Shear Dumb Luck

I know nothing about college basket ball, but take a look at my bracket. Somehow I guessed all of the final four teams right. I have a 1 in four chance of winning the office tournament. I'm in 15th place point wise.

Of course I probably wont win and so I'm bragging about this while I can.

Spontaneity

I usually like a lot of structure in my life. For instace, I like the fact that I work the same schedule eveyday. I like to know my weekend plans on Monday at the latest. And I am always thinking ahead to big events months in the future. But I also am okay with ocationally being spontanious. This past week was all about stepping out of the routine.

Last week Brandon and I looked at our calender and could see somethings out of the ordinary. We knew my parents were coming up for an HR conference/anniversary trip (yes it is an odd combination but it works for them) My dad was one of the speakers at the conference to I'd scheduled work off for an afternoon so I could go hear him speak. We also planned on eating with my parents. This was all planned for Wednesday.

Well Tuesday my sister Lindsey told me that she was thinking about coming up to visit. She was off of school that week and her husband was in Georgia. She and her baby boy, Rocklond came up from Cedar City to Salt Lake to see our family. Our younger sister Hillary was going to be leaving for the Choir trip to California on Thurday and that meant that our brother Billy was the only one home. Lindsey and Billy wanted to come up and visit us. I said that was fine and scheduled a whole day off on Friday. (Luckly this was during what we call "down time" at work so I could take the time off.)

Well I spent the half the day with my parents on Wednesday. It was great to see them. My dad did great at his presentation. We also were able to see the room that my parents were staying at in the Anniversary Inn. It was very impressive.

On Thursday I was at work again when I got a text message from Lindsey. They had decided to come up that night. So after work Brandon and I met up with Lindsey and Billy. We also ran into my Dad and so we went with him to the Anniversary Inn to see my Mom. It was weird to have so many of my family members in Logan.

We had a fun night talking, watching a movie, and goofing off. We also decided that we should drive to Rexburg to see my other sister Emily. Billy had to work on Saturday so he went home with my parents. Lindsey, Rocklond, Brandon and I all drove the 2 1/2 hours up to Rexburg. We quizzed ourselfs on all the state capitals.

We got to Rexburg and had another fun night of talking and goofing off with Emily and David. At one piont we all started talking about the bills that we had to pay and how we got good deals on them and such. Brandon made the comment, "If I was five this conversation would be so boring."

At one point on Saturday Me, Lindsey and Emily were all sitting on the couch. It was so fun to be together. I'm so glad I was able to understand that it is okay to have a routine but it is also important to break out of that routine. Especailly when it involves family that lives hours away.

For those of you who read this whole thing here is a picture of Rocklond. I would have taken a lot more pictures but our camera batteries aren't holding charges very well so our camera was dead all weekend. I stole this pick off of my sisters Blog.

No More Secrets

Here is the final result of about 4 months of secrets. It is a giant copy of The Family A Proclamation to the World, surrounded by family pictures. My Dad asked Brandon and me to make this for my Mom for their 25th Wedding Anniversary.

His original idea was to take a large copy of the Proclamation and then put pictures around it. He even had the frame ready. The frame was currently around a painting from the Inn at Temple Square. None of us really liked the picture. I pretended that I wanted the pic up in my apartment and my Mom gladly let me have it. Once we had the frame at home Brandon and I took it apart.

We decided to retype the Proclamation and print it out with the picture border. We decided to change the orientation from Portrait to Landscape. We spent quite a while finding the correct looking font and laying all the text out almost exactly the way it looks on the original Proclamation. The first "W" was especially hard to do. It is in a very scripted font that our computer did not have. Brandon finally took a picture of the W, uploaded it into Adobe Illustrator and traced it.

For the pictures we decided that it would be best if everybody picked out there own pictures. That way they wouldn't be upset by a picture they personally didn't like. We told my siblings that we needed 4 pictures of each of them. We wanted the pictures to be a good representation of my parents 25 years together so we asked for 1 baby picture, 1 little kid pic, 1 pic of an accomplishment, and 1 current pic. We also had room for a current family picture and 1 picture of Rocklond. We put a picture of my parents on their wedding day in the middle of the Proclamation.

