

But the Lodge at Vantana Canyon ended up being beautiful! So I likened this place unto a Park City-ish feel, but just not cold.

It was a golfer's dream with 36 holes and probably more people on golf carts driving around than in cars. The day we got up there it was almost storming, so it was ideal golf weather I presume. It was also ideal walk-around-and-take-picture-without-saturated-hair, weather.

There was one pool that had a pool party going on. Aside from adventuring and sightseeing, this is our main reason for weekend venturing, really. Pool-ing, relaxing, snacking.

Husband: "You are one fine cow!"

Me: "Awh, tha..wait, what? Cow?"

Smack.

Venturing and maybe spending time with my hub. Just maybe. I really am going to have to carry a pen and paper around to note all the hilarious sayings Ben will randomly pop off with. He makes me laugh so hard. Like when he endearingly calls me a cow.

Instead of palm trees everywhere, the Ventana had a ton of cactuses ...cacti...I'm not sure the plural form of such word. Some were entirely massive and my first thought was that I wouldn't want to be standing near this during an earthquake. A most certain death by cactus.

While swimming I looked up and saw a waterfall a little ways up. We decided to meander up these random trails to go check it out.

We explored 4th Avenue in Tucson, where it seems all the University of Arizona students hang out, and it's by the campus there. Though we ended up at Tucson's RA.

The drive to Tucson is 130+ miles so I figure there is a 3/4% chance of being pulled per mile (saying each mile is equal in chance) for this drive. There is also only a .007% chance of being pulled over within the same 50 feet.

Lesson learned. Do not go 8 over in the middle of nowhere.

In other news, we got a Garmin watch! I'm so happy!!! I guess I've been in the dinosaur ages. I've been mapping my jogging routes online and then using my cell phone to time me. It worked for me.

Nobody needs a jogging buddy for motivation, but rather just a watch that documents the run and helps you set new PRs. It documents e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g and makes graphs that are motivating (at least to us). I love graphs. Ben's run like so...

I think this will be a good investment. :)

Have a nice summer week!! Miss you all!

Five August Activities

2011-08-22T10:54:00.002-06:00

1- Ben rocked at Crossfit doing "Helen," a workout this week, with all sorts of people cheering him on. He puked his guts out in the puke bucket for the first time. I thought he might pass out. An hour later it was awesome, but during his workout recovery it really wasn't that awesome. That is some determination!! (I had him promise me he wouldn't do that again. haha). I love my Crossfitter.

2- Weekends at home consist of Ben's famous breakfasts (pretty much the only time I eat breakfast...mornings just don't typically mesh with food).

3- We made toaster smores with super GIANT marshmellows, something well worth documenting. (We even watched five movies this weekend, too, and I typically hate movies.)

4- We finally went up Mt. Graham, but we didn't make it to the telescopes up top, which was a bummer. The road turned into a dirt road after an hour+, and we brought our new car. We'll be back up again, in the truck this time, and maybe even to camp. We were pretty disappointed about the random dirt road. I guess we should have done a little more research before hand. Hopefully we didn't turn around right around the corner from what would have been our destination.

The mountain temperatures dropped about 35-40 degrees up near 10,000 where we finally turned around. I am still so surprised because I still think of Arizona as a total desert, and not as it looks below, all forest-y.

A deer ran right behind me here, and there was the brightest green moss I've ever seen (easily amused I guess). I guess there are bears galore up there, but we luckily didn't encounter any.

5- There are some randomly giant houses here in town. This one looked like it was being added onto and I saw it and was like "holy house!!!...let's go take a picture." Of course.

And this house is very orange, I had to take a picture. In fact, I probably should have shot an HDR. The skies here are always so pretty, and I love them in HDR, especially against bright colored houses.

I don't think our town enforces any codes. We pass the house below on our walk to Crossfit (which is conveniently across the street behind us), and I always want to take a picture of all the junk. Click the pic to enlarge the junk. This is one of many houses like so. A junky yard would stress me out I think.

That is all for now. Except our town pool is full on drained for the season (this town is run by total weirdos, it's like well over 100 out and they end the pool season). Back to reality for another week. Life is treating us well in AZ. Love and miss you all!

LDS Journal Dot Com

2011-08-18T13:33:00.001-06:00

I used to write in a journal religiously and then I discovered blogging and that pretty much ended the journaling, I guess. Upon moving I found some journals and they are pretty funny to read through and think back on the days when I was dealing with my "mean sister," or a highschool boyfriend, or a cheerleading stunt falling during a halftime show (heaven forbid), etc. I even had this TOP TEN list of guys I liked and I updated it almost every single day (little did I know that some of those guys on it had discovered it and would check it when they came over). If it weren't for those journals, I'd probably never had remembered all of those hilarious things.

