Happy 1st day of school!

Today, Hayley is back in school! I got up early with her so I could go and see her new room. She's been working so hard on it--moving desks and furniture, buying school supplies, putting up posters, organizing curriculum, assigning recess duty, and all sorts of craziness. With all the hard work, I think her room looks great and the year will go great for her!

Happy 1st day of school, Hayley!!! Hope it's a great one. You are a great teacher and wonderful with kids. I'm certain that those kids are in good hands! I hope you have the best day ever! I can't wait to see you tonight and hear how the 1st day went!

Love you. Here's hoping for another great school year!

Blog post 135

I kinda wanted to do something for my 100th blog post--because, you know, then I'd be syndicated--but it came and went without me noticing. My actual 100th post is still a good one... But Here's what I've learned about blogging so far. I don't promise to know anything, but here's some stuff I've learned in no particular order.

1. Don't post about whitening strips. No one will comment. Except your lovely wife.
   
2. If you DO want comments, post about grammar or word use or something. People eat that up and have lots to say about it.
3. Another way to get lots of comments is to get married. People get more excited about that than even the grammar/word use posts.
   
4. If you want people to find your blog via searches, use popular quotes from TV shows as the title of your post. Or ways to win at laser tag. (seriously. according to google analyitics, these are my two most popular landing pages from people searching the interwebs. crazy, I know!)
   
5. Use links in your blog posts. People dig that. Especially if the link is to an image that isn't actually in the post. And use those image links in an ironic way. It's funny.
6. Post pictures. You don't have to in every post, but it will make it so people come back to your blog. (I am sort of fudging this rule in this very post, I realize.)
7. Almost everyone I know (myself included) does an initial post when they start their blog about how they don't know what to do when writing a blog. The truth is, it doesn't really matter what you do. It's your own place to do whatever you want.
8. If you go private, I may not read your blog as much, and subsequently may not comment as much. (I'm not great at commenting all the time anyway...) I still love you just the same, it's just that your blog is not as accessible to me (through google reader) as it once was.
   

There you have it... some... rules... or whatever. Like I said, I may not be the fount of knowledge here. But my blog still functions, so yay for me.

Here's to another 135 posts! Thanks for reading!

When applying whitening strips for the first time

my first and second question are as follows:

"How do you turn this on? Like, how do you turn this on?" ...yes, all in one breath... Sorry, I've never used whitening strips before! I was so confused, I guess my brain wanted there to be an on switch or something.

In other news, Hayley and I went to the Death Cab for Cutie concert. It was pretty awesome. Read about it on Hayley's blog here and here.

my celebrity look-a-like

Me and Seth Rogen. What do you think?

Maybe? Or you can do a google image search for him and see if there are better pics of him that look like me. Hey, Seth--since you're my long lost twin and all, can I have a million bucks? You seem to be doing well for yourself. :) But if you don't want to, I guess I'll understand.

More whiteboard fun at work

So it's the week before the long weekend. It makes it a little hard to focus at work. If you recall, I had a little fun on Mike's whiteboard last week. Well, this week, I drew a little angry face on Dan's whiteboard. He was upset about something (I don't even remember what). And eventually, I changed it from an all blue angry face, to red eyes and brown angry eyebrows. I eventually gave it a tie, too.

This morning I came in and the label that made it clear that the angry face was Dan was replaced by my own name. And a few additions to make the viewer certain it was me. It was so funny, I had to take a picture.


Ok, back to work... again... for now.

baby Pyper!!

Ok, so this post is named after Pyper, but there isn't a picture of her to be found on this post... Oh well.

Last weekend, we got to go see baby Pyper! She is a cutie. I don't have the pictures of her, but you can see them on Hayley's post.

We decided to head down Saturday morning, and got to take Rylie and Taylor with us. They stayed with their cousins an extra day and we picked up Rylie at Jared and Liz's and met Darren with Shelby and Sarah to pick up Taylor in Lehi. Those kids travel pretty well. You could tell they missed each other. Taylor went right for Rylie to give her a hug as soon as she got out of the car, and then they talked about all the things they did during the week. And then they napped a little in the car through the canyon. They're sweet girls.

When we got to Wellington, we had a great afternoon with the girls. Camryn showed me all the lights in the basement and made me turn them all on before playing in the kitchen, getting me a plate of eggs, and countless cups of drink. (she called it drink, not tea. I thought it was pretty cute.)

Also in the basement, we noticed a HUGE black widow spider. I took a couple pictures with my phone before Garth went outside and killed it as we watched in the basement. It was freaky.

Make sure you click on the pictures to see how huge she is!

I got to play a lot with Tori's girls. They LOVE the trampoline! Camryn loved it. I got a little video of her jumping. She even put her hands up high!

Thanks again, Tori, for letting us crash at your house all afternoon! Pyper is adorable, just like the rest of your girls!

and the thing is, we're busy...

So work has really picked up lately. We have tons to do and not a whole lot of time to dilly dally... but that doesn't mean we don't make time for an occasional fit of non-work. Case in point: Mike G's white board.


Now, Mike's white board has been used for non-work-related items in the past. But today is a special day. Today we found out that two employees have been confirmed as carriers/recipients of the swine flu. So of course, when Mikey tells me he's suddenly feeling cold, I automatically respond, "YOU'VE GOT SWINE FLU!!!" and tell him he's gotta get outta the office, pronto. The joke continues on, allowing ME to leave work as well, as long as this area of the office is quarantined.

