And a Happy New Year!

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The Lewis' Top 12 of 2012:

1. Moving out to St. George Utah. We survived the nearly 2,000 mile journey out here without staying in a hotel and snuggling with our 2 cats and dog the whole way.

2. Mangaing to get a new job in Utah. I'm pretty sure it had little to do with me and everything to do with some awesome reference letters from my previous Dr.

3. Chad finished up his first year at Dixie State. He loved almost all of his classes :)

4. Mountain biking in the mountains

5. Hiking Angel's Landing multiple times! A big accomplishment for me after a giant meltdown during the first attempt.

6. Getting a King Size Bed. Thanks Cheryl!

7. Familiy Trip to Hawaii courtesy of Mom and Dad Portela! Best Vacation E-V-E-R! We should probably make this a yearly thing ;)

8. All of our crazy road trips. We were able to visit some incredible places, multiple National Parks and the ocean, twice :)

9. Realizing our dog is awesome. We can take her out hiking and even more impressive, mountain biking, with us. She stays right next to us and runs along the trails with us.

10. Chad's awesome photography skills allowing us to document our wonderful year

11. Dylan introducing us to the amazingness of janky sno-cone stands. Yeah, they are amazing enough to make the list. Thanks Dyl.

12. All of the friends and family that love us enough to come all the way out here to visit us. We had so many visitors this past year, we really felt loved and had so much fun with everyone! Again, you should all probably make this a yearly tradition...

Merry Chirstmas! We love you all and hope that you had a wonderful year!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

 

We take our Zoolander fashion shows very seriously around here. Although I think the most awkward thing about these photos is my beautiful pool hair. Warning: I may be looking through all my old photos to find new "awkward" photos, you may be up here soon ;) These are coming at ya from over 3 years ago.

 

 

Awkward:

• Planning on being 20 minutes early to work only to find your car completely frosted over. No worries, scrape it off! Nope. We were prematurely happy about the warm weather and who the heck knows where our window scrapers are. I patiently sat in the car for close to 15 minutes waiting for our car to warm up. Until it warmed up I may have been blowing freezing cold air full blast, making the problem much worse. At any rate I made it to work only 1 minute late. Is it the weekend yet?
• I wore the sweatshirt I usually wear at work while making brownies. The next day at work as I am handing a new patient some papers to fill out I notice that it looks like I have poo all over the cuff near my right hand. Nope, just brownie batter. Poo or chocolate? Luckily I don't think this particular patient noticed, and if they did I don't think they would have cared. Classy people.
• It was nursing home week at work, so it was an explosion of older awkwardness, topped off by a woman who told the Dr. to look away, as she stood up her pants and adult diaper were around her knees. Danielle to the rescue! She tried to take them all the way off but I convinced her to let me pull them back up. BTW, she had used the diaper. Pants seem to be a real issue at nursing homes.... but I guess I've mentioned multiple times that I hate wearing pants, so....
• Someones socks at the nursing home were covered in old pee. They were yellow, and no they were not just stained, you know pee when you smell it.
• Enough poo and pee talk? I am happy to report that I haven't seen Miss Brittany in a whole week! While this in and of itself is AWESOME, Brittany will only ever be mentioned as being super awkward.

 

Awesome:

• I told a guy at the nursing home "bye" and that we would see him in a couple months. He told me to "stay sweet".
• Adjustments were finally made to Chad's financial aid!
• Grades are in! Chad was unnecessarily worried.
• My parents are amazing and wonderful.
• Grandma's are the best.
• Aunt's are pretty awesome too.
• Previous bosses rock as well.
• Anniversary celebrations.
• Parents and Tay will be here Sunday!
• Ash and Pat will be here Christmas day!

 

I hope you had an awesome week!

3 years ago...

Three years ago there was a crazy snowstorm, a hastily bought substitute ring from KMart, "trespassing" at Cranbrook, a lot of friends, family and love. Three years ago I married my very best friend, and I've never been more happy.

Five {Confessions} Friday

1. I cannot spell the word definitely. Can't do it. I usually spell it so wrong that spell check can't figure out what I'm trying to do. I really consider it a success when I spell it just close enough that spell check catches on the first try and I don't have to go through multiple wrong spellings that just get further and further from right.

D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E-L-Y

2. I could eat soup every day, all day. It's yummy and delicious and I crave it even when it's over 100 degrees outside.

3. I get bored with my handwriting and change it every so often. Slanted, all caps, all lowercase, cursive, straight up and down, big and girly... This has caused problems only once, maybe twice. In Hawaii they wouldn't accept my signature on a credit card purchase because it didn't match. I literally had to cross it out and try again. Yeah, cause that makes sense. I had to think back on how I used to sign my name to do my absentee ballot, they said that they wouldn't count the ballots where the signatures didn't match the ones on file. Not quite sure I was able to do that... Never knew signing my name could be so difficult...

4. If I don't know the number that's calling my phone I don't answer. Period. Chalk it up to some bad experiences but there are literally no exceptions to this rule.

5. I am super excited about NOT having a White Christmas! Sure it's all festive and beautiful, blah, blah, blah. I for one have had enough snow. It's cold, it's wet, it's icy, it's sucky. I will be enjoying my colder weather with palm trees, blue skies and beautiful red rock!

 

 

 Do you have any confessions? ;)

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

Let's me be real for a minute. This week, and last week for that matter, haven't been so much awkward or awesome as it's just been kinda sucky. Sorry Aunt Joleen, it's "inhaled vigorously". I'm determined to make up for the less than stellar start to December and bring back some Christmas cheer to our house.

Instead of boring you with my pity party let's move on to something a little more fun...

Are you all so excited to hear about Brittany? She's psycho. For reals. I want to make a video of her. I'm pretty sure positive that she's high all the time so I don't think she'd notice or mind.

Awkward:

• Brittany knocking on our door every day. Every. Single. Freaking. Day. A couple days ago she knocked 3 times in an hour period. I ignored every knock.

• How Brittany knocks. She stands at our door and does this pathetic, quiet knock that lasts like 15 seconds. It may not sounds like a long time but try it. Seriously, right now, knock on your desk/table/counter/whatevs for 15 seconds without stopping. It's a long time people.

• Finally getting angry enough to go an answer Brittany's ridiculous knocks only to have her not be there! She gives us the 15 seconds to answer the door and if we don't come immediately she runs back into her apartment. Slamming her door every time.

• Jumping up so fast to answer the door the next time she knocked that I scared Rukia. When I answered she was bawling and crying all over herself. I lost my nerve. I couldn't tell her "no" flat out. I made up some lame lie instead about why I couldn't give her our Internet password.

• Jumping up off the couch to answer the door on Sunday, Sooooooo ready for Brittany. She knocked that morning before church, then woke us up while we were napping. No matter what this girl wanted the answer was no. I was fuming when I whipped open the door, only to find my sweet visiting teacher there with banana bread for us. I tried to recover but she looked confused at the crazy, angry lady answering the door.

Awesome:

• My Parents. They rock.
• Refusing to pay an extra $100 in rent when renewing our contract and they actually listened. $30 more is a much better compromise.
• They towed the raper van outside our house.
• Debi's Brownie Recipe.
• This Van we saw at the Grocery Store. You know you want it.

Anything Awkward or Awesome happen this week?

Jackpot

We hit the jackpot of Christmas lights a week or so ago. We were driving by the park downtown and found it blinged out with tons of Christmas lights! The trees were glowing since most of them still had leaves. It was beautiful and Christmas-y and we only had to wear jackets. Not having snow is really shaping up to be wonderful. :)

We had a great, relaxing weekend. It was definitely needed to recover from the past week. Chad has finals this week and then he can relax! We can both relax!