We did a quick preview so that my Dad and my siblings could see what it was going to look like. Here is the preview. After getting every ones input and a few more pictures we were able to start laying it out for real. We hooked our laptop up to the TV and used it as a second monitor to edit on. This was nice because we both could see the picture easily.

Here I am editing.

Here is what it looked like on the TV (That dark line really isn't there. I guess taking a picture of a TV screen with a camera causes that line)

Here are the two monitors. I have two monitors at work and I LOVE them. The little screen has the preview layout on it and the big screen has the official layout.

Here is the final preview. Brandon created the texture for the part that the words are printed on by taking a picture of granite and then coloring it yellow. We printed the picture out using a 36 inch printer on Campus. Then we framed it. Yesterday we took it to the Hotel that my parents were staying in for their business trip/ anniversary celebration. Brandon snuck in the picture while I distracted my Mom. He had a blanket over it so my Mom had to take off the blanket before she could see what it was. She was very happy to see it. She kept saying, its all our favorite pictures in one place.

I'm glad she likes it and I am also glad that I don't have to worry about spilling the beans any more. 4 months is a long time for me to keep a secret.

NASCAR Cake

My team lead at work loves Nascar and loves Dale Jr. So I made her a Nascar cake for her birthday.

Before I show the pictures I have to say that this is the first cake I have ever completely made. I helped a lot with birthday cakes when I was younger, but I never did a whole cake. I also never frosted a cake that was out of its pan. Every birthday cake my family has ever made was left in the cake pan.

Here are two cake pics that I found on the Internet. They were my inspiration.

I wanted to do a checkered pattern to look like a nascar flag and have the number 88 raised on the cake. 88 is Dale Jr's number (see what you can learn with google)

I was going to do the whole cake in chocolate but then decided that it would be cool to have one chocolate layer and one white layer so that the individual pieces of cake would look like checkered flags as well.

First we mixed up the cake mixes. This picture is misleading. Brandon did not do all the work. I mixed up the cake mix and poured it in the pan. Brandon decided to smooth it out for me and I took a picture. Brandon was helpful as usual, but I tried to do most of the work so I could actually learn how to make a cake.

While I was mixing up the cakes Brandon painstakingly scrapped off the cream from Duplex cookies. He then blended them up into fine crumbs.

To make the two 8's I used some little round baking dishes that I have. As you can see I filled them a little too full.

I cooked each layer in a cookie sheet. I liked how I could stack the two layers and still have a relatively thin cake. Getting the two layers together was a bit of a trick. It involved a lot of wax paper. Luckily we still had a ton from wedding gifts.

I frosted the cake. I'm glad I did the top layer white because it was easier to frost than chocolate would have been.

While I frosted the cake Brandon was in charge of engineering a way to get the checkered pattern onto the cake. He constructed this funnel with a square opening.

He would place the funnel where he needed it, put the ground up cookie crumbs into the funnel, smoosh them into the frosting, and then lift the funnel straight up leaving a perfect brown square.

It was time consuming but it looked great.

I'd like to try this cake again and make it for a chess lover. I think it looks more like a chess board than a checkered flag.

Here is the final cake with the number 88 and the race cars. The 88 was supposed to be black frosting but apparently mixing all the food coloring colors will only create a really gross grey color. So I frosted the circles with the gray and then rolled them in cookie crumbs.

I found the cars at the dollar store for 6 for a dollar. I got lucky at the dollar store and found a Dale Jr car with 88 on it. I'm glad I found that because otherwise it looks like I made an 88th birthday cake.

Brandon and I took the cake into work before my team lead got there. She was so excited to see it. Everyone who had a piece of the cake said that it tasted good too.

Slight HSA update

Well I signed up for the HSA. I'm excited about it but I found out that I was slightly misinformed. I was originally told that the premiums I pay ever pay check would go into the account. Unfortunately, this is not true.

However, those amounts go to my Health Insurance company so that they can get good rates on doctors appointments and such. So I still end up saving money (just not in the way I originally thought.)

Sorry for passing on bad info.

Recipe: Cinnamon Buns

This is for my brother Billy who says he is sick of our old cinnamon roll recipe.

