27 weeks and other random stuff

well hello third trimester. so nice to meet you. its hard to believe you're already here! i feel like my belly has no more room, which makes it hard to believe i still have three full months left! eeks!

favorite foods this week: bean with bacon soup (i want to eat it every night for dinner!), caramels, hot chocolate, and strawberry poptarts. healthy mix, huh? don't worry, i'm still getting some fruits and veggies in :)

ew, do my arms look bigger? i think its the top i'm wearing...

yesterday night we went and saw kathy griffin in salt lake city. she was a riot, as usual. this is the third time we've seen her live, and probably the best show yet. tonight we're going to dinner with some friends, and i'm going shopping (!!) with my girl emily. you all know i'm obsessed with shopping, so its going to be a very fun night :)

also, i recently found something amazing. have you heard of sweet paul? he puts out digital magazines that are amazing, and has an awesome blog. i'm obsessed. you need to check him out if you haven't already.


this is the cover of his fall issue, and i am planning on making these maple syrup baked pears sometime soon! who wants to come over and help enjoy them? :)

happy weekend! any fun plans?

amazing

just stumbled upon this, and i love it. this guy is so talented, and he actually does queen justice :) and i'm a huge queen fan, so that says a lot. just watch it, he is awesome!

ode to the weekend

tucanos on friday night
results in absolute delight
to my tummy
even though our waiter was crummy
he offended maine's pride and joy
i almost slapped the silly boy
he thought pacific lobster was better
i should write his manager a letter!
thankfully the food was so good
and our friends are so hood
that we still had a lovely time :)

on saturday we also had lots of fun
i even had time to craft a ton!
expect to see pretty pictures soon
of something i created that might make you swoon
think tulips!

we went to a baby blessing on sunday
[thats my fun day]
it was my cousins baby, talon
he's cuter than a young jimmy fallon
i loved seeing my awesome family
it was a great old jamboree
i also snuck in some more craft time
which was absolutely sublime
yayyyy!

thank you weekend, for being so great
too bad its over, what terrible fate
this week i'll be trying to blog more
i'll try not to be such a bore
did you have a good weekend? ♥

tall, dark, and mischievous?

sometimes at work (because i'm a girl, mostly) funny things will happen. guys who drop the f-bomb every other word and generally act like they hate people will smile and open the door for me. sometimes when i'm being silly and i curtsy at people, they will try and curtsy back [always humorous]. sometimes when you're walking to another office across the yard, a guy in a water truck will try and spray you with water on purpose (even though you are carrying a computer...). and sometimes, i get called some funny things. for instance, cher. at least 2 or 3 different guys at work have made that reference. i've also gotten elvira (ew). and the latest and greatest? ...one of the guys started calling me natasha. at first i didn't get it, and i thought that he just thought that was my name. then someone made the connection for me, that its natasha from bullwinkle.


today i had the privilege of riding around with the guy who started this, and he was like "well, you're tall and skinny and have dark hair. and you're married, so it was a good way to remember you two: boris and natasha!" he later admitted he still didn't know my real name, but i thought it was funny so he's allowed to call me natasha. he also asked if i even knew what bullwinkle was, and i was like "DUHHH, we used to have a Rocky and Bullwinkle movie and it was the best ever and i'd watch it like once a week!!" it was pretty funny.

i'll take natasha. she's pretty snazzy, minus the crazy eyebrows. i dont think josh is very fond of the comparison to boris, so maybe we'll just forget about that one...

oops

wow i've been a horrible blogger. so shameful! so here's a little update, in case you're interested...

+over mothers day weekend my parents came into town and stayed with us for a couple days. it wasn't a long trip, but it was fun to have them up at all! my dad saw our house for the first time, and apparently it passed the test ;) we went to one of my favorite restaurants, macaroni grill, and somehow i ended up eating an entire piece of their DELICIOUS chocolate cake all by myself. oops?

+before my parents got here we wanted to get the house all finished. so besides the spare bedroom (we're just ignoring its existence right now), everything is all done! oh, except for a couch for the very front room. if anyone knows of any good deals, let us know :)

+we killed the weeds in our front lawn. we were the worst lawn on the entire block. thats embarrassing... they are still in the process of dying, but its looking a lot better than it was. i also bought some flowers to plant out front, but the weather hasnt been good since i bought them, so theyre hanging out on our back porch. hopefully they survive...

+we've been busy hard at work as usual. with the commute, work takes up 60+ hours a week. so...i'm a little tired by the time we get home. thus the shortage of blogging, my decline in cleaning [from sometimes helping clean to NOT cleaning at all (love you joshy!!!)], lack of cooking almost every meal.... etc... oops

+i had potato soup this weekend (from chili's) and now i'm obsessed. i want potato soup like every night. if anyone has a fool-proof recipe, let me know. yummmmm....i might be drooling right now.