No Meatless Monday today, unless someone out there needs a recipe for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or bean burritos. On a happier eating note we made Debi's awesome brownies this weekend. Our fridge may be bare but at least we had everything we needed to bake! I'm pretty sure you all know what we will be eating for dinner tonight.

I hope your all having a wonderful December full of Christmas lights and treats!

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

Trampoline land is not the best place to take great pictures however, it is the best place to take awkward pictures.

 
It's that time of the week again kids....

Awkward:

• Chad is in the Young Men's presidency at church, Jeff is the President. Jeff is awkward in everything that I witness from him. A couple weeks ago he was trying to get a hold of Chad. He had been texting him all week, to the point of stalking. Chad had been in class, studying and taking a crazy amount of tests, so he hadn't returned the texts. Jeff then decided the most logical thing would be to come over to our house at 7:30 Saturday morning and start knocking on our door like a crazy person and ringing our doorbell. Really? Come on Jeff. We ignored him. An hour later.... he was back. Knocking and ringing away like a small child. Our dog wasn't too thrilled, neither were we. Then he started calling Chad's cell phone like crazy from our front door. We held strong and ignored him. He finally left and only came back one more time. What did he want? To know if Chad was going to teach the lesson on Sunday. Um, duh! Chad's the teacher, so he'll be teaching. If he doesn't show up, there's literally only 4 young men and the whole presidency that meets together. One of the five other adult men could probably figure out something to teach for 20 minutes. Lesson: Don't come to our house on Saturday morning before noon unless you are related to one of us. We will ignore you.

• The white raper van sitting directly outside our apartment. It's full of garbage, has a flat tire, a busted window (now there's glass all over the sidewalk), and has been there since October. We finally called the police department and hopefully it'll be towed away soon.

• Trying to mail out patient bills only to find out after I had sealed them all shut that I had put them in backwards. BAH. Had to open them all and try, try again. Sometimes I don't feel very smart. Also forgot to put stamps on this particular batch so they all came back to me. I wich I could say this was the first time that this has happened.

• Brittany. Oh our new neighbor. She has become more than I care to deal with and really deserves her own post outright. Over the past week she has been over to our apartment every other day asking to use our phone to call her baby daddy/ex-husband/whatever. She can never get a hold of him. So she proceeds to call anywhere between 3 and 5 of his friends trying to track him down.... on my phone people! She'll have conversations with them and I'm just standing there stunned not knowing what to do, just watching the crazy unfold. When she's done with a conversation she'll spit. After handing the phone back to me she'll turn around without any kind of eye contact and say "thanks so much, I really appreciate it" under her breathe as she goes back in her house.

• Don't worry there's more Brittany... this one's my absolute favorite. We let her borrow our Internet password the first night they moved in. Moving blows and we were trying to be nice neighbors, not knowing the crazy that just moved in feet from us. Well she said they only needed it for a day. We gave her 4 and then changed our password right before going to bed Thursday night. Friday morning at 8:30 Brittany is knocking on our door like crazy, does no one know how to knock like a normal person anymore? I answer and she asks if our Internet is working. Yes, MY Internet is working, I respond. Well, it's not working at our house. Are you kidding me? Who has the nerve to knock on someones door at that time to tell them that the Internet they are now stealing isn't working. Seriously? I am fuming, tell her I don't have time to deal with this because I am literally on my way out to work. Unfortunately we've had neighbors like this before and while annoying and irritating, they usually don't last too long. Don't worry though, she came back that night, knocking on our door, I'm sure looking for our password, and we ignored her too.

Awesome:

• Celebrating half birthdays! I'm now a believer.

• The fact that Chad sleeps through anything and everything. Makes getting surprises ready for him much easier when he's dead to the world.

• The new "park" just down the street. They've got a 1/4 mile loop that's lit at night, perfect for doggie walks after work.

• Listening to Christmas music all day at work, so much better that the normal crap we listen to.

