Sorely Needed Mini-Break

Ash and I had a GREAT, relaxing day off together on Friday. We realized it was long overdue when the night before we almost couldn't sleep we were so excited and after it was all over, we actually felt rejuvenated and productive at home.

So, because we're horrible at planning things like this, we didn't get to play disc golf at the ski resort as planned, but we found a lot of other fun things to do.

Started off with breakfast at Blue Plate Diner downtown. Several people from Kansas have told us to eat here since it was featured on the food network this summer. It was greasy, greasy, good, that's for sure!

Then we headed to Park City to tool around...got some coffee, walked around, visited the Olympic Park. Good, relaxing times. Oh, and Ash made a new friend:

He's such a good sport sometimes.

We then took a drive through the mountains, which were absolutely beautiful with the fall colors starting to pop up. We circled back through Provo Canyon and then landed for some lunch in Provo proper. Ate WAY too much sushi and then eventually headed back to SLC to pick up Helena.

Oh, before I forget, while we were in Provo, we saw this advertised at Provo High School:

Yes folks, that's a bridal fair. At the HIGH SCHOOL. Ah...Utah culture. At least it's entertaining.

Some really great pictures are on flickr from our day...enjoy!

Emily :)

Eh....

I’ve been trying to come up with something interesting to blog about the past couple of days, but alas, life is pretty boring lately. And I've been feeling remarkably lazy.

We did have some professional family pictures taken this past weekend (I'll post some soon!), which I drug Ash to even though he had a 102 fever. He was really sick all weekend, so other than our picture outing, Helena and I just laid low around the house and went to Target a couple of times. Shopping seems to be my main form of entertainment these days. And while it's marginally fun, it’s not as fun as it could be if I had unlimited funds. Ha! I’m really busy at work, too, which doesn’t allow for very many interesting life experiences. And blogging about work is probably not the best idea, ya know!?!

We do hopefully have an exciting weekend coming up…Ash’s birthday is tomorrow and he & I are both taking Friday off to have a date day together. I think we’re going to go up to a ski resort in Big Cottonwood Canyon to play some disc golf. We’re also going to hit up a really good place for breakfast before we get on the road. And there might be an IKEA trip in my future. There I go shopping again!

So here’s to more interesting times ahead and less TV watching. Although I LOVE ‘new tv’ week every fall.

-Emily :)

Two Milestones

Helena took 3 steps on her own this evening. Very exciting! I'm so glad she did it in my presence and not at daycare. Or at least I'm glad that if she did, daycare didn't tell me. How nice of them. Ha! Here's a pic of her standing the other day (without pants on, of course).

The other albeit minor milestone we had this week was her first ponytail. We had to try really really hard, and there was some wrangling and unhappiness...

...but it's there. And it was cute. My little baby finally looks like a girl! And I guess it's cute that she also looks exactly like her dad. :) Who coincidentally used to have a ponytail. But that's another post.

- Emily :)

Dietary Confusion

I took advantage of a pretty cool perk of my new health insurance today and visited a nutritionist at the University of Utah. I basically found out I'm not eating as bad as I think I am, which I guess is good. Commuting 45 minutes to an hour each way to work has not been good for my eating habits, though. And I know there are a lot of people out there who have horrible eating habits and say, for example, have Doritos and Mountain Dew for breakfast. I'm not one of those, at least. ;)

The other main reason why I've been feeling that I'm not eating well is that, like most people I'm sure, I don't feel like I eat enough fruits and vegetables. Especially since the pregnancy-induced, all-inclusive vegetable aversion.

So the nutritionist is going over the government's food pyramid with me and I realize you only need 5-ish servings of fruits AND/OR vegetables a day. I always thought it was 5 fruits AND 5 vegetables a day, totaling 10-ish. And I've always wondered, WHO EATS THAT WELL!?! AND THAT MUCH!?! So, now that I have my facts straight, I feel better about my fruit and veggie intake. But I really think they need to evaluate the use of their conjunctions in their promotional materials.

Anyway, I share my new found knowledge with Ashford tonight, and he thought the exact same thing. So, I didn't feel so stupid after all. He's convinced that they must have drastically changed the dietary requirements since we were kids. I'm not sure, and I'm too tired to research it. :)

Anyone else as silly as we are and thought the same thing? (Jen, if you're reading, feel free to chime in!)

