Today I reached the quarter-century mark.  That's right, this afternoon I turned 25. Crazy, eh?  Sunday birthdays are not usually the most exciting, and birthdays when you and your husband are sick are definitely not.  However, I had a great day, and a great day yesterday, too.  We didn't end up going anywhere or doing anything in particular yesterday.  Well, not for my birthday that is.  My cousin Riley was baptised, so we went to that and hung out with family for a bit.  Matt's aunt and uncle stopped by and gave me flowers and truffles (soooo yummy! and I love the flowers!  Thanks Lynell & John!).  Matt then said I could open his gift if I wanted.  I knew what I was getting, so I did :D

Well today is Saturday, so I'm not at work! Yay! And I'm actually on the computer and have put all of my pictures on said computer.  Matt is napping on the couch, so I believe this is the perfect time to share some of the visual aids that go with the last post.  Enjoy :)

 

 

 

 

Look! I post! YAY!  I know you've all been dying to know what's happened since August.  Okay, I'll be honest, you've probably all forgotten I even have a blog ('cept you, Heather :))  While I'm being honest, I'll mention that the only real reason you're even getting a post is because I've given up on work's internet policy and am posting while I should be editing. (Everyone breaks the rules pretty much - so I don't feel too bad.  At least I'm not watching videos or listening to Pandora.)

Now the problem is I have to remember what has happened since August..... Well, the band went to Jackson Hole.  Even though I've quit the band, Matt still plays (and is now drum sergeant - don't know if I mentioned that or not :)), so I tag along on the trips because they're fun :)  Thanks to WUSPBA, I can tell you the band took 2nd in Quick March Medley and 4th in Timed Medley.  I particularly enjoyed Jackson this year (aside from not playing and not being frozen in rain) because our dear friend Andrew was one of the judges. :) Thanks to Shawn and Darren for driving us and sharing a room - we had a party :)

September . . . that means Labor Day and Payson's Onion Days.  I dropped Matt off and then drove down to the end of the route and watched most of the parade, until White Peaks finished.  I believe we had pizza at Matt's parents' house.  Other than that, I'm at a loss.

October - Ventura! Woot! I love going somewhere warm when it is cold here.  Actually, fall has been pretty mild, so it wasn't that bad, but it was warmer in Ventura :)  Seaside Highland Games.  Another one of those band trips I tagged along on.  We didn't think this time and so Shawn and Darren and us didn't share a room.  They did, however, drive again.  I miss going to California. :(  It was a super fun trip.  Salt Lake Scots went down as well, so we had friends.  We also got to see our friend Aaron Mars with his band Cameron Highlanders.  Yