Pumpkins!!

One of the things I love about the holiday season are traditions. One of my favorites for Halloween is that my family and I get together at my mom's house to carve pumpkins. This year I decided to put together a collage of us. The first one shows each of us hard at work on our pumpkins. My mom decided to get a little creative and started adding feathers and sequins to hers. It actually turned out to be pretty cute.
These are a few of the good pumpkins that turned out. Pau's is a scarecrow or something. JJ and Halle made a cute little monster. Hunter's pumpkin is a freaky face. Wish I got better details on that one.

Hunter hard at work. He actually made two when I didn't even complete mine.
Halle only wanted to work for a few minutes. She lost interest and wanted to
go play with grandma's toys.
Now these are my kind of pumpkins. I tend to lose patience and didn't want to take time to carve pumpkins. I love doing it I just lose interest very easily. So I decided to make glitter pumpkins. The good thing is these will also last during fall. I saw this on Good Things Utah at the beginning of the month. I'm not crafty, but these looked easy enough to do. I love how they turned out and am excited to not only use them for Halloween but I can use them through Fall and now have Thanksgiving decorations.

Halloween Decorations

This is my 3rd attempt on this post. Let's see if I can finally get it right. :)

Next to Christmas, Halloween is Paul's favorite holiday. This year I decided to take him shopping and let him pick out our decorations. The only say I wanted was what we did with our balcony since I came up with what I think is a fun idea. These are pictures of how our apartment has turned out and there will be more to come once we are done.

We decided to use the blood and bloody hand prints on our bedroom window.

For the balcony we got web and spiders to weave through. We also bought some ghosts and a bat to hang. It looks pretty awesome when the light is on.

Our living room has ghosts looking out on you. Its kinda creepy cuz if you are in the apt. they are also looking in on you. Cool though.

We also have monsters hanging out in our 2nd bedroom. As you come up the stairs to our apt. and feel something looking at you... thats whats waiting.

The thing that has gotten me most is that we have a watchman or something that is 6 ft tall and its right next to our door. As you come in its right there. It has creeped me out a few times.

We also have something (obviously I have no idea what it is) that reminds me of Moth Man Prophesies that we have hanging over our couch right now. Its fun too.

I'm not really much of a Halloween person. I never really got into it, but I love the activities and parties that go on in October. I also like Halloween because it is the start to a holiday season. I have to admit though that getting into decorating has been fun and is making me look more forward to Halloween. I hope everyone has a great holiday!

Spring Pictures

I know they are a few months late, but these are some of the pictures that Paul and I had done back in May.

Happy Fall

I love this time of year and living in Utah. As much as I hate winter, i'm glad to live here where we have all the seasons and can enjoy watching it change to fall. It is so beautiful here with the mountains and the trees changing colors. It makes me excited for the holidays, not matter how much I don't like the cold. I can still appreciate it though. I never really got too much into Halloween but it just happens to be Paul's favorite. One thing I do love about it almost being time for Halloween is that it means the holidays are right around the corner. I also love football season. As weird as this sounds I also like the smell of fall. Its hard to describe but its totally there. I guess with the holiday season coming up i've been thinking more about what im grateful for and just appreciating more in life. I do try to have a positive attitude (even with my last post being complaints). I also love that fact that we have most of our family here in Utah. It will be hard when we go out of state for school and stuff but I know it will be worth it. One thing I've been thinking about today is how grateful I am to have the time on the weekends to spend with my husband. Our schedules are so chaotic right now that I really appreciate every second I have with him. Today was a good day for us and I'm glad to have spent a day where I wasn't stressed, could take time to relax, and to just be with Paul. We were able to get up and go to the temple this morning. I love the feeling of peace that you feel there and hopefully can carry with you through the rest of the day. We also went and got Halloween decorations and are looking forward to take time to decorate our apartment in the next few days. Tonight we were able to spend time with the Gardiner side of the family. Its Paul's sisters birthday and we had dinner and watched a movie over there. It was fun being able to spend time with them. They are so much fun to be around. It's also my nieces birthday in a couple of days so we did a party for her last night. I guess its just a weekend full of birthdays. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARY AND HALLE! We love you guys. Happy Fall!

