Sweet little Leah

Twice now, Leah has called me at work and then brought me a Slurpee.  I am SO spoiled!  Here she is with her cute friend Jamie making a delivery.

For the record, I used to prefer cola slurpees but I've since made the switch to blue raspberry. SO yummy.

We had Stake Conference this past weekend and when I was sitting in the Saturday night adult session, I got texts from Leah asking me where I was.  I of course told her.  I mean, she wouldn't do something to my car again, would she?

Um, I went to a different high school but okay... ;)

 Leah did some very lovely art work on my car while I was inside.

Thanks for the warning! My hands look great, don't they?

 She included my fun camp nickname.

Hi neighbor.

I love that Leah is always looking for opportunities to teach me new things.

I'm so grateful for Leah.  Knowing her and having her in my life makes my heart happy.

Leah also thoughtfully made my car a public service announcement.  Hopefully all of those people who are checking their phones while driving will make a stop at this awesome website.

She waited for me until conference was over and then I took her out as a thank you.  Where'd we go?  To get slurpees, of course.

I love you, Leah!

Catch-up post #4

I gave up Diet Coke.

Yes, it's true.  I haven't had a sip of the sweet nectar since February 6th.  It started out as a little competition (with no official bet or stated reward) but I'm still going, which is just shocking to me.

Why am I shocked?  Well, I love the stuff.  I don't drink it every day.  I don't even keep any in my house. But I drank it a lot, by my own standards, and probably by others'.

I'm a fan of the fountain variety so I miss that the most and I HAVE been drinking a ton more water, which I know is a good thing.  But I haven't noticed any physical changes since I've stopped drinking it.  I sleep the same.  I had a mild headache on the second day but nothing since.  Other than that, there is no real change except for one big thing.

I miss it like crazy.

Isn't that weird?  I just love it THAT much so maybe it's a good thing I'm not drinking it?  Who knows.  And I don't know how long I'll go without it.  I'm really just taking it a day at a time (haha.)

So like I said, I'm in sort of a non-competition with a friend of mine.  In fact, I came home one night and found this waiting for me on my porch.

Seriously?  How rude is that**?  And yes, it's still in my fridge, thank you very much.  I also have like 9 bottles people have given me in my desk drawer at work (what can I say, people show their love by giving me Diet Coke!)  But having it all around doesn't tempt me at all, which is weird. But yeah, I still miss it a lot.  Have I mentioned that already?

**Okay, fine.  Full disclosure. I might have left a Big Gulp (festooned with ribbons, no less) at the home of my non-competitor...but, really, it was all in fun.  Seriously.  Maybe it wasn't even DC in the cup - maybe it was root beer.  Yeah, root beer.  I wouldn't purposely try to tempt someone else like that.  Honest!

How I spent my Christmas break, part cinque

To wrap up this super fun (if I do say so myself) series, something else I did over my break was receive some very awesome gifts.  Some have already made an appearance on the blog like the key chain from Cindy, new perfume and my key necklace (see part four.)

I got this really cute shirt from my mom (with shopping help from Michelley.) I wore it to the New Year's Eve dance and here's a bad phone shot of me & Leah from the dance.  There's a better picture here on part 3 but I wanted to include this fun pic that I stole off of her FB.  Photo props courtesy of Oh Happy Day.

Speaking of my Michelley, she got me these fabulous earrings.  So pretty...

FYI, I kind of really like trivia.  I have so much useless stuff in my head that one of my friends thought I should have more (and he was so right.)  Love this book.

So, remember when I went to Idaho and went to Bear World?  Well, Nikki and Emily surprised me with this super adorable teddy bear who looks just like the bears we saw there.  They packaged him perfectly in a box with "haaaaaaaay" and holding a sign that said the same thing (say it with your best Southern drawl.)

My dear friend Kim sent me some fun stuff all the way from England, by way of Amazon.  One of the gifts was this:

No, not the car but eyelashes for MY car.  I love my friend even though this is probably the craziest gift I've ever gotten.  I know she wants me to put them on my car but I'm thinking it would be super fun to just surprise someone one day and have them on their car when they least expect it.

