The New One (Finally!)

This won't even be a very good new one, sorry. I've been thinking about blogging a lot lately and just haven't done anything about it. My last real post was before Thanksgiving so I haven't even covered the holidays, yikes! For the time being, here are a few recent thoughts/updates for y'all :)

For six(!) years now I've heard about "Spring in Utah." This is in reference to the seriously crazy weather patterns we get March-June. Temps in the 70's followed by a snowstorm. Seriously. We got married Memorial Day weekend 2010 and I was terrified because it snowed 5 days before. It was a beautiful 65 degrees for us, thank heaven! Anyway, I think this is actually the first time that the weird Spring weather has been visualized by our car:

Here's Justin loading up for a bike ride. Notice anything unusual?

Yep, that's a ski rack on top. We were up on the mountain just 9 days ago. Crazy!!

Here's a new "Funny Justin" story. We were walking to lunch today when a rollerblader, yes rollerblader, zoomed by. Justin said "Wow, I almost got taken out by 1992!!" Bwahaha!!

The One where Justin is Hilarious!

Got home after work just a few days ago and Justin was literally "pink with barely concealed glee" (Friends reference!) because he had done something that afternoon he thought was hilarious.  He was right!!  His cousin who is also from FL but currently living in the DC area had posted on Facebook how much she was missing family.  Here's his response:

Bwahahaha!!  I almost peed my pants when he showed me!!!  I seriously laughed so hard and continued to giggle for a good 10 minutes.  What a nerd!!  That's his "goofy" face, I love it!!

The One with Campfire!

I almost forgot to include these stories from camp!

Thursday afternoon when it started to get stormy Shelyse and I were at our site warming garlic bread for dinner that night.  The storm came up so suddenly it started blowing our 5 star camp apart.  We'd never staked the canopy over the hammock down so we could move it for optimal shade.  This was a bad idea and it was lifted right up and into some trees!  We couldn't get it down ourselves so Shelyse ran for help and I tried to prevent further major damage.  While she ran to the pavilion, I ran to the fire to put chairs away.  I was too slow though and had a perfect view of the "pharoah chair" falling into the fire!!  Remember this thing?

Umm yeah, it no longer has an awning.  It melted.  The worst part is for some reason there was a balloon in the chair, which got trapped by the awning when it blew over into the fire.  As I ran to try to save the chair the balloon popped from the heat and scorching plastic landed on my legs and feet!  Thank heavens it was a small balloon!  The storm was a blessing in disguise as we packed up most of our camp that afternoon and saved ourselves some time the next day.

Way back when we were still making blankets, Gabby and Ryann discovered that when you throw a ball of yarn, it unwinds.  Much like toilet paper.  See where I'm going with this?  They invented "yarning," the much kinder and more attractive version of the TP prank.  I told them they could prank all week if they wanted as long as it was never malicious.  They brought so many supplies but didn't use them until the last night.  They "yarned" the pavilion, which I thought actually looked really cute.  Somebody else must have disagreed however because this is what we woke up to the next day:
 

They also made the mistake of tying our leader tent's zipper shut with the yarn.  Initially I thought it was our own girls so I returned the favor and both of their tents looked like this:

Now that's how you lock someone in a tent!  The dual tie technique.  Seriously, the girls couldn't get out on their own and had to convince me they didn't prank my tent before I let them out.  I think I forgot to mention that I realized our own tent was tied shut when I woke up early to go to the bathroom.  I was not happy.  Thankfully I had my pocket knife with me and it was just yarn so I got out quickly.

However, if it had been my girls who'd tied the zipper pulls together they were sitting ducks in their own tents waiting for this!!

I was prepared.  And lesson learned- don't mess with Texas!!  Or Cindy Cooper.

The One where Camp is Funny!

As is to be expected, we had some pretty funny moments at camp.  By far the biggest photo op was during the Minute to Win It challenges.  Check these out: (the girls are going to LOVE me for posting these!)

Gabby & Anne Marie picking penne up with spaghetti.

I think Gabby wanted to win! The focus!

 

Danielle & Anne Marie

Bonnie & Gabby

Ryann competing in the stack-nuts-on-a-popsicle-stick challenge.

Bonnie participating in the eat-the-cookie-off-your-forehead competition.

Gabby wanted to see if she could do it.

Or maybe she was just pretending to be a pirate :)

The next challenge was using a tennis ball inside a stocking to knock over 10 cups.
So much harder than it looks!

 The girls thought the nylons were hilarious!

 Because they are!!  Anne Marie looks like a spider!

And Ryann looks bald!

Balloon balancing.

You can always catch a funny facial expression during Minute to Win It.

Hopefully not seeing the future too soon here!

Other funny moments:

Ryann competing in the ninja challenge after skit night.