This is from Great American Recipes with some additions from me.

I do have pictures of the last time we made these, but I guess I left them at home.

Dough
3 cups (roughly) of all purpose flour (the recipe calls for 4 to 4 1/2 cups of flour but that is too much.)
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/4 (or one envelope) of yeast
1/2 cup hot milk
1/4 cup of butter
1 large egg

Filling
1 to 2 sticks of butter
1tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar

Combine 1 cup of flour, sugar, salt and yeast in a large bowl. Add 1/4 cup hot water, milk, and butter. Beat until combined, then about 1 minute longer. Beat in the egg.

Stir in the remaining flour until a soft dough forms. Knead until smooth and elastic (til it looks like a cabbage patch doll head) Place the dough in a greased bowl and turn it once to grease the top. Cover and let rise until double in size. (The recipe says this takes about 45 minutes but our kitchen is cold so we have to heat the dough in the oven and then let it rise for about an hour and a half)

Grease a large baking pan. Punch the dough down. Roll the dough out on a floured surface into a rectangle roughly 16 X 12. Sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. Dot butter on. (Don't use spreadable butter, I learned the hard way that it wont work.) Roll up the dough starting with one long edge. Press the seam to seal.

Cut into 15 slices using dental floss. (Slide the floss under the dough, pull up and cross to cut) Arrange cut side up in the baking pan. Cover and chill overnight (or for three hours if you want these the same day)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Uncover the slices (We forgot this step one time and cooked the Saran wrap to the rolls. Oddly we didn't realise what we hat done until after we ate about 5 rolls.) Let the rolls stand at room temperature until they are golden brown. the recipe says this takes 30to 40 minutes but in my experience it has only taken 15 minutes.

Let cool on baking sheet and cover with icing. (Sorry I don't know the recipe for the icing.)

le, la, and les

Brandon and I have a goal to go to Reunion when we finish paying off his student loans. (The picture above shows where Reunion is located) We figure having a really great reward will help us sacrifice money to getting out of debt quickly instead of taking 10 years to pay off the loans. Still we don't expect to be able to go to Reunion until at least 5 years after graduation. In the meantime I am working on learning French so I can communicate with the French people there.

I took three years of French in Jr High. I did okay in the classes, but after learning about such things as imperfect past participles I decided that I didn't care to learn any more. Brandon went on his mission to Reunion which is basically a "shovelful of France dumped in the middle of the Indian Ocean." He is practically fluent in the language. One of his favorite things to do is translate English songs into French. He admits they are probably bad translations, but they sound fine to me. He has randomly spoke to me in French since I met him, but now he is (somewhat) seriously reteaching me the language.

We actually started the lessons because we were lazy. We read our scriptures at night when we are in bed. One night back in January we couldn't reach the English copy of the Book of Mormon so Brandon grabbed his French copy that was under the night stand. He read a verse in French and then had me translate it. Surprisingly, I could (it helped that it was a verse I basically know by heart.) Encouraged by this initial success we read some more. Then Brandon started reviewing French words with me. The next night we read another verse in French in addition to the chapter we read in English. Gradually things that I'd learned 10 years ago started coming back. I still remembered most of the basic conjugation of verbs and my pronunciation started to improve.

Halfway through February we finished the Book of Mormon in English and started it in French. We read a column a night. Sometimes I read a verse and then Brandon helps me translate it. Other times Brandon reads the verse and I repeat it. We've almost made it to the 4th chapter of 1st Nephi. I find that slowing down and taking time to try to understand the scriptures in another language has also helped me understand them spiritually.

I'm not anywhere close to being fluent yet. There are many things that I need help with. One of them showed up last night. There are three words for the in French. Le is for when you are referring to a masculine thing. La is for when you are referring to a Feminine thing. And les is for plural things. I knew all this. the trouble is I never, and I mean never, learned how to pronounce them correctly. In Jr High I just kind of faked it and for the past 2 months I've been faking it. Well Brandon caught me last night and I had to fess up. I had to admit that I've never paid attention to the different sounds the words made. Brandon then spent about 5 minutes going over the correct sounds for each one. La sounds like la as is Do Ray Me Fa So La Te Dah. Les sounds like Lay. And Le sound like Legh (that's the best I can do to describe this one) By the time he was done working with me on that I knew the difference between the sounds that the words make.

