Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer

December 18th was my brother Josh's 29th birthday so we got the gang together on Google+ for some video chatting.  For the Christmas season, Google added a "Reindeer" option.  Aubrey, my niece, was in love, until she got tired.  It really was pretty cool.  I definitely recommend trying it out.  We could only get it to work on our computers though.  It didn't give the option on ipads.  

Tired and sick of chatting.

Randal on Pinterest

This morning Randal asked for my Pinterest login info (for Christmas).   An hour later I received this response via text

"I can't make heads or tails out of that damn site.  I guess you get coal."

Hahaha.  

via

NCFR and SeaWorld

For the past year I have been working on research with a professor and in November I had the opportunity to go and present it at NCFR (The National Council on Family Relations) in Orlando, FL.  It was my first time in Florida and I loved it.  We went the week before Thanksgiving and it felt like spring break.  It was so warm and sunny.  I didn't get many pictures of the conference, but a few of the other research assistants and I went to SeaWorld during the trip and it was incredible.  Seriously.  My camera died halfway through the day so I didn't get too many pics, but the dolphin show was amazing.  They have a deal where if you buy a ticket one day, you get a second day free, so we went back for day two and had to see the dolphin show again.  It was that good.

We were able to ride some good roller coasters, watch a bunch of shows, and pet dolphins!  That was probably the highlight of my trip.  I am not a huge fan of theme parks and don't plan on taking my kids to Disneyland (I know, I'm not sounding like a very good mom here) but I will take them to SeaWorld.  It was amazing.

The hotel the conference was at.

The front gate.  They had misting machines.  

I was on the hunt for gators.  I didn't see a single one. 

Their power or phone boxes were decorated and even their buses were.
It was so fun to see art everywhere.

This baby killer whale was so adorable.  It went everywhere with the mom. 

Dolphin Cove!  And the folks I went to NCFR/SeaWorld with.

Getting pumped to pet some dolphins.  

BOISE...STATE!

Randal has been dying to go to Boise.  I knew from day 1 of dating that it was his dream home.  He is obsessed with it after going to school there for a bit before his mission.  So we finally made the trip north last month.  We spent a lot of time with Randal's friends from high school and went to a Boise State game.  It was pretty incredible.  Everyone goes nuts.

I just happened to have a Boise orange jacket.
I was getting compliments left and right. 

He was going nuts. 

K Moore!

Our seats.

The train station

Me and Anna on top of Camels back.

I loved Boise.  I loved downtown. I loved the trees (who knew there were so many trees!), I loved all the active people playing outdoors.  It really is a great place and if that is where we end up, I wouldn't be mad at all.

Princess of China

I have a friend who works at a salon who needed someone to get color done in their hair today.  I have had some colors before (red, purple, orange, black, blonde) but it has been a few years.  I have been liking having my natural color lately.  But I decided to do it as a fun new hairstyle.

We went to Randal's work party tonight, which is the only reason my hair is actually done. ha

Sorry for the terrible photos.
I figured I should probably document this
color quickly because red fades so fast.  

Not too shabby huh?

Someone at the Salon said it was like Rihanna.  Since she is Randal's celebrity crush (who knew!?) it makes sense why he is liking my red hair so much.  

via

Cute Little House

Randal found our new house on KSL.  Originally it was "no pets allowed", but after both of us searching for so long, we started calling everything and asking if they would make an exception.  Most people turned us down, but one lady said that with an additional deposit she might make an exception.  Randal went and looked at the house first and was excited about it but had to wait and see if we got it.  We ended up getting a call later and it was ours!  Later that night Randal took me and Sal and we went and looked at the house.  Our landlord wanted to meet our dog to be sure that she was allowed.  I instantly loved the house.  The landlord wanted a $625 pet deposit in addition to our regular $625 deposit and first months rent.  Just for us to move into this house was going to be about $1900!  I did not want to spend that much so I just told her that and she completely got rid of the pet deposit!  We went from a place that didn't allow pets, to a high deposit, to nothing.  It was such a blessing.  Okay, so here are the pictures.  Some before we moved in and some after.

Before (I'm still figuring out photoshop,
so adding the word before in my other picture took
me way too long to figure out.  Not really worth it.) 

If you notice, Sally decided she had to be in just about every single picture. 

As far as those green couches go, we got the green chair when we were engaged at the D.I. in Ogden, and before we moved to Texas, we got rid of our other couches.  While searching on KSL I just happened to find the couch that matched the chair perfectly.  The colors are not exactly identical, but it is so close, and the textures are the same.  I love them ha.  

