Lawnmower Fun!

It's not often that you see "lawnmower" and "fun" in the same statement. Nevertheless, for us, they went hand in hand today. You see, when we first moved here in June it became quickly apparent that we needed a lawnmower since we now have a lawn. I set off on a search for the perfect lawnmower in typical Wendie fashion - I scoured the internet, read the reviews and consumer feedback, and searched the stores. I eventually landed on the perfect, top-rated, easy to use, no fuss, no muss mower that was cute to boot! - and who can resist the name - "The Lawn Pup". So, I ordered one. Little did I know, I was among many. . .

Isn't it interesting how much more fun and interesting things become when you have to wait forever to get them. Maybe that's why we like babies . . . anyway . . . I order the Lawn Pup on June 18th. After many "update" e-mails and a log of my mower's trip all the way from the Far East, it finally arrived on August 28th!!! In the meantime, you need to understand that our lawn kept growing . . . and growing . . . and growing. Luckily we only have grass in the backyard or I'm sure the neighborhood police would have been knocking on our door. The UPS man knocked on the door this morning and I think I heard an audible "whoo hoo" from somewhere in the house. We had that mower out of the box, put together and ready to mow within 10 mintues (another great reason to buy this beauty!) Take a look at how cute!! I watched Nate mow the whole lawn. The Pup reminds me of a little yellow VW bug. It mows (very well, so says Nate) and it's cute. You can't beat that. The instruction manual claims this thing has "fine Italian design". I don't know about that, but it's pretty darn "fun". I had to take these pictures so everyone else could enjoy the cuteness, but we also need to chronicle our first lawn-mowing of our new home - a landmark moment worth a blog note. So there you have it - a fun lawnmower moment :)

See how long the grass has gotten in 2 months!

Chloe thought she was guarding the yard from the new interloper. She wouldn't stop barking, as you'll hear in the video.

Uh Oh, I'm It!

Monique tagged me on her blog, so here goes . . . a little about me . . .

Jobs I've held:

1. Sea World hamburger slinger
2. Sea World lemonade slogger
3. Telephone surveyer (for like 2 hours - who can do that?)
4. Griswold Advertising intern (don't you just love "unpaid" internships)
5. Procedure Manual writer for a building company (lots of Tetris during this one)
6. Recruiting agent (this one was for 2 days, I think - what a nightmare!)
7. Vanity Press marketer
8. Kellogg's Marketing Rep (there's no better job than one that gives you all the free cereal you can eat) . . . . nevertheless, I gave up the cereal in hopes of . . .
9. Juice - Ocean Spray National Business Manager (I manage all of drug now - Walgreens, Riteaid, CVS) - it sure is nice when they're building one on every corner - nice growth curve for me!

Places to Go for a Weekend Getaway:

1. The Sanders cabin
2. Anywhere else in the mountains
3. A Road trip to pretty much anywhere as long as you feel like you're "getting away"

Movies I Can Watch Over and Over

1. Pretty Woman
2. Forrest Gump
3. Never Been Kissed

Guilty Pleasures

1. Any kind of bakery cake - with buttercream icing
2. Sugary cereal with fresh milk
3. Sugar of any kind, really
4. Shopping at Ann Taylor loft
5. A spa day
6. Pedicures
7. Too many hours surfing my favorite sites on the web

Places I've Lived (is there enough room here?)

1. Clearwater, FL
2. Key West, FL
3. Kalispell, MT
4. New Albany, IN
5. Louisville, KY (twice)
6. Evansville, IN (twice)
7. Hudson, OH
8. Provo, UT
9. Midvale, UT
10. Chicago, IL
11. Aurora, CO
12. Henderson, NV

What were likely the first things you thought of when you saw your significant other for the first time?

1. Nice smile
2. Very thoughtful
3. Tan
4. When will he call me?

Places I've Been on Vacation

1. Mexico
2. Caribbean
3. Canada
4. Hawaii
5. Florida
6. Israel
7. France and Belgium
8. England
9. Costa Rica (honeymoon!)

Favorite Foods

1. Did I mention cake with icing??
2. Mexican (pico, chips, enchiladas, quesadillas)
3. Comfort food of any kind - mashed potatoes, roast chicken, gravy)
4. Ripe tomatoes with fresh mozzarella and viniagrette
5. Chocolate

If in a "jam" with your spouse, what tactics do you use to get out of the "doghouse"?

I don't think it's been long enough to get in a "jam" yet, but if I did, I'm sure I'd be remarkably charming . . . and making yummy food goes a long way too!

Websites I visit daily:

1. Friends' blogs
2. Lifehacker - Geek to Live
3. Fox News
4. 9 News
5. Meridian Magazine

Best First Kisses Landmarks:

Most of my best kisses have happened very simply at the front door or on the couch (in the case of Nate). Don't you think one of the best parts of a first kiss is the tingle of anticipation? Not that the rest's not good too, but you just can't ever duplicate the anticipation of a first kiss again.

Places I'd Rather Be Right now:

1. On vacation
2. In Colorado, visiting friends
3. At the spa

Who sent this to me: Monique

Buddies to Survey:
All my blogging buddies have already done this. My choices will have to be postponed until I can convince a few others to start the blogging thing.

