Bart's mouse (which I have been informed is actually named F3, not F1 as previously reported) had her 9 pups last night. Holy crap.
And I'm told M3 is already trying to get her pregnant again. Ladies, we should all be glad that there isn't such a thing as postpartum estrus for humans (getting pregnant a day after giving birth).
I hate sappy posts, but this totally is one, so turn away if you aren't interested in some gushy love.
Four years ago Bart and I went on our first date. It was horrible. We both agree. Luckily for us, they have only gotten better. Since then, we have gone on approximately 208 dates. It's pretty incredible to think that only one of those 208 dates was not incredible. Some dates that are particularly memorable to me:
-Watching Rocky on the Art Museum steps
-numerous picnics
-Walking by the sculpture gardens
-Les Miserables at Walnut Street Theatre
-seeing the mice at Bart's lab
-piano concert for Bart's birthday
-The Nutcracker for my birthday
-candlelit dinners
-slumber party with pajamas for Valentine's Day
-walking along the river where we got engaged thinking about when we got engaged
-Christmas lights at Longwood Gardens
Oh Philadelphia, I will miss you desperately when we have to leave one day. Luckily for me, I get to take the best part of you with me--my sweet husband.
I just found out they are shooting a movie at my work. How cool is that?! Jack Nicholson is one of the stars, and while I do think he is kind of a dirty old man, that won't stop me from trying to poke my head out the window to conveniently be an unwanted extra in the film. The movie is allegedly called "How Do You Know?"
Admittedly, I'm left to wonder if they KNOW how disgusting this hospital is. I'll be curious to see if the portrayal is accurate. There also better be a LOT of Philly 'tude because this location is full of it--and not just from yours truly.
We are officially coming home for Christmas! We are flying in to Utah on December 17th around 8:30 pm and staying in Logan until the morning of the 26th when we will head down south to Layton until the 3rd of January. Hooray for long winter vacations! Thank you, P-E-N-N (joke for my dad who actually doesn't ever read this blog... so maybe it's a joke for me...)
I had a case of the grumpies this morning, so I thought I would take some time to count my blessings and be a little more grateful for what I have. I thought I would start with my family. You are awesome. Maybe next time when you have the grumpies, you can look at this list and know that someone cares about you. Some of these may seem pretty small, but they weren't too small for me to remember them.
Bart: What can I say? You are perfect for me, and absolutely the most thoughtful, selfless person I have ever known. If any of you know how much sleep means to Bart, you will particularly appreciate this. For the past 3 nights I have had what I would like to call "crap sleep." Each night, Bart has lovingly scratched my head for a long time (up to 45 minutes once) to help me go to sleep. In so doing, he lost that amount of sleep, but he never complained or even thought about not doing it.
Mom: You are ridiculously sassy and will always listen to me feel sorry for myself or talk endlessly about whatever thing I'm doing, even if it's inconsequential, even if you are actually the one who needs someone to talk to.
Dad: You always ask how the car is running (even though, I secretly know that you are asking me how I'm doing).
Julie: You ate the burnt monkey bread I made when you came to visit, which is representative of how you try to see the good in all things. You didn't even make fun of me when I cried because I was so touched by that example and love.
Granny: Words cannot express how much I love you. But to keep it short, I will say that you are awesome at emailing and inspire me as you try to learn new things every day.
Richelle: You are so thoughtful! You always remember what is going on in our lives even though we live like 5 billion miles away!
Andy: You took me fishing, which was the highlight of my summer. Oh, and you didn't make me put the worms on my own hook!
Shawn: You know about computer stuff and are patient when we bother you with dumb questions. You also always ask me how I am because you genuinely want to know.
Mindy: Martha-Stewart-example-extraordinaire! I love that you make being a mom fun and still have time to pursue your own interests.
Derek: You work so hard for your family even though it's not easy most of the time. You have courage and fortitude and you don't even know it.
Becca: You love your son (and impending child) so much that you teach him every day. I can tell that you love learning and that James will excel because you work so hard to teach him.
Kurt: You are quiet but you have your own ideas and goals, and it is encouraging to me to see how you take things seriously and aren't afraid to pursue the hard road.
Bonnie: You love life. I can tell every time I'm around you. I want to be more like this.
Jon: You are a goofball. But I like it because I know when it comes to Ashley, you will do anything for her.
Ashley: You love your family so much, which is probably hard since you have 4 older brothers. You are goal-driven and focused and it will pay off. (If you don't agree, look at what you have accomplished in your life and you will realize I am right.)
All my nieces and nephews: You give me courage that parenthood is soooooo worth it. I love how each of you are unique and bring something important to our growing family.
Family... Isn't it about... TIME? hehehe. Sorry, I couldn't stay serious forever.
For those of you reading this blog (which I'm sure are very few), I would greatly appreciate you helping me with some research I'm doing for a talk I'm giving on Sunday. If you could comment (or email me) with answers to the following questions, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks for your help!!
What is a family to you?
If you knew that there was a free workshop to improve your family relationships, would you attend?
Why is it important to you to have your family with you in eternity?
How does the Gospel help you in your family relationships?
Of the following, which thing would you most like to improve within your family?
-Family Unity
-Communication
-Conflict resolution
-Listening skills
-Understanding of child development
-Appreciation for family relationships
-Spirit within your home
While serving as chaperons for youth conference this past weekend, we went rafting with with the youth from our stake. There was much waterfighting and colliding between the 20 rafts. At one point our raft made a brief collision with another raft which brought Katie in close proximity to some youth from another ward, whom we haven't met before. As the raft rebounded away this boy boldly grasped the opportunity offered by this chance encounter, and made the title statement of this post. And then the rafts were separated by the flowing river, leaving the boy with his hope that the seed he planted could one day fruit, never to know how truly misguided his foray had been.
When we were dating, Bart and I always heard the familiar jingle from the ice cream truck going at all hours of the night (don't ask how we knew this).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2uOzy3cyG8
We've always been curious about who lets their kid get ice cream after midnight? Well, we finally figured out that the ice cream truck was just a cover to sell drugs, thus we renamed the Mr. Softee truck "The Crack Truck." I bet whoever thought of selling drugs from an ice cream truck thinks they are soooooo smart.
Ice cream = happy children
Crack = happy parents (?)
I digress. Last night, Bart and I had kind of a rough night. We had to go to Wal-Mart.
Twice.
Wal-Mart in Philadelphia is not like the nice, clean Wal-Marts in Utah. We decided last night, while we were waiting in a line of over 10 customers, that Wal-Mart in Philadelphia is the embodiment of hell.
We finally got home after the second trip to Wal-Mart and much to our dismay realized that the item we bought was mislabeled. So, yeah, we were pretty bummed. But then, oh wonderful then! We heard that all too familiar jingle of the Crack Truck. We grabbed our flip-flops and some money and ran after it.
Three blocks later we were happy and all of our Wal-Mart troubles had disappeared into our sticky, soft serve cones.
Today is the greatest day ever. You might wonder how I could know that considering it's only 9:24 am. Well, let me tell you about the awesome things that have happened so far:
NPR had a tribute to Michael Jackson during my morning commute and played my ALL-TIME FAVORITE MJ song, Billie Jean. (If you don't know that song, you clearly haven't been to many BYU dances. And, shame on you!)
Today is JEANS day at work. I don't know if my boss(es) realize the greatness of Casual Friday. Every Thursday night when I'm getting ready for bed and Bart asks me what tomorrow is, I get all excited and squeal that it is in fact Jeans Day! I'm sure anyone who has had to wear "nice" clothes to work every day can understand the awesomeness of Casual Friday.
And finally, Bart bought me two soft pretzels for breakfast this morning. It is part of an experiment, so I'm sure that was his actual motivation, but anything that gets me a soft pretzel for BREAKFAST is a good thing.
Yeah, I already ate one of them.
Bart and I pay a lot for car insurance since we live in Philadelphia and people here are crazy drivers. And our poor little car has needed it. Below is a list of trouble our car (and Bart's former car) have gotten into:
2005: Poor Red gets its drivers' side mirror ripped off
2005: Little White gets rear ended
2006: Poor Red gets its drivers' side mirror ripped off again
2007: Little White scrapes an illegally parked car
2007: Little White has an accident in the parking lot
2008: Little White is mysteriously hit one evening and left with some bad scrapes
2009: Little White is involved in a hit and run
2009: Oh, Little White.... The car doctor will take care of you soon...
P.S. The other driver had no teeth thanks to his crack habit. Unfortunately it wasn't his fault--this time...
Dear Postmaster General,
Hi. How are you? Thank you for bringing me coupons to cool stores and forwarding my mail when I move. This letter is not just a thank you note, but written so I could ask a few questions. Did you put up a camera in my office and record the last 5 months of frustration I have experienced at work? Did you rig my printer to jam when I had to send out a huge mailing last week? Do you know my boss, "Awhhhhhhh Freak Out", I mean, John? Or for that matter, my other boss, P. Head? Maybe you learned that SLF has changed his mind for the 5 billionth time about obtaining CME credit for his precious Anniversary event, which will cause me a lot, LOT LOT of work. Have you been tape recording the conversations Bart and I have on our way home from work wherein I tell him about my day? Or maybe you have just been doing a little snooping through my emails to my mom? Forgive me for asking, but I have to know how on earth you would know that I might need the following brochure:
My friend Lisa tagged me to post my fourth photo in my fourth folder or something like that. Since I haven't ever found time at home to do this, I've decided to post the only photo that I have at work that has not made an appearance on this blog. I take quite a bit of pride in it because it is something that I created with my friend Lizzie. It's a SCIENCE cake! Can you believe it?!? I made this cake for Bart's birthday; he was completely surprised! Sorry the picture is a little rough; it's from a cell phone.
I'll describe what you are seeing in case you can't tell. That large thingy stretching across the center is DNA, which even has the correctly labeled base pairings. The blue and white thing is a pipette, which says "love Katie", and the large white cylinder is a beaker that says 30 mL old on top. Hehehehe. Someday we will get around to posting about our trip to New York, but until then we will leave you wishing you had some cake to eat right now.
Do you watch The Colbert Report? Well it's time you start -- because I'm going to be on it!
Okay, so that isn't entirely true. But I am going to be at it, for Monday's show. Katie got us tickets to the filming of Monday's (3/16) filming! (This is no small feat. Just for the experience, go to the website and try to get tickets. You'll find that there are no tickets left -- not only for the next several shows, but for the next several years.)
So we're spending a three-day weekend in New York to celebrate our anniversary and my birthday, and to attend the filming.
I love you, Katie. I'm the luckiest guy in the world.
Bart and I drive to work together every day. Sometimes we have interesting conversations about government, Church stuff, how lame my boss is, etc. Sometimes we have conversations that are a little out there. For example, yesterday we talked about how we could totally live as farmers. So, in the event that our economy completely goes to crap, we concocted a plan for how the Andersons/Fords/Lays would survive if America reverted to an agrarian society. Here are your assignments:
Andy: Head Farmer--you are by far the toughest and the strongest, read further down the list to see who will be your assistants
Richelle: Teacher--you can educate all of our children because I most certainly don't want to be left in charge of that
Shawn: Mechanic--you are in charge of creating farm equipment that will help our farm destroy the neighboring competition
Mindy: Cook--I like brownies--please figure out how to make those over a wood-burning stove
Bart: Doctor--he said in the car that he wanted to do something else, but we have to have a doctor and he's the closest thing we've got; he can also be the mid-wife
Katie: Print shop/newspaper editor--another way we will make money and force our neighbors to read about how awesome we are
Derek: Crop duster--you will fly the crop duster that Shawn will invent
Becca: Seamstress--but don't make just aprons; I don't want my bumm hanging out in the middle of the winter
Kurt: Hunter/fisher
Bonnie-lass: Ranch hand--you can lass-o all the animals back to the corral. (hehehe. See what I did there?)
Jon: banker/store owner
Ashley: barber/assistant to the store owner
All the children: field hands--probably sounds kind of harsh, but isn't that the whole reason people had kids back then? Someone needs to start having some boys... Not it.
For any questions about your assignments, please contact Julie, she's the only one who's actually lived on a farm.
Because of the lame-ness of Frontier airlines and because we can't do anything about the fact that we are flying with them yet again after much turmoil and frustration (we wanted to use $200 in vouchers because of the mistreatment from our last trip--redeeming them should have been an issue in a different post, but I'm trying to release the bitterness I feel toward Frontier and the airline industry in general), Bart and I are going to have a contest on who can guess how many times our flight times will change between now and the time we arrive in Philadelphia after our trip. For those of you who don't travel often, it might be difficult for you to imagine that this number could be pretty high, but BELIEVE me. It will be high. Here are the rules for the contest:
1) This is NOT Price Is Right. As much as I adore that show, for the sake of this game, we are going to say that the person who has the CLOSEST guess--higher or lower--will be the winner.
2) You are ONLY guessing in regards to the Frontier leg of our trip. It is a one-way ticket from SLC to Philadelphia.
3) I will check the flight times once weekly (starting today) until it is 30 days before our flight. That will be 17 times that I will check the flight time. At the 30-day point we will be receiving phone calls to let us know the updates.* I will create a tally of how many times our flight time changes.
4) The tally already has one mark in it because it has already changed since we purchased it last week. So be sure to guess higher than 1.
5) Delays incurred while we are at the airport on July 15th DO COUNT so factor that into your guess.
6) Here is the flight information we had when we bought the ticket:
Depart SLC on July 15th at 11:25 am. Arrive in Denver at 12:55 pm.
Depart Denver on July 15th at 2:55 pm. Arrive in Philly at 8:25 pm.
The winner will receive a surprise obtained from one of the following cities in honor of our time spent in the airport:
Philadelphia
Cleveland
Seattle
Anchorage
Salt Lake City
Denver
or any other place we might get rerouted to
**we were guaranteed by a ticketing agent that the flight will change and to not bother looking at the flight times until 30 days prior to the trip.
For FHE last night Bart and I played squash-ish racquetball. And today, well, my arm feels like jell-o. I think I was holding the racquet too tight. Regardless, I was unstoppable. Or at least the amount of time I spent looking goofy didn't stop. But since Bart is such a wonderful coach (see post about swimming from 2008) we had a pretty fun time. He even told me I was surprisingly good. I don't know why he was surprised though--I did play t-ball for 2 whole years.
Hey family! We are super excited because we are officially coming to Alaska and Utah this July. Mark your calendars for the following schedule. (Oh man, we are really anal and controlling--can you tell we don't have kids yet?!) You all have permission to be this ridiculous when you come visit us!
July 3 at 11 pm: Bart and Katie arrive in Alaska. Will promptly greet Richelle, Andy, Savannah, and Gabe (assuming they are still awake), hopefully see some moose or elk or something, and then fall asleep because it will be 3 am Philly time and we will have been traveling for 13+ hours.
July 4-8th (all day): Bart, Katie, Richelle, Andy, Savannah, Gabe, and new moose friend will have tons and tons of fun exploring Alaska and seeing the Lays in their element. Katie is particularly excited to go fishing! (Minus the worming her own hook part--do you think Gabe or Savannah will help me out with this?)
July 9th-ish: We will take a red eye around 1 am to arrive in Utah at 8 am on the 9th and hopefully head up to Logan via one of our loving relatives... hint hint...
July 9-12th: We are thrilled to be able to attend Sydney's baptism and hang out in Logan with the Anderson family.
July 12-15th: Next, we will head down to Layton after Syd's confirmation in order to hang out with Katie's parents and Granny.
We are so grateful that we can come visit everyone and know that the trip will be way more fun than this lame post sounds!
Remember the movie Groundhog day? Well the real Punxsutawney is even more quirky, but not nearly as big or nice as that. But if your idea of a good time is getting up at 3:30am to drive an hour from your hotel so you can freeze your butt off on the top of a hill four hours from any real city in the dark with thousands of teenagers college kids and fanatical old people -- well, you should buy a top hat and apply to the Inner Circle! We thought it sounded like a pretty swell time, and we were right. We didn't get pictures with all 32 groundhog statues, but we got most of them.
This one's for Diane. Go STEELERS!!
Finally, here's a video especially for Shawn:
Back in December Bart and I went to a special seminar organized by our stake to train us to be official SEPA VOAD (Southeastern Pennsylvania Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster) volunteers. About one week later, we received badges that allow us special access to emergencies! In conjunction with this, SEPA VOAD through the Red Cross offered to give us more training classes.
So last night Bart and I became two of the newest people to be CPR certified. We spent 4 hours learning about rescue breathing, compressions, and saving people who are choking. We offered to do the mouth-to-mouth on each other, but they insisted that we use the Annie training dummies (see below). It was VERY informative and now we feel empowered to help in an emergency. I'm sure that we would still be terrified, but the extra knowledge will definitely help.
