Thankful Thursday

* The weather is just perfect so that I can open the windows in my house to keep it cool and I can hear the kids playing at the park across the street

* I was folding laundry this morning and Harrison was sitting right in the middle of the pile throwing clothes around when the "Elmo's World" song came on (for any of you that ever have Sesame Street on at your house)and he snapped his head up to look at the TV and started laughing. Love his laugh

* I am not wearing any makeup because I ran out of it yesterday, so I have been rubbing my eyes and face all day and it is nice for a change

* I think I know what I am making for dinner tonight

* The Office is on tonight

* Halloween is next week, which means I get to put Harrison in his monkey costume that I bought in August - it can't come soon enough.

* The laundry is done for the week

* Maisey is asleep on the couch, curled up like a cat. She is so funny.

* The pinatas I am making for the family Halloween party are almost done, and they are looking pretty good!

* The mountains by our house are so pretty, especially this time of the year, and I have a great view of them from my computer.

* Harrison is starting to eat more and more solid food every day. He turns 1 in about a month, which means no more formula! Can't wait for that.

* Zac is in cub scouts and last night was the pumpkin carving pack meeting. We managed to haul 30 pumpkins into the church and the boys carved them without any injuries and without ruining the carpet in the church.

* I get to vote, which is a big blessing. And I get to vote early, which means that I don't have to wait in the super long lines on November 4th. Plus I will probably get one of those cute stickers that says "I Voted" with a fingerprint on it.

Crazy Bus

We live in Provo and Zac works in Salt Lake. The commute is a bit long, not to mention expensive and Zac's work pays for him to have a UTA pass, so he rides the bus. He is an early bird and much prefers to leave at 5:30 AM and get home at 5:30 PM rather than leave at 6:30 and get home at 6:30. I have never thought that anything exciting happens that early in the morning, but Zac's bus experiences are starting to prove me wrong. On more than one occasion, Zac has called me and said "I am so lucky to be alive! The bus driver nearly drove us off the road 4 different times today!" So understandably, I am a little worried about his safety every time he leaves for work and I say to him at least twice before he walks out the door "Be so careful!" He gets to work at about 7 in the morning and Harrison and I are usually still asleep, so Zac doesn't call before 9 or 10 to make sure not to wake us up. Which is why I was a little worried when the phone rang at 7 this morning.

Zac: You are not going to believe what happened to me this morning! I am still shaking!
Me: (Freaking out) Are you okay?

He proceeds to tell me that when he got on the bus this morning, he sat next to a guy who had a backpack in his lap and was sleeping with this head against the window. No big deal. They keep the lights out on the bus that early because almost everybody sleeps. A couple minutes later they are on the freeway going 75, the guy puts his face against the window and starts to act a little weird. "He's probably just having a dream or something." So Zac sits back in his chair and tries to doze off. Then out of nowhere the guy chucks his backpack onto Zac and clings to the window, trying to open it. Zac is thinking "Holy cow, this guy is trying to jump out the window!" So Zac grabs onto the guy and struggles with him to get him away from the window. A man behind Zac sees what's going on and tries to fight him off the window so he can close it. With all the commotion going on, everyone just watches. They finally get the bus driver to pull over and the guy sort of gave up. Zac looked at the him and noticed that his eyes were rolled back in his head and yells for help. A lady in the back says "I'm trained. I can help him!" She looked at him and he came to. She said that he seemed okay and that they could keep going, but Zac wasn't convinced, so they called the paramedics. A firetruck, police car and ambulance later they said that the guy was okay to get back on the bus. Apparently the man had a seizure. He had one of those pill boxes that you put all your medications in for the month, so maybe he has epilepsy or something. Understandably, he was embarassed when he got back on the bus. He thanked Zac for helping him and they chatted for a minute before the guy leaned back up against the window. I am glad Zac was there to help him, but I am seriously considering chauffering him to work from now on.

Good Laugh

This video is from Saturday Night Live last weekend. I laughed pretty hard so I thought I would share. Happy Friday!

The Lawrence Welk Show

Weird and Random

I was tagged to list 7 weird/random facts about myself and despite my initial "I don't think i'll do this one" response, I never have a good answer for those name-one-interesting-thing-about-yourself games and so I figured I would humor myself and try it.

Fact 1: I have sadly come to the conclusion that after you have a baby, you may be back to your pre-baby weight, but you will never have the same body. Period. And even though I know this is true I still tell myself that "I will start working out tomorrow and get back the body that I used to have and didn't appreciate." Never happens. My goal one day is to run a marathon, but I think you have to be able to run a mile without passing out first. Everything has it's season, right? Maybe I will start tomorrow...

Fact 2: My very favorite blog to look at is called Seriously So Blessed and it is pretty much my daily medicine. At first when I read this blog I was completely offended. Then I realized how hilarious and dead-on it is. If anybody is interested in a good laugh and Utah-girl humor, I highly recommend it! If you want to check it out, here it is.

Fact 3: I have always thought that October is the best month for a birthday, probably because I love October and that's when my birthday is. It always seems like I am meeting people with my same birthday. I don't know if I am just looking for it and so it seems to pop up everywhere or what. One of my friends growing up shared my birthday. One of Zac's old college roommates with whom we are good friends and I share the same birthday. I just found out that the twin girls in Jon and Kate Plus Eight have the same birthday too. Does anyone else feel the same way about their birthday?

Fact 4: Anyone that knows Zac knows how mellow and easy-going he is. He is probably the easiest person in the world to be married to. He always lets me have my way and doesn't complain about it ever with one exception: control over the thermostat. For the longest time we would constantly battle with that thing. I would turn the temperature to what I thought was comfortable. As soon as I would walk away, he would come behind me and change it in the direction that saved us money on energy - cooler in the Winter, warmer in the Summer. Then I would think "Geez, it feels hot/cold in here." And I would check the thermostat and sure enough it would be a degree or two hotter/cooler than what I set it at. I would ask him about it and he would tell me that he wants to save as much as possible on the energy bill in our house. Then I would say "But shouldn't we be comfortable in our own house?" And then he would smile and apologize and let it go, with a smug grin of course. And sure enough, the same thing would happen the very next day. And this happened for the longest time. Well I am finally letting it go. I figure that he has more than earned control of the thermostat with all that he lets me get away with. So this one goes out to you, baby. Thanks for letting me get away with a lot of worse things. :)

Fact 5: One of my biggest pet peeves is the positioning of the shower head. I am all about taking a shower away from the cold marble wall and so I always have to have the shower head pointed out. The problem with this is that if you forget to point the shower head down before you turn the shower on you get a very unpleasant surprise. Anyone who is weird like me and cares about this knows that when you first turn the shower on it shoots out a 1/2 second stream of cold water before the hot water comes out. A 1/2 second doesn't seem like a big deal, but every time I forget to point the shower head down before I turn it on I totally freak out. It mostly happens when I am staying somewhere other than my house, am out of my routine and forget about the cold stream until it's too late. Hate that!

Fact 6: If I could go back to school for anything in the world, it would be culinary school.

Fact 7: I was born with a big dark quarter-sized birthmark on my right calf. I always hated it as a kid and felt like that was the only thing that people could see if I wore shorts, which was probably true. I had it removed when I was 11 because it was pre-cancerous, not to mention ugly. So now I have a big scar on my leg, but it was well worth the trade-off. It's one of those things that I never think about, so when Harrison was born and I saw a big dark birthmark on his stomach I was like "Oh man, he probably going to hate that when he gets older." I love it on him. I totally think it adds character and I adore it, but I am sure he won't feel the same way about it when he is in a swimming suit and everyone can see it. Maybe boys don't care about that stuff. Does anyone know if birthmarks like that are hereditary? The older he gets and the more I learn about him, the more I realize he is a miniature Hillary, in boy form of course. The birthmark seems to be no exception.


Fact 8: I am pretty much the last person to board the Twilight Series train. I am currently about 150 pages from the end of Breaking Dawn, and I am so ready to be done with it. I am ashamed to admit that I am a book cheater. It is a huge book-buzzkill, but I do it anyway. I got about halfway through Breaking Dawn and was like "I can't stand it anymore!" I thought it was going in a really weird direction and got really bored and so I thought "I am going to find out what happens because I can't read another chapter without knowing if all this is worth it!" So I peeked ahead and found out what happens and 2 weeks later I am still not done. I totally ruined it for myself. I will read a few chapters every now and then but the thrill is pretty much gone when you know how it ends. Maybe one day I will finish. I probably should, because I really want to read The Story of Edgar Sawtell
and I won't let myself start a new book without finishing the last one. Sigh. I am making a promise to myself right now that I won't cheat on Edgar Sawtell. It's so not worth it.

Fact 9: I have a new found appreciation for Tina Fey and am now a devoted fan.

Fact 10: I just realized I should have stopped at 7.

Getaway

I have been a slacker at blogging lately. We haven't been home a whole lot and my camera ran out of batteries, so I haven't had any cute pictures to blog. Boring! Zac went to Washington DC 2 weeks ago for work so Harrison, Maisey and I went to my parents house for the week. I am so not a fan of Zac being out of town and I figured that it would go by quicker if we were with family instead of at home by ourselves. Zac hasn't ever been to DC, so he was really excited to get to be there, even though he was working the whole time and didn't get to see a lot. Then the next week he had to go to Scottsdale for training, so we all headed back up to my parents again. Harrison got to spend a lot of time with grandma and grandpa which was great because I left for Scottsdale 2 days later. I left baby boy with my parents and he had a blast! They went fishing, went swimming in the hottub, fed him everything I don't let him eat and they even bought a walker for him to use which he LOVED! He cruises everywhere in that thing. Zac and I got to do pretty much everything we don't ever get the chance to do like go shopping, eat out and go to the movies. We saw Eagle Eye, which was so good! Has anyone else seen it? It's your typical movie with a weird computer-goes-bad-and-tries-to-kill-off-the-government plot, but the action made up for it. I even cried 3 times during it, which is weird. But we both loved it. It was nice to have a couple days of downtime, but I was so ready to get back to my baby. When we got home, Harrison saw us and looked really confused. It took him a little bit to realize who we were and then he got really excited. So happy he had so much fun and was good for my parents, but I have to admit I was a sad when he looked at us and was like "Uhm, who are you and why are you interrupting my playtime with grandma and grandpa?" Bless his heart. I am just glad that he eventually remembered us. :) It made me realize that going on a getaway every now and again is probably as good for Harrison as it is for me.

Random, a few months ago I cleaned out Harrison's room and put a bunch of stuff away for storage in his closet. I was looking in there this morning and I found these pictures that I love from Mother's Day that I framed but never hung up.