So you've all been warned!

How I spent my Christmas break, part vier

I shopped at Tiffany!  But first, a little background...

With the exception of my affection for Coach bags, I'm not a girl who is overly tied to name brand things.  For whatever reason, I got a few name brand gifts this year and it just sort of struck me funny.  They were all from people at the office, because, hello, those people owe me for all of the pain and suffering they put me through all year long (I kid, I kid.)

One day I came into work and found this box on my desk:

Inside was a lovely crystal candle holder from one of the VP's in the office.  A few days later, I got this from one of my beloved bosses:

My favorite perfume!  Thanks to KMZT for letting him know I was running low.  Then I had lunch with my other beloved boss and his wife and got this:

Yep.  The little blue box.  I was kind of excited, to be perfectly honest.  I figured this is my one and only time getting anything from this ridiculously overpriced store, you know?  Well, I untied the ribbon and inside was this:

It's a very pretty key holder that is registered to me so if I were to ever lose my keys, theoretically, some nice person would take them to their neighborhood Tiffany store and then I would miraculously get my keys back.  Of course, they wouldn't keep the key ring for themselves or sell it on eBay or something.

It was a very thoughtful idea and a really cool item to get but I have super cute key chains already.  See?

I've got this little pink/red theme going on plus I have my new favorite "Best Mom" key chain that Cindy gave me for Christmas (yeah...she's pretty dang awesome.)

So the boss and wife gave me the receipt for the key chain in case I wanted to exchange it and I decided to venture into the sort of intimidating Tiffany store for the first time ever last week to check out my options.  I had gone online and thought the key ring cost $125.  Well, I went to the store and they told me it was $175.  (Yes, you read that correctly.)  So I looked around, tried not to be freaked out by how expensive everything was and found this adorable key:

Ever since I read Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen, I've wanted to get myself a key necklace.  Isn't it pretty? I love it so much and it feels more like me than the key ring.  I told them about the exchange and they were fine with it - phew.

How I spent my Christmas break, part tres

I love Christmas break because it means some of my favorite college students are home for the holidays.

Nikki and Emily and I went to Panera for lunch.  (This actually happened just before break but it was close enough to make this post.)

Annie, Nikki, Emily, Sarah and I went to get frozen yogurt.  There's a fun place near us where you get to add your own toppings to whatever yogurt flavor you choose and we love it.  It was so great to hear all about everyone's Christmas presents and all of the rest of the exciting things these darling girls have been up to.

I chaperoned our stake's youth New Year's Eve dance and Nikki and Annie stuck with their tradition of crashing the dance to come visit me. (I look a little tense because Sassy Leah was taking the photo and as much as I love her, she is sort of an, um, interesting photographer lol.)  Sarah came later but we didn't get a picture.  These two adorable girls left this weekend for BYU-I and I miss them already.  I'm counting down the days until Spring Break because I just can't wait until all of my girls are back with me for a few days. (Bridget, you'd better be planning a trip here in April, okay???)

How I spent my Christmas break, part deux

So there's a restaurant chain based in Oregon called Burgerville.  I go every Christmas when I go shopping in Portland with Michelle.  They have a few locations in WA too and besides pretty good burgers, they have awesome milkshakes.  In December, they have these babies as their flavors of the month:

The chocolate peppermint is awesome.  It's basically a chocolate shake with crushed candy cane mixed in and it's amazingly yummy.  My friend Laura and I had talked about making the little over an hour long drive to the nearest location and during my break, we did it.

Don't these look so yummy?  Well, they were - except this location doesn't put enough peppermint candy in theirs.  You gotta mix it all the way through, not just sprinkle on top, if you're making these at home.

Laura went to school with my younger sister so we've known each other forever.  She replaced me as assistant camp director last year and I seriously couldn't have been happier to turn the reins over to her.  She is amazing at it and is always so kind whenever I excitedly offer my opinions on how I did things when I had that calling.  She has never once made me feel bad about my know-it-all-ness and for that I am so grateful. We had the best time talking during our drive and I can't wait until our next adventure.