• Nice old ladies letting us cut in line at the dollar store since we had 3 things and they had a cart full.

Pinspired

Oh Pinterest, I'm trying to use my boards and the hundreds of things I've pinned. I've made all kinds of scrumptious (and horrendous) food and desserts, cleaning supplies, and crafts. Now it's time to tackle the style board. I've pinned all these outfits, now it's time to pick some and make them my own!

So I picked this little beauty to recreate. I already had a remarkably similar top and I found this skirt at a Thrift Store. Warning: I am overly excited about it. Pleats and Polka Dots? Um, duh? Yes please. I snatched that puppy of the rack faster than you could all nod your head with me about the pleats and polka dots bit.

I think it's just a little too long and it also needs to be taken in a bit, but all in all I think it was worth the couple bucks I spent on it!

Any great thrift store finds lately?


Linking up with:
thepleatedpoppy
Rolled Up Pretty


Challenge

November goals went pretty a-ok.

1. Juice: didn't happen. It wasn't our lack of commitment but lack of budget. When we aren't poor kids going to college we'll try again. Not quite sure when that'll be....

2. Workout! Check. Now I just need to do it more often and harder!

3. Be Thankful. We made a pretty little tree out of branches and cut out leaves on the cricut. Everyday we wrote something we were thankful for and hung up the leaves. Of course I didn't take one picture of this though!

4. Play the Piano. Didn't happen once a week. There was a grand piano where we spent Thanksgiving though so I played a few days for quite a while. Chad may have sung along, loudly. It was sooooo fun. And the piano was rockin'.

2. Floss and Rinse. Check!


This month is going to be awesome! I can feel it :) It's no longer 110 degrees for starters...  it's Christmas time (duh) and my family is coming to spend a week with us! Woot! Here are the goals I have for making this a rockin' awesome December:

1. I found this on Pinterest and thought it would be a fun way to document Christmas all month long, and help me practice my photography.

2. We are also doing a Christmas Countdown!

3. Walk the pup. We are horrible dog owners and never walk our dog. She'll go with us when we are out running and biking but we haven't been very good lately. The past week was better and I hope to take her out with me everytime I run.... at least 3 times a week. She sleeps like she's dead whenever we take her out for more than a couple miles.

Keeping the goals light this month, I'm sure I'll go overboard in January as usual. This month we are just going to try to make it through the end of Chad's semester and then enjoy the holiday season!

What goals do you have for the end of the year? 

Meatless Monday: Grandma's Wheat Pancakes

It was a fun weekend. Sunday was Chad's half birthday. We are not the people that celebrate half birthdays or even know when our half birthdays are or any of that jazz. Which made Sunday that much more surprising, it was Chad's half birthday.

I woke up early and let Chad sleep as I ran around the house decorating, baking a cake and setting up a mini scavenger hunt that ended in our living room. I was going to decorate our guest room.... but then Penny peed on the bed. Then I was going to decorate our bedroom.... but then we were naughty and skipped church so Chad was in the bedroom sleeping. This made the scavenger hunt pretty anticlimactic as he went from the guest room back and forth to the bedroom a couple times and then finally downstairs to the action. We had a fun day celebrating his pretend birthday, eating cake and relaxing from the week!

As a side note does anyone watch The Walking Dead? OMG. That is all.

My Grandma makes the best whole wheat pancakes. Now she has a wheat grinder down in the basement which made her wheat pancakes even more rockin'. But they are pretty darn good even with the regular ol' whole wheat from the store.

Pancakes seem like one of those things that should be a no brainer, but we haven't had the best of luck making them. I love the pancake mixes but to help out the grocery budget I leave it out since we already have everything we need to make them! Somehow though they always end up too thick and dense and blegh.

Finally I remembered that I had my grandmother's recipe and Wa-la! Tasty, light, fluffy and nutty whole wheat pancakes. I don't have any of her homemade choke cherry syrup, but I did have some strawberries and raspberries already blended up for yogurt. I warmed that up and along with a sprinkle of powdered sugar and syrup, it was a great Saturday morning breakfast.