+we went to ihop tonight and had the perfect waitress. i love when that happens! she even let me order off the kids menu. :) extra tip for her!

+its my bedtime. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

i hope your lives have been more interesting than ours. whats been going on lately? ♥

i know my A-B-C's

josh told me i'm really behind in blogging and i need to get to it. i told him i know, but i'm lazy and my life is boring haha. but then i saw this ABC thing, and thought it looked fun. so i stole this from my girl krysten over at after i do. feel free to fill it out too, if you so wish!

Age: 24. almost a quarter of a century! eeps!
B ed Size: queen. we want a king sized bed, but there have been other things to spend our money on. like... house decor. and student loans. and medical bills...
Chore you hate: i don't do chores. thats what josh is for...duh
Essential start of your day: brush my teeth immediately. apparently a lot of people think that is weird, and only brush their teeth after they eat and stuff? gross...
Favorite Color: purple! then yellow, then green.
Gold or silver: silver. i try to wear some gold every once in a while, but silver is my favorite.
Height: 5'10" (or 11", not positive)
Instruments I play (or have played): violin, drums
Job Title: wildlife biologist. aka professional treehugger.
Kids: be grateful if you have them!
Live: glorious utah. in a town founded by polygamists. sometimes we play the game where we guess which houses have polygamists living there. usually they resemble compounds, and have 15-passenger vans in front of them, or like 5+ different cars. its a pretty fun game, you should try it sometime.
Mom’s Name: Kimberly. love you mom!
Nickname: umm...jess? haha.
Pet Peeve: annoying people. and a whole lot of other stuff i cant think of right now. i hate when these things put me on the spot......
Quote from a movie: "Someones ear is in danger of having hair brushed over it!" -Columbus in Zombieland (just watched that this weekend haha)
Right or left handed: right. i always wanted to be ambidextrous growing up, but that didnt really work out for me.
Siblings: 1 little sister. she'll be 23 this year i think. CRAAAZY!
Time you wake up: 5:19am. i dont like waking up at even-numbered times!
Underwear: is good...?
Vegetables you dislike: corn. corn is gross, and it just comes out the same way it went in, so whats the purpose? ew.
What makes you run late: i am a zombie in the morning. it makes simple tasks (like getting out of bed) hard to do. josh walks over and tells me to wake up at least 5 times every morning. what a sweet husband, i'm glad he doesnt just leave me in the morning ;)
X-rays you’ve had done: a bunch. teeth obviously. elbow when i was 12. wait...MRIs count too, right? whaturr... my mom does x-rays but i still dont even understand radiation...haha. dont disown me, mom!
Yummy food you make: garlic chicken ranch pizza!! lets make some! yummm...i'm drooling!
Zoo animal: i love [almost] all of them! especially in baby form. SOOOO cute!! ♥ now i want to go to the zoo. will you go with me?

my avatar

josh's brother has been in town, and they have been playing a lot of games of course. they were playing some sort of weird game where you make your own characters, and you can control a lot of different features. so they decided to make me. they were pretty proud of themselves... haha.

see how detailed it is? the height and weight aren't correct (taller and heavier! haha), but overall kind of similar looking. although for some reason they made my expression "mean" so my eyebrows look crazy!

what do you think? have you ever made your own avatar somehow?

[ps i dont normally post 2 blogs back-to-back, but my post # was 3 sixes. i dont even want to spell it out! but now it will be 667, so its all good]

weeds

well hello there! if you follow me on facebook or twitter, you know that we've been at a weed conference for the last couple days. yes... a conference about weeds. we were in the middle of nowhere (Vernal, UT) and it took us about 3 hours one way to drive there. gross. such is the life of a wildlife biologist? i guess so..

in other news--the move was great. thanks to all our friends who helped us!! my mom happened to be in town over the weekend too, which was awesome to see her, and she helped us a ton too. we're slowly getting everything together, which means we're staying really busy. i can't wait until it starts coming together and i can show you guys!!

also, i'm just going to leave you with a few gems from the weed conference:

"Let's kick the crap outta some weeds!" --guest speaker at conference
I made 2 new boyfriends, who were both over 60. I'm such a charmer.
One of the prizes was a bbq apron that said "Smokin' weeds with DuPont" (DuPont is an herbicide manufacturer)

why i suck at blogging lately

1. working 50 hours a week and driving an hour each way to work and back takes up a lot of time and energy. welcome to the real world, eh? haha

2. our apt is cuckoo. cue crappy phone picture:

we started packing last weekend, and then today we decided to tackle it once again, since we are going to be out of the apt by next saturday (eeps!). our apartment looks like there was some sort of crap-explosion. also, i've discovered how much of a hoarder i actually am. i sort of always knew that, but it's become sooo much clearer now. josh will hold something up (like they do on the show hoarders, yes) and everytime i say "toss" i get a little pang in my heart.