How I spent my Christmas break, part one

I work for a company that shuts down Christmas Eve through New Year's Day.  It's seriously the best.  This break has been wonderful for a lot of reasons and I'll try to capture some of that here in the good ol' blog, starting with what I did today.

I woke up today feeling kind of crummy.  I have a bit of a cold so I just stayed in bed all morning.  I started getting texts from Leah at about 7 AM.  Here is a bit of our conversation:

I then started getting texts from Emily.

I sat in bed and thought "why not go bring them lunch?" So I jumped in the shower really quickly and with wet hair and my pajamas on, I drove to Taco Bell and got a dozen tacos and then to their high school and waited in the visitor parking lot for the girls to come out.  Leah was first...tacos are her favorite. Can you tell?

Cute Eric came too.  That's Abbie in the middle, Emily on the right.  They were all in pajamas too.  Did you all go to high school in pajamas? I never did.

Leah had to photo bomb the first pic so I took a second one.  Cute cute.

Leah took this one ... I prefer a crunch wrap supreme to a taco...in case you were wondering.

I asked Abbie to take my pic with Leah and this is us checking our teeth.  Because I love Leah so much, I posted this one...nice, huh?

Here's another...thankfully it's a little dark so you can't quite see my super clean face.

Things I'm grateful for:

• that school security didn't come out and arrest me for being on campus with kids in my car
• that I did something spontaneous today despite not being as cute as I could be
• that I have these awesome kids in my life
• that they love being with me as much as I love being with them

Proof for the non-believers

I have much to share but very little time to do so...so while you wait for my latest installment on my Disneyland trip and a report on the gifts I received from work people, watch this video from last weekend's SNL.  Yes, it's irreverent, etc. but watch until the last line from Jesus, will you please? :)

My favorite commercial - right now

I saw this when I was at the movies this weekend and then saw it a bunch of times this week during American Idol. This is just hilarious - watch.

Mormons, Mormons, Mormons

My cute and wonderful friend Kim has a well-known dad. (He's a certain longtime US Senator from the great state of Utah whose name rhymes with match.) Anyway, she blogged about this but I want to share it here too.

Her dad wrote a really great Hanukkah song recently that has gotten some publicity. (See Kim's blog for more.) Well, this week, The Tonight Show wrote all of us who are members of the LDS church a nice little song. Check out the video and then let me know if you're still singing the chorus in the middle of the night like I know I will be.

Packing woes plus something funny

I'm going* to Utah soon (and leaving gun-wielding, rottweiler-owning former Navy SEALs in my house while I'm gone so if you are thinking of coming for a visit, um, don't bother.)

I know I've mentioned before that I loathe packing. Hate it. At home, you can take a day off from being cute. You can be sloppy, wear sweats, etc. but on vacation (especially a vacation when you're meeting five beloved bloggers** face to face and attending two weddings***) you have to be as cute as you can be every single day. STRESSFUL! So I'm avoiding thinking about which outfits to bring and sharing something that made me laugh recently.

Katie blogged about some Amazon product comments awhile back and seriously, this is the funniest stuff you will read in a long time. I've shared this with my co-workers and now it's your turn to enjoy it. If you laugh, try this one too.

*I'm driving down with two of my dearest friends. My car is clean, tuned and ready to go. I know it's crazy but I'm totally excited for a road trip.

**The bloggers I'm meeting are: Michelle, Vanessa, Shannon, Holly and Jill. I know! Can you even believe it? I simply cannot WAIT!

***The weddings I'm attending are for Adrian and Callie (gone private.) I am *SO* excited to see these beautiful girls marry the guys they love in the temple next week.

My new ringtone

Have you all seen this commercial? I hope so. It's one of my faves. My sister Jen texted me the song today so it's now my new ringtone. If you're a verizon customer and want it too, email me your cell number and I'll text it to you (I don't think it will work unless you're verzion.) Anyway, it makes me laugh whenever anyone calls me. LOVE IT!! Thanks, Jen!