1096 Days & Counting...

In honor of our 3 year anniversary today, I thought I'd post one of my favorite wedding pictures! Can you guess why its one of my favorites? Think Harry Potter... think the tree in the background... starting to look familiar? Yup, its Temple Square's very own Whomping Willow!!!

Officially Gradumacated!

Well, while I'm at posting all these pictures I'll go ahead and actually post a really important one! Ben graduated on Friday! He received his MBA from Oklahoma City University and here we are after the commencement. By the way, whoever invented those ridiculous hoods (that are impossible to put on correctly, by the way!) must've been smoking something... Oh and on a funny note, when Ben got his Bachelor degree his tassel was pink, and well... what guy wants a pink tassel, right? This time around he was excited because he thought his tassel would be blue, like at BYU... well, not so blue, huh? For the life of us we could not figure out what to call it... copper...peach...tan? Well, while we were sitting in the audotorium and waiting for the commencement to start I began flipping through the program and lo and behold, there was a guide in the back that told all the colors and their respective degrees. As I scanned for "Business" I grew more and more excited... finally the mystery would be solved and this ugly color would have a name! And then I saw it... Ben had gone from "pink" to "drab." No kidding...

SuperSirius

So we've been cleaning out closets and geting the house ready for my mom and we stumbled upon Sirius's old Halloween costume. He never liked it back then and well... as you can see, it still has not grown on him!

Here it is!

Ok, so here are some pictures of this whole ordeal... First, we have the hole... there it is in all its smoldering glory!
And here we are pulling up the carpet... that foamy insulation thing was SUCH a pain to rip up because it had been glued down to the floorboard...

Once all the stuff was ripped up and the floorboards scraped cleaned, we proceeded to lay down a layer of mortar and then over that went these cement backerboards. At the seams more mortar was applied and they were secured with some special screws.

Here Ben is skillfully laying down the mortar with his trusty trowel. My job was to place those little white spacers!

Yay for cleaning nasty grout off tiles until 2am!!! Despite my smile, I was really not enjoying this step...
And after all that hard work and so many sleepless night... TADA!!! Here is the finished product!!! That wood floor transition/ trim was cut and stained by Ben as well. Also featured in this picture is Sirius's lovely butt!

Step 4: Make An Even Bigger Mess!

Wow, I thought mortar was messy? Watch out for grout! We started shmearing the stuff all over the tiles last night and what was supposed to be the easiest part turned out to be the hugest pain ever! It doesn't help that it stinks too! Kind of reminded me of the smell of the stuff dentists fill cavities with. Basically you spread it all over and into the spaces between the tiles and then you have to clean it all up (but careful not to wipe off TOO much b/c then it won't fill the gaps right) before it dries and hardens. Man, it was awful... but its done now and curing so we should be able to give it one last clean and then Saturday morning we seal. If all goes well, we'll have our living room back in order by Sunday evening!

Step 3: Stay Up All Night

Ok, so laying tile takes a while... a long while. See, tiles are square but the area you're tiling isn't always that same shape. This creates problems...big problems. Especially when you have to start cutting them into very odd shapes and sizes to fit around a fireplace! Oh , and lets not even get into the noise that a tile-cutter makes as it is scoring through the ceramic... very much like nails scraping down a chalkboard...*cringe* This part took forever.
The next part was actually fun. Ben had to mix up a new batch of mortar (again he neglected to mind his wife and it got all over the walls) and then we started shlopping it down on the backerboard and placing the tiles on top of it. Thankfully someone invented these cool little spacers that you put in between the tiles to keep the grout space even. I had fun putting those down. We worked into the wee hours of the morning though... what a night. Now we have to wait for it to dry and tonight we get started on the grout... I can't wait!

Step 2: Make a Mess

Mortar is messy... very, very messy. Word to the wise, NEVER mix it indoors! I suggested this to Ben, but did he listen? Of course not... so we ended up cleaning nasty sticky grey stuff off many a surface... including pants and shoes. Once that was under control, the fun began. During the day he busied himself measuring and cutting something called backerboard, which is cement gunk held together by this meshy tape stuff. Last night we got to mortar it down to the plywood floor and reinforce with screws and more mortar and that meshy tape. Very exciting, I tell you. It didn't take us very long and then began the long and arduous wait... I think thats the hardest part because we're on a roll and want to keep working, you know? But things have to dry and set, yadda, yadda, yadda. So we wait... but tiling begins TODAY! Too bad I'm here at work while Ben is having all the fun at home. Hmm... maybe I can do some of the grout tomorrow!

Step 1: Destroy Everything!