3. i had food poisoning thursday/friday. i got it from eating a sandwich from the ramada. gross.

4. and the main reason: nothing super exciting has been going on. yawwwwn.

anything fun/crazy going on with you guys lately?

flip, take 2

are you all tired of our videos yet? haha. we [and by we i mean josh] have been having a little too much fun w/the flip. tonight i was in the kitchen writing out a grocery list, when josh basically ambushed me.



youre welcome.

i'm sure i'll get back into doing "real" posts soon, but these videos sure are fun :)

flip, take 1

so, like i mentioned the other day, josh's aunt sent us a flip camcorder. it's pretty awesome, and we might be kind of obsessed with it. we got it when we got back from arizona, so we were all tired and stuff from driving, but still wanted to play with it. josh was being silly and playing around with it, and this video resulted...



i know its really silly and not about anything at all, but it makes me laugh every time i watch it. basically, this is what i live with everyday ♥ haha.

myspace flashback

i've seen this on a few other blogs/twitter lately and i thought it seemed kind of fun. i got myspace in 2005, when i didn't even really know what it was, but my savvy roommate filled me in. i had to think about it, but luckily for you i remembered what my url was. here are some old/funny myspace pictures of me.

maine, 2005

rubi and myself, byu, 2005
i went red in 2005, and didn't go brown again til 2007!

byu, 2006

utah, 2006

camping w/sarah, 2007

signature myspace photo, 2007
obviously taken by myself, trying to be hott hahaha

some of these are embarrassing, but they're funny so i figured i'd put them up and you could get a kick out of them :) haha. now i want to see old pictures of you!! if you do a post like this, let me know!! ♥

i like hugging unicorns

hey guys, these pictures are from a couple weeks ago, just wanted to let you know we're still alive ♥ did you have a good weekend? i love being so close to my family, it's like a mini-vacation every weekend :)

top 5 of the day

1. anderson cooper is a stud (i hope josh ages like that!)

2. i feel so bad for people who get migraines regularly (i dont even want to think about it!)

3. early christmas presents make a rough day a whole lot better (who am i kidding, they make any day better...haha)

4. jay-z is cute, but when he wakes me up from me trying to sleep off my first migraine ever, it makes me want to put him in a straight jacket (don't come after me PETA!!)

5. in conjunction w/#3, i love betsey johnson. and my new purse (rawr!)

purple rain

first of all, let me just say this: i spoke too soon about the curling my hair with a hair straightener thing... i was shown how to do it that night and it looked so easy i was like yayyy--i finally got this! then the next day i tried it myself. umm...yikes. i couldnt make consistent curls. every time the curl came out different looking or non-existant. obviously i need some more practice...

[random, cute jay-z picture to hold your interest]

second, josh thinks it's embarrassing to have reading material in the bathroom. he said it's like a frat boy, except everyone knows it's me because they're girl magazines. honestly, i don't really see the problem. apparently it irks him, and he even said, "i dont know how i've let this go on so long..." too bad josh, i'm not moving them unless i'm switching them out for new material. thats how i roll.

third, it is pouring tonight, and so after i went to the grocery store and whatnot, i decided to change into some cute [dry] clothes. i went shopping today with one of my bffs (hi shannon!) and we hit up nordstrom rack (love!!!). one of the awesome things i bought was..... JEGGINGS! i'm not going to lie, when i first heard of jeggings i was a little confused. i just thought they referred to stretchy skinny jeans, which i've been rockin for years, along with most of you. so i was like *what is the big deal!?* today is honestly the first day i've understood jeggings. i saw them and i knew it was a match made in heaven. i don't care what any of you jeggings-haters think, i fell in love. so tonight i paired them with some purple report boots (also new from nordstrom rack), a gray tank top, and a purple plaid flannel vans shirt. oh, and i was eating a grape blow pop. what can i say, i love the color purple!!

it was hard to hold my foot up so i put it on the tv stand...

and yes, football is on. could you expect anything less from my husband on a saturday?
ps: my hurr isnt short, its just crazy in a messed up bun. dont judge.
pps: josh likes to get his jeans in my pictures. apparently they were jealous of all the attention my jeggings were getting...

and fourth, happy halloween everyone!! i wish we got trick-or-treaters, because i think they're cute, but i guess that's what you get when you live in a college town and close to campus. i hope everyone has a fabulous weekend!

busy bee

between friday and monday we went to the movies 3 times. check out our review blog to see our thoughts. i made pizza saturday. we had macaroni grill monday. tonight i got my hurr done (dyed, trimmed, purple extensions put back in), and i learned how to curl my hair with a hair straightener. i've been told how to before, but i needed one-on-one help haha. and now i know!! i told my hairdresser (hi girl!) to make me look like kim kardashian...

look out, world, it's me! kim jr!

always, sometimes, never

saw this on meg's cute blog, a newly bird

i always:

+brush my teeth first thing in the morning. before eating or drinking anything. some people think that's weird, but then i just think they're weird.