-Emily :)

Helena vs. Dill

While our cats are very good with Helena, as she's become more active they have to get creative about how to avoid her when they want to. Here's a video I took today where Dill is chillin' in his favorite safe zone, but Helena is doing her best to torment, and enjoying every minute of it.

I apologize for the grainy-ness of the video :)

-Emily :)

State Fair Day

In honor of my friends and family attending the Brett Michaels/Poison concert at the Kansas State Fair tonight, we decided to check out the Utah State Fair today.

Helena had a blast being able to get super close to a lot of the animals...a lot closer than we did at the zoo last weekend. And they had a cool farm exhibit for kids that she was a little young for, but Ash & I got some free cheez-its out of the experience, so I think it was worth it.

While eating barbecue sandwiches and listening to some gospel rap across the way (which Helena was dancing to off and on), I got a major case of the giggles. Pretty much the only lyric of his song was "I don't want to be a renegade...I wanna be a soldier!" He sang his little heart out to his (sadly) very empty tent...and, because I'm a jerk, I just couldn't contain myself. So freaking funny. What a horrible gig for a rapper, although in my opinion he's already dug his own grave with his specific choice of genre.

We got some really great homemade ice cream, too. I had peach, which reminded me of my grandma making it at the lake; Ash had chocolate and claims he's never eaten homemade ice cream before. Quite the travesty in my opinion. Oh, and Helena tasted ice cream for the first time. That, along with the french fries for lunch, made for a pretty sweet day.

The Utah State Fair was as trashtastic as the Kansas State Fair. Although I was a bit disappointed we didn't see a family of more than six kids. But, it was Sunday and it would cost a family of 15 over $100 to attend the fair. We did see two kids on a leash, though; a WT staple at the Kansas State fair.

Here are some more pictures of our day at the fair...enjoy!

Signs there are too many kids in Utah

1. Over 100 strollers parked at the zoo at any given time at any given exhibit. Ash actually saw a 5-seater!!

2. Takes phone calls to four different OB/GYN practices to get ANY appointment with ANYONE in the next two weeks. (And no, before you ask, I’m not pregnant.)

3. There is actually a very real thing I call ‘School’s Out Rush Hour’ that’s probably worse than regular rush hour.

4. It’s a common occurrence that I think I hear Helena crying in her room when I think she’s asleep, but no, it’s someone else’s kid making noise from outside our house. You know, one of the probably 30 kids that live within 50 yards of us.

5. Last night I couldn’t sleep because a gaggle of cats that roam around our neighborhood were crying just like children. I’m not even kidding. For a second I thought maybe I should call child protective services. It sounded like the very dramatic wailing of a two year old. Very weird that even the animals are picking up on the suburban roar of Utah.

6. If you think I’m exaggerating about the overabundance of fertility here, check this out. Utah is also statistically the youngest state in the nation. 30% of Utahns are under the age of 18, and I don’t think it’s because you don’t live to be very old around here.

-Emily :)

Weekend Rundown

We had a great holiday weekend. Tried to actually do some stuff outside the house just for fun. Saturday we made a trip to Hogle Zoo. Made sure to hit up the bird show, which was really pretty cool. They trained all of the birds to swoop right over the crowd…Helena thought that was pretty cool. She also started mimicking the bird’s noises during the show. She’s recently started doing this with our cat Stella, too, at home. So cute! Some of her other favorites included the leopards, turkeys, and giraffes.

The big event of the weekend, though, was that IT RAINED! A lot, too! We might have gotten like an inch. Seriously, this is the most it has rained since we moved here. I think summer is officially gone here in Salt Lake – the low this morning was in the 40’s – AND it snowed in the mountains over the weekend.

We had a couple of guys Ash works with over for a BBQ on Monday. We had steak, coleslaw, corn on the cob and I made a peach pie. Good stuff for sure!

I also sweet talked Ash into going to the mall with me to get Helena some fall clothes, we hit up IKEA, and Ash is so so close to finishing up the shower tiling project we’ve been working on semi-diligently all summer long. It’s going to look really good when it’s all done.

Hope everyone had a good long weekend too!

-Emily :)