She actually made it to the final although this seems a bit unfair.

I love this picture of Gabby's face!

 Why is she freaking out?  This little guy right here.

Poor Ryann got dehydrated the second day of camp,

which gave her some pretty severe nosebleeds :(

Thank heavens Melissa the Nurse was prepared!!

She recovered in time for the 1st and 4th year nature hike.

It was so long Gabby had to carry me back to camp ;)

Champion cheese griller!

 
It started to rain really hard on Thursday so we gathered in the pavilion during free time and played games.

Beehives!

Photo bomb!

We played Pass the Pigs...

...and Bang!  We weren't allowed to bring face cards to camp but they

never said we couldn't shoot each other or drink beer to regain hit points!

The hand slapping game.  We used to play this game in high school before volleyball matches.  Aww the memories.  Also note the tarps we had to hang up to keep the eating area dry.  It was sooo windy!

 

Shelyse had just gotten pregnant right before camp (it's ok, she's married :) and was pretty tired all week.  Seriously, what a good sport.  I can't believe she made it sleeping on the ground all week!  One afternoon though I thought something was wrong with the tent and looked inside to find this.  I'm not sure if it was for shade or she was just too tired to close the umbrella :)

Another random moment.  I couldn't stop laughing when I got

home and realized I'd taken this picture getting out of the tent!

Silly Ryann.

Silly Danielle.  She wanted to see how many rocks she could put in my lap.

Let me tell you- a lot.  It was so heavy!

Helping Ryann get a hit on the volleyball court.

 
The last night of camp the ward bishops and stake presidency came up.  They played a running scavenger hunt game that was hilarious!  Ryann (far right) was chosen to participate as was her dad (third from right, he's our bishop).

And guess who won!  Actually, Debbie did.  Haha!  But Bishop knocked his own daughter out of the running.  Ruthless I tell you.  (I'd probably do the same thing!)

TBC again....

The One with Justin and Payton

Payton is the son of our friends Brock and Carrie.  He is so darn cute!!  I absolutely love his laugh.  Since I'm still playing catch up on the blog I don't think I've mentioned that Justin and I watched him overnight for B&C for their anniversary back in May.  I told them to not do anything (change Payton's diaper, give him a bath, etc.) before they left because it would be good training for Justin.  Unfortunately I went over early and Justin got to their house a little later then planned so all that really happened is I look capable of motherhood because by the time Justin arrived I had fed, changed and played with Payton and barbecued dinner.  That's right.  Not just cooked, barbecued.  That was actually our payment for babysitting.  Brock is an excellent cook/marinader.  And Carrie's not bad herself :)

Anyway, back to babysitting.  It is so funny to me the little things watching a child requires that Justin is not aware of.  Like how much (or little) water is required for a bath and how "easy" it is to watch a baby.  Easy because literally all you're doing is watching them.  Not so easy because all you can do is watch them, you can't let them out of your sight!  The night went very well.  Payton is so easy to put down for bed and B&C were home by 10 the next morning.  So Justin passed the "Future Dad" test.

His grade was raised to an A this past Sunday however when we went to B&C's house for dinner.  Payton has apparently learned to feed other people and thinks it is absolutely hilarious.  I have to admit, I do too.  Justin was laying on the floor and Payton really wanted to feed him some yogurt covered raisins.  I wish I had a picture of this!!  He is very determined once this process starts and when Justin tried to just clamp his lips shut Payton forced his tiny little finger in!!  Soooo funny!  There's nothing tastier than candy fed by a baby :)  I laughed so hard my stomach still hurts.  There's just something about watching my husband with children that makes my heart melt.

**This post is in no way making any sort of announcement.  Simply sharing a very adorable experience :)  I'll get back to camping posts soon!

The One with the Quotes

Sorry for the leave of absence there.  I started writing this post over a month ago!  Birthday post to follow shortly :)

The first weekend of March was graduate recruitment weekend for the Chem department.  It's for students who have been accepted into the grad program starting next year (and are possibly choosing between several programs) and current students are their "hosts."  Justin and I like to help out because you get a lot of free meals and even a free lift ticket!  I feel like it's kind of cheating but our department takes the students skiing on Saturday.  It's a huge dangling carrot, especially for students visiting from the east coast.  Meaning those who know how to ski but have had to deal with crappy east coast hills and ice.  I've never even skied out there and I'm already a Salt Lake resort snob!

The weekend wasn't really that exciting but I somehow managed to use two of my favorite sitcom quotes.  In real life!!  The first one was this: (in response to a comment about first world problems)

Chandler Bing

Grrr.  It won't let me embed the actual video, skip to 0:45.

And the second was this: (introducing Justin to my friend's boyfriend)

So I actually said "Haaave you met Dave?"  I've always wanted to use that!!

