Published!

Not me, my good friend Kylie Nixon.

Kylie was our amazing wedding photographer. A low maintenance, creative, inventive, and genius girl.

She recently emailed me to tell me that one of the pictures she took from our wedding has landed a spot in a book that was just put out by theknot.com. The picture is on the right- me and 3 bridesmaids in yellow holding our flowers.



Love this girl.

In other interesting news, the moment Harry woke up this morning, he looked at me and said, "Is it too late to move to the suburbs and start a musical group with five kids known as the Jacksons?"

This was followed by a lengthy pause.

I love that man.

Because I was on my death bed when I wanted to post this.

Valentine's day was weeks ago but I did want to post evidence of the love.

In bullet form:

• Calalillies (favorite flower of mine)
• Bridge mix (favorite favorite)
• Fancy dinner at Donato in RWC
• Propping our camera atop our fridge and self-timing it to get documentation of dressing up for the occasion

It was just dreamy.

Only a few short days later I was laid up, hacking, thinking to myself, "If I was a pioneer woman right now, I probably would have 24 hours to live. Or would have died already."

Harry made Thai Beef Soup. It involved a bewitching mixture of star anise, cinnamon sticks, chicken broth, mint, jalapenos, flank steak, bean sprouts, scallions... and heaven.




Aaaand just for giggles, when I was in UT Becca let me steal a bunch of pictures I didn't even know existed. A lot of them were just of our BYU days, which meant a lot of them featured Harry. What better way to post the Valentine's love than a glance at the dating years?

Dating, hanging around Provo

Fundraiser Event for Cystic Fibrosis in Park City

Wedding Dinner

Back from the dead

I have finally recovered from the worst cold/respiratory infection/brush with a phlegmy death of my entire life. I have a new appreciation for the ability to take deep, pain-free breaths, for antibiotics, and for a husband who literally will get out of bed at 2:30 in the morning just to get me a glass of water and will rub my back until I fall asleep again.

What started as a left over cough from a cold somehow blossomed (exploded?) into something fierce about a week ago. I will spare the gruesome details; let it suffice to say I thought I had pnuemonia. I couldn't take even shallow breaths without hearing and feeling wet pockets of air in my lungs respond. I was coughing night and day. I was dizzy when I stood up. I was feverish and couldn't stand the thought of eating. The concept of showering was even too much to handle.

Thanks to wonderful wonderful doctors (and even more wonderful brothers), and the wonderful wonderful world of drugs, and after 5 days of taking it easy (so easy I'm convinced any muscle I had is now as mushy as applesauce), I am now back to normal.

As luck would have it, right in the eye of the phlegmy storm, my brother Cameron was driving out from Utah for a visit. This had been in our plans for months. When he arrived, all I could do was sit on the couch and feebly wave and whisper. But he stuck it out like a pro, happy to just hang out when I wasn't feeling good. We still had ourselves a good time, and managed to squeeze in the movie "Unknown" along with a Cheese House sandwich and some Chipotle. True to form, and lazier than ever due to, you know, being ill, I didn't take many pictures. But he's a good brother and I'm so glad he was here to hang out with his sick sister.


Forcing the boys to take Airborne to avoid my fate


My Cheese House Sandwich


Self portrait: "On the very edge of life"


Cam and Harry took great care of me. Harry even made an amazing Thai beef soup with mint and cilantro and fresh ginger and grilled flank steak for me-- from scratch. There never was a luckier sick girl.

I'm not to the point where I should go running or hiking or even and excessive kind of jumping, but when I do, I will feel over the moon about it. Good health is such an enormous blessing! I really do have a new appreciation for it. I also really want to protect it-- fiercely-- from something like this happening ever again. I want to live on grapefruit and blueberries and kale and canteloupe and brown rice and broccoli and wheat germ and flax seed and string cheese and the occasional slab of butter, and get 9 hours of sleep a night, and do yoga an hour a day and run 5 miles after that. What I'm describing isn't really possible in my life right now. But I can dream.

Thank you, B.

For this Fleet Foxes cover of Swedish sisters in the woods.

Happy birthday Mom!

You are the summation of all things lovely and we love you so much!



(Don't forget, calories don't count on your birthday. I think there are about 8 pieces of vanilla nut fudge at See's with your name on them!)

Ba Ha Ha Ha Ha

$$$$$$$$$$$ (read: ca-ching)

Last night someone had put a few recent issues of Real Simple Magazine out for anyone to grab on the first floor of our building, which I did, on the way out the door to our dinner date. I knew if I didn't snatch them then they would be gone in another 2 minutes.

Today I got a chance to sit back and read one (from last month). I read through a page of information of what you can do to manage your finances. Finance-wise I feel I'm a pretty conservative person. I'm not an impulse-buyer. 99% of the things you can find in my closet were bought on sale, snatched at a clothing swap, gifted by an older sister, or bought off the rack at a discount or thrift store. Basically, we like to save money. But reading through this article (the all-too-confusing words "S&P Index 500" were used), I realized there's a lot about money I don't know.

So I said, out loud, "You know, I think I would really like to learn about investments and IRAs and the stock market. I bet there's a lot we could be doing with our money."