I've got the black mold, pop

We were going to be living in the basement apartment of a friend's house.  There would be three single men living upstairs, and us living downstairs.  It was very cheap, convenient, and pet friendly.  We were excited to get moved in and start school.  We knew after we got back from Texas that it would be a few weeks before we could actually move in as we waited for the guy living downstairs to move out.  This was fine because we wanted to go see family and we were in no hurry, school didn't start for a few weeks anyway.  Well when the guy was going to move he was cleaning and found mold in the kitchen.  Not just a little bit, I'm talking an insane amount behind the stove and under the sink.
But maybe you are reading this and thinking, "mold? Thats not bad, just clean it with some bleach".  Oh no my friends, not the Black Mold.  Here is a snippet from wikipedia about it:

Depending on the length of exposure and volume of spores inhaled or ingested, symptoms can manifest as chronic fatigue or headaches, fever, irritation to the eyes, mucous membranes of the mouth, nose and throat, sneezing, rashes, and chronic coughing. In severe cases of exposure or cases exacerbated by allergic reaction, symptoms can be extreme including nausea, vomiting, and bleeding in the lungs and nose.

via

Needless to say, we were scared about living there.  The landlord said they would have it fixed soon and so we didn't unpack any kitchen or living room things and moved them all to the spare bedroom or to our room.  It was so crowded.  After a solid day of a few workers coming to clean it up {aka rip the entire kitchen out}, they were gone and we thought it would be fixed soon enough.

So from August 28th to September 25th we didn't have a kitchen.  Fortunately the upstairs had one, so we could go eat up there, but I felt bad for the single boys upstairs.  They didn't plan on having a girl roommate.  The first week or so we thought it was all going to get fixed so we waited on buying groceries thinking we could hold out a few more days.  As weeks passed, we knew that eating out and eating triscuits and string cheese would not cut it much longer.  It was such a bad situation.  Finally we got word that the homeowner was going to fix it, but that everyone had to move out asap.  Frantically, we started looking for new places to live.

Before: The kitchen before the demo.  This was all we ate for a good while.  It sucked. 

After: Completely gutted.  It sat this way for most of the time we were there.

It was hard.  There were less places than there would have been 2 months ago because school had already started and people were settled.  And to top it off, there were even less places that allowed pets.  We were so stressed.  We would go to school, come home and house search, go look at places (most of them were awful), and then come back to our cramped apartment with no food to eat.  We were both perma-grumpy.  We found one basement apartment in Springville that was nice, with a small backyard and supposedly pet friendly.  We instantly liked it and were ready to sign for it on the spot, but the lady had a few more people coming by to look at it.  Honestly, we just wanted to be settled.  We found out a few days later we didn't get it, and it was mostly because of Sally.  Why would you say that you allow pets, and then tell us that we didn't get it because of our dog??  Doesn't really make sense.  But looking back, I'm so happy we didn't get that place, because a few days later, Randal found the place we are in now.  And let me tell you, we LOVE it here.  Don't worry, I'm working on a post of pictures of our new place that will be up soon.

Cold

Sally is from Texas and I really think this is the coldest she has ever been. She is not a snuggler and yet this morning she refuses to get off my side. She is in the tightest ball, all curled up, and sometimes shivering. haha. Oh sal, just wait for winter.

I love her little grey eyebrows so much.

Coming home from Texas

I was going to write about living in Texas, but there really isn't much to say and I don't really have many pictures, and any that we do have are just of our dog.  So at the risk of sounding like a crazy dog lady, I'll refrain from adding a bunch of pup pics.

Anyway, coming home from Texas was hard.  Randal worked right up until our last day so that left me to pack and clean the house.  We came to TX with two very full cars, and along our way, I purchased a few home goods and odds and ends from the goodwill or other places and we had a dog and all her stuff to pack (bed, crate, food, toys, actual dog, more toys) so we went from full cars to cars bursting at the seams.  I honestly don't know how we managed to pack it all in.  The drive wasn't horrible, but we had decided that instead of paying for a hotel, we wanted to drive all the way through and get home as soon as possible.  So off we went.

We around Plano around 10am and didn't stop, besides for gasoline and to let our pup go to the bathroom, until about 1am the next day.  We were exhausted.  We pulled over in a hotel parking lot and slept in separate cars for 2 hours.  It was horrible...and ghetto.  Our cars were so full that they only room we had was the drivers seat so there was no meeting in one car for a good cat nap, and we couldn't even recline any.  Needless to say I was exhausted.

We pulled into Provo at about noon two days after we left.  It was a long car trip.  We barely ate the entire time besides an odwalla and a banana haha, and Sally threw up on me 2x.  I liked Texas, but I never want to make that drive again.  ever.

Oh!  And to top it all off, somewhere around the New Mexico border, Randal's little car stopped working, so we did get a break for an hour or so while Randal grumped around trying to fix his car.

Luckily for us, we were able to come back to a dirty apartment full of black mold.  I'll post about that later.

And since posts without pictures are lame, here are some poor quality phone pics.  I promise to be better about taking photos!

HUGE wolf spider outside our front door.  Thanks Texas.

Couldn't include a post with out a Sal gal pic, considering most of my phone pics are of her.
 Fine, we are crazy dog people.  

She always lays down with her legs sticking straight out

Look at this ragamuffin