Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Cookies and Cards


My parents were here visiting last week and we had so much fun with them!
We did a lot of this...

The women won A LOT, and the men finally had to resort to cheating to get some wins. Chad however tells a different version of this story.

There was a lot of debating on where to eat. There always is when my grandparents are involved ;) They want to make sure we all get something we want. So the whole vegetarian thing made that debate even longer this time!
Fortunately there was a lot of these too...

In between the card playing and eating we swam in the very warm pool at my grandparents clubhouse, had a major grocery shopping excursion at WalMart, got awesome frozen yogurt, Cafe Rio shrimp tacos, and Kneaders French Toast (I guess that's still eating!), went to the DI, and just hung out and talked a lot. It was a great week that went by way too fast!

Granola Recipe


Chad and I eat A LOT of yogurt! We've recently discovered greek yogurt which is super yummy and super good for you. It's a nice way for us to get some protein! Along with fruit we NEED granola with our yogurt. Granola is expensive though and often times I have been less than impressed with what I could get at the grocery store so.... I make my own!

A while ago I stumbled onto this awesome website, Word of Wisdom Living. It is an awesome website all about leading a more healthy life! From there I got this granola recipe, it's full of good things and is much more affordable to make. The best thing about making your own granola, you can put whatever you like in it! We usually go with almonds, cashews and sunflower seeds as our nuts and call it good, but you could add all kinds of things: dry fruit, raisins, mini chocolate chips, go crazy! This recipe is a little different in that you bake it low and slow, but I like it SO much better! We end up making a batch every other week!

5 c old-fashioned rolled oats
1c whole-wheat flour
1c wheat germ
1c coconut, shredded or flaked
1 to 1.5c total of chopped nuts

Mix above ingredients in large bowl

2T vanilla
1/4c water
1/2c honey
1/2c (or less!) healthy oil (try coconut oil)


Mix wet ingredients in a medium bowl, then stir into the dry ingredients.


Spread in shallow baking pans and bake about 2 hours at 250 F., stirring gently every 15 minutes. Cook until golden brown and nearly dry. Cool and store in airtight containers; refrigerate.


Enjoy!!!

Friday, February 24, 2012

Worst "Interview" Ever

As of late I've been able to find quite a few jobs to apply to. I found one listing on craigslist that sounded like it would actually be a lot of fun, a Nutritionist/Dietician. I didn't apply to it at first because I am not a Nutritionist or Dietician but after talking with Chad and my mom figured, what the heck!, might as well apply! The posting said that you would be working with clients and forming meal plans and working with them on their diet. You needed to know about the body and how it worked and interacted with food. I'm a biology major, I got this! So I sent in my resume.

Later that day I got a response from Jared saying that he'd love to meet with me! Awesome! I was excited to go in and see if I could get this job. I googled the company and got a glimpse of what was in store for me. They only had a facebook page, something about healthy fast food... oh no. I remained optimistic about it until the next afternoon (the day I was to go in for the "interview") when I saw another ad on craigslist:

Men or women 18 yrs. or older
1-866-673-1341 leave mess.
Must like Network marketing
Business Breifing Thur. nights
call for time and place.
Add an extra $500 or more to your income
part time.

Oh no. I had a sneaking suspicion that this was the same thing that I was going to. I had my appointment all set up though and I really wanted it to be something awesome so I got myself all ready, straightened my hair, makeup on, skirt, heels, the whole works and went out to get myself a job.

The inside of the building was neon green. There were 20 women all inside. When I opened the door I was assaulted with club music. No. No. No. I asked some random woman for Jared, but he was out in the alley on a phone call. Middle aged women kept trying to get me to drink some sort of weird herby tea magical drink stuff, I declined 5 times. Everyone had buttons on and a friend with them. I sat awkwardly and watched someone come in dressed in pajamas. And then another girl in those horrible baggy bondage pant things with all the chains and things hanging off of them. Everyone else was in jeans and t-shirts. Some girl asked me how I had heard about this and what got me interested. Yeah.... I don't even know what this is. I chatted with her for a while hoping that Jared would finally come in and I could tell him that this isn't what I was looking for. I was looking for a JOB. Not some extra income. "Hi, yes, I would like some extra income to supplement the $0.00 I am currently making". No thanks. Jared wasn't coming, however, the women kept coming with their magical potions trying to suck me into their world. I kept hearing people say, "It looks like we're about to start" and "We should begin any minute now". I needed to get OUT. I was not going to stay through their whole, sell our tea presentation and I wasn't going to get to give Jared the con man the courtesy of an explanation due to important business in the back alley. So I looked at my phone, tried to sound like something important had happened and excused myself from chatting with the way too enthusiastic sales girl to make a phone call. I high tailed it to my car and without looking back, peeled out of there as fast as I could. While the job prospect was a giant fail at least I didn't have to sit through some awful presentation pretending to be interested in selling tea.