+recycle everything. to a point of annoyance [to others, not myself]. i've even been called the recycling nazi before [hi jon!]

+tell josh i love him everyday.

+want candy. it's a problem. which you already know if you're at least a semi-faithful reader. [in fact, i'm eating asian candy right now. i have a strange love for it]

i sometimes:

+forget that i didn't text/message/email someone back and then remember hours or days later. oops!

+want to change my career path completely. personal shopper, nail technician, fashion buyer, pro-blogger, hair stylist, etc

+let the cat sit on my lap when i go to the bathroom. wait...what!?

+remember to fix the seatbelt when i leave the car, since it drives josh nutso to have it "twisted"

i never:

+eat ketchup. even with fries. i think most condiments are gross. except mayo [because it's pure fat? who knows...]

+scoop the poop. josh does. i think it mainly started since i can't smell and josh could smell whenever kitty dropped a big deuce, so he would go clean it up. somehow it stuck. thanks, babe!

+watch kids movies unless i'm with a child. if someone got me 101 dalmations, that little story might change its tune...

+liked cooking until college. i used to be anti-cooking, and would never want to help my mom cook. when i started cooking and asking my mom how to make stuff she was shocked. *wait...you're actually cooking? like...with an oven?*

[all images via weheartit]

ps: yes i know, 2 posts in the same day. *how annoying* etc etc. whaturr. i'll be back tomorrow with a lovely BESTeam feature. now go win yourself some hair bows and let me know if you do a post like this in the comments! i like to read random things about other people ♥

vegas! excuse me while i head to the slots...

so i'm in vegas. sitting in a very uncomfortable chair downstairs to be on the lovely internet. theres a comfy looking one thats close and now empty, but i'm lazy. anyways, vegas is HOT! like, freakishly hot. i don't particularly care for it. it's been pretty good so far. i feel grown up saying that i'm on a business trip haha. i'm going to a training that costs $500 alone (then there's hotel, airfare, and food) and i'm only a potential employee. sweet, right? this training will look awesome on my resume and i'm getting the experience for free so i am happy.

training is boring, of course, but that is to be expected. it ends tomorrow afternoon. i haven't done anything particularly exciting here. it's more just like chilling, and eating. i did a little shopping today and would have liked to do more but i didn't feel like going out adventuring on my own. plus, josh has watched too many tv shows/movies and is scared that if i go out by myself i will be abducted. it doesn't help that i'm "not very strong." direct quote. nice, huh? i guess it's time i started lifting again...

i would go to the pool but this hotel doesnt have one. its at "the sister hotel" across the street. psh. so since we've come back from eating (at a delish cafe at the golden nugget) i've been down here checking my email and starting to catch up on some blogs (it's been forever! i have so much catching up to do!!). my bum is hurting though from this couch, which looks lovely and antique-y, but feels horrid [the couch, not my bum]. earlier i had an impromptu dance party/photo shoot in my room. i'm sharing some of the pictures with you for your viewing pleasure. you're welcome.

umm hi. i'm taking pictures of myself (hello myspace).

do i look like audrina from the hills?

maybe now?

no? well this is getting awkward...

anyways, i'll probably delete these later when i realize it was a bad idea to post embarassing self-taken pictures on the blog. but for now i think i will head back to my room where reeses, a cold sprite, and the end of a good book (the forgotten garden) are waiting for me. night!

hey homies

[looking for the giveaway? click the button over there ------> or click HERE]

i have to go camping AGAIN. and i just got a cold. awesome, huh?

also, is anyone watching the bet awards? chris brown, while still a scumbag, is definitely winning points back tonight. i didnt realize he could dance so well. after tonight everyone will be back to loving him and thinking he is all cute and young and innocent. nevermind the fact that he beats women. as josh said after chris brown attempted to sing man in the mirror: "yeah chris brown...how bout you attempt that change..."

i will say though, props to him for doing such a good tribute to michael jackson. we love mj in this household. if you havent seen "this is it" yet, you really need to. go watch it NOW. [i believe it's streaming on netflix!]

r.i.p. mj. we ♥ you. when i had to be knocked out for a...procedure...and took propofol? i thought of you. you're welcome. also, i want to steal your wardrobe. those peaked sleeved jackets?? yes please!

see you on thursday, peeps! dont forget to enter my giveaway!