Eye of the Tiger

So this happened... Twice. Bam! All the way to the freakin' top. And guess what? It was awesome and amazing. I had a blast and felt like a champ afterwards! The weather has been perfect, it's been so nice to be able to go out and enjoy it! I can't wait until next weekend when we are up and climbing again!

Sweaty Sweat Face

You know those super perky morning people who tell you all about how wonderful it is to wake up early, workout and eat something healthy to start off the day? Those people who apparently hate sleep and love leaving their warm bed, handsome hubby and snuggly kitty to go run/walk/workout instead?

Guess what? They are totes right.

Once I convince myself to get up, throw in my contacts and get dressed, I'm pretty good to go.

Granted I'm not out running miles upon miles, or breaking out the Insanity dvd's or anything, but an early morning walk is quickly becoming one of my favorite things. It's quiet, the pup is happy and the air is cool and crisp. I don't need to eat anything before hand, which I definitely would before a run or serious workout, but I've got time once I get home to grab something quick before work.

Crazy Eyes = Crazy Painful Yoga

It's amazing what waking up early, moving, and eating breakfast does for the rest of your day.

Hello, my name is Danielle and I'm slowly turning into an adult.

Who would have thought?

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

quite the gem of a cat

Awkward:

• Some guy knocking on our back door, standing in our patio area at 1:30am looking for "Paul". After Chad told him there was no Paul here the guy proceeded to keep talking, describing Paul and what he drives so that Chad could point him in the right direction. It's 1:30 freaking AM! I'll give you one guess who he was looking for.... yup, our druggie neighbors. 
• Speaking of our awkward druggies, 2 detectives were next door, also looking for Paul.
• I don't want to give our neighbors a bad wrap. While they are clearly into some shady business, they still love Halloween. And between all their drug using and who knows what else, they still have time to decorate!

Notice the pile of shoes by the bushes? Every single wack job of a neighbor we've had has had piles of shoes out by these bushes. 

Awesome:

• While the neighbors may be shady, and have super janky "friends", at least they are quiet! I love me some quiet neighbors. 
• The cockroaches are finally gone. After a deep cleaning and some wonderful poison, we think we are finally in the clear. Hopefully there won't be any more surprises whenever I open the dishwasher. 
• We rearranged our living room and finally have a layout that seems to use all of the space. It only took 1 1/2 years. 
• We also finally bought a hose and adapter for our facet. Now instead of wrestling Rukia into our bathtub and showering her off, we can just hose her down. Much easier on her. Much easier on us. 
• NOS on sale at Kroger for $1. 
• Matching shoes :)

A love note

to Rukia. ha!

I've said it multiple times that when I picture myself in the future Chad and I have a nice little house with a huge yard. Acres and acres of land.... for our dogs. I would love to have my own little herd of dogs. A Doberman, another golden doodle, a weimaraner, a couple great danes, and maybe a vizsla. I like my dogs, and I like them big.

As of yet there are no children in my visions of the future... sorry mom :)

So here's a little Pinterest inspired love note to my most favorite of dogs, The Rukers.

mylittlemess.net

shelterpups.com They will make a stuffed animal that looks like your pup! Awwww



Shotgun!

Now that it's not a million degrees outside we can start up Chad's favorite sport again.

We went out to Shotgun Alley last Friday night and climbed away. Rukia had a ball splashing through the river and we had some gorgeous scenery! All that rain has really greened up the desert. Chad climbed like a champ even though we haven't really been all summer, and I climbed a bit without breaking into hysterical tears, that's a definite win in my book.

Shock and Awe

First off, Breaking Bad. Come freakin' on. There are only 2 episodes left and then I will stop mentioning it's goodness and glory. But until then, OMG.

Chad and I decided that we needed to get on a better schedule, broken record much? And with this Piriformis Syndrome going on, I really needed to wake up early and stretch/walk/yoga it up so I could feel better during the day. So guess what, I am. Please pick up your jaws, it's actually happening.

We organized the kitchen, deep cleaned the bathrooms, and did ALL the laundry over the weekend. It helps me wake up and get going knowing that the whole house is clean and in order. Why? I have no idea but I'm going with it. It also helped when I decided I didn't need to do a yoga video every morning. I've done enough yoga to where I can do my own thing for a half hour. Rather than stressing out about what video I'll do, or trying to find something that I like, I just do my own thing. Sometimes it's yoga, sometimes it's just stretching and foam rolling, and sometimes it's a walk.