Grandma Portela's Whole Wheat Pancakes

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 c Whole Wheat Flour
• 1/4 c coarse Wheat Flour - I just use more regular whole wheat flour again
• 1 t baking powder
• 1/2 t salt
• 3 T honey or sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 1/2 c milk
• 3 T oil
• 2 stiff egg whites

Directions:

1. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form
2. Mix remaining ingredients together
3. Fold in egg whites
4. Cook on a hot griddle! Makes 16 pancakes

Sunday Dress

Dress: WalMart, Shoes: Target, Necklace: random store in the mall

It was a great Sunday. Perfect really. We slept in, I surprised Chad with his half birthday party, and we ate cake and nachos. We made Christmas cards, watched too much tv and just relaxed. I also decided to dress like it's springtime in my pretty little dress from... drum-roll... WalMart. Ta-da! My mom bought me this little pretty when she was here visiting. It quickly has become my favorite dress, so you bet I will be wearing it whether it's spring, summer, fall or winter!

Do you have a favorite article of clothing you wear despite the weather?

Linking up with:

ididtellyou

modernmodestbeauty

watchoutforthewoestmans

thisgirlslife

thepleatedpoppy

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

Who wore it better?

What happens when I skip a Thursday of Awkward and Awesome?  The awkwardness multiplies!

Awkward:

• Driving to California with Rukia refusing to be anywhere but on top of me or Chad. We were prepared to share the backseat with her on the ride, but not the fact that she would want to snuggle the whole way there.... and back.
• Resorting to cutting off the top of my banana with scissors because I couldn't get into that stupid thing for the life of me and there were no knives at work. BAH!
• Doggie diarrhea. That's what happens when your dog steals the whole can of tuna from the kitties. Not pretty. At least she has the courtesy in the dead of night to whine and lick my face to get me up and let her out instead of just "going" everywhere.
• Chad accidentally buzzing off his side burns. He's gonna love that I put this on here :)
• My visiting teachers came over a few weeks ago and as soon as they left I ran upstairs to change into stretchy pants and a t-shirt. Because my old worn out jeans are so restricting? Anyways, as soon as I get everything off there's a knock on the door and our home teachers decided to stop by. Chad ran Rukia upstairs to keep in our room and just laughed at me. Back into the jeans I went!
• Before Thanksgiving patients kept asking me what my plans were. I would excitedly tell them that we were going to California. They would then ask where. I would shake my head and sheepishly admit that I had no idea, I just knew we were leaving the desert, going to the beach and eating lots of Mexican food in addition to Thanksgiving. Isn't that all anyone needs to know to agree to a road trip?
• Stopping to use the bathroom at Subway and getting harassed by a tiny Asian lady my age. I went into the stall after her and she started knocking like crazy asking for her "bell". Huh? I quickly finished (give me a second lady!) and as soon as I came out she ran in. Clearly she lost her "bell". I washed my hands and she proceeded to yell at me about the "bell" and want me to look for it with her in the tiny bathroom full of women. I tried to leave and she pulled me back in. What the what? Clearly she thought I stole her "bell".  Finally another lady pointed to a belt under the sink and she finally let me go. I'm glad she could figure out what the crazy borderline abusive woman wanted because I was clearly no help. No need to apologize crazy pants.
• The doctors license plates in our parking lot. Seriously guys, it's not funny or witty or whatever it is that you're going for.

My doctor: Toejam (ewww, gross)

Plastic surgeon: FixIt

• We have new neighbors. Brittany came over to ask for our Wi-Fi password so they can use ours until they get theirs. She proceeded to then tell me all about how she lives with her baby daddy, they were high school sweethearts and got married when she got pregnant. But a year and a half ago they got divorced, but they still live together because of their baby. But they have separate rooms. Except now she's now 9 weeks pregnant. At this point she tosses her cigarette on the ground. And I am left with no words. Um.... nice to meet you?

