Right Now and a Little of Back Then

Hello! I hope you all had a good weekend/first half of your week! Last weekend was so nice for me. On Friday I dyed my red tips purple! (Lust Lavender, actually.) It's pretty hot.

We went to a kinda weird movie. Sucker Punch. I REALLY did not want to see this movie when I first saw the previews. I was thinking "Wow... stripper teenagers fighting giant samurais and nazi's with swords? What?" but Cody expressed his slight interest and I thought Ok, it can't be too terrible, the action-y parts look interesting. And yeah, it was just ok and kind of confusing. If you do see it though, the pimped out mayor is my fav part.

I also played a lot of hackie sack. I'm getting pretty good at it and it gives Mr. Black and I an activity to do outside together.

ANYWAY! Gosh. I have been trying to lose weight. I am "obese" according to the BMI calculator, and have "lost my face" among various other things according to my dear mother. So hopefully I can stick to my plan of eating nutrisystem food and exercise (EW) everyday. My family is having a competition to see who can lose the most weight before June. I am losing pretty bad right now, but it's only the first week. It is good motivation and cool to have a bunch of my family all trying to be healthy as well.

Nutrisystem is really nice. The food I've had so far is really good, just tiny portions. WAY better than HCG. I'm hoping to lose a pretty sizable amount of my body. I want to be AT LEAST what I weighed in 10th grade. Even back then though, actually, pretty much since 6th grade-ish, I have not been at all happy with my size. Haha, not saying I'm going for my 5th grade weight or anything, I just want to feel better about myself, which means losing at least 40 lbs and getting a bit toned. And then staying that way. That's the part that really scares me. All I know is eating what I want, which includes a ridiculous amount of pizza, like, all the time. So after nutrisystem isn't there telling me what to eat, what do I do? I don't really know.

Here is a size that I would be happy being again. This is prom with Cody. Oh there's my face! I found it.

Photo Shoot

I got to take some family photos of our friends, The Hernandez's. They have such a cute and good baby! We were taking photos for quite a while and she barely even fussed. Cody was quite tired from jumping up and down and making silly sounds behind me, trying to get her to smile. He is a trooper. The pictures turned out pretty good in my opinion but I definitely have a lot more learning to do.

12:04 AM

Last week I visited my sister Aimee in California. She is about to pop out a baby boy (so excited!) She has two tiny precious busy little girls, and her hubby was out of town for the week So I went down to help her out. She just moved to Riverside. I had never been there. They live on a pretty cool property with cute little places to walk, and orange groves, and a lemon tree. California is my very favorite. I would never abandon my Utah but every time I go to California I realize how deprived of vegetation we are. I want a lemon tree!
This is the first time I have every driven anywhere like that by myself. 6 hours in a car alone with myself is a long time and I am terrified of driving in unfamiliar places. I left home at 2:30 in the morning so as to miss all traffic and it was nice, just me and a few other cars out there in the desert. I was seriously thinking it was a very probable possibility that I would somehow end up dead on my way there. The scenarios that went through my mind include getting run over by a semi, death by decapitation. Needing to pee so bad that I'm forced to stop at a seemingly empty rest-stop, killer is waiting in stall next to mine, death by decapitation. Etc, most ending with losing my head for some reason. Needless to say I am a bit of a worrier. I've accepted this, I'm okay with it, and I just have to remind myself that things always turn out fine. And they did. I made it there with my head and only had a couple of terrifying moments. I did really really need to pee so I got off on some exit south of Vegas and totally got lost, ended up giving up and trying to get back to the freeway, and accidentally turning sooner than my GPS was telling me and driving onto a road with "WRONG WAY DO NOT ENTER" signs all over it. Thankfully it was empty and I found my way to the right road. Phew! Pretty much almost a decapitation!

Before, I pretty much would not drive anywhere but Saint George. Now that I have done this, I feel like a bit more of a woman and I don't have to be afraid anymore. Maybe.

Here are some pictures I took when we went on a walk by Aimee's house.

Aivree.


Aria.








Pretty Pregnant Aimee.




Under the pepper tree. Did you know black pepper comes from trees? I didn't. They looked like little pink berries. But they smelled like pepper! Amazing.

I had so much fun just hanging out with my sister. I haven't done that in a long time since we both got married. We spent most of the time playing with the kids, making owls for Moxie Owl and reading Do Not Reply emails. And trying to induce labor which totally didn't work. Does spicy food ever work for anyone? I think it's a myth. Now I am back and I miss them so much!