Who would have guessed that ripping up carpet would be so much fun? If you ever get the chance, you should try it... very entertaining! Thats what we did last night... Ben pulled out this nifty little contraption called a "chalk line" that does just that... draws a line with chalk! You fill it with colored chalk (ours was blue), shake it up, pull the chalk covered string out across the surface you want marked, then SNAP! You pluck it and the chalk line appears on your carpet! Pretty darn tootin' cool, if you ask me. After that, we cut along the line and started ripping it all up! Good way to take out any anger, if there is any hiding in there, by the way...After a bunch of other stuff (that will take too long describe) was done, we were left with a bare plywood floor that would be today's canvas! Ahh, but that's tomorrow's blog! Stay tuned for more details.

DOH! (Part 2)

Oh if you could only see me right now... you can't so I'll take a moment to describe what is transpiring in this moment of utter shame. Remember that lady driving and smacking herself in the head? Yeah, thats me right now! *Smack!* Well, I guess it's been a while since I've come to check on my own blog. My excuse was that my life has been pretty boring as of late... well, until about 4 days ago when we almost burned down the house, but we'll get to that later. So yes, guilty as charged... I , Alex, have been neglectful and caused some major upheaval in the wonderful world of blogs. I will take this moment to publically appologize to my loyal fans (all 2 of them) for keeping them waiting and forcing them to sink as low as commenting on eachother's comments in order to provide some semblance of entertaining quality to my poor blog. (Wow, Clark you should get Suzanne to diagram that atrocity of a run-on sentence!)
Ok, so onto the juicy juiciness... WE ALMOST BURNED OUR HOUSE DOWN! Yah, see thats what I get for complaining about my life being boring and not having anything to blog about! A few days ago we had a big snowstorm and so we were making lots of fires in our lovely fireplace... Well, due to inclement weather, we were too lazy to take our ash bucket outside to dump it and began collecting our ashes in black trash bags... the NOT so Hefty kind... I know you are all shaking your heads here... yeah, that was oh-so-stupid of us, wasn't it? Well, of course one of those times the ashes were not all the way cooled off and were still, in fact, partly embers that had not cooled off entirely. The said ash/embers were placed in the bag and set on the hearth rug (fireproof my behind!) where they slowly but steadily began to melt everything they came in contact with... including the bag, the rug, and our carpet.
Hours later we noticed a distinct stench in the air... Upon further investigation we discovered to our dismay a very big HOLE. Yup, singed all the way down to the subfloor. Not a pretty site! (I'd post a picture but I can't yet... more on that later.)
What now? Well... we play "lets remodel!" We had always wanted to tile the area around the fireplace (for some reason having carpet by the fireplace always struck us as... hmm, unsafe?) and looks like we get to now! Ben is currently cutting and ripping up carpet in preperation for our tiling escapade 2 days from now. It's a long drawn out process it is... and guess what? Since I've been so neglectful, you all get to hear about it all... every step of the way! It will take me a few days to get the pictures up since the computer had to be disconnected and moved, but never fear... in the meanwhile you will be regailed with my descriptions of whats taking place each and every day. Are we excited???

Vanilla Envelopes In A Doggy Dog World

Ok, so you know how sometimes people spend ages singing the wrong words to a song because thats what they *thought* it was saying? Well, I've been very blessed to know 2 people who are afflicted with this condition in normal every day life phrases and words. Today we were at WalMart getting some odds and ends. Ben all of a sudden mentions, "Oh, and I need some vanilla envelopes." I did a double take and said,"A what now, hun?" to make sure I had heard correctly. "A vanilla envelope, you know the big yellow ones with the clasps on the back," he said with a straight face. I knew he was not joking. After laughing my head off for like 5 minutes, I kindly informed him that what he's been calling "vanilla envelopes" all 26 years of his life are actually called MANILLA envelopes. This was almost as good as the time my friend Kathy said to me, "Man, it sure is a doggy dog world!" Like with Ben, I asked her to repeat herself and again, after recovering from my fit of laughter, had to break the news to her... that its a dog EAT dog world. This was about 10 years ago... I still tease her about it to this day whenever the opportunity arrises. And so it begins with Ben and his vanilla envelopes!

I'm too sexy for my shades... too sexy for my shades, so sexy yeah!

So I went to the eye doctor today and sure enough, he used those drops that make your pupils dialate to about the size of a dime! Seeing as the effects of these drops don't wear off for HOURS (ahhhh, bright light, bright light!!!) I had to walk around for the rest of the day sporting these lovely things! Just thought I'd share how fantabulously stupid I looked in them!

