We are Family

Our family was ALL together for the first time since... I'm not sure. Chad's wedding? That might not be true... but it has been a long time. We were all only together for a half hour, but we were all together... SO we got a new family picture.

If I'm being totally honest, it wasn't the best day for me to take pictures. Many different reasons for this, but I tried to look nice and make the best out of it. It was my idea to do family pictures after all. Just should have thought about losing 20 pounds beforehand. It was freezing. It was bright outside with the sun reflecting off of the snow. The occasional wind made my eyes water big time. With 9 grandkids, not all of them were happy. In fact one in particular was REALLY not happy. With a great photographer (Ron) and a photoshop expert (my brother in law, Dan) we got one pretty good picture. Better than nothing right? Ha ha

Ron also got pictures of individual families that also turned out cute. Unfortunately there was not a glam photo shoot of just me (since I don't have my own family). PS that was sarcasm. I don't have Jamie's family pictures and Chad and Clara left, so they didn't get a family picture. But here is Kristy & Lori's family photo's.

Then of course we got some mother & daughters picture.

And our tradition Sister pictures.... because we LOVE each other. We do. We had a fun week together. Wish we all got to be together more.

The WHOLE FAMILY!!!

Word Cloud

I was reading my friend Ali's blog, she is into word clouds (which are pretty cool) and suggested making a word cloud out of your Patriarchal Blessing. I thought that was such an awesome idea, so I did it. It is cute decor... but with meaning.

Here is my Patriarchal Blessing word cloud.

Love it. I suggest making one of your own... of whatever. Doesn't have to be your Patriarchal Blessing. If you want to make one, click on the link to Ali's blog at the top of this post and it will lead you to the link where you can do this. You can choose different shapes and fonts and colors as well.  They are pretty neat. 

Station 22 Cafe

Normally I don't dedicate a whole blog post to somewhere I have eaten, but I just loved this place that I ate at on Friday.

So, I made a new friend while learning and performing in the Flash Mob. Her name is Alexi. We were dance partners in the first verse of the flash mob. Anyway... the only thing I knew about her was that she could dance and she was really nice. We soon became facebook friends and then I started reading her blog and then we decided we should go to lunch. I love new friends, so I was all about this.

She suggested we go to Station 22 Cafe on Center Street in Provo. I live in Provo and I had never heard of it. Amazing all of the places I have never tried before. So we met there for lunch on Friday. As soon as I walked in, I loved it. I'm all about presentation. The whole place is like Hipster Country. They have "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" music and other types like it play in the background. The guy waiters where flannel and hats with hipster glasses. The girls... something similar. The menu is on like Coffee paper or something that is clipped to a clip board. The drinks and soups are served in cute little jars.

They have unique dishes and flavors. I forget what the soup I got was called, but it was little a sweet curry. My sandwich, well, I asked what was the most popular and I ordered it. What is the most popular sandwich there? The Ratatouille sandwich! I had never even had Ratatouille before (although I had always wanted to try it after watching the Pixar movie) so I was putting my trust in the popularity. It was a good call. It was healthy and delicious and of course cute presentation.

Alexi and I had a fun time chatting and getting to know each other while taking pictures of everything and intagraming. As it turns out... we have lots in common and want to hang out lots more... maybe craft together? So this might be a regular thing. I'm glad that I did the flash mob even though I didn't know many people doing it. It was fun to be in a flashmob, and it was great to make a new friend. Thanks Alexi for a great lunch date!

Flashback Friday 98

This takes us back to December 2001. I guess I should have posted this during December since it is Christmasy... oh well.

My Grandma believes that every girl should own jewelry with their birthstone in it. So for years she collected all of her Granddaughters birthstone rings and gave them to us that year for Christmas when we had gotten together as a family (Mills/Adnerson). Each right had the birthstone and some little diamonds in the setting as well.

I still have it and I love it. What a special gift to be able to treasure forever.

Confessions of a Brunette on the Internet 151

First week of the new year has been FREEZING! It has pretty much been below 10 degrees all week. I think because of the cold... we have had a pipe freeze or something and we had some water leak. It seriously hurts when you walk outside. It's not okay. I only go outside when it is completely necessary.