So I am that much closer to be able to talk to people on our trip to Reunion. Luckily I have several years to learn.

Here are two pictures of Reunion. If you want to see more. Google Reunion Island and click on Images.

No more throwing away money to Health Insurance land

My company is switching our health insurance to a Health Savings Account (HSA). I am totally excited about this switch here is why.

Last year I paid a little more than $100 per paycheck for my health insurance. My company kicked in about $20 also. This means that I paid over $2400 and the company paid $480 for me to have medical insurance. I used maybe $500 dollars of that for 1 doctor's appointment and 2 blood tests. Plus I had to pay a $20 co-pay. So basically I gave up $1900 just to have piece of mind in case I got in an accident or got pregnant. I was pretty ticked off when I realized this. (especially since the whole reason I signed up for the insurance was in case I got pregnant) I started thinking about switching off the company insurance, or canceling it altogether and just saving the same amount in the bank. Then I found out that we were going to switch to an HSA. I was so excited.

Here are the basics of how it will work. My $100 payment, my company's $20 payment, and an extra $75 that the company will kick every month will go into a special savings account. The money in this account can be used to pay for any medical expense from over the counter cold medicine to hospital stays. I can pay for those things with a debit card. There is still a deductible amount that I have to reach, but after that everything is paid for by the insurance company. Here is the super sweet part. The HSA will start to earn interest after the balance reaches $500. And I don't have to use the full amount ever! The balance rolls over every year. So potentially I could have an HSA with a balance of over $3700 by this time next year. If I ever leave the company I can take the balance and roll it over to another HSA. So if I start saving in the HSA now while I am healthy I will have a large amount stored up in case I ever have heath issues. Oh and here is something else that is great. On this plan anything that is considered preventative, like a yearly physical, is free. That's right I don't even have to pay a co-pay.

Yes there is still the chance that I could get in a huge accident and have to pay more out of pocket before I get to my deductible, but I will take that chance. I want to have control of my money. I want to know that I'm investing in my future instead of throwing money away.

Movie Review: Madagascar 2

I've watched the first Madagascar movie once. I've tried to watch it about 3 other times but fell asleep. Come to think of it I fell asleep the first time I tried to watch the movie. I just didn't think it was that great of a movie. After watching it I thought that I would probably never watch the movie again. Enter Brandon. Brandon's mission was to Madagascar (though technically he spent all his time on the little island Reunion and never set foot on Madagascar.) Before Brandon left on his mission not many people had ever heard of Madagascar. While he was on his mission the movie came out so when he got back everyone knew about Madagascar. He loved the movie mainly because of the title. When we heard that a sequel was coming out we didn't think much of it. Sequels generally aren't as good as the original. Then we saw the trailer for the movie and found out that there is an airplane involved-- and the penguins fly it! Instantly I knew that we were going to have to see this movie too.

Last night we got the movie from Redbox. I didn't expect it to be very funny so I was planning on photo shopping while we watched the movie. Instead I was laughing from the moment the Dream works logo was on screen. (You have to see it to understand.)

The movie is hilarious. All the characters are back and they are crazier than ever. The minor characters from the last movie have even more screen time which is good because I think the penguins and the monkeys were the funniest parts last time. Plus there are a whole bunch of new characters. After the movie was over Brandon and I decided that this movie was crazier than the last one but in an odd way it made more sense.

The parts involving the plane were even funnier than the trailer. After watching the movie we went back and watched the plane crash scene about 5 times. We even put on the subtitles to catch every word even though we were laughing loud.

I highly recommend this movie as a great comedy.

The Miss Kearns Pageant

There is something about watching a Jr high or High school performance on a stage that fascinates me. I love watching the performers - who probably spend a lot of their time thinking they are nobodies- become something amazing.

I've seen it so many times. Once it was a 9th grader who gave Yule Brenner a run for his money as the king in "The King and I". Another time it was a group of high school boys dance in the Kearns High Male Drill Team. A few times it was me playing the string bass or dancing and feeling like I could do anything. On Friday it was my little sister, Hillary.