The One Where I Just Have to Say...

http://chinga.deviantart.com/art/I-hate-winter-152148014

So so done.

The One with the Compliment?

I sure hope Justin was trying to be funny when he told me this morning as I was filling in my eyebrows "Oh there they are!"  It reminded me of another time when I was "concealing" a zit (I know you won't believe me but I get them too.  Hate it!) and Justin said "Wow! That stuff is awesome!!"  I know it was meant to be a comment on the effectiveness of the product but maybe there's a different way to word these comments that doesn't sound like I'm hideous!  Good thing my response is to just laugh at his enthusiasm and awe of makeup.

I'm also quick to forgive right now because Arizona beat Florida last Saturday!!  Woot!!  Now we're even and I hope our teams never play each other again as long as we live!!

The One with the Blue M&M

Yet another hilarious moment brought to you by none other than my comedian husband.  Maybe this is also a you-had-to-be-there kind of moment but I thinks it's funny :)

A few days after I got back from London Justin and I went down to Grandma Sabol's house for dinner and games.  Grandma had just had her second knee surgery done and Mom was up visiting.  FYI Grandma is doing extremely well :)  As always, we had plenty of treats to snack on during games, including M&Ms.  At one point Justin turned to me holding one blue M&M and asked, in all seriousness,

"Do you remember when they introduced the blue M&M?
I do."

 While making this face!

I seriously almost peed my pants laughing so hard!
I love my husband!!!

The One with Crappy Pictures

Thanks to Wendy I have read a few posts (ok, all of them now.  Hi, my name is Cindy and I'm a blog stalker.) from the hilarious blog Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures.  Even though I'm not a parent (yet, we'll throw that in for Mom), I love how she can take an everyday event and make it real and stinkin' funny at the same time.  It made me think of the things Justin and I do that drive each other crazy but I'm sure happen to every single other married couple; Marriage: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures.  For example, sleeping (and cleaning, there's a fair amount of that in this story too).

When Justin and I got married he had a twin(!) bed and I (thankfully) had a queen.  Guess whose bed we sleep in?  I warned him from the start that since I'd been sleeping in a queen all by myself for so long I was used to taking up a lot of space but I'd try my best to stick to my half.  I'll be honest, most of the time that does not happen.  This is what it looks like on the surface when we go to bed:

 And this is what it really looks like:

No, my right leg isn't really that long but I'm sure this is how Justin feels most of the time.  That's ok though because that's just how the night starts.  This is how it ends:

Yep, I'm the one not smiling in my sleep anymore because I'm not asleep.  I've woken up at 4:30 in the morning because it's winter in Utah and I'm cold.  I could be warm, but somehow 98% of the blankets are now covering Justin.  I steal enough back to tuck around my body but there is still a huge pile draped off Justin's side of the bed.  I don't care though because it's 4:30.  AM.

Before we got married I would wake up in the morning and immediately make my bed.  It didn't take long.  I don't really move in my sleep so all I had to do was flip up the corner of the sheets and rearrange my pillows.  It looked like this every day:

You could bounce a quarter off those sheets.

I usually wake up about half an hour before Justin because girls take longer to get ready (stupid makeup).  But mostly because I hate hitting the snooze button over and over.  I set my alarm for the latest time possible to begin with.  Justin does not subscribe to this method.  Which means he gets up last.  Which means the bed now looks like this every day:

I miss bouncing quarters.

Update:  I showed Justin this post and he almost peed his pants laughing so hard- must mean it's true.  He also mentioned that the drawings are not only crappy but slightly inaccurate, we do wear pajamas to bed!

The One where Justin Says the Darndest Things

I truly love my husband.  And you know why?  Because he makes me laugh.  Hard.  So hard it's actually silent, I'm shaking and tears are streaming down my cheeks.  Remember the Gollum post?  Stuff like that happens all the time around here.  Like ghetto dancing- we've got skillz.  A few things have happened recently that I thought had to make it to the blog.

We were watching tv after dinner one night (Have I mentioned this is a regular occurrence?  We are super cool.) when something weird/extraordinary happened on ESPN and Justin said "What the Coop?!"  Pretty sure he was going for "What the poop?!" (the clean version of Steve's "What the eff?").  Hmmm, maybe you had to be there but his tone/expression were hilarious when he realized what he'd actually said.  And I almost fell off the couch :)

Did you know we live in Utah?  Where it's freakin' cold?!  Here's Justin's solution to warming up his feet before bed:

Yes, that is my mop bucket and yes, I have since bought him a wider, shallow bucket specifically for feet warming.