Hopefully the next interview will go better, and actually be an interview, for an actual job.

Anyone else have any interview stories? Please share... the good, bad, ugly and funny! Make me feel better about my crazy "interview"!

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Awkward and Awesome Thursday!


How cute are our snuggly babies? They were beyond excited about seeing mom and dad. Sunny wrapped himself around them and Rukia was super hyper and wanted to lick everyone up! Unfortunately we dropped off the parents at the airport this morning :( So we are back to normal life around here. Who's coming out to visit us next?!

Awkward:

  • Last Sunday we were strolling in to church a few minutes late. We scoped out the chapel and found some open seats in the front. We made our way down the aisle, Chad sat down first, and before I had a chance to sit down I got a butt pinch! And the 4 80 year old ladies sitting behind us got a little show.
  • That same day in Relief Society the President introduced herself to me again. I just went along with it, no big deal. But then during opening exercises they asked if anyone was new, and she kept making faces and gesturing for me to get up. Yeah.... I already did that about a month ago. Glad I was so memorable... This went on for what seemed like forever, her motioning me to get up, me shaking my head, me making hand gestures, and finally me doing the whole off with your head hand signal to really drive my point home. The person sitting next to me definitely thought I was nuts.
  • In Chad's Chemistry class the Professor asked if anyone was doing anything fun for Valentines Day. So Chad announced that he was going to Vegas. Everyone was a little shocked and thought that was ridiculous. Some kid said, "well at least we know who's single in the class!". Everyone thought that was real funny until Chad let them know he was married. He didn't however tell them that he was going to be sharing a hotel room with his in-laws right next to the grandparents ;)
  • Favorite Tattoo parlor we saw in Vegas: Precious Slut tattoo. Keepin' it classy.


Awesome:

  • We've had cable the WHOLE time we've been here, just found that out a week ago! Hello Food Network and HGTV, how I've missed you my lovelies!
  • As mentioned before I was a $17 big winner in Vegas. Chad was a big 15 cent winner. In the positive baby!
  • It rained a lot here recently which let to a double rainbow! If that wasn't fun enough we could see the end of one of them, and then drove through it. I always used to try to find the end of the rainbow when I was a kid and I finally did. I did not however get a pot of gold. bummer.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

The "Dirt Mound"

A few posts I mentioned the "dirt mound" that separates us from St. George. In case you don't remember we foolishly thought (from google maps) that Chad would be able to ride his bike over this giant dirt mound thing that was between us and Dixie State. Until we got here and realized that "mound" was a mountain!



We decided to go and hike on our dirt mound, we found a trail and took off.





Saturday, February 18, 2012

A Very Vegas Valentines


My parents came down to visit us and the grandparents on Valentine's Day. After Chad's last class we packed up our things and headed down to Vegas. Unfortunately we haven't really met anyone in our ward yet :( so our plan to have one of our awesome new friends let our dog out while we were gone was kinda thrown off by our lack of any kind of friends... So, we needed a new plan. We have an enclosed little patio out back and thought we would just let Rukia stay out there and set her up with some blankets in her cage as a dog house, of course with the heated blanket! We even have a fake grass rug thing out there that she could use for a potty. Nice plan huh? We were quite satisfied with our solution until we found out it was supposed to rain/snow the whole time we were gone. Bah! Now what? Well.... next best idea... barricade her in the kitchen! We set up some blankets for her, drug the rug inside hoping she'd potty there and gave her all her toys. We didn't feed her or give her much water the day before and didn't leave her with any either! I know, we're awful! We blocked off the rest of the house with our couch and bike, she's terrified of the bike so we thought it would do the trick. More on that to come...

We picked them up and headed back to our hotel at El Cortez. From there we all went to see the craziness at Freemont Street. We saw the awesome light show above the street that we'd heard so much about, it was awesome! There were men in leopard costumes, a man playing the sax, and men in bikinis and stripper shoes. We have pictures of two out of those three, I'll let you guess which one we didn't get ;)



We went out later that night and took a ton of pictures of Vegas all lit up. The next morning the grandparents told us all about their wild adventures in Vegas. They definitely had a good time getting into free shows and seeing all that Vegas is known for (wink, wink)! Who knew I had such wild grandparents!