Harry, who had been astutely mixing yeast and warm water for homemade pizza tonight (droooooooooooooooooool) paused, and marched over to our book shelf and pulled this little beauty off of it and handed it to me. I kind of love it and hate it when he makes me put my money where my mouth is (finance pun not intended).



He read this book in a finance class last year (which he loved. How this is possible for anyone, I will never know). He said that anything and everything I ever wanted to know about money is in this book. His teacher praised it as one of the best written on the subject.

I thumbed through the first two pages and saw the dedication. And I had to laugh.




I decided it's sort of a sign. That Harry's wife (...me, for you slow ones) needs to read this.

Will I get all the way through it? I don't know. Probably not... but I really am curious enough to look through it.

Since the (f)unemployment is still abounding over here, I've realized I'm not that great at managing free time. I'm fairly productive, but I've watched more reruns of NBC shows in the last week than I'd care to admit. Harry, brilliant as always, suggested I make a schedule for myself. You know, something like

8:00 am-9:05 am: Eat breakfast and surf internet
9:05 am- 9:45 am: Exercise
9:45 am-10:45 am: Look for a job
10:45 am- 12:00 pm: Think up awesome recipes to make Harry for dinner
12:00 pm- 12:55 pm: Clean out bathroom drawers
12:55- 1:45 pm: Organize pantry

(Whoops. I honestly forgot to put "shower" in there. Do you see what having no schedule is doing to me?!)

Anyway. Hopefully penciling in time to read this book will contribute to my overall productivity... and just maybe I'll do something useful with our $$$.

What do you do when your job ends?

Take a trip, of course.

More specifically, wait two days after your last day of work, and take a trip to where people you love/miss reside, and play for 4 days straight without pausing for breath.

I've been getting better at documenting (though someday I plan to upgrade from taking pictures with my phone to pictures with an actual camera). For any/all who are interested... here was the weekend of love, 2011, Farmingtown, USA.

Driving to Provo with cousin Bec

Figuring how to fill up the car with natural gas

(Uncle R is saving the environment w/ his hot wheels)

Hello, Cam!

Don't know why I felt compelled to take a picture of the cougarettes poster. All that studded patent leather they're wearing... it was just worth a photo.

Fro Yo makes a great mid morning snack.

The BYU candy counter. We got reacquainted. We're old friends.

The only soda fountain in the world that offers Caffeine Free Diet Coke. Oh BYU. I love you.

Carl Bloch Exhibit at Museum of Art w/ cousins Libby and Mary. It was breathtaking.

Imported from Denmark.

Cafe Rio! I contacted all the local peeps I could to come join us for dinner. Thank you to everyone who came!

Salads.

Me gusta Cafe Rio!

We baked bounteous cookies and cupcakes. What we do best. Recipes can be found here, here, and here.

Driving in the car w/ Cam.

Dinner with Cam and gal pal K! Too much fun!

Visiting Cam's apartment. We watched reruns of "Parks and Recreation" and had a blast. His roommate called me "old." I wanted to kick him but realized I left my steel toe boots at home. Dang.

J and A. Blushing newlyweds! They came over for the superbowl.

The men, engrossed.

Trivial pursuit. Serious business with Kyle.

And Bec.

And Uncle R.

Things not pictured:

1) Kyle playing with the remote control helicopter.
2) The wild game of mad libs.
3) Watching all episodes of Masterpiece Theater's "Downton Abbey" (thank you Whit for the link! I will watch it over and over again!)
4) Thrift shopping-- belt, ruffled satin skirt, 2 victorian picture frames= $9.
5) Seeing both Annette and Sophie for the first time in years.

6) Breakfast at Kneaders

7) The notorious trip to Costco (the Saturday before the Superbowl, apparently Costco has the most samples of any day of the year. It. Was. Epic.)


At the end of it all, it was high time that I high tail it home to this man and his fancy new glasses. I now call him Harold B. Lee, and think he should showcase his handsome retro frames as a cast member on the show "Mad Men." Only playing the part of a faithful spouse, of course (something that show is particularly lacking).

A world without the right Mary Poppins

Once when I was a little kid, I was watching "Mary Poppins." I don't quite know how this thought arose, but I started thinking to myself, "What if Julie Andrews' parents never met? What if they never had her? Then Mary Poppins would have been played by someone else! And if no one had ever heard of Julie Andrews because she didn't exist, Mary Poppins never would have been a good movie! And no one would know it was because the movie was made without her!" And I began a mini panic attack, trying to imagine how we could all get along in a world where Julie Andrews did not play Mary Poppins.

I remembered this little episode last night when I was hopped up on Nyquil and Vitamin C-Monster Odwalla juice (yet another cold has struck me down! That's what I get for galavanting around SLC with my cousins/brother all hours of the night and day this past weekend...), talking to Harry about how if we hadn't met/run into each other in the library/dated, that we could have wound up with other people! And that is such a crazy thought to me. I cited the experience above re: Julie Andrews, saying "Harry, the thought that we might not be together is just as horrifying as the thought that Julie Andrews may never have played Mary Poppins! It's just so wrong!"

And then I paused and realized, "Yeah, this is one of those weird thoughts that I should just blog about."

And, there you have it.