Hillary continued the family tradition of being in the Miss Kearns Pageant. Lindsey and Emily were both in it (I would have been but I was the oldest and I didn't know a lot about the pageant) Lindsey's friend even won the pageant one year. We all hoped that Hillary would win the pageant, but we knew from past experience that anything could happen. Still we all made sure we were there to support her. Emily came from Rexburg and Lindsey came from Cedar. I came down from Logan.

The night started with the production number where all the girls dance together. Maybe it was just bias, but Hillary seemed to be the best and the brightest.

Then they did the "sportswear" part of the program. This has always been kind of a made up part where the girls can wear sportswear for any sport they participate in, like watching, or just decided to dress like. Hillary came out in a full body wet suit and was holding an inflatable surf board. She hammed it up on stage pretending to be surfing. She had the audience laughing and even made the Master of Ceremonies snicker and loose his place as he was reading her bio.

There were a couple of filler numbers to give the girls time to change. I was surprised to hear the emcee say "and now we will be pleased to hear from Mr William Loveless." And out walked my 17 year old brother to play his french horn. By the way Billy got a music scholarship to BYU.

Then it was time for the talent part of the program. Originally Hillary was going to dance, but for several reasons she decided that she should do "modeling" for her talent. This was a bit of a gamble since Kearns is such a dance oriented community and modeling hadn't ever been done before. Hillary was the 4th contestant and followed a singer and 2 dancers. She walked out there with more stage presence that any of the earlier contestants (and any of the later ones). She posed a couple times, blew a kiss and ran off stage. It was captivating.

After another French horn number from Billy the girls came out in their formal wear. Hillary looked just like Cinderella in a blue dress and with her hair up. She walked out on the stage very gracefully and then had to answer an onstage question. Her question was "what does community service mean to you" Her answer was perfect "It is an act of Love." It was so amazing to see her up there so full of grace. I couldn't help see a little of all of us up there. She was wearing one of Emily's old prom dresses and the under skirt thing that Lindsey wore under her wedding dress. Lindsey had even done her makeup.

After that there was a bunch of filler while the judge's scores were tallied. The old royalty did their final walk. Then it was time for "This is the moment" where the crown gets passed between the contestants. By this point we were all just dying with anticipation. I leaned over to Brandon and whispered, "I think Billy should win."

They gave out three awards for girls who had impressed the directors. Finally they announced the second attendant. It was the girl who probably had the most crowd support. In my mind she was Hillary's biggest competition. With her out of the way I started to think that Hillary was going to make it. Then they announced the second attendant. It was a girl that I didn't even remember. I started to think that maybe the judges were going for something other than I had originally thought. I didn't think that Hillary had a chance. But then the emcee said "and the new Miss Kearns is the girl who put the most into this competition tonight," and I started to hope again, "Miss Hillary Loveless." And all heck broke loose on our row.

It was crazy. Eventually we all made it to the stage and we were able to congratulate Hillary. I ran into one of the judges who I'd known since Jr high. She said, "It wasn't just the name. We were all really impressed with Hillary in the interview. She is just amazing."

The pictures and pandemonium lasted about 45 minutes. Then we were able to all go home and talk and laugh about this pageant and prior ones. It was such a fun night.

My sister is Miss Kearns!!!!!!!

I'll blog more about this later but I wanted to get the word out. Last night my youngest sister, Hillary, was crowned Miss Kearns for 2009. It was an amazing night and she did so well. We are all so happy and excited for her.

Vacation update

Brandon told me that this morning at 2:00 AM I was wide awake and telling him something about work. He said all he could think was "go back to sleep." I don't remember this, but it doesn't surprise me. I often dream about work. So here is a post to prove to him and everyone else that I do think about things other than work.

I am so stoked about our anniversary trip to California! This trip is to celebrate my graduation in Dec 2007 and Brandon's upcoming graduation in December 2009. Plus it is to celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary.

Here is a breakdown of some of the things we plan to do. Since this is a public blog I'm not going to post the specific dates and locations of our trip, but it will be in the middle of May.

