Madness

  So I am not trying to ignore my blog, it is just that it is really hard to get anything done with a little puppy who gets into everything.  Right now I am letting her gleefully tear apart some Artic Circle coupons while I get this blog post written.  Apparently all the toys she has are just not as fun as paper we get in the mail. 
   March is my favorite month, partly because it is the beginning of spring and the weather warms up, but mostly it is the beginning of the NCAA March Madness tournament which is one of my favorite things of the year.  This year the second and third round games were here in Salt Lake City and we had tickets.  To say I was excited is an understatement.  I have been looking forward to this since the last time that we went three years ago.  I was really hoping that Oregon would come here, they did not, but it was ok we had lots of fun anyways.  For the most part the games were good, there were some blow outs, but even they were fun to be at, even if it was just because we got to make fun of the horrible cheerleaders.  I mean come on all they did was clap and shake their pom poms, they could have at least done a flip or something. 

Here we are on the second day of the games with our official tournament t-shirts.  

 This is my elusive Papa John's pizza that I wanted.  The first day of the games I really wanted a pizza, but when I went to get one none of the Papa Johns were open.  Which is weird because they had lots of people there so why wouldn't they be open.  So I decided to get a rice bowl.  By the time I got there they were out of rice and noodles.  Which was ridiculous because they knew about the games you would think that they would have plenty of food.  So then I saw there was a Papa Johns open so I went down there and when I got in line a lady came out and said they would not have enough pizzas for everyone.  So instead I had chicken fingers.  So the second day I finally got a pizza and decided to take a picture of it.  To be honest it was not as good as I had hoped.

 

This is the guy that we fondly nicknamed Bumblebee man, because of his overalls.  He was a fan for Wichita St, who beat Gonzaga, ruining my Mom's bracket. 

 

 And here is the court with the players from the Gonzaga game, which was a pretty good game. 

 

So that was our tournament experience this year.  It was awesome.  As a side note I won our bracket competition this year, by being the least sucky and having one team that made it to the Final Four.  So I guess all those hours of watching basketball did not really help me that much because we had the puppy do a bracket, we put the teams on paper and whichever one she bit that was her team very scientific, and she got as many teams in the Final Four as I did.  In fact we have the same title team.  It was still fun and we are thinking about maybe going to Portland in a couple of years to watch the games there.    





Introducing Gracie

   January 29, 2013 we welcomed a new member into our family, our puppy Gracie. She is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and is freaking adorable. We have had her for almost two weeks and I can't believe how much she has become a part of our family and how much we love her.  I am so glad that we picked her.  We were trying to decide between her and another puppy in her litter.  The other one was more of a lap dog and Gracie is more playful and I think has more personality.  After we decided on her she climbed up on my shoulder and started to nuzzle into my neck and that is when I knew we made the right decision.  I feel in love with her right away.  Being with her all day has been a change for me because I have to worry about how long I am leaving her and I can't come and go like I used to.  However, she has brought so much happiness into our home those little sacrifices don't seem that big.
  

     About Gracie

 

-Right now her favorite chew toy is me, which is not always super fun.  My hands are kind of chewed up.

 

-  She loves to sleep on either Jason or I.  She likes to get up by my face and curl up and sleep.  This does make doing things hard, but she is so cute I love it. 

 

-  She does not like her crate, I think that she thinks it is prison.

 

-  At her vet appointment on Thursday she weighed 2.6 lbs at 9 weeks.

 

-  She will sit when she sees a treat because I have been trying to teach her the command sit, and she associates it with food.

 

-  She likes to use under the couch as a way of getting around the family room, and it is kind of funny.

 

-She loves people and she has not seen a face yet that she does not want to cover in doggy kisses.

 

-She really wants to be friends with the cat, but the cat wants nothing to do with her right now and the cat will hide under the bed because she is afraid of her.

 

  Well that is a little about our new family member.  Here are some cute pictures of her playing with Jason today.  

 

Good-bye Misty

   Today our family dog passed away.  Misty was 14 so it was not much of a surprise, but I am surprised at how hard it is.  She was such a wonderful dog and we all loved her very much.  It is going to be hard going to my family's house and not having her there welcoming us in the house.  I know in this picture she has demon eyes, but I don't have many pictures of her on my computer.  This one seems fitting though because she always wanted people to rub her tummy.  It was her favorite thing.  I will miss her very much and always love her very much.