*GASP!*

I almost died this morning.... yup, the world *almost* lost its snorting Alex! No, we didn't have a tornado... No, I wasn't crossing the street without looking both ways. No, I didn't even drop my hair drier in the tub with me (not that I take baths anyway). Want to know how I came inches from having my life snuffed out like a candle? Alright... here we go. "Please, I must ask you not to scream... " (Quick, name that movie!)
I woke up and jumped out of bed followed by my Sirius. As I reached the door to the hall, a strange sensation overtook me. A weird buzz in my head and then the world started spinning. because of the momentum, I had continued walking... clumsily approaching the stairways, with Sirius close behind me. Why I didn't just sit down at this point, I don't know... I wasn't really thinking, actually... the buzz, remeber? So Then I find myself half walking, half tumbling down the stairs but thankfully, I was able to hang onto the banister and steady myself. Sirius (sensing that I was in mortal peril) ran in front of me, just further down the stairs... willingly lending his body as a cushion to break my fall, lest I plummet to my untimely death.
Anticlimatically, however, I managed my way down the steps, passed Ben half not knowing what I was doing and sat down in the living room where I proceeded to put my head down by my knees, willing the world to stop spinning. Eventually it did... Sirius is my hero.

The Minsters of Magic

Well, I've been a bad momma... Here I've been posting picture after picture of my Sirius and Mini has yet to grace this blog. You'd think I am playing favorites here... well, actually I am, but thats besides the point. So... without further ado, here for your viewing pleaseure... the dumb, the bumbling, the creepy stare-er... Minerva.

DOH!

Ok, so I'm driving to work this morning and there is this lady in a white Taurus in front of me. She was going rather slowly and I was about to switch lanes to pass her when she started hitting herself on the head! You know, the open palmed smack on the forehead you do when you're having a "duh" moment or when you've forgotten something really important? Yeah, she was doing that. At first I thought I must've been imagining it, but then *smack*, she did it again... and again... and again! Soon she was doing it with both hands! (Alternating hands of course, between smacks and holding onto the wheel) Surely she was going to stop this, I thought... well, she did... but rather than resuming driving like a normal person, she started yanking at her hair! By this time we had approached an intersection and she managed to control herself enough to signal and turn... I (despite my curiosity) continued straight and laughed my way to work... bizarre.

Shark!!!

Bull shark to be exact... the largest captive Bull sharks in the world, apparently. Oklahoma has them, can you believe that? Yup, in a little town called Jenks on the outskirts of Tulsa there is an aquarium that houses these man-eaters. As Ben and I walked under the plexi-glass tunnel that seperated us from the immenent death that swimmed above and around us yesterday, I realized Bull sharks aren't really all that big. (Well, at least not in captivity, anyway...) When you see "The World's Largest_____" label, you kinda expect something... well... larger. Oh well, watching the stingrays (in the touch tank that can no longer be touched due to recent unfortunate events involving our dear mate, Steve Erwin) splash around and bobbing up for food was cool! Oh, and I got to touch a starfish... oooooohhh.

Baaaaad dog!!!

It was cold Halloween night... very cold. So cold that they put out freeze warnings, mind you. Ben and I had to go out for all of 20 minutes and decided to leave the dogs inside...after all, we'd be back right away! What trouble could they possibly get into?

Well... now we know. Mind you, this candy was in a bag in another bag, on top of the dinning room table...little buggers! After impressing upon them how bad that was we sent them outside while we cleaned up the mess. In lollipops alone they managed to wolf down close to 20.

Sirius, who obviously was the instigator of this whole shinnanigan soon got was coming to him... a tummy ache. We sometimes call him Patheticus... can you see why?

And after a while of not getting any sympathy from us, he decided to really play it up and lay it on heavy... *sigh* How can you be mad at a face like this? Grrr.... gets me every time.
Wondering where the Minsters is in all of this? Well, unlike Sirius (who knows no shame) she was hiding in her kennel... didn't see her the entire rest of the evening.

Moral of the story? Uh.. well, you'd think we'd learned our lesson by now.

Unabashed Gushing...

So I think its time you all meet my Sirius. I talk about him a whole lot and I know I just can't do his studdliness justice. So... every now and again I'll post a picture so you can all oooh and ahhh. Here he is doing one of his many tricks... begging. Awwwww...

Pooooodunk!

Just when I thought OK could not get any lamer... it did. So I was watching the 10 o'clock news the other night and was shocked to see that the last 15 minutes was spent on football. Now, I'm not just talking about NFL sportscasting... I'm talking about highschool football! And just as my jaw was nearing the ground they began covering 7th grade football games!!! I sat there flabbergasted. 1/4 of the news was dedicated to local football action... I knew OK was boring but this is just ridiculous... Thats all, just had to get that out.

