My Surprise Trip to WA.

This last week I got to make a quick surprise trip to Washington.

Tuesday was my mom's birthday so we kept it a secret and surprised her for a birthday present! It was a lot of fun. The little girls( -zoe & sam-), who aren't so little anymore, didn't know either so they got to be surprised also!

Thursday Taylor had graduation. That was also fun, but long. I don't remember my graduation being that long, but, oh well. Jaimie and I had some very interesting conversations while they called all the graduates names off.

Friday I came home.

Awesome trip. Great to see the fam, wish it could have been longer & wish Jon could have come!!

Here are some pics:

The Red Wall Problem Solved?

Okay so I have been struggling with what to do on my Red wall. It is very big, and because it's Red it just makes everything i put on it look itty-bitty. Well I finally found a mirror a month or two ago at my ultimate FAVE place, Real Deals, for $68 bucks!! I thought that was pretty good considering how large it is. -I was at a furniture store today and found something very similar to my mirror and it costed $259 so i feel like i got a "real deal" (haha, get it?--okay not funny, i know).- Anyways, I needed something to go on either side of the mirror and so I have been looking around.

Last week I found these triangular flower canister-ish things at another store for $7 and then the wheat stuff for $3! They look pretty good-ish, I think? So now I am done...hopefully.

(Try to ignore my flashes reflection in the mirror-also the lighting is really bad. And i just noticed the couch is off-center)

Dogs and Water

Last week we took the dogs out to Massacre Rocks National Park. They have a couple little trails and then, of course, the river. The dogs have never been swiming before so we tried to get them out there to try it. They were'nt that excited about it, but trigger went in because he loves me and he does whatever i want him to do whether he wants too or not. You can tell he hates it, he keeps trying to sit down in the water. Anyways, it was fun to get out and do something.

Oh we also saw a snake as we were leaving. It was the biggest snake i've seen in the "wild" (is that how you'd say it?), but i'm pretty sure it wasn't a rattler which is good.

***On a seperate note, i have just finished New Moon the second book in the Twilight series! It was soo good!

P.S. Apparently my videos are not uploading on my blog, so i will try and upload them to youtube. If you scroll to the very bottom of the blog there are some of my videos you can see.

Thor & Mal go to Doggie Obedience School

This Thor and I, and we just started Doggie Obedience Classes! Whohoo! (Not that Thor is unmanagable or anything {he's only a shy 150+ lbs} , but he could be better-me as well.) Here is our story from day 1:

I had been stressing over this class all day! Seriously, i was making myself sick over this; what if he drug me around the room (he weighs a good -at least- 30lbs more than me), what if snapped at another dog, what if he snapped at a trainer, etc... I even had to leave work early so that i could calm down before we left for class. Then we went to class. Things went pretty un-eventful (thank goodness) while all the dogs showed up and got ready for class.

The trainers all introduced themselves and gave an intro of the class and what kinds of things to expect, and what we'd learn. Then we jumped into the exercises.

Here is what our first excercise was: Physically lay your dog down on the ground and hold him there no matter how much he fights it, he can not get up until he is commanded. If that means you have to wrestle him to the floor and hold him there until he calms down, that's what you have to do.

I silently laughed inside. Hahaha. I think everyone else in the class probably was laughing at me too! I had to be the smallest person there, and I, by far, had the biggest dog in the class. There is no way that i could physically lay Thor on the ground and hold him, especially with 20 people and 20 dogs all around. So i just told Thor to lay down and i tried to hold his leash down so that he couldn't get back up. To coax him to keep laying i had to keep scratching his belly --which they had said not to do because it was cheating--and of course he couldn't be discreet about it, he was totally sprawled out all over the place.

Anyways, i know i'm blabbing on and on, but over all it was a good night. Thor didn't instigate any fights (although he did snap at a couple dogs who sniffed his behind-and rightfully so, i would have done the same. Plus it didn't help that the owners weren't paying attention to their dogs--that made me kind of mad) , he didn't snap at the trainers, and i actually had better control of Thor than some of the guys with smaller dogs! I was so proud of myself, and Thor.

The End.

Colour Revolt

So about 2 1/2 3 years ago I went to a "Brand New" show in SLC with a buddy of mine at In the Venue. Its a bit of a whole in the wall kinda place but it always seemed to house some good groups. Anyways, one of the opening bands really kinda stuck on me. And honestly, most of the opening bands at small shows tend to suck. Loud, poor sound, no audible lyrics etc. So got home, downloaded their EP, just 5 songs, and got hooked and downloaded their first full length tonight called Plunder, Beg and Curse. If you like a mellow singer, catchy lyrics, and something different than whats on the top 40 radio, check it out on i-tunes or probably even purevolume.com.

Another group worth checking out is out of the Mile High city itself, Flobots. Its political, white rap, violin, brass, percussion, rock and overall just not like anything I've really ever listened to before. Their most famous one that you might catch is called Handlebars. Again, you can find these guys and gals on i-tunes (a registered trade mark of Apple ha ha). They also spell flobots with a "w" too for their earlier stuff.

So, thanks for the time.

Late.

Jon.

Da Pups

Some funny pictures of the dogs. Here they are passed out:

Totally out of it.
Close-up of Thor zonked

An even closer-up of Thor sleeping. Haha.

The family room...

So for awhile now i've been working on trying to finish up the living room. This following part in parenthesis is what Jon has added: ( and my husband has been super helpful and wonderful!! He got me this kick butt mirror and he even hung it up on the wall! Isn't he great! I don't think anyone could have a husband as good as mine? Right? I mean he is just the best.
I know what all of you are thinking, share the wealth, well ya can't have him!! He's mine, all mine! He buys me lots of things cuz he loves me. Shoes, phones, clothes, mirrors, ha ha!! I'm so funny and cute. He calls me his little kitten bub's and smothers me!
Well thats all, for now. )

Now here are the pictures:

(Try to ignore the gate in the picture)

Anyways, it's coming along pretty good. We will still probably fine tune some things, but overall not too bad. Thanks to Mom Nielsen who helped me paint!!