My red face after an Insanity sweat sesh. Rukia likes to lounge and watch me work out. 

I think we are finally rid of our summer slump and back in a good routine. Chad's working out at school, I'm finally making dinner and we're feeling much better.

16

Saturday night was homecoming here in St. George. One of the young men Chad taught at church asked him to take pictures of their group before the dance. There were 6 couples and it was an absolutely amazing range of relationships.  

There were the seriously dating couple who were more than happy to full on make out in front of everyone. I'm talking ear biting and massive face sucking. It was awesomely bad. They were definitely going to have a good night.

On the other hand we had a few couples who had only known each other for a couple weeks, not even a entire month. They were very afraid to be within a 5 foot radius of each other, which made for very natural looking "couple" pictures. ha.

Then there was the very pretty girl with the very nerdy guy. She was a doll and while they fell into the previous category, there was something that I just loved about them.

There was the couple we thought was dating but wasn't... not yet anyways. They were pros at the whole picture thing, posing and cheesing like it was their job. It also helped that they seemed to like/know each other.

We had a boy who COULD NOT smile. He would be fine and then as soon as the flash went off and the picture was taken, BAM, weird, open mouth, confused face. I guess we can't all be Barney.

We had a great couple hours hanging out with a bunch of teenagers and in the end were happy to be out of that stage of our lives. No longer do we have to worry about making it home on time (lol, yeah, no) or if another couple was going to tag along in our car and ruin our good time :)

Instead, we were home well before 1am, although we were up much later than that making our own fun. It's not all bills and responsibility being a married adult ;)

Awkward and Awesome Thursday

Channeling his inner Finn

Awkward:

• A classy instrumental version of Flashdance on the radio this morning as a flood of mentally challenged people invaded my waiting room.
• Getting bum tapped by my grandma's dopleganger at the nursing home.
• Chad projectile vomiting after working out in the school's gym. Best part: he was wearing my shoes. I let you put those two things together to see how that ended on your own. 
• Taking off my sandals to try on shoes at Target and watching a woman run them over. Her cart actually got stuck on them so she backed up her cart and rammed her cart over them as hard as she could. I wasn't even mad, it was just so ridiculous.
• Trying to speak to someone who only speaks Spanish.... on the phone... and needing to give them directions. Awkward does not even begin to describe it.

Awesome:

• So You Think You Can Dance. I loved every single one of the final four. Loved. Why did my parents not force me to become an amazing dancer!?!?!?
• Breaking Bad. I will assume you are all watching and loving it.
• Sleeping with the window open at night.
• Chad gave Rukia a bath and now she feels like a soft teddy bear.
• Chad and I getting twinner red shoes so we can match all the time.
• Coconut Cashews from Costco. Yum-O.

Love Hate

I have a love hate relationship with yoga. As I'm doing it, I pretty much hate it. All of it. Except corpse pose, I love corpse pose. But really, everything else is awful. Especially now. Any sort of backward bending is a nightmare. As I went to do my P90X yoga hell on Sunday morning I rationalized that there wasn't really any sort of backwards bending and I would be fine. Until I started and my body started screaming at me. Upward dog is all about a gentle back bend. Upward dog is now my nemesis. I quickly learned that all the warrior poses are also all about a disguised back bend as well. Tricky yoga.

Granted part of the whole "hating it while doing it" may have something to do with the fact that I didn't eat or drink anything before doing it. I have a nasty habit of just jumping into my workout on weekend mornings without eating anything, mostly because I just want to hurry up and get it done. So I wasn't feeling super awesome 20 minutes in. Little vomity...

I stuck with it though and after 90 minutes of deep breathing and making strange noises during the back bending portions I was done... and all of a sudden I loved it. Especially after I got my act together and got something to eat and drink. My back and sciatic nerve were just a little happier with me the rest of the day.

Yeah, my favorite nerve still screams at me all day long and I still want to cut off my leg once or twice a day, but at least it's just once or twice. I'm hoping that a little yoga everyday and a lot of yoga on Sunday will help to strengthen my back and whip this nerve into shape.

