Lights

Has anyone else noticed a huge decrease in the number of Christmas lights on homes compared to ten years ago? Spencer and I spent an evening driving around to look at Christmas lights, and while it was a lot of fun, the lights seemed few and far between.

We found that the lower-middle class neighborhoods typically had more homes decorated, and the big expensive homes along the east bench were pretty sparse. Where's the Christmas spirit?! Oh well, we did find some homes all lit up and beautiful.


Even Jack enjoyed the sights!


The best spot we found for lights was at La Caille, the fancy French restaurant in Sandy.


What a great entrance! Just beyond the gate, the road bridges over a pond, which was filled with ducks despite the cold. The long cobblestone path up to the restaurant was lined with trees, all lit up with red, green, and white.


The water fountains just outside the restaurant had mostly frozen over and formed these great ice sculptures. We could see water still spraying out the top.


On the way out we even spotted a swan.



If you are in the area and have a free evening, this is definitely worth seeing. And the best part is, you don't have to get out and walk around in the cold and snow!

Body Worlds Exhibit

My parents asked us a little while ago what we wanted for Christmas this year, and I told them right away, we want tickets to Body Worlds! Since we first heard about this exhibit coming to Salt Lake City, Spencer and I have both been "dying" to go. (no pun intended)

So, my mom and dad sent us the tickets, and yesterday we drove downtown to the Leonardo museum and experienced "Body Worlds 3: A Story of the Human Heart."


We both loved it! I learned a lot about anatomy and was blown away by the amount of precision and detail it must have taken to create these displays. I know that a lot of people are grossed out by it or think it is morbid, but I looked at it as a celebration of the human body, and proof of divine creation. After seeing all that goes into making a functioning human body, I don't know how anyone can say that it was all an accident!

At the end of the exhibit, Spencer and I discussed what our favorite parts of the exhibit were. I couldn't really narrow mine down, but one thing that Spencer was amazed by was the camel dissection. That's right, a camel! And it was HUGE!


I was very impressed with the blood system dissections that they had, ranging from a rabbit, to a placenta, to an entire human body.


After spending two and a half hours at the museum, we headed to the Gateway for lunch and a little window shopping. It was so fun to spend the day with Spencer. Thanks Mom and Dad for the great gift!

Friday Night

We got to babysit for our friends, Greg and Laurie, on Friday night for a couple of hours. They have two cute boys, and Spencer and I had a lot of fun with them. Spencer spent much of the time organizing all their transportation toys into different categories.


Of course, he had plenty of help!


It's fun for me to see Spencer interacting with kids, because he is so good with them. We're both excited for the day when we have our own children, but until then we can enjoy the kids around us. We get to spend a lot of time with Greg and Laurie and their boys. We love hanging out with the Lorenzon family!

Thanksgiving

We love Thanksgiving! We drove down to Fillmore on Wednesday evening and had a delicious turkey dinner with the Jolley family on Thursday.

More, please!

After all the food had settled, the family walked over to the high school for our annual flag football game.


Despite the cool temps and wet, slippery grass, the game was a lot of fun! Spencer and I were on the winning team with my brother Adam, uncle Rob, and cousin Rachel (and our dog Jack!).

The "Dream Team"

The "other" team consisted of my dad, brother Michael and wife Jessica, uncle Dave, and Rachel's husband Andrew. The family Turkey Bowl is always one of the things I look forward to most at Thanksgiving.


We drove up to Springville Thursday evening to visit Spencer's family, then hit the mall on Black Friday for a little shopping before heading to Pleasant Grove to play games with my family.

Speaking of shopping, I have to say we had a great bit of luck shopping on Black Friday. I needed a couple of new dress pants for school, and Spencer and I were both planning on spending A LOT of time trying on pants to find anything that fit. Based on previous shopping experience, I knew it could take a while. We arrived at the mall at 11:00 a.m., and the first 4 pairs of pants I tried on fit almost perfectly! Plus, all were on sale for a great price, so we walked out of the store 30 minutes after walking in with 3 new pants and the rest of the day to enjoy playing games with family. That is definitely something to be thankful for!

Grandma Jolley reading to her two little granddaughters

Halloween Part 2

Okay, so my first Halloween post was a little early, and this one is a little late. But I have a good excuse. . . Parent Teacher Conferences! (scary, intimidating music) Anyone who is a teacher can tell you how busy the week of conferences can be. First, we have to stay late before conferences to get grades and everything ready. Then we have to teach our normal school schedule, with two afternoons and evenings meeting with parents. It can be pretty exhausting.

Luckily, we have Friday off today to make up for the time spent after school. So now I can catch up on the blog!