So I recently decided I wanted to start another journal that I can write everything and anything in without boring the world or sharing too much. I found LDSJOURNAL.COM a free, online and private journal.

Like a blog, it can be printed into a book on the site for fairly cheap. It can send weekly email reminders to write, and there are a million questions that you can answer about life if you struggle to think of what to write. I think you can even upload pictures, though I haven't.

I have been writing once a week and I'm excited to be able to look back, again, and remember even the insignificant things that made me laugh, or the awesomely innapropriate ones that would never make it on mister blog.

Happy Thursday!

Weekend #130

2011-08-15T16:20:00.001-06:00

Today marks day one of the Pushup/Air Squat Challenge. 100 reps each day, six days a week, any combination of both full push ups and air squats (I can't really do push ups that well either and I have to do the man kind). The challenge + Taleah's crazy Zumba classes and jogging is the goal to be in good shape for our Honeymoon #2 (where my cute husband isn't going to be on Morphine/Lortab with a sushi like arm.). It'll be our one year anniversary trip.

Ben is going to do all push ups, mister crazy. I like challenges and when your town is sorta boring it's easy to spend allllll evening working out.

So we had as stressful latter week/weekend after insuring our beautiful new Honda and learning of a massive claim paid out on it from last fall that wasn't on the Car Fax or disclosed.

We planned to return our new car (quite angrily mind you), but things turned out in our favor and alas, never wrecked after all. We left the dealer this weekend with the same car and I'm so happy because I love it. But what a pain. Hopefully we don't have to car shop for like, ever.

We took a visit out to Agritopia in Gilbert. It has a feeling unto Daybreak. Actually Daybreak is cuter, but Agritopia has the weather on its side....so perhaps that makes them tens. I was too lazy to get out and take more pictures, so the imagination is necessary. It was so cute out there.

And we made it out to Scottsdale for a day of pooling at one of our favorite pooling locations...of course. Perhaps next valley trip we will go to the water park or float the river.

I'm struggling through book three. I have read 2+ books during the duration of this one. Book one of the series was fab, book two alright, and book three is meh, a book. And I will finish. Book one movie comes out in March!

That's all. I'll be in Utah in a couple of weeks for a quick trip with my sister inlaw, and for work. Hopefully see many of you then!

Happy Birthday Dad!!

2011-08-10T07:00:00.005-06:00

Happy Birthday to my amazing dad!! He has been one of my best friends throughout the years, and we have so many childhood memories and more memories while I lived with him throughout my university days, just us two in that house.

I have never been so far away from him, and miss him tons. He has done so much for us, continuously. He's the best dad in the world. Happy Birthday!!!

I really wish we could be there to celebrate. Hope it is a great day. Love you lots!!

A new car. Yay.

2011-08-08T11:40:00.003-06:00

I've/we've put a ton of miles on big blue in the past four-five years (100k?), so we decided it was time to trade it in. A sad farewell, but necessary for post warranty. It was a decision we've been making over a couple of months, but to trade it this weekend was a decision we made on, like, Wednesday. Then it became tunnel vision to a new car.

How about a HONDA for commuting, and for many practical reasons... (someone actually traded this car in and got $200).

So we found this beauty!!

Actually...no way. I actually took a picture of this in our neighborhood Wal-Mart parking lot (so hopefully it doesn't belong to anybody reading this). We bought a dark grey/silver Honda Accord at Tempe Honda! "Our first car." =)

We celebrated (an excuse) our success by going to the Ra in Tempe, on Mill Ave. Mill Ave is awesome (and so is the candy store)!! We've driven through, but never more. It was nice to be around lots of people and a night life again!! Had we not been car shopping in ridiculously drip sweaty heat all day, and to a water activities birthday for lil miss Keegan's first birthday (which I should have taken pictures of), we probably would have been up to more of an evening out. But alas, sushi and the food network channel. Can't go wrong there.

Crazy Monkey, King Crab, Tropical something, Vegas, and one I forgot and apparently missed. Sushi is so good, and I always have to take pictures. Why does it have to cost a small fortune, boo.

We still had time to chill at a pool. The pool is happiness. We find ourselves migrating that direction each weekend, and the pictures get repetitive, perhaps. Sadly summer is dwindling down! I have no idea what to expect for fall temperatures, really, but I think they will be satisfactory. We have enjoyed these days of never getting cold...except for when grocery shopping, of course.

Here is a glimpse into the drive home in HDR. Unfortunately traffic bombarded my images mid way. Pretend you can't tell. :)

Happy August!