Any free yoga video recommendations? I've got my trusty P90X lineup but am definitely not committed to doing something that intense everyday.

Puncha Your Buns!

Chad introduce Patrick to the amazingness that is Adventure Time a while ago. Over the summer for Pat's birthday he got a Finn hat. Chad has been insanely jealous ever since. So this weekend we were on an Adventure Time swag hunt.

We started online until we realized we had forgotten about one very important store.... Hot Topic. Oh, Hot Topic, how we love you. We stopped at one on the way home from the mall on Monday and hit the mother load. Between Hot Topic and Spencer's there was more Adventure Time gear than we could have ever wanted. Swords, cell phone cases, wallets, t-shirts, backpacks, blankets, robes, hats, underwear, bras... you name it and they had it.

And now we have some of it too :)

Chad had a major nerd moment with the girl who was checking us out. She wanted to know if we were going to comic-con which led to all kinds of stories about her costume and our friend Jared's costume. At one point Chad pulled out his phone and starts showing her pictures of Jared at Comic-con. It was hilarious.

The boys spent the rest of the night in their hats and me in my t-shirt. On the way to the mechanic the nest day we saw this.

And we loved it because we are all just a bunch of nerds at heart.

Looooooong Weekend

Wednesday of last week Chad and I decided we needed to do something for the long weekend. As you already know from all my recent complaining, we've been sitting/laying around our house doing nothing waiting for my back to get better. Now that it's tolerable we needed to get out of the stinkin' house. Las Vegas or Provo?

Rukia knew what we were up to and refused to get out of the car

Provo was our easy choice :) Chad finished up some things for school, we got a part on our car fixed, found an awesome dog sitter and away we went! We even left at the time I told Ashley we would be leaving and not 2 hours later. Although it was 2 hours later than Chad thought we would leave. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to sneak in a Kneaders breakfast though.

Once in Provo we proceeded to eat our way through the weekend. We started with sushi, then moved on to Krispy Kreme, ice cream, cinnamon rolls, an amazing amount of Mexican food, In-and-Out, and lots of energy drinks, at least for me and Chad.

As a side note, the Mexican food that we got at the mall that Monday was more delicious than any Mexican food we've ever had in St. George. #StGeorgeProblems

Speaking of #StGeorgeProblems, we have no hard ice cream places. Unless you want to count Baskin Robbins, which I don't. I'm not paying 10 bucks for a quarter of a cup of ice cream, no thank you. I'll make do with frozen yogurt at that point. So Pat and Ash took us out for some real hard ice cream. Unfortunately they were all out of strawberry, Chad's favorite. After trying all the other flavors he asked the guy if he could just scrape out as much of the leftover strawberry ice cream as he could. Instead he just gave hime the whole tub. For free. It. was. Awesome.

We played our favorite nerdy game, Munchkins. I came out of left field to win the first round, although it may have been because my kind husband let me win, even after we wouldn't allow Patrick to let Ashley win. Sorry guys :) Chad didn't want Pat to win so I got to. Patrick did make up for it by winning the second round.

On Monday we wandered around City Creek Mall in Salt Lake. Chad was on the hunt for a new computer bag for school. And while we never found the bag he did discover Etsy. So it all ended well! The trip up there wasn't for nothing though, we all got our free piece of chocolate for the month from Godiva and Chad found a sweet new bike on sale at REI on the way home. We are easily having to buy gas at least twice as often as we did this summer, if not more, now that Chad's back in school, so the bike should be the solution to that problem!

Finally Monday night around 11 we headed out. I'm sure Ash and Pat were a little surprised to get a phone call just 10 or 15 minutes later that we were coming back! The wheel bearing that we had a mechanic check out and okay for our trip was done. It sounded like we were driving some sort of broken down space ship. It was ridiculously loud as well. In fact it was ridiculously loud going 40, 80 on the highway was out of control. So instead of risking getting stuck in the desert in the middle of nowhere with possibly no cell service at 1am we opted to turn around.

Chad had a nice chat with BJ the next morning who said we could try taking the back roads home (what back roads?) very slowly until he heard how far away we were from home and then just laughed. Clearly we had made the right decision. So we got it fixed at some janky place, and got an extra day off work and school!

We had a great weekend and can't wait for Ash and Pat to get their booties down to St. George!