House Pics

OK - we haven't exactly been quick in our endeavour to get our house cleaned up, but this weekend, we made some progress. At least most of the living room and family room is totally liveable. We still need decorations (curtains, plants, accessories, etc.) but we're getting much closer. Here are a couple of pics of our living room. That's the family room in the background. Nate got our surround-sound hung up this weekend too, so another thing off the list!

We picked this house because we loved the windows and the open ceiling.

If you look closely, you'll see Chloe out in the family room (along with a few of her toys). You might also notice those pieces of paper on the floor. Those are the canvases Nate started. These are just on paper, but they are so cool. Pictures don't do them justice. These happen to be patterns from some new scrapbook paper I bought. I'd like to print them on canvas and do a gallery wrap (i.e 2-inch depth).

Speaking of printing, Nate's finally got the large format printer up and running, so if you ever need a picture on canvas, let us know. We'd love to do it. For now, we're going to begin dabbling in e-bay sales. Custom canvases are getting very popular.

So that's the house for now. As we get more accomplished (I'm working on curtains now), I'll post pictures. I can't wait until we live in some kind of peace with no boxes to unpack :)

A Wedding Picture Peek

OK - so I know a bunch of you have been begging (yes, begging) for wedding pictures and the truth is that I really don't have any yet. We were slow to pick our favorites, the photographer's on maternity leave, blah, blah, blah. We hope to get our real pics sometime in Sept or Oct. In the meantime, I've got a little peek under the tent - my bridal video. This was taken at Temple Square about a month before the wedding so it's not technically wedding day photos, but it will give you the idea. The only thing missing is Nate (I know that's a big "missing") and my hair was bigger on the real day. Enjoy for now. More to come later. . .

Key West Adventure

OK - so one of the catch-ups I have to do is our most recent vacation to Key West with the whole Williams clan. It's the first time all of the daughters and their husbands have been there all together. The main event of the week is always the lobster hunt (Buggin', as they call it) on Wednesday and Thursday. We get up at the crack of dawn so that we can be out on the water and on our "spot" by sunrise. Then it's a crazy amount of diving for the boys, while the girls stay aboard to collect the catch and make sure it's of legal size. You can see here that the boys did just fine - even the newbies (of which Nate was one). In fact, Nate got two lobsters that day, and boy, did we hear about it.


He was so proud! Diving is actually much harder than you would think, so he really did have something to smile about it. He kept checking the live-well to see "his" lobsters. Some found it so funny that they decided to mark his lobsters with those plastic tie-wraps so he could keep track. They're in the big picture above.


After the two days of lobstering, it's more water time for the boys. The girls enjoyed lounging at the pool :) Nate was successful once again -

OK - not really. This is actually my uncle's catch - Nate's catches were too small to keep, but doesn't he look good with this one?

The cap of the week was the ever famous "Duval Crawl" - a trip down Duval Street to see all the sights - and believe me, there are sights to be seen! Key West is a place all its own. And no, we didn't visit the psychic in this pic. By the way, that's my preggo sister, Julie, on the left.


And our trip would not be complete without the most famous picture of all. We actually had to wait in line for 10 minutes!

A New Beginning

OK - so 4 months and many well-intentioned attempts later, I'm back to blog. So much has happened over the last few months - we've hardly had the time to keep up. Of course there was the wedding (on April 20th), then the honeymoon to Costa Rica, then packing up all of our worldly belongings in early June (in 2, yes 2!, giant Uhaul trucks), which we then drove ourselves the 14 hours to lovely Las Vegas. Then there was all the unloading, unpacking, decorating, and general moving nightmare - all while maintaining a job and starting as a new couple together. Talk about pressure! But we're finally here and settled. Well, kind of settled. Neither of us has yet mustered the energy or desire to unload all the myriad of boxes strewn through the house. But, we're making inroads. Hopefully by Christmas we will have pictures on the wall and all of our clothes hung in the closet. Ugh!

Through all of this, we've actually had a great time. Most things have gone very smoothly and we're really liking Las Vegas. We're blessed. As for today, Nate is still looking for a job here in Vegas (the job search process in Vegas is a post within itself - crazy.) while I'm pressing forward with Ocean Spray. We know he'll find something worthy of his talent soon. In the meantime, he is making me some awesome canvases for the house. I'll have to post a few pics of those. We're beginning to get to know our church congregation (aka ward) here. It's huge! I think we're topping 700 people now and I swear it grows by 4-5 new families per week. We're meeting with the bishopric tomorrow evening. We hope to get involved soon and maybe even get a calling.

As an FYI for all those members out there, they're doing this really cool test market thing here in Vegas. The church is running a ton of commercials in primetime, on the radio, on major billboards, etc. spreading the message of "Truth Restored". The ads are all super cool and not so much like the tear-jerking older style of church commercials - more black and white and very thought-provoking. If you get a moment, please check out the new mormon.org and look for these ads there. If the program works here (and we've heard some amazing stories so far), you may be seeing this program come to a city near you. What a cool thing to see our message in the mainstream. It's getting so many people to think, and that's just what we want.

I need to get caught up on pictures soon. For all of you who are waiting for wedding pics, they are coming. We were super slow in picking our pics and then our photographer went on maternity leave, so you'll have to wait a few more weeks.

More to come . . .