Tonight my roommates and a couple of other friends went to the BYU Basketball game. BYU killed it. It was fun. Games are always fun to go to, especially when you are in good company. Which I was. Although I never attended BYU, I think it is pretty fun to go to the games. I even have the fight song down.

My roommates and I finally had our Christmas gift exchange. Everyone exchanged very thoughtful gifts. I guess that just shows how much we care for each other and pay attention to each other. In years past my roommates will get me a scarf or whatever... and I have done the same thing to others. I got Meg Billy Joel and Elton John piano books because she plays very well and she was saying she wanted some new fun music to play. I got Sarah some super cute and warm slippers because she is always in slippers when she is at the house. I also got them both boot socks... since we all wear boots and they have mentioned liking mine in the past. Megan got me and Sarah gift cards to Applebees... to encourage our karaoke attendance (it has been a while) and she got me a capo for my guitar because I don't have one and I have needed one for forever and she knew that. Now we can play the guitar together easier. Sarah got me the 5 Love Languages book. She didn't know it... but I have actually been wanting to read that. She just knows that I am always trying to figure out relationships and new I would love that book. She ALSO got this big frame and did a collage of pictures of us roommates. It was super cute and I hung it up right away. There are not enough pictures of us up right now. It was super thoughtful... almost made me teary.

The other night, Sarah and I were watching funny video's on YouTube. Mostly this guy, Andrew Hales. He is this Utah local and does most of his pranks at BYU and UVU. Some of them are pretty funny. Sarah and I were watching his different video's for a while and getting a big kick out of them. Anyway. Then I told Sarah about one of my favorite YouTube video's, Validation. It is kind of cheesy, but the end kind of makes me tear up. Okay... maybe I'm super emotional, but it is sweet and makes me want to go out of my way to make other people feel good about themselves. If you have never seen it, you should totally watch it. Anyway, we had just watched that... and then I sat down to watch the next episode of 24, and the main guy in that video was in that one episode that happened to be next up. HA! I love it when little things in life like that happen.

My co-worker brought in these crazy chocolates from Chicago. Seriously weird chocolates... like I tried on bite of each kind just to try it... but I didn't want anymore. THAT is saying something because I love chocolate. There was like... ginger chocolate and spicy chocolate and bacon chocolate, etc... It was all just too weird for me.

Speaking of co-workers and food. On Monday, my co-workers and I went out to lunch. We of course decided to have ethnic food. We have ethnic food 95% of the time that we go out to eat. I never care so I never have a say, but I actually love it... because it is pretty rare that my friends would want to go to any of these places. Anywho, we went to this Korean place. This was my first time eating Korean food. I liked it. I was kind of hoping that our waiter would serve our food gangnam style... but that didn't happen. Oh well.

Have you ever played the Wii game "Just Dance"? The firs time I ever played was "Just Dance 2" with my friend Sara. I was having so much fun that we ended up playing the whole game in one night. It took a long time. Sara now has all 4 games. She came up with the idea to do all of the games in one day. Since I did the whole game in one night with her, she asked me if I would be up to doing it with her. I said sure. She told me she has a spreadsheet of all the songs from all the games and predicted that it would take us about 12 hours. I don't know what thoughts went through my head when I said yes and committed so easily. I mean, 12 hours in a long time. Maybe I thought... well, it's fun, so the hours will just fly by like it did when we played one game all in one night. So we planned on it.  Last Saturday was the day. We got in work out clothes and we started at 10:30am. We were going to start at 9, but Steve was in town and Nate, Steve and I got together for breakfast at Maglebees Fresh (just like old times) and chatted and talked about "The Big Thirst" that we all read for our very first book in our book club. Anyway.... it went longer than expected. So Sara and I got a late start. She checked the songs off of her list as we completed them so we would have a good idea of where we were at. She also video taped us before we started and then after we completed each video. I would love to see those videos. It would be funny to see the progression of tiredness and realizing what a bad idea it was as the day went on. I can laugh at it now... but there were points of the day that I really wasn't laughing. Ha ha... and other parts of the day that I was slap happy and was laughing that we had been playing the game for so long. Besides the first game, which is the shortest and took us 2 hours to complete, the rest of the games each have 45 songs on them and took us around 3 1/2 hours to complete. We took one hour break to have dinner and a half hour between the 3rd and 4th game... trying to convince myself that I could complete this challenge. With all of our other little breaks taken throughout the day, we probably had a 2 hour break total. We finished playing at 12:30am. I seriously thought it would never end. We played for about 12 hours or so. By the end, I was so tired, so sore... I felt like I had just climbed a mountain. Overall, it was still pretty fun, because it is a fun game and Sara and I won equally, We took turns beating each other. Let me tell you though... I will NEVER do that again. I was so sore the next day. I could barely get out of bed. Who does that?