4 8 15 16 23 42

Ok, so I have this weird sort of love/hate relationship with the tv show LOST. Every week I look forward to and at the same time dread the coming episode. It all started last season when the novelty of freaky endings that left you begging for more started wearing off and was slowly replaced with pure exasperated annoyance. They're really ticking me off. Every week I sit there and swear its the last episode I'm watching, thats it, its over! This show has consumed way too much of my energy and its stopping right now! However... I always find myself sitting there, the following Wednesday night, arms crossed, scowl on my face... watching. I'm powerless to stop and its driving me insane! So much so that it has now invaded my last safe haven from the world... my dreams.
I woke up this morning terrified. I was covered in sweat and something was breathing hot stinky air in my face... Sirius. As I opened my eyes I realized I was home safe in my bed and that what had plagued me just minutes before was only a dream... about LOST?!?! I was running through the jungle with bright orange Crocks on (this must be due to watching too much Mario Batalli on Food Network, but thats another day's blog material!) with Charlie (otherwise known as Merry from Lord of The Rings) and we were looking for Locke because "The Others" had taken him too. We found the hatch and snuck inside and decided that the only place to hide was under thes bunkbeds. Well, John comes in with one of "the others" and starts talking like he's betrayed us and has become one of them. Charlie and I are terrified and I can't help but start crying... Just then a hand reaches down and grabs my brighlty clad foot and John yells, "Alex! I knew that was you!" Charlie and I both get yanked out and thrown outside with a bunch of old rusty cars. Charlie seems to think that they may be our chance for escape but John soon informs us that we are to start a new civilization out here with "the others" and that they have been so kind as to provide us building materials. (The cars???) So then I demand to know where our friends are ( you know, Jack, Kate, Sawyer, etc) and John laughs and says that they're being punished for trying to jump the fence to feed the polar bear. So Charlie and I walk over to the cars and Locke says he'll be back with some food. After that is all a bit of a fuzz... I recall something about a jail cell and being able to hear Jack and Kate but not see them. Sawyer was no where to be found. I was scared and and all Charlie could talk about was about having to push the stupid button.
The end. I woke up. Sirius was breathing on me and I just lay there mad... stupid show. Its bad enough I can't get away from it while I'm awake, but now in my dreams? This is just ridiculous... so, anyone have any theories? I think the producers are lost and have no idea what they're going to go with the plot. They're just stalling... I mean come on, they brought the stupid polar bear back!!! But who cares... its not like I'm gonna watch it anymore... i think... I hope?

Stupid dog...

So anyone that knows me could not possibly imagine that I'd ever utter those 2 words together in the same sentence. I love dogs. I believe that dogs are the best thing that ever happened to the human race. However... then I met Mini. Minerva (as we renamed her after she was pretty much dumped on us) is a stupid dog. I take that back... she is THE stupidest dog to ever grace the face of this planet. There is no animal dumber than she. I've been mulling this over all day and it kinda makes me mad that we're stuck with her. Ben and I became the proud parents of the world's COOLEST little stud of a dog (Jack Russell terrier) named Sirius T.Young (T for trouble) a little over a year ago. He is the MAN. This dog is by far superior to all others of its kind. He was potty trained by 4 months and can do a gazillion tricks.(My fave is sneezing on command!) Granted, he's a spoiled brat... but when you're that cool... I mean, come on... you deserve certain privileges! Needless to say he is king of the castle. I love my bubba.
Minerva, on the other hand... well... she is a basketcase. She reminds me of Ed, the retarded hienna on The Lion King. You know, the one that walked around gufawing with his tongue sticking out and his eyes crossed all the time? Yah, thats Mini. All she's good at is eating Sirius's food and staring at you. She does this thing, its actually pretty creepy... she'll just sit right smack dab in front of you and stare...stare... stare... for hours if you let her. Its unnerving! She's a blundering fool... we've decided to nickname her "the bumble" b/c she is so clumsy and runs into everything when she gets excited. (which is usually over anything and everything. You can yell at her and she'll still think you want to pet her!) Anyway... so long story short, she is a stupid dog.
So I'm just a tad bitter about the fact that we've always wanted to get a female Jack for Sirius. If one Jack is fun then 2 must be great fun! We've been told that a male and female Jack Russell will get along wonderfully. (And not just b/c one is male and one is female... Sirius is fixed) Problem is that now we have a 2nd dog and cannot get a third until we move into a bigger home. When will that be? Who knows... but definitely not anytime soon. So my dream of 2 Jacks is put on hold and in the meanwhile we're stuck with the stupid one... She's only about 2 1/2 yrs old. so yeah... it'll be a while before nature takes care of this problem...Anyone want a dog?

