Saturday = Favorite Day

Saturdays are by far my favorite day of the week. It's a whole day for me to do whatever I want. I'm not a big fan of sleeping in anymore, so I try and get started right away. Yesterday was no exception. I woke up and went to my usual Saturday morning kick boxing class. Love it! It was even better because there was a new round (which means new choreography and new music)! The new rounds are always my new favorite round. Then I headed home and made some zucchini cookies. When I lived with Megan, she was always sure to keep our counter/freezer stocked with them and ever since I've moved out, I have only been able to sneak them here and there when I remember and I'm at house, which is not even close to enough. They are pretty healthy (for cookies) - which is definitely a perk. I mean who puts zucchinis in their cookies? If you want the recipe and other great healthy ones click here to see Megan's Muncher Cruncher blog.

Following the cookies I went and met up with Megan and Rox to see a matinee, Dear John. I had mixed feelings about, but over all I think I really liked it. After the movie I went to meet up with these amazing girls
for Hilary's birthday. We went to Texas Roadhouse, standard for the 5 of us for birthdays. It's always so good to see all of them - we don't get to near enough! I am pretty sure we could just stay and talk the whole night away (or a few of them). To finish out the night, I headed back down to Provo to meet Megan, Roxanne and Krissy at Farr's Frozen Yogurt. I had been thinking of that place all week, seriously. They quite possibly have the best cookies and cream frozen yogurt I've ever tasted. We are pretty on top of all the newest frozen yogurt places around, since for some reason Provo/Orem doesn't think they will ever get enough of them. But I'm not complaining. Then Megan and I began going through all our old pictures from old trips and laughed for a few hours. Not much is better than one of those nights. (Thanks for being my friend during those rough times midge) AND my sister Holly got engaged! I am so so excited for her! He is such a great guy and they are adorable together. What more could you ask of a Saturday?

I could bake ALLLL day

I really could. I love it. I don't know if it's because I love eating the pre-made cake batter, brownie batter, cookie dough...etc, and because for some reason I don't think the calories count if I am just test tasting...just a little bit here and there OR if I love the taste of warm treats straight out of the oven, nevertheless, I LOVE IT. I moved in with my sister a couple months ago and she went and bought 10 bags of chocolate chip because she figured I would be baking up a storm. Every time I ask my nephew Cohen what he wants to do, he says "Let's make popcorn and cookies!" He knows me well. I have tried to slow down on the treats as of late because, well, it was starting to get a little out of control. But this week I hadn't made anything yet, and my bananas were beginning to rot, so I decided chocolate chip banana bread would be the perfect remedy. One tiny problem I have when reading recipes is my eyes somehow refuse to read recipes in a straight line. I think they deliberately try to block words out just to see how I react each time. I haven't been cooking long enough to realize that what I read shouldn't have been there, or that would have been way too much salt to add to a certain recipe, or of course there should have been much more flour in that... I just do what the recipe tells me or what my eyes think it tells me. No questions asks. So this time, I purposely added triple the salt, (didn't think a thing about it, naturally) - even sprinkled it all the way across the bowl (not just one mound in one place) so that it would mix evenly. Then I got to the next step which was baking soda...that's when I noticed. I almost started crying right there, but I told Jeremy what happened and he said it would probably be just fine and to continue with the recipe. Very skeptical, I did. Somehow it still turned out great! The recipe I got was from thegirlwhoateeverything.blogspot.com, a site that I love and want to make everything she has made! You should check it out.
Here is what the final product looked like... is it weird that I think its kinda cute with the chocolate chips on top instead of inside? Maybe its just the baby loaves?

Much needed vacation

For a few weeks Lori and I had been trying to figure out a time for me to come down and spend the weekend. We began talking about valentines weekend and realized that it was a 3 day weekend and I could probably make it work. I am pretty sure I live for vacations and road trips - no matter what the length. So naturally I asked the best road tripper I know of, Megan, and she was immediately on board. So Friday at noon we set out for our 10 hour road trip (8 for me, 10 for Megan). We had a few complications on the way there...The tire pressure light kept turned on, so we did the responsible thing and pulled over 2 different times to make sure our tires weren't flat. We continued on our way and I guess we got a little distracted because we somehow missed our exit towards highway 89. OOPS! We made it to Cedar City, and finally pulled off realizing we had never gone that far to get to Kanab before. We pulled over and asked for directions to see if there was an easy way from there that we didn't have to turn around and go how ever far back it was to our correct turn off. So we took the 16 year old Cheveron workers advice, and continued from Cedar City.. Bad idea? maybe, but 40 minutes up a windy mountain road, it was too late to turn back. The snow was piled so high that we couldn't see any signs as to how far we were to a city, or if we were even going in the right direction. I just kept telling myself we were headed in the general eastern direction so we should be able to meet up with the 89 at some point right? My silent prayers were answered and we did! yay! Still not sure how far back we were set but at least we got to see some really pretty views from the top of the mountain! So we made it to AZ safely with no other complications. On Saturday Lori, Kingston, Lily and I headed up to the Phoenix Zoo and it was so much fun! The weather couldn't have been better. Seriously perfect for Arizona and being outside walking around all day.
This is the most adorable picture of Lily.

Kingston and me


Kingston wanted a ride in the jeep. he is the cutest little guy you will ever meet. I learned very quickly that I was not to put him into his car seat or take him out... other than that we were best buddies.
Lori and Lily with the elephants.Lori and Kingston with the rhinoceros - who finally decided to move.

This cute little chimp was adorable! He had a big audience and I guess he got a little shy and ran and grabbed his sheet - or blanket and covered his face.

Lori and me. love her.

After the zoo we went and met up with my mom for some dinner and shopping. We got to stay the night up there so we turned in early to get the kiddies to bed. We continued the next day with more shopping and sushi in the park. Another beautiful day. Eventually Lori dropped me off to Megan and I stayed at Megan's parents house in Gilbert that night. We woke up got pedicures, went to lunch with her mom, sister and niece and then headed on our way!

It couldn't have been a better weekend to get me back up and rejuvenated. I need those every couple of months.

I've changed.

Growing up I was a very picky eater. I don't think I ever tried anything if it wasn't from the freezer or a nicely packaged bright box from the pantry, or the nearest drive through I could find. I've changed. If you would have asked me a year ago if you could eat some of my cookie dough mid baking, I probably would have said yes, but I definitely wasn't happy about it, nor did I ever even attempt to taste my own cookies before I baked them. And now I can't keep my own hands out of the bowl. I never realized the goodness I was missing out on! Unfortunately this wasn't the only thing I have been missing out on. Here's a list of foods that I have learned to try/love in the past year:

Avacado
Guacamole
Bananas (i'm still working on the loving part)
Sushi
Asparagus
Green Peppers
Cucumbers
Protein bars
Any type of fruit salad
Blackberries
Grapefruit
Pears
Beans (Black and refried)
Tomato bisque soup
Sweet Potatoes
Squash
Salt (okay I know what you're thinking, but I NEVER put it on anything unless it was homemade popcorn and I never realized what it did to things until I put it in some soup a couple weeks ago and it made it taste so much better!)

So I'm growing up! There aren't many things I won't try anymore and it has really made a world of difference...

**Did you notice that I tried not to mention the long blogging vacation that I was on for a while...? Let's just leave that in the past and go forward from here :)

Yep. I'm back.

Hi Guys. Glad to be back in the blogging world. More posts to come :)

the best kind of test

You know what the best kinds of tests are? The kind where your professor gives them to you before you actually have to take them so that you can know all the answers when you go take it. Its kind of amazing. I have the same teacher for 2 classes and he is foreign which is very common at UVU... so I can't completely understand what he is talking about all the time. But I go to class and I write word for word all of his power points down just to stay awake, but mainly I go to class to sign the roll. This is the style for both of his classes that he teaches. It's realy hard to pay attention and I was even more scared thinking about what his tests were going to be like because I wasn't picking up one bit of anything he was throwing out. Until he emailed us the "review" which was actually a copy of the test. When I got to go through that I actually learned a lot about the topic and it turns out that he does actually know what he is talking about. I wish all my teachers had tests like this.

Changes

Why is it that the times that you have all the time in the world to do something and you have a million things that you should be doing, you don't want to do ANYTHING. I really don't get the way my mind works. I think I need to train it to want to do things all the time even if I am so bored all I want to do is sit here. I know, I know its been forever since my last post...really embarrassing. But the more I thought about how much need to do a post, the more I didn't want to and more things I found to do instead of it. Such as sleeping, watching the TV show that I had missed because I now work at night so I can never see them the night the air, thinking about doing my homework or just avoid the thought of it, you know the really productive things. But here I am on a Friday night - the first Friday night of my new working nights career. I have always been a 9-5er so this is going to take some getting used to. But the nice thing is that its usually pretty slow so I have time to do things like blog :) Lots of new things have happened these past few months such as starting school again, getting a new job, moving into a bedroom where I have a room-roommate, not being able to go to my gym classes at night and just getting used to the new schedule. I am one who usually really likes change, but I'm not sure how I feel about so many things happening all at once...

So in the past about 4 times a year I lose my voice. Its so weird and I usually don't feel too sick other than just not being able to talk. Since I got my tonsils out I was sure that I wouldn't get sick anymore, and I was positive I wouldn't lose my voice. I was wrong. Yesterday I woke up to a pretty scratchy throat and I had a very annoying voice, but as the day went on, it got better and better. This morning when I woke up, I couldn't even talk at all. Just a very quiet whisper. I don't get it. It doesn't help at all that for my job at Nuskin I am the technical support person so I talk on the phone the whole time. I wasn't sure how this was going to work out, but I had to go to work! I couldn't just not go to work because I felt fine and I have got to pay rent somehow! So I came in anyway and once people heard me talk they were like umm... you shouldn't be here. They were probably right, but I didn't care.. where there is a will there is a way. So here I am 5 hours into my shift and not one person has even mentioned the sound of my scratchy voice. I talk a little bit deeper but it seems to be working!

But now I want to go home...