Anyway, I dressed up as Super Teacher for my school Halloween costume. I had all the clothes already and made a little sign to pin on my shirt, so it was pretty easy to throw together at the last minute. The kids all seemed to like it too. One of the parents said I needed to glue some eyes to the back of my head to make it more realistic. Not a bad idea!

Don't you love the shoes?

Along with parent conferences, I also found the time to vote.


I thought about doing the early voting, but I always saw a big line of cars at the early voting place I pass by every day on the way to school. So I procrastinated, and at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday night I made my way to the polls. I must have been one of the few procrastinators in the area, because there were only a couple other voters there and plenty of volunteers and voting machines. I was in and out in five minutes!

Spencer has been such a big help this week, taking care of dinner and cleaning up the house. He is very thoughtful and lets me relax and be lazy when I need to. He's my favorite husband EVER!! (I get that phrase from the first graders who say that I am their favorite first grade teacher ever. Quite a compliment, since I am also their ONLY first grade teacher!) But I am really lucky to have Spencer as my husband, and he really is super!

Halloween Part 1

I know it isn't quite Halloween yet, but I had a little down time and thought I should do a quick post about our first Halloween party of the year.

The night before the party, we were trying to come up with costume ideas. As we wandered aimlessly around WalMart, we passed by the boys section and saw these SpongeBob pajamas. These would be perfect!

Spencer is wearing boys size large, and mine are boys small. We went as twins who grew up overnight.

If we had known Sarah Palin was going to be there, maybe we would have dressed up a little more!


The big event at this party was the band performance. That's right, Spencer is in a rock band! His mom would be so proud that he is putting his cello skills to work. He actually plays the bass guitar in the band, which I guess is similar to the cello. He is very musical anyway, and could probably play any instrument given a little practice. He also sings a couple of songs.

Here's a shot of Spencer on the bass.

Here's the band performing. It was hard to get a good shot, because if I used the flash, you couldn't see the dim lights and disco ball, etc. If I didn't use the flash, everything was too dark. I don't remember what setting this was. The light was good, but it wouldn't focus very well.

His other band buddies are Greg (lead singer), Rick (guitar), Steve (guitar), and Ron (drums).

The Band

Most of what the band plays is 80's rock, since that is their generation of music. But they also have some more recent songs. The crowd favorite is always "Pop Goes My Heart" from the movie Music and Lyrics. Here's a link to the youtube video from the movie. click here

Spencer and Greg singing "Pop Goes My Heart"

Spencer sang "Guardian Angel" by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. I think it's the perfect song for him because it shows off how melodic his voice is.

So cute!

I love Halloween!

New Office

Well, it's official! Spencer is now working in Utah County. He has been planning to move his chiropractic office to a new location when his lease ended in November, and he found a great space in Pleasant Grove. He has had several allergy patients commuting up to Salt Lake from Utah County because there are no practitioners in that area who do allergy elimination technique. We hope that the move down there will bring in even more patients without competing with other doctors.

Spencer is dividing his time between the Cottonwood Heights and Pleasant Grove offices for the month of October, and will be exclusively in PG starting November. We spent the day Saturday in his new office getting things ready.


The children's waiting room has a big whiteboard on the wall that we moved down to the baseboards and framed in so kids can draw pictures. Here's a picture of the whiteboard, with me hanging up a child coat rack.


We did some painting, hung shelves, cleaned a little, and built a little shelf on the receptionist window for patients to use when they sign in.

It was fun to spend the day together and have a sense of accomplishment for all the work we did! Even Jack got to come and hang out with us.

Once the office is all put together in November, I'll post some more pics of it.

Here's a link to Spencer's business website: Total Care Wellness Center.

Yummy New Tradition

Spencer and I have been married for over 4 years now, and we are slowly developing our own family traditions. One tradition that we have just started is a trip to Iceberg Drive Inn to split a burger, onion rings, and a shake.

The first time we did this, we ordered a burger, fries, onion rings, and 2 shakes. Even though we can both eat a lot (especially Spencer) we couldn't finish it all! So we learned our lesson and ordered a little less the next time we went.

The onion rings at Iceberg are DELICIOUS!! I am not a fan of onions, but these are so big and so good, it's like eating candy!


This is a family tradition that I hope continues for a long time to come!

Side note: Next time, I need to do any food posts on NON-Fast Sundays! Looking at these pictures again is making me drool!

Picture Tag

The rules are you have to take pictures of the following things, and you have to do it right away. No cleaning, straightening, or wiping your child's nose (and I mean it!) Then tag 6 others.











1. Kitchen sink. We had pasta for dinner, and I left the plates and pot in the sink instead of putting them in the dishwasher. Oh well, there's always tomorrow!