Book surprise

   Around Christmas time I noticed that Barnes and Noble had a lot of classic books with nice leather covers.  I really wanted to get some of my favorite books leatherbound because I want special copies of them.  As probably everyone knows Pride and Prejudice is my favorite book, but of course that was not one of the books that I could get.  They had it in this set with other books that I was not super interested in, but did not have it for sale by itself.  I told Jason that if he could find it that I would love to have it for Christmas.  I did not get it for Christmas so I figured that he could not find it.  Earlier this week Jason said he had a surprise for me.  When he got home he gave me the copy of Pride and Prejudice that I wanted.  He had gone to Barnes and Noble and asked them about the book.  They found it in another state and had it sent to the store that is on Jason's route, where he picked it up.  I was so surprised and I love it.  I am so grateful to Jason who tries so hard to make me happy and makes me feel so loved.  I love the book, but I also love the effort that Jason put into getting it and I will always cherish the book because of that. 

Puzzle

   Jason and I love to do things together, but after ten years of being married sometimes it feels like we have done almost everything.  We have probably played hundreds of games of Ticket to Ride and there are only so many times we can go to Target for our date nights.  So I thought maybe to "spice things up" that we should do a puzzle.  In the past I have not really liked puzzles, but I thought maybe it was time to give it another try.  I also thought Jason would like to do one.  So we went to a game store and instead of getting a small puzzle to try it out we decided to get a 2000 peice panaramic puzzle.  When you look at the box it does not seem that big, but when you get all the peices out you realize it is a big long puzzle.  It took us about three weeks to get it done, but we got it done on Christmas Eve.  We sort of had to get it done because we needed the puzzle for Christmas dinner.  It was actually really fun to do the puzzle and I did not get as frustrated as I thought I would although there were a few places that were hard, like the sky.  It was fun to see it all finished and kind of sucked when we had to take it all apart.  I figure in a year or two we will probably do it again.  Jason would like to do a 5000 peice puzzle but I don't think that we have the room to do one that big. 

 

Lights



   I am a little behind on blogging.  I have been busy trying to get stuff ready for my brother's wedding that is this week.  I am trying to make up for it, hence the three posts in one day.  In December we were lucky enough to go downtown a couple of times to see the lights at Temple Square.  They were very beautiful and it was fun to go see them.  We have not been downtown to see the lights for a few years, so it was good to go again.  Of course the time that we went to get pictures it was freezing and snowing, but the snow made it seem even more Christmasy.  It was also fun to go down to City Creek and be there around Christmas.  It was super packed, but still really nice.  

 

I like this picture because Jason is actually smiling in it.

Christmas

    Christmas was pretty fun this year.  I was a little worried how things would go because I had bronchitis weeks before Christmas.  Luckily I got better right before Christmas, but it did make me really behind on everything.  So instead of two trees we only had one and I did not get any Christmas goodies made that I wanted.  However, Christmas day was good and I had lots of fun.  Christmas Eve we spent the night with Jason's family and opened pajamas with them.  Christmas day my family came over and we had breakfast before we opened our presents.  Jason had the most presents to open because I bought him a bunch of stuff.  He is super spoiled.  I got him a bunch of blu rays that he wanted, a couple of daily calenders, socks, a dress shirt, a new pillow, and a helicopter which I think is his favorite present.  Jason got me some gift cards to Michaels, Joanns, Nordstroms, and a set of self-healing mats that I wanted for sewing.  I am excited about the Nordstroms gift card because I have found a pair of shoes that I want that I can get with it.  After opening presents I started on dinner and Jason went to play with his helicopter.  Almost everyone else took a nap or just talked.  After dinner we watched Muppets Christmas Carol, because we watch it every year, and then ate pie that my sister made.  After my family left Jason and I spent the rest of the night watching some of the new shows that we got.  It was just a really nice holiday week and pretty relaxing.  I am glad we got to spend time with everyone and that Jason and I got to spend some time just the two of us because it feel like we don't get to do that as much as we would like.  Jason enjoyed Christmas but he is glad that it is over because it ends his busy season at work.