Faith restored

So I just read something that brings a ray of sunshine into my otherwise drab and boring world that is insurance. Some friends of mine were in a very scary car accident this weekend while taking a roadtrip out to Colorado. While reading about it on their sister's blog (Suzanne, I know you'll never read this b/c you have no idea who I am... but if you do, please accept my condolences on behalf of your dear Johnny. We too have recently lost a much beloved car to the same kind of tragic fate.) I realized that although my job is soooo very b-o-r-i-n-g (as previously blogged about)... it is useful. As my boss loves to say, "Everyone hates paying their car insurance... no one likes it! But when you have an accident, boy are you glad to have it!" So in cases like this, I'm glad I'm in the position to help others out when they have something like that happen to them. And although I personally had nothing to do with it, I'm glad she had insurance and that they were all able to safely get home in a rental car, rather than having to hitchhike. (Especially with that correctional facility nearby... no one would have picked them up!) So thanks guys for restoring my faith in the insurance world!

B-o-r-i-n-g

So it hit me last night(while being home taught... yeah, I know... way to be paying attention, huh?) how pathetically boring my life is right now... Let me explain. So we were going around the room (new HT'ers) sharing what we do for a living. This is what we came up with: 2 insurance geeks (that would be Ben and I), an auditor (heehee... can you get more boring?), and an attorney. 10 years ago if you'd asked me what I'd be doing with my life I would have laughed until I turned blue if you'd said, "Well no Alex... you're actually going to be working in insurance!" Sure, for some people I guess insurance is a fascinating world... full of numbers, stupid rules, and terminology that makes NO sense... (Did you know that Inland Marine policies have absolutely NOTHING to do with lakes, boats, or anything water related?) But for me... well, its a slow and steady death. My boss is great and sure I get to dink around online or play Civ.IV on bossman's computer when its slow... but I anxiously await the day I FINALLY have my degree and can practice in my own field. Ahhh... bunches of rowdy and sticky pre-schoolers. I'm sure on certain days (when they are especially rambunctious) I'll be longing for my old desk job but for right now... *sigh* the smell of Elmers glue sure does bring a tear to my eyes.

Wal-Mart haters...

Ok, so a few days ago Ben and I somehow got onto a conversation about Wal-Mart and all the people out there that hate it. Apparently I've been living in some sort of cave my whole life and never knew that such a population existed, much less was I aware of its supposed size. (I am told it is quite large) I guess if you're someone whose small business was bulldozed over to make room for an upcoming supercenter well... ok, you have reason to hate. But for the rest of us out there... why all the contentious feelings? Who actually enjoys purchasing overpriced goods at some high-falutin' hoighty-toighty store when you can save a buttload AND be greeted by nice little old ladies/men at the entrance? I mean come on, what more can you want?
Just last night Ben and I were shopping at this glorious store and were pleasantly surprised to find the item we were looking for (pre-lit Christmas tree... yes, I KNOW its not even Halloween yet!) not only in vast quantities (you can't find those if you wait until December you know...) but for a much cheaper price than originally thought it would be. For a mere $29.99 we were able to purchase a 6.5ft pre-lit tree!!! Yes, you read right... $29.99...pre-lit, yes... almost 7', yes. WOW! How can you hate that? I mean really... do you realize how much more you can spend on ornaments and decorations now? (Oh wait... could that be what they want us to do? Well.... at least it'll be cheap, right?) So to all you WAL-MART haters out there(If you really do exist?)... enjoy paying three times as much for half of what we'll be getting this Holiday season...

And so it begins...

So here I am again... blogging. I haven't done this in years! Not because it got boring or old, I guess I just got too busy. If I recall correctly, my first attemp at all this got thrown by the wayside about the time I left on my mission. Something about not being allowed to be on the internet? Hmm.... Then I got home, returned to BYU, got engaged, had the worst 18credit Fall Semester of my LIFE (18 credits after being un-acadamiafied for 18 months and while planning a wedding... what was I thinking?!?!) so... yeah, not much time for dinking around online. But alas... I'm married now and boring, once again. Not much to do except work and hang out with my hubby and puppies (how did we get this boring?) So thank you Cloark and Shannon, for re-introducing me to the wonderful world of rambling about anything and everything on a spiffy blue page that took me hours to tweak to near perfection. (Again, thanks Cloark) I now have something to keep me busy at work... ;)