Things I dislike, vol. 1

It kind of annoys me when people say things such as, "You better be careful, or you're going to be sleeping on the couch tonight." Etc. Not sure why this annoys me. Maybe it's because no one is actually sleeping on the couch. Ever. I can never think of a time where Anna is going to force me to sleep on the couch and that I'm going to go willingly sleep there. We have a big bed, if we're not getting along I'll just mosey on over to my side. I don't recall my dad ever sleeping on the couch for misbehaving, and I don't predict I'll ever be in that position. Furthermore, what are these people saying that is causing them to end up on the couch. I feel free to speak my mind to my spouse with no real consequence. As Anna can attest, I often get nervous looks from our friends after some comment. And I think to myself, "What, do they think I'm going to have to end up on the couch tonight?" If anything, I'll make Anna sleep on the couch. And I can confidently say that with no worry that I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight.

What Blogs are really about

To be honest, Anna and I like to look at most people's blogs to make fun of the weird, exaggerated things people like to post. Anna won't admit this, though. I like to look at people's blogs (not people we really like all that much, so if we like you, you're safe), knowing what is actually going on in their lives and compare it with what their blog conveys to the masses. This will often result in me sending emails to Anna during the day with some snippet from someone's latest exaggeration.

My favorite thing to compare is people's schedules. Wives, especially with husbands who are in school, love to talk about how much their husbands are gone and how lonely they are (emphasis added). In reality, no one is gone this much. Trust me, I see your car parked there or I know other people in similar circumstances. This isn't happening. We need an anonymous way to call people on things, it could be the B.S. meter on the side of your blog right below the floating baby.

I do wish Anna would be around more, though, because she is basically gone all the time, you know, being in graduate school and all. I mean, the neighbor's kids don't see her for days on end sometimes. Besides, we're way behind on our DVR and have like 3 Law & Order episodes on our queue and I need someone to play the air flute during the intro music while I'm on the keyboards.

On a side note, Anna was in jury duty this last week (see: prior post). I'm an intern at the Milwaukee D.A.'s office and am assigned to a specific misdemeanor court. Coincidentally, Anna got called up to jury selection in my courtroom on Wednesday. So an Assistant District Attorney that I work with told me that when the jury pool came into the court, another ADA responded that at least there is one attractive juror. Turns out he was referring to Anna. Then Anna said her name. He felt dumb. Anna made me retell this story three times on the way home. "Wait, what did he say about me again?"

Christmas Break

We had a great time at Christmas.  We were able to take a nice long break and go to Utah.  We spent a few days in SLC and were able to go to Kate Sadler's wedding.  It was a beautiful wedding and we had a nice time with the family.  We also got to spend much needed time with Pierce and Josh which was good because we really needed a fix.

 

We also spent a two days in Pine Valley at Hannah's cabin with Hannah and Canyon.  It was so relaxing and we had a nice time catching up with old friends. Tim and Canyon spent time shoveling snow and making stop-motion videos.  I was very happy we got to jam Christmas style with Canyon as well.

 

 

 

We then spent about 10 days in St. George and even though we overstayed our welcome, I think my mom forgave us after Tim got so much stuff done on her to-do list.  It made her happy and kept him busy so it worked out pretty well.  I am just posting some of the highlights from the trip.  Didn't take pictures of the lowlights, sorry.  Sam, Natalie, and my mom went with us hiking in Snow Canyon and also went to some art shows which were wonderful.  We also got to spend lots of time with my siblings playing Bananagrams which was great.  Chris, Sarah, and Tim were the best, not necessarily in that order.  We also got to spend a lot of time with the 4 nephews and 1 niece which I always love.  They are each so unique and they have already developed very strong personalities.  I wish I got to seem them all more often.  Zach and Katie have somehow managed to have two cowboys for sons, as you will see below.  We also got to spend some time with my Dad, Dee, and Margo at their Christmas party where they gave us a beautiful picture of Zion National Park that we have now put up in our apartment.  All-in-all a swell Christmas break.

 

Sam, Natalie, and Tim hiked down into the cave.  That is my mom and I up at the top.

Pretty cute, right?

After Tim bagged 18 bags of leaves, he decided it would be faster to burn them so he and Chris built this contraption.

Cowboy Exhibit 1: Owen and I went on a hike and he brought his shotgun to hunt during the hike.

                            Cowboy Exhibit 2: Sam picked up Owen's shotgun and aimed it right at my face.

Tim spent a lot of time wrestling the kids.  It was good for him.

Jury Duty

Right now I am sitting in jury duty for the second day.  I am back in the waiting room.  It is an odd mix of people from the Milwaukee area.  A very random sample to say the least.  My biggest concern at the moment is that the movie the Family Stone just started to play.  I have only seen this movie once and it was right after Tim and I got married.  I am nervous because after my first viewing I cried for almost twenty minutes and I honestly am not sure why.  All I remember is Tim was unsure of what to do or say.   I am just hoping that whatever provoked me to tears last time will be a one-time thing.  We will see how this goes.

Rules of the blog

To help ensure we don't fall into the blog traps that we have feared so much up to this point, there are a few rules we have established.
1. No exclamation points (exceptions: births, deaths, job offers)
2. No use of specific words such as awesome, girlers, Powell, or chillin
3. No pictures with lame poses
4. No complaining
5. No bragging
6. No spouse bashing or spouse shout-outs
7. No shout-outs in general
8. No embarrassingly personal posts
9. No extremely long posts that actually belong in a journal
10. No pictures of our kids unless we have some

There are a few guarantees about our blog that we want to stop but probably won't be able to.
1. There will be soapboxes
2. There will be boring updates
3. There will be lots of pictures with not a lot of text
4. There will be attempts at humor that might not work out
5. We might offend you but we don't want to

This is so hard...

Even though we "started" a blog in May, this has been extremely hard for us to keep up. I think we just need to be honest about our feelings regarding blogs before we begin. I don't want to offend anyone and hopefully you know I am not talking about any blogs that we follow. So here it goes... neither of us really like blogs. We have a few close friends that we enjoy keeping up with via blogs and we really appreciate their willingness to blog. But a lot of blogs seem to show a life of extremes. Either people show how tremendously happy they are and how great their life is or people talk about how hard and terrible life is and sometimes it all happens in the same week. It's all a little too dramatic. Our lives are pretty consistent and we aren't good at making things look great or terrible, just normal.

With that being said, I will try to keep up my New Years resolution to keep up with our wonderful friends from St. George, Minnesota, and BYU. Happy blogging.