On Sunday Meg and I noticed at church that our neighbors were not there... except for Jason. Geoff and Nate were not there though. When we got home, we asked Jason where his roommates were and he told us they were both home sick. Meg and I decided to be good neighbors (and friends) and we made them soup and gave them each a bread stick and diet coke (Meg's favorite) and a Dove Chocolate and Meg wrote a really funny, yet sweet message for them and we brought it to them. Geoff Instagramed it... so obviously he thought it was great. Nate text and said thanks too. Meg and I... we are awesome. :)

Photo of the Week 149

Fact: This morning is was -2 degrees outside..... Brrrrr! Not okay.

A New Year

It is the first day of a new year. 2013! It is the time where I start reflecting on life. What I have done in the past year and what I want to accomplish in the next year. I feel like I set a lot of the same goals every year and wonder if I even should because I can't seem to accomplish them. Part of the problem I'm sure is that I set too many. At the same time, there is so much I want to improve with myself and so many things I want to accomplish.

I shouldn't be too hard on myself though. I did accomplish some goals on my long list. Although I didn't get to travel outside the country this year, I did travel to some new places. I painted my nails many different colors, I styled my hair a little more, I redid my room to make it a place I loved to be, I exercised more and ate healthier, I think I have developed a better relationship with myself and others, I wore perfume more, listened to lots of great music, I have tried to give more compliments (although I can always improve on this more), I have tried to look cute most of the time, and probably one of the biggest changes I have made was my relationship with men. I have not been used this year by guys looking for the wrong thing. I have been respected and I think that has largely to do with the respect I have had for myself this year. This means I have had a lot less attention from guys... but I would rather have the right kind of attention from guys than any attention I can get. This was a great improvement.

I have looked at many other people's blogs and facebook status's and everything that has changed with them in the last year. It is amazing how much can change in a year. People have graduated, moved, gotten married, had a baby, etc... for me, I have had a year filled with people and fun things... but my life has not changed much. Except for my living situation. I now have the best roommates in the world and for that change, I am very thankful. Our house is a better place than it used to be... filled with love and service and friendship and people love to come over. I love that. It was very negative last year. Besides that... my life is the same. I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I would have loved to have a big change in my life.... a good one, but it didn't happen this year. I can look back on 2012 and say that it was a good year. It wasn't bad and it wasn't awesome... but it was good. I can live with that.

That brings me to now. Who do I want to be and what do I want to accomplish in 2013?

I want to find a place in the community to serve
I want to be more focused on others and less on myself. I want to compliment & validate others
I want to work on my spirituality. Be more regular with attending the temple and scripture study and prayer
I want to be more open with communication and my feelings
I want to complete the Insanity workout
I want to run in a 10k (didn't do that last year) and a half marathon (still can't believe I want to do this)
Continue to eat more healthy. I want to cook more
I want to do more things that I pin on Pintrest
I want to visit a new state
I want to travel outside the country
I want to scuba dive somewhere new
I want to cut out unnecessary expenses
I want to go through and clean and organize the whole house (roommates and I have already made a plan)
I want to learn how to do something new
I don't have much control over this, but I want to find a man. One that loves and appreciates me for exactly who I am and doesn't want to be without me & obviously I want to feel the same way back. I want to find true love again.
I want to be happy with myself and life.

Yes, I want this next year to be a good one. Seriously. My friend Rich and I said our theme this year was going to be seize the day. Sometimes I need to be reminded... but I know I can do anything that I set my mind to. Sooooooo..... Here is to making 2013 an amazing year!