Monday
Leave Salt Lake and drive to Cedar City where we will visit my sister (if she is still there)
Get to Las Vegas, see the sights, and spend the night

Tuesday
Leave Los Vegas and drive to our hotel in the San Fernando area of Los Angles
Go see a taping of the Late Late show with Craig Ferguson

Wednesday
Go to Magic Mountain!!!!!!

Thursday
Visit the La Brae Tar pits and other sites in LA
Drive to our campsite at a beach near San Diego
Watch the sun set over the ocean

Friday
Go to the San Diego Zoo
Drive from San Diego to Barstow CA where we are camping again

Saturday
Visit the calico ghost town.
Drive back to salt lake

And that is not all. On memorial day we are going to go see No Doubt and Paramore at the E-Center. (Tickets go on sale tomorrow!)

All in all I get 10 - count them- 10 whole days off of work. We are camping two nights and staying in hotels 3 nights.

I can't wait!!!!

2 years ago yesterday

Two years ago yesterday Brandon proposed to me.

I thought I would share how we got engaged.

Of course it all started with us meeting. (That was two and a half years ago yesterday) A mutual friend set us up and them made sure that we kept seeing each other. After her initial prodding I was sold on the fact that Brandon was a really great guy. About two weeks after we met I knew that he was someone I could marry. I spent the next several months convincing Brandon that I was who he wanted to marry.

By January we both were pretty certain that we would get married but we still talked about it hypothetically. We would say things like "If we get married we should go camping." We even started planning out some things for our possible wedding. Still we were cautious about actually talking about getting married.

In February things started to really click. We fasted about getting married and felt good about it. Feb 8th, the day after my birthday, Brandon told me that he was certain he should marry me. And then the waiting game started.

We started getting more specific in our wedding plans. We even picked a date. But Brandon didn't officially propose. He teased me mercilessly about it. He would say "do you want to go on a walk?" I would think, "maybe we will walk by the temple and he will proposed" but no, an hour later I would realise it was just a walk. Valentine's day came an went. Brandon told me it was all about timing and he would propose to me when the time was right. I was getting antsy. I told him that if he didn't propose to me by the first weekend in March I was going to do it for him. He would just smile.

After 3 weeks of this it was Friday March 2nd. We had plans to go to Salt Lake as soon as I got off of work. I really wanted to be engaged when we got to Salt Lake because both sides of our family's were having get to-gethers. I wanted to be able to announce an engagement. I was hoping that Brandon would propose on the way down to Salt Lake, but I didn't think it would happen. I came home from work and finished packing. Then Brandon came to pick me up. I took my bags out to the car and got in the car. For some reason Brandon didn't follow me. I just kept sitting in the car. Finally he called me and asked me to come back in. Confused I went back in the apartment. Brandon was standing there all dressed up in a shirt and tie. He said, "I have a question for you. Will you get dressed in you pink dress and come to dinner with me?"

We went out to dinner at the Blue Bird. Brandon had called ahead and got us reservations up on the second floor so that our table looked out over the entrance to the restaurant. The dinner was good, but the whole time I kept waiting for him to propose to me. It didn't happen.

We left the restaurant and started driving to Salt Lake. I thought to myself, well maybe he will stop on the way to Salt Lake and propose. I figured that was his plan so I started going over a mental check list to see if we had packed anything. I hadn't seen the laptop in the car so I asked Brandon, "did you remember your laptop?" "Shoot" he said and turned the car around to go back to his apartment. I didn't know it at the time but I had played right into his hands.

Once we got to the apartment I just wanted to stay in the car. Brandon convinced me to come with him. We walked into the apartment and I couldn't believe my eyes. He had rearranged his furniture so that the living room was basically empty. He had put rose petals and candles everywhere. He'd talked a friend into lighting all the candles. ( I hadn't noticed him texted his friend to let her know it was time to light them) He'd even made a CD of romantic songs and had it playing right as I walked in. He gave me flowers and had me dance with him for a minute. And then he got down on one knee and finally proposed. He told me that he had been planning on proposing to me on March 2nd for weeks. He picked that date because it was exactly 6 months after we met.