The next morning the grandparents taught Chad and I how to play the slot machines. With some direction, their money and a little luck I was a big winner!!!! Well... I was in the positive, $17.04 baby! Woot! Never mind that to get that we put $15 in. I'm way too cheap to gamble. I'd rather go shopping :)


Chad and I headed back home Wednesday night anticipating an easy drive. Most of it was until we hit the mountains right outside the Utah border. Then the rain came. Oh boy did it rain. And we could handle the rain until it turned to snow as we climbed higher and higher into the mountains. Ok, no big deal, we're from Michigan, if there's anything that we know how to do it's drive through a bunch of snow in a blizzard. FYI driving through a blizzard in the mountains is just a little bit different than driving down 1-75 in one. Lots of turns, lots of hills and twists, and lots of me closing my eyes hoping that we weren't going to slide into the side of the mountain. We could barely see but Chad was a champ as usual and we finally made it home. Who would have thought that we would have to drive through a snowstorm here in St. George? Clearly not us!

We were back home and hesitant to see what kind of destruction had occurred in our home. Did she get out and rip everything up, chew on all the moldings, pee everywhere, poo everywhere? We opened our back door to find.... nothing. She held it the entire time! Probably helped that she had nothing in her! It was a nice surprise after the horrible drive. Ok, well that's enough talk about my puppy and her potty habits! Probably more than you needed to know ;) Good news for us though, we can leave for 24ish hours and our puppy will be fine without us!

We hope everyone had an awesome Valentine's Day whenever you decided to celebrate!

Thursday, February 16, 2012

The Weekend of Love!

Happy (late) Valentines Day!

Last Saturday Chad and I celebrated our Valentines Day! He made me a wonderful card, does it look like I'm enjoying it!? He also got me an awesome new purse to replace the ones lost to Penny. Afterwards we went to Olive Garden for Dinner, yummm. Next was my portion of the evening....


There was a long wait at the resteraunt so we got a pre-dinner snack!

I made a fun game for us to play ;) I got the idea here! Don't you love all the wonderful things you can find on pinterest!


I figured any old YW leaders or YW that I used to teach didn't need to be able to read every fun space in my game!

Our actual Valentines Day was spent in Vegas picking up my parents!!! YAY!!! But more on that later....

Friday, February 10, 2012

February New Year's Resolutions!

Chad and I LOVE to make goals. Sometimes they're simple and other times they're a bit more crazy. On Monday we sat down and finally wrote down our goals for the new year.



Goal we're most proud of accomplishing from 2011? Move to St. George!

Yeah, yeah, it's February, big deal... what's one of your goals for this year?

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

I know it's quickly turning into Friday but better late than never right? Right!

Awkward:

  • We don't have quite as much storage space here as our last apartment and I haven't found a good place to keep all my purses so they've just been sitting in a pile in our 2nd bedroom. Yesterday we were organizing that room and started putting the purses away when we started to smell something awful, and unfortunately all too familiar. Penny had decided that the pile of purses was a much better litter box than her actual litter box and decided to pee ALL OVER my purses. So our whole night was spent making runs to Petco for cleaners and doing multiple loads of laundry trying to clean out my purses and a couple of Chad's backpacks. All of that work ended with a garbage bin FULL of purses. Penny and I are fighting.
  • Randomly going into offices to see if they are hiring. I don't think that there is any smooth way to do this.
  • Either our walls are very thin or our neighbor is the LOUDEST snorer in the WORLD! Luckily I don't struggle to go to sleep, I would be in big trouble if we did. Every night as we go to sleep we can hear him (or her I guess!) snoring away.


Awesome:

  • My new bike gloves came in the mail today! Getting mail in general is awesome enough, even better when it's a package!
  • Rukia has come with us on all of our mountain biking adventures. She is great and runs on the trail right between me and Chad. We love that we can take her out with us and not have to worry about what crazy things she'll do or if she'll run away.
  • Chad rockin' out his first Biology test. He had his first tests in Chemistry and Biology and got his score back on the Bio test, 106%! Woot! He's off to an awesome start.
  • I had 2 phone interviews! One led to an actual interview on Monday, hopefully that won't make the awkward list next week. I'm pretty confident that the other phone call will lead to an interview as well. Keep your fingers crossed! While I am definitely enjoying this whole stay at home thing it will be nice to go to work, and even nicer to have an income :)

What was awesome about your week?

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Oh Tuesday...

Today was full of:


Which was followed by a lot of job hunting. I hit up every medical office I could find in St. George that was in any way vein related. After that I went into a D.O.'s office. His practice sounded really interesting and the person in charge of hiring was also from Michigan! We chatted for a minute even though they weren't hiring and said she'd put my resume at the top. We'll see how it goes. After a long afternoon here's how I ended the day....