Awesome:

• The ocean
• Not having to drive a single minute on the ride out to California and back, Thanks Pat!
• Testing out massage chairs at Bed Bath and Beyond
• Starbucks hot apple cider
• Peppermint coffee creamer in hot chocolate
• The movie, Just Friends. OMG, why don't I watch this movie everyday of my life. "Watch your face!"
• Having to decorate the office for Christmas. Wednesday was a strenous day peeps.
• We were behind the most annoying group of people at Cafe Rio. I won't go on and on becasuse... once we got up to pay, the worst offender gave us his meal stamp and we got our meal for free! Thanks super annoying line jumping dude, you made our night!

Count it down!

Our first married Christmas together I decided to make a little Countdown for Chad. Why wait for kids to create an awesome countdown, I'm super stoked for the holiday too! I went all out and made 25 Christmas cards. Some had activities for us to do, and some just had little love notes for days that were going to be too busy.

This year I was not going to make 25 Christmas cards, and I wasn't going to reuse the old ones, partly because I didn't want to look for them and partly because Christmas in the desert is going to be slightly different. We can't make snow angels, go sledding or build a snowman. It's just not happening.

So I made a new countdown this year, kept it nice and simple and I like how it turned out. I got to use my cricut and glitter, is there anything better? I glittered some clothes pins then glued them to some foam board (all from the dollar store!). I filled our countdown with things we would do anyways (decorate the tree, bake cookies), some surprises (shhhhh...) and some things that I want to do and don't want to forget (crockpot hot cocoa, make a wreath for the front door). I'm super excited for something fun everyday of the month, and Chad's excited for another month full of surprises!
 

 

My favorite part of cool weather

Dress: H&M, Leggings: Target, Boots: Payless

 

Cooler weather rocks. Hoodies, hot cocoa, changing leaves, jackets, and best of all leggings.

 

 Is it a shirt? Is it a dress? Who cares, I've got my leggings on!

 

 

Turns out Chad and I are becoming overly excited about Christmas this year, just like everyone else it seems. My immediate family is all coming out to visit for Christmas so I thing my excitement over the holidays is more of a reflection on my excitement to see my family :)

We've got a few decorations up, have seen numerous Christmas movies and drank more hot cocoa then a normal person should already. We're geeked to say the least. The rest of the Christmas festivities have found there way into our Christmas countdown for December. I did one the first year we were married as a surprise for Chad, and it looks like it will continue in all the years to come. While there is no shortage of countdowns on Pinterest I'll be sure to share mine soon so you can get excited about making your own this year too ;)

 

 

Linking up with:

ididtellyou

modernmodestbeauty

watchoutforthewoestmans

thisgirlslife

thepleatedpoppy

Happy Thanksgiving!

We thought our Thanksgiving might consist of the two of us at home in our p.j.'s eating a giant chocolate cake and watching Christmas movies Frasier. And while we would have enjoyed that we did get a better offer ;) Ashley and Pat invited us to tag along with them to his mom's house in California. We happily agreed and before we knew it we were off to a new state, walking along the beach, eating Mexican food for every meal, watching our crazy dog play with Linda's fun pups, and eating way too much turkey. Yup, that's right, turkey. It's the holidays, we splurged and went nuts.

 

Some things we are thankful for this year:

free meals from Cafe Rio

friday night Date Nights

snuggly scaredy cat animals

skype
a fancy smancy camera

a husband who likes to snuggle while sleeping, even in our king bed

mountain bikes
a dishwasher
mountains and sushine
a wonderful home (with windows for the sunshine!)
friends and family who travel so far to see us

Happy Thanksgiving friends!

My Phone Has Eyes

Our weekend:

 Date Night at Home, A plethora of desserts, errand running and Sunday morning naps for all!