Our first Christmas together Justin got tickets to the MoTab Christmas concert.  The "dancers" are probably our favorite part because the moves are extremely simple and extremely funny.  About a week or two after the concert Justin came in to my living room with both hands clasped in front of him, took a few steps, flung his arms out to either side while simultaneously hopping and reclasped them, all with the most serene expression on his face!  Bwahahaha!!  That was the main move from the Christmas concert.  To this day we will randomly walk across a room like this and it always elicits laughter.

There is one final story that I have practically begged Justin to let me post (aka tell everyone we know) but he vehemently forbids me from doing so.  Let's just say it involves his deep-rooted love for all things Star Trek as a young child and maybe, just maybe, if you ask him face-to-face you'll get to hear it :)

The One with the Thanksgiving in Arizona

As much as I love seeing my family I will admit that I am glad (or should I say, thankful :) this was our last double digit hour drive home this year.  I am also really glad that Justin and I broke the drive up into multiple sections.  We usually stay up pretty late and figured as long as we were awake we should hit the road early so we drove down to Lake Powell Tuesday night.  Justin also didn't mind leaving that early because it meant we got to eat dinner at El Pollo Loco on the way and camp one more time this year.

Lake Powell is Gorgeous with a capital G!!

We woke up to a beautiful view and then headed to Tucson.  I really wanted to hit up the "A" store in the Tucson mall.  My current collection of UofA gear is starting to look a little too "holy" and I had a Christmas present in mind for Justin :)  After this little detour we had a few hours to kill so we drove over to Wendy's house and I had fun pushing the kiddos on the swings while Justin fell asleep on the couch.   Landon thought it was hilarious when I ran behind his swing as it swung forward and suddenly reappeared in front of him, like magic!  Wendy made some de-lic-ious chiminichangas for dinner which I will be attempting on my own soon (wish me luck, I'm soooo not a chef) and then Justin and I drove over to McKale Center for... the UofA men's basketball game!  I was so excited!  Justin had mentioned at the beginning of November that my Cats would be playing at home over Thanksgiving but I didn't think we'd be able to make it.  Well, we certainly did.  I have to admit I was a little disappointed, because we lost :(  But it was still super fun to be back on campus and we got to see the HUGE new screen at the football stadium.

This was awesome!  We got to see the presentation of the Territorial Cup during halftime because the Arizona football team beat ASWho in the annual Duel in the Desert!!

This HUGE lit letter A is on the backside of the new screen at the football stadium.  Brings a tear to my eye every time.

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Thanksgiving day itself was fun, happy, crazy, crowded and tasty.  Maybe it's a good thing Amy decided to start her own family tradition and had Thanksgiving at home.  No, I take that back, we missed you guys :(  I guess we'll have to start getting used to not spending every holiday with the entire family anymore- there are just too many of us!!  I think it's funny that we try to plan activities when we get together and then all we end up doing is just hanging out with each other.  That's my favorite part anyway.  Especially since I've moved farther away than I've ever been from my family and don't see them near as often as I'd like.  Here are a few pictures/videos of the fun had with family:

James was playing hide and seek in the backyard with these cute kids which quickly turned into just playing in the dirt.  Including a game you can probably only play in AZ- dirt angels :)

 

Bwahahahahaha!!  This cracked me up!

 When Justin had the chance he tried to rest like this-

because when the Brimhall children could find him this was what he actually spent most of the weekend doing:
falling out of chairs

 and trying to fit under small blankets.

 

For some reason they thought it would also be funny to "trap" his legs in pillows.  Or to let him trap their heads.  Either game seemed to make them laugh.

Another hit game for the weekend- Wii bowling.   Here's Justin showing his technique:

And Wendy impressing everyone with her moves (which somehow beat out Justin's more traditional approach):

And finally, the funniest moment from Thanksgiving.  For some reason I kept doing that dance from musical theater where you swing both arms directly in front of you while kicking both legs out behind you in the same plane.  I don't know how else to explain it and no, there is no video evidence of me even doing the dance so if you don't get it from this next clip, well, you're just out of luck.  Anyway, here is Trevy and Callie's attempt to do the dance.  Soooo funny!!  Quickly followed by a dance they do excel at, the Diaper Dance, with a guest appearance by Landon (aka Donald).

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Justin and I drove up to Phoenix on Saturday to visit the Fulps family and cut out a section of the final leg of our trip.  Kaden is getting so big!  He's definitely no longer a little boy.  Makayla and I played school for a little bit (meaning Makayla wrote a schedule on her white board while I tried to keep Seth from swallowing Barbie shoes) and then Justin helped out by teaching her Snell's Law of Refraction, complete with diagram. Umm, maybe a little too soon for that one honey.  Her expression was hilarious!  Wish we could have stayed longer but I did snag a few pictures of these little cuties:

 

 

Seth loves his Aunt Cindy!

Oh and what did the men do.  Take a wild guess.

"To ancient times and distant music!!"