Monday, February 6, 2012

Tukupetsi Trail



We decided to go hiking last week and instead of looking up a trail to go on we just headed out in the general direction of some cool looking mountains. And it ended up being pretty awesome! It was a great trail, we biked and hiked and plan on going back to run as well. We brought Rukia with us and she had a ball. As we got closer to the cliffs we were curious as to what she would do. Well, she darted toward the edge and scared the crap out of us, back on the leash she went. Chad also got dangerously close to the edge trying to get some good pictures, which he got.


 



Sunday, February 5, 2012

Pizza Fail

So... remember that whole "we aren't going to eat any more pizza" thing? Well here's what happened Friday night -

Extra Cheese with jalepenos and mushrooms from Pizza Hut

3 cheeser bread from Hungry Howie's

Darn you delicious pizza! We'll do better next week... maybe. Oh yeah, we followed up our pizza and bread stick extravaganza with brownie sundaes :) Don't be jealous! What's your favorite guilty pleasure meal that never lets you down?

Saturday, February 4, 2012

The Cat Came Back


As of lately our cats have had a bit of a history of escaping. I'll start with Penny, who, last summer, snuck out our window through a tiny little spot in our screen that wasn't quite shut all the way. We printed out flyers, searched the neighborhood, the river, the swamp area, parking lots, and the used car lot (that's a lot of cars to look under!). We were terrified for our little baby kitten and it was not a happy time in the Lewis house. Our apartment was in the basement with our windows opening up to the ground, so we slept with the windows open and cat food all over, hoping that she would make her way back in. After not sleeping so well that night due to listening for Penny and also because we were a little nervous that our windows were all wide open (did I mention that we our windows looked out into the parking lot so everyone could watch us sleep?), we decided to just leave the window cracked so she could get in the same way she got out. And guess what? She did. Two nights later, 3am, she was at the end of our bed, meowing at us, announcing her arrival home. Since then she has been absolutely terrified of leaving the house and panics every time we take her near the door. This makes me SO happy :)

Sunny's story is pretty ridiculous. I was at work and I got a text from Chad that he couldn't find Sunny. He had looked all over the house and had no luck. Now it's important to note that Penny had a funny habit of opening all of the cupboard doors in the morning. I would wake up for work and find ALL of the bottom cupboard doors open! So I would shut all of them and then she would open them all up again before Chad would get up. Okay, so this was the same time that we were packing all of our things up to move in with my parents. The night before we had packed up all of our things under our bathroom sink, exposing a giant, gross, dirty hole in the wall where the plumbing went. Awesome apartments. Chad suddenly put two and two together and figured Sunny had probably climbed in the hole and was now in the wall! BAH! We felt like we were in Sunny in Philadelphia with our cat in the wall! Chad put out some tuna fish hoping that would lure him back in, no such luck. Finally after calling the maintenance guys and getting the okay to make the gross hole a little bigger he was able to look in the wall. And as he looked into the wall he saw... cleaning supplies. Our NEIGHBORS cleaning supplies under HIS sink. The hole went into our neighbors apartment!!! COME ON!!! Are you serious? That's literally what Chad said to me on the phone as we were talking as I was driving home. "I've got to go, I've just got to go, I've got to figure this out!" and then hung up. Chad ran over to the neighbors apartment. "So... funny question.... did you happen to see any random, stray cats in your apartment today?" Our neighbor was getting out of his shower that morning and as he got out Sunny was just chillin' in his bathroom. Scared the pants of him. He said he didn't know what to do with the cat so he.... let it go. What? Yup, he let him go. Who just lets a cat go? Our awesome neighbor, that's who. So we started our search. Keep in mind though that this isn't just any cat. Chad has had Sunny for 12 years. Almost 13 years. He literally rescued Sunny from his burning house. We HAD to find Sunny! The river, the parking lots, the swamp, everywhere. And guess what? I FOUND HIM! I found him fenced in with the electrical power lines. I called to him and he... ignored me. Wouldn't even look at me. Just kept meowing and crying and ignoring me. Awesome, love you too Sunny. Chad came running over and Sunny took one look at him and leaped into his arms. It's was very cute.

Unlike Penny though, Sunny has been trying to escape ever since. He's succeeded multiple times but we catch him pretty quick. He had quite the run when we were moving to the Parents house and then moving again to Utah. But he never made it too far.... until Thursday night.

