Happy Wifey Day

The day that Lauren and I got married Lauren's brother let me know that even if my new wife and I didn't have kids yet I still need to celebrate this day for her because she is the future mother of my children. Well to celebrate our anniversary and Mothers Day we took a nice warm trip to Las Vegas!
We have been enjoying just laying around:) Lauren said yesterday, after our three hour nap, "We are so lame to drive 400 miles to just sleep and be lazy!" Although it may sound like we are lame it has been a much needed break. I just got done with finals and she has been working very hard with track and normal work.
Any who since the only reason I ever blog is to retaliate to dumb seminary teacher friends in Nephi about my bad grammar (eat up all that beamish Danny, yep brammar, bad grammar!), I decided to tell my wife how much I love her.
Lauren you are a very hard worker. I cannot believe how much you will dedicate yourself to your work and now coaching track. I know that you apologize for venting to me about your days but it does show how much you care about your students and the success of your school.
You are such a sweet girl. Watching you childhood videos really helped me realize even more how soft your spirit is and how much you care about others. (even if you did have your hair cut like a little boy:) )
And lastly, ( I have to wrap this up because your are getting suspicious of why I'm in the bathroom this long) I love you so much because I know when you are the mother of our children that you will do anything that you can to make sure they are happy everyday, that they are mindful of the gospel, that they look the best they can everyday, and that they will succeed in everything they put their mind and heart to. Lauren you are beautiful, you are amazing, and I am so glad that you are mine!
Happy Mother's Day!! I hope you continue to enjoy Vegas!

Love you...

for all the "Kicking Cancer in the Butt" people...

Yesterday I read a quote on fb that really made me think about life...

All of us have a thousand wishes, to be thinner, to be bigger, to have more money, to drive a cool car, to have a day off, to have a new phone, to date the person of our dreams.

A cancer patient only has one wish, to kick cancer.

  Quote via Denise Evans.

So when a staff member was struck with the sickening and heart breaking news that cancer will soon end his life, the entire school pulled together- to kick cancer in the rear.  We are trying to raise $30,000 to give to the family who will soon- much much too soon- lose a husband, a friend, a chaser away of monsters in the dark, a handyman, a financial establisher, and one great dad.  

Cancer sucks, that's all there is to it.  Part of the fundraiser activity allowed for the students to buy a ticket to place their names into a drawing in super high hopes for the chance to pie a teacher.  The school raised a ton of money doing this.  Perhaps this sends a not so good message about all us teachers.   I volunteered to be pied and here's the result...  Thank you to my iphone this image was captured, and thanks to my iphone this image is blurry.  So it goes.

Mom I promise you succeeded in teaching me the importance of making sure my socks match when I put them on in the morning.  I don't know how I ended up with one pink and one white.  But don't worry, Mr. Herzog said there are at least 30 white socks in the lost and found in the boys' locker room and he can find me a pair that matches.  

I can only imagine how many p.e. kids who hate me for the fact that I make them run one class period each week- cuz heaven forbid we should exercise once in a while- were wishing and dreaming they were this kid at that moment.

The pie rubbing culprit was nice- everyone at school said he was too nice.
Granted I threatened this kid's life, or maybe just his P.E. grade, if he got the idea of rubbing the pie in my face as if I were a baby being lathered with lotion.  I think he comprehended well.

Back to the cancer thing... I don't fully understand the disease- it's too sad to fully comprehend it in my opinion.  I can't imagine being a doctor having to tell an 8 year old girl that she has a brain tumor that is inoperable.  Even more so, I can't imagine having the tables flipped and being the one to hear such news.  This topic and conversation has been discussed multiple times in my health class.  It's a topic where the bell rings too soon and we- for just a small moment- contemplate what it would be like knowing we were living our last days.  Life is much too often taken for granted. Everyone needs to watch an episode of the buried life on MTV.  It puts things such as life into a good perspective.  (I fully understand that the words good and MTV shouldn't be used in the same sentence, but "The Buried Life" is that good, that I am allowed to break the rule of using the two words together.) 

What would you do if you had three months to live?  I would hold on to Caleb and never let go.  

With that being said... if you have nothing to do with your life this Friday night the 6th day of May, come to Roy Jr. (5400 South 2100 West, Roy, UT 84067)  for a spaghetti night (5-8 pm) in the honor of this lovely family.  Plates are just 5 dollars or 20 dollars for a family.  The kids at my school needed so much extra credit that we now have enough spaghetti to feed well over 6.000 people.  So come!!!!  Please and thank you.  And let's all continue to kick cancer in the butt!!!