Complaint Department

WARNING: Homework Day = Bad Day

I have so many thoughts going through my head right now that its very overwhelming. I thought maybe if I put them into a post I will feel better just to have them out of my head.
I have been a little overwhelmed with the whole school and working full time thing. Its not so bad its just a lot of busy work and I feel like I don't ever have time. So today, I decided to take a day off from work and dedicate this day all to homework. The course i'm in right now has been the busiest for me. Not only does it include the courseware (even that is set up differently), I have my text and have exercises at the end of each chapter. Each unit had at least 8 chapters in it. I only have a month to finish the course which pretty much evens out for me to do a unit a week. Each courseware chapter has 9 or more lessons in each chapter/unit. The text is a step by step version for my course. Its easy enough just busy work. Then of course I have my labs and unit test once a week. I guess i'm just not that use to it, since its been a few years. I feel like I shouldn't complain about it, but I just get overwhelmed so easy and that doesn't really help. Anyways I woke up early this morning and started my school work. By 2:00 I still wasn't nearly close to finishing. Since I haven't done anything but school work I decided to get ready for the day and take a much needed break. I had a few earrands to do and took off for that. It was nice to have a break, but now my next complaint comes in...
I hate stupid people. Today has just not been my day. I go to the store and there is construction everywhere! It doesn't matter what main road you take, the construction is horrible!
So I get to Jordan Landing and go into one of my favorite stores that I just happen to have a gift card to. I was so frustrated with everything that I guess I wasn't in the mood to shop. I just couldn't find anything. Oh well, At least I'll have credit when I find something there later on. I go pay my card at Target and the guy that was helping me had no idea what he was doing. He tried three times to use my card and make a payment and just didn't get it. He finally called a supervisor who did it the first try. I was annoyed but not complaining. The supervisor was very nice and gave me some apology money. I now have store credit there. She apologized and said it shouldn't have taken as long. I was happy about that. It was nice. I also went to a store to buy new scrubs. I got there and there were three kids ranging from 5-9 talking and fighting non stop. Then they started playing leap frog in the middle of the store. Their mom did absolutely nothing about it. I can understand when the kids are little but you should at least acknowledge it and try to solve the issue. The mother did absoulutely nothing. And to make it worse she was looking in the same area I was so they were all close together in a tight area. UGHHH!! My last errand included taking ibuprofen to Paul at work. He had dentist work done today. Not that good of a day either. I decided to be nice and take him some dinner too. I got to the drive through of Del Taco and nobody was taking my order. I got very upset and just drove up to the window since a line was forming behind me. They also screwed up the order. At that point I was just trying to take everything in stride. I feel like if I wrote it down that I would feel better. I kinda do. I think to relax and calm I'll give myself a time to stop homework for the night and to take a nice hot bubble bath and read a great book. Thats sounds way nice right now. I guess all I can say is that I hope tomorrow is a better day. At least it will be a new start.

Sweet Moments

This past little while has been a little hard for me. Paul and I have been married for 4 1/2 years and we still have the same schedule, where our schedules are completely opposite. It gets hard a lot of the time. Especially since i've gone back to school. It seems like the only time I get with him is Saturdays and even with that our lives are busy. Anyways I knew it would be like that for a while and I think i've done pretty good without complaining. I just want to say though how much I love Paul and I'm lucky to have a thoughtful guy. He is still romantic even when I tease him thats he's lost his romantic side. It definitley becomes different when you are married.
Last night we had a plan to where Paul would pick up dinner and I would stay up for him when he got off work. He called to tell me he had something to finish up and that he would be home soon. What was supposed to be not a huge thing turned out to take longer. He called me about an hour later and apologized then said he was running later and didn't know when he would be home. He didn't want me to wait up for him so he came up with the idea to tuck me in over the phone. I honestly can't remember a night (except for when I went on a girl's vacation) that he wasn't there to tuck me in. Anyways it was really sweet. We said our prayer together over the phone then sat and talked for a few min. It was pretty much what we do everynight without the cuddling. I like that best, but at least he was there with me when I went to bed. Sounds cheesy but I totally loved it. Thanks for a good idea Paul. Love you.