We had just decided to go to bed when Chad realized we hadn't seen Sunny in a while. Well crap. We searched the whole house. I was hoping that we had accidentally locked him in the closet or bathroom like we had done to Penny but we weren't that lucky. We ripped the house apart before finally accepting the fact that he had managed to escape. So at 12 we both ran outside and searched all over the apartment grounds. Under all the bushes and tress, around the pool, and under all the cars. No Sunny. We finally had to give up and call it a night. We searched again all morning, hoping we'd have more luck in the daylight, but no. We drove around, rode our bikes looking for him and searched everywhere again and again. No Sunny. That night we left a bunch of food out everywhere for him, just like the last night, and left the door to our patio open. Around 8pm Chad looked out the back door, and there he was! Just sitting and looking at the backdoor, waiting patiently to be let in. So after all the effort on our part all we really needed to do was wait. He eventually got hungry and cold enough and decided to come on home.

Hopefully we won't have any more escape stories to add to our list! What about you? Any funny stories about missing pets? Hopefully ones with happy endings!

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Awkward and Awesome Thursday!

Awkward:
  • We eat WAY too much pizza! We decided to become vegetarian to be healthier and have better diets. Cheese pizza with butter cheese crust kinda defeats that purpose. Now our beloved pizza is on the no eats list, especially after we had pizza for lunch last Sunday and then went out and got yet another pizza for dinner... again, we are seriously not trying to get on the Biggest Loser despite all of the posts that would lead you to that conclusion.
  • Remember that whole dumping the moving boxes in a random dumpster in the dead of night thing.... totally found a place that not only would have taken all the boxes, but would have recycled them as well. Best part, it's less than a half a mile from our house and at our grocery store. So close...
  • Rukia has an amazing ability to poo ALL the time! So I let her do her business before taking her on our afternoon walk. Important note, this was the third time she had gone that day. So I figured we were all good to go. We went walking in the retirement community across the street from us, where half of our ward lives. Halfway through our walk I look back and Rukia is squating in the middle of the road.... come on! I tried pulling her off to the side but she wasn't budging. I didn't know what to do... kick it to the side into someone's yard maybe? People were out everywhere... Ahh! So I looked at Rukia, looked at the poo, looked at Rukia... and then RAN! Just as a side note the next time we went out on a walk I brought 2 bags and didn't have to use one!
  • Before we moved out here Chad and I would look at google earth to see where we wanted to live and make sure that Chad would be able to ride his bike to school since I would need the car for work. The route that the program kept giving Chad to get to school seemed so ridiculous and random. We found a much better path up and over a little hill. Again we checked out google earth to see that he would just need to go up and over this "dirt mound". No biggie. Yeah, "dirt mounds" out west... they're mountains dummies! Now the "random" route that google gave us around the giant mountain makes a little more sense. Every time we drive around the "dirt mound" we can't help but laugh at ourselves.

Awesome:

  • My plants are growing! I decided to try to grow some herbs and it's working! I'm very proud and excited to try growing a little garden as it gets warmer out!
  • The employees at stores here are super, crazy friendly. While I normally find this somewhat annoying I'm pretty sure we met our new best friend at Best Buy. He was tall and had curly hair and glasses. He was super into photography and told us all about the date he wanted to take some future girl on. 15 minutes into our conversation I was wondering why I wasn't super annoyed at this guy but instead wanted to be best friends. When we got in the car Chad said, "You realize that guy was Taylor's twin right?" And oh my gosh he was! He is Taylor's nerdier, less well dressed twin, but his twin all the same. Love it!
  • Following the Portela tradition I am doing a no dessert during the week thing and instituting Dessert Sunday! While this in itself isn't really awesome at all... I have also declared that having only a square or two of good dark chocolate does not count as dessert but as a health food. Dark Chocolate does all kinds of good things right? Right!
  • Costco, nuff said. Super awesome deals, in bulk... awesomeness in bulk. And samples, enough samples to constitute my lunch on Tuesday :)
  • Sea foam green footies from the cutest little old lady from work. Who doesn't love pom poms on their slippers!

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Pioneer Park


As soon as we got our new camera we decided that we needed to go test it out! We found a hiking spot only a few minutes from our house in Pioneer Park. I was expecting something more like a regular park... playground equipment, maybe a disc golf course, and a short trail to hike/stroll down. I was pleasantly surprised!


There were lots of places to rock climb

We found "The Narrows" and after Chad climbed up them we made our way through them. It was a tight fit...

Too tight for me! My boobs wouldn't let me get through! Darn you! I immediately thought of you Ashley and being able to squeeze through the gates to freedom. No such luck for me that day. At least I had another exit strategy though! I backed out and climbed up and over to meet Chad at the top.