Ombre and The Gimp

First things first, Happy birthday to my cute SIL Andrea!!!  Considering it's close to 11:00 pm, I wanted to give her a shout-out rather than call her and wake the likely sleeping baby.
 
I didn't know what the word ombre meant until my hair stylist used the word to define what I was describing.  I showed her this picture,  (picture via D, we are super huge L.C. fans around here, and my sister knew exactly where to go when I told her I wanted the "melting" look. ) and so my hair stylist did exactly just that with my hair.  She really is a miracle worker, every time I tell her what I want, she gets my hair to do just that.  If only she were available every morning around 6 am, life would be bliss.  I said goodbye to my nasty zeebra looking roots and hello to my hott "melting" roots.  

The ends still have tons of blond, which I love, but the top doesn't look zeebra-y. 

And just for the record, my hair is getting longer.  I keep thinking it is NOT growing because I know for certain that my hair doesn't grow past my shoulders, it doesn't think it's possible or something like that.  I am trying to retrain its thoughts by taking multi-vitamins, but I don't know if it's working.  And Brooke, the greatest hairstlyist ever known, a.k.a. my hair stylist, told me again today my hair is getting long. (You have to understand long for me, is much different than long for someone else.)  I didn't believe her but then Caleb reminded me of this picture and the emotional day I had once upon a time where I literally chopped all of my hair off, I cried...

Moving on... meet Mr. Gimp.  Caleb and I were just talking a few weeks ago about how we have worked hard our entire marriage to try and always have medical benefits.  (I knew for certain that if we ever dropped our benefits, we would get pregnant that day, and I would be super stressed because I strongly believe timing is everything and plus babies cost a pretty penny without benefits.  Me plus stress equals huge mess.)  In fact, up until I got a teaching job, it seemed like most of our paychecks went towards benefits(JetBlue, not to name names or anything), and they were benefits that we never used.  Knock.on.wood. I should've known we cursed ourselves with that stupid conversation.   Here we are a few weeks later and we have since paid five co-pays (and become "frequent-flyers" at the Instacare, exact words of the receptionist) in the last seven days for various things.  But now more than ever, I am so grateful that we have paid every single month for the dang benefits, because things have happened and finally I feel like it's payback time.  Things such as Caleb trying to beat up his friends,  which caused a major carpet burn, which then got infected, which then led to a major staph infection, which then led to me thinking Caleb's leg would soon be chopped off.   Don't worry, it has not been detached yet.  Then Caleb got the marvelous idea of wanting to run blind on the treadmill.  Brilliant right?  He took one step which led to him landing flat on his butt, flying off the treadmill, which then caused his leg to get caught in between the wall and the belt, which led to a huge burn on his ankle, which then made the Staph. infection super happy because it had that much more room to grow.  I'm sure you all wanted to hear that.  But wait there's more, Caleb was being super nice despite me being really ornery and he took it upon himself to demolish the garbage truck sized box the treadmill came in.  A few stomps on the box later and Caleb landed on his hand with his arm locked in place causing his radial head bone to be crushed.  Ouch!!!  Suddenly our $1,000 dollars off on the treadmill sale isn't so sweet anymore, j.k.  I love my treadmill, I treat it like it's my baby just so ya know.  (And according to brother dr., you're more likely to break a bone if you land with your arm straight rather than bent, so word of advice... bend your arm!!!) but still I thought there was no way in heck that my husband's king-kong sized bones could/would ever break...  Yep I was wrong.  Caleb:1, Me:0.  In fact I had zero sympathy for Caleb when it happened, and he knows it too, remember I was ornery.  It was a bad weekend.   So we meant with a good ol' orthopedist who said we should say our prayers and hope Caleb's bone heals properly otherwise we know what he'll be doing with his spring break.  So fun.  

So here's the hott cast with my even hotter husband.  

And one last thing, because my Grandma went home to finally be with Grandpa again this past weekend, we are reminiscing about her life this coming weekend.  Which means the Ohioners are flying in.  Can you say freaking Wahoo!!!!!  I can't even tell you the last time my entire family was sitting in the same room... Remember this picture???!!!

I get to do this again... but this time she'll look more like this...

Lucky freakin' me.

More about the most loving, funny, amazing grandma later.