Hello.

This weekend my niece Justine came down from Salt Lake and visited me a bit. She is a very cute girl with an awesome smile so I put her in front of my camera. She is a natural model. I love how they turned out. Isn't she cute?

This weekend we took a couple hikes, went to the dog park, and took a drive to the mountains which, as it turns out, are closed for winter. Not cool. We had all the cameras and film ready and everything and we got all the way to Pine Valley mountain and the gate was closed. We still had fun though, and drove around to pick out our favorite cabin.

Hope you all had a good weekend too!

Happy Weekend

This weekend has been so lovely. We got to just be lazy and happy together. We started out on Friday with a really good show at a local gallery/venue. Cody almost convinced me to just sit at home and be the anti-social hermits that we are. But I am so glad we went. We saw old friends and listened to such great music. I forget how much I like small, intimate shows where you don't have to fight people just to stay standing. You can just relax and get lost in the bands little world of music. I don't know how those musicians go up there and do that. Singing the words they wrote for all to hear. Sitting on a stage in a dark room where everyone can just stare at you and scrutinize your looks and talent, or just ignore you and talk over your music. It has got to take serious courage.
After the show we went bowling. We got home at midnight-ish which is pretty much unheard of as Cody's usual bedtime is 8:30. (He gets up at 1am to go to work every day and doesn't get home til 6:30 at night.) So I was lucky to get this much out of him.
Yesterday we slept in til noon and pretty much didn't leave the couch all day. We just watched movies and Dexter season 5. (thanks Elisa!)
Today was so nice. I can't believe it's so warm in the middle of January. We took Lulu on a walk, came home and there were a thousand birds outside our house making so much noise. It makes me get spring fever, but of coarse that is silly since our springs last a week and then it's on to feeling like you're on fire. Anyway, I wanted to listen to the birds so we got out the hammock and a blanket and listened to them til dark. It was a good day.

By the way. Vast amounts of geese have been flying over this area for a week or so. From early morning to evening. They are flying west-ish in the middle of January. I don't remember them doing this last year. Does anyone know if this is normal? Is it part of this M-Night-Shyamalan-style, birds-and-fish-dying-for-unknown-reasons phenomenon?
Yep. Tiny bits of snow are still on the ground from the STG snow storm, and geese are flying strangely. The end is near!

I had Cody take some pictures of my new hair and it turned into this silly photo shoot. Oh yeah, and Cody cut all his hair off and shaved his beard so here are pictures of him!

Ghost Towns and Mine Shafts

My second parents (Craig and Jeanie) whom I met when I was in Young Women's took Cody and I to some Mine Shafts a few months ago. They are CRAZY and actually go into closed off abandoned mine shafts and poke around. This sounded nuts to me (which it IS) but we went anyway. I didn't even know this but there are hundreds of them all around us in Utah and Nevada. We went to some called the Jack Rabbit Mines.
We went to one where you walk waaay back into the mountain and then come into this HUGE room with loooong latters going every which way and bats on the ceiling. There was a shoot that went so far down, our flashlights couldn't see that far so Craig just grabbed a small boulder and threw it down. The noise of it falling just went on and on. There was a latter next to the shoot that went down with it. It was so creepy how far it went down (of coarse Craig and Jeanie went down it on their next trip without us, they are crazy. they found repelling equipment at the bottom) The mines were so creepy and I thought we were going to die the whole time but I am now hooked.

On our way we stopped at a couple abandoned buildings that used to be a hotel/general store in at an old train stop. I took lots of pictures for you to see!

Outside of the Hotel

Inside the general store area the ceiling had caved in.

A creepy hallway under the creepy cave in that led to some reeally creepy dark stairs that went down to a creepy basement which we did go into. It was creepy down there!

Upstairs in the hallway next to the freaky caved in room.

Here is a piece of a door by a window. There were just pieces of things everywhere. Drawers, beds, shutters. It was so cool to see things that were used 140 years ago just abandoned.

Someone propped some old box springs against the front window to prevent intruders. (teehee)

Shelves in the general store.

A bedroom.

Here is the building next door. We don't know what it used to be but there were hooks all over the ceiling.

After the mines they took us to these "ovens" where they used to bake pottery? Something like that.

Man, I want to go again!