2. Laundry room. Nothing fancy here, just the basics and some food storage.


3. Fridge. It looks like it's about time to take down some of those notes!














4. Bathroom. This is our second bathroom. The one Spencer and I use is not as clean. I use this bathroom to blow dry and straighten my hair. I don't think the shower has been used by us except to wash things, like our climbing rope and large tupperware containers. Michael and Jessica used it when they stayed overnight. I remember because there was no soap or anything in there and they had to use the hand soap from the sink!





5. Closet. One thing we lucked out on with our condo is the huge closet in the master bedroom. It's definitely bigger than the one we had at our house in Idaho! Which leads me to . . .

6. Favorite room. Okay, okay, the closet isn't really my favorite room. But I forgot to take a picture of the living room and I don't want to go through the trouble now that I'm already in the middle of posting.







7. Favorite shoes. I just realized I forgot my ultimate favorite pair--my $2.50 black flip flops from Old Navy. I've worn them for 3 summers now I think. The heel part is almost worn clear through, but they're super comfy! Well, until I step on a jagged rock or something and it stabs my foot through the thin rubber!
The pink pair on the right are from my Grandma Sally. Aren't they cute?











8. Self portrait. Pay no attention to the garment sleeve visible on my shoulder. It's Friday night and I deserve to be comfortable! I guess I should have edited it out, but it's too late now.














9. Children. This is as close as it gets right now. Jack has been following me everywhere as I've been snapping these photos. When I took a picture of the shoes, he laid down and rolled over so I would scratch his belly. How could I say no?

















10. Dream vacation. I would love to go on a cruise to somewhere tropical. I want the kind of cruise that does all the fun adventure things, like scuba diving, climbing, and all that jazz. I figure if I spend a lot of the time doing something physical, it will be okay to eat all that yummy cruise food I hear so much about!

Tag! Michael & Jessica, Adam & Harmony, LeAnn, Sara, Laurie

Jack

Before I decided to enter the world of blogging, I was a little hesitant because we don't have kids. Most of the blogs I saw were of young families showing off their cute babies. Why would anyone want to see boring pictures of Spencer and me? Anyway, I am glad I got over that, and today I thought I should do a post about our dog Jack, since he's as close to a child as we have right now!

We got Jack for my birthday in 2005, right after buying our house in Idaho. We picked him up at the animal shelter in Idaho Falls, where he had been for 3 weeks prior. When we took him out of his kennel to look at him, he pressed himself right up against my legs and stayed there, even when we took him outside the shelter to walk him around. All the other dogs we looked at would immediately run to the edges of the fence when we took them out, but Jack stayed right with us.

He was super skinny, dull fur coat, and he had to be neutered before we could take him home. The surgery involved stitches, so we couldn't bathe him for a couple weeks. And the anesthetic they gave him made him pee about every 15 minutes. This was before we finished our fence in the backyard, so he stayed in the house a lot of the time. Which meant I spent all my time following him around with carpet cleaner. Not a great start! Luckily, he completely changed after the first couple weeks. He is great with kids, never gets on the furniture, learns tricks quickly, is obedient MOST of the time, and of course is very loyal.

The one thing we struggle with is his interactions with other dogs. For the most part he's fine, but he has attacked a couple of dogs on different occasions. We are still working with him on this.

Anyway, here are some photos of Jack. They are not in any certain order.

Jack came with us to Fillmore to help my parents put sheetrock up in the garage. He spent most of his time hunting for cats and laying around in the dust.

Jack kept me company in the Uintas this summer while Spencer spent the day fishing.

What a great sky!

Spencer and I sometimes force Jack to do "people" things, like play on the playground at the local elementary school. He doesn't really like it, and we had to push him to get him to go down the slide. But it makes for cute pictures!

Here's Jack with his cousin Sarah. We kept her at our house in Idaho for a couple months while her family was transitioning to their new house.

We took Jack to Lake Powell in 2006. He liked riding in the ski boat and house boat. He liked being on the beach. He liked all the food given out by nieces and nephews. One thing he did NOT like was the water! We threw him in a couple times and even gave him a life vest, but he never could appreciate the joys of swimming. Oh well!

Here's Jack in our backyard in Idaho. Since moving to Utah, he has had to adjust to much less backyard space. Especially now, while we're living in a condo! Luckily he is a very mellow dog and doesn't mind staying inside for most of the day.

I've always liked this picture of Spencer and Jack along the Snake River, one of our favorite places to take him for walks in Idaho Falls.

Jack is such a cuddler! He almost always sleeps all curled up with his nose tucked under his paws. Awwww! Cute puppy!