If you didn't see Mike's whiteboard clearly, here's a little better shot.

Luckily for me, Andy had already put the sweet purple car with the "G" hood ornament on Mike's white board before I got there to quarantine the place. Oh, and earlier today, I labeled the car "The Veganmobile" because Mike is, unfortunately, a practicing vegan.


But he's not preachy about it. He doesn't want to blow up mink factories or anything. He doesn't tell me that I'm eating his friends when I have a burger. (If he did, I'd tell him his friends are quite delicious.) Doesn't even ask me to go to meetings either... And with the Veganmobile on the white board, it looks like the Vegan superheroes of the world are trying to save us all from swine flu. but I digress...

Because some people are genuinely worried about swine flu (and rightly so), but may not have the same sort of morbid sense of humor that I do, I added an asterisk to the "Quarantine" part of the sign. Here's the footnote.


Because you can never be too careful. Ok, back to work.

And the best show on TV is...

30 Rock.


I. Love. This. Show. Wanna know why? here, try these on for size:

- "What the Frak?!"
- "Blurg!"
- "I want to go to there..."
- "What the WHAT?!"
- "I'm gonna have to talk to some food about this."
- Liz: "Are you wearing a tux?" Jack: "It's after six, Lemon. What am I, a farmer?"
- "Suck it!"
- "That place can eat my poo!"
- "I'm lizzing! I'm lizzing!"

Ok, if you don't watch the show, you may not really think most of the things above are funny... but the thing I like about this show is that it isn't just the overall story that's funny, there are funny bits throughout the whole thing. And not cheesy, Full House type funny, but actual smart-funny jokes throughout an entire episode (not that "... eat my poo" is a super smart joke, but those take a little longer to explain... and they happen so quick!). And right after they make the joke, the plot just moves on. I laugh almost constantly while watching this show. It may be a little shocking to some of you to hear it, but 30 Rock has totally taken over as my favorite show, even over LOST. I know, it sounds nuts, but I can't help it. It's so good! So get on the band wagon and go watch it. If you have a sense of humor, you won't be disapointed.

In other news, Tori had her baby! She's a cutie and I can't wait to see her. Also, I'm aware I haven't posted with pictures in a while, and this post may be a sorry excuse for my lack of pictures. If you need to see a few pictures, check out Hayley's blog. She's been posting quite a few lately! And the new Transformers movie opens next weekend! I'm so frakin' excited!

ten years...

Ten years ago--I think this month, maybe May--I graduated from high school. Pretty crazy, thinking about what has happened in that time, and what I thought my life would be like when I was a recent high school graduate. It got me thinking so much about it, that I went back and read my old journal and found a couple entries that illustrate my thoughts at the time. This first one is from December.

December 3, 1998
...I think about going on a mission and about how much I don't know and I don't want to be so unprepared that I can't teach anyone. Man, a mission used to be so far off. But now I'm 18 and have already voted! Before you know it I'll be 80!I'm real worried about my future. I don't know what I want to major in in college yet. I just know that I want go. It's a little scary, but I just think I'll do like a semester of generals and then go on a mission and pray about it and stuff and see what happens. I wish I knew everything I was meant to do down here, but not knowing is part of the point, right? I kinda want to get my handwriting analyzed. I don't know what made me think of that. Well, bye.

Guess my ADD from high school has still stayed with me. And no, I never actually got my handwriting analyzed... Here's a few of my thoughts the summer after I graduated.

June 23, 1999
Well, school's out and I'm finally graduated! Wait... I graduated. I wanted to graduate? I'm going to college? How confusing life is. Well, I'm going to college at SUU and I'll be rooming with Matt Dearing, Kyle Jenson, and Trent Olsen. Psycho, huh. I still don't know what to major in. Well, high school is over. I think moving out will be good for me....

To be completely honest, I was surprised at how much stuff I wrote about the gospel and my feelings about God and the Church--there was a whole lot more from my journal I didn't post here.

I'm glad I read that journal. I go back and think about how nervous I was to go on a mission, and even with that on the near horizon, everything seemed pretty carefree. I have a journal entry that says one of my paychecks was $280, and how awesome I thought that was. Holy. Crap. I can remember how awesome I thought I was in high school. I remember having no idea what I would do in college, but not really caring too much, because I was living it up--especially that first year. But I'm glad it all happened. As it turns out, I had a pretty good head on my shoulders then. While I thought $280 bucks for 2 weeks of work was pretty great, and didn't care to declare a major, I still kept the important things in mind.

Things have really changed, and I have really changed and grown into who I am now. Ten years doesn't really seem like a lot of time, but man, thinking about it all has kinda put it in perspective. I'm so blessed to be where I am now. I'm so happy I found Hayley! She is the main reason for my happiness. I am glad to be where I am today and so blessed to be on the journey of life with Hayley. Here's to another 10 years!

What's up?

Mostly I just wanted to change the post that shows up at the top of my blog to be something different than an announcement that I pooped in a bucket... great, now I just mentioned it again...

So how are you, faithful reader (haha! do I have many of those?) doing? I'm ok. I have no tubes in me, I'm done with antibiotics, and just need to keep my wounds clean. Other than that, pretty busy these days. But managing it ok. I'm VERY glad to have a weekend and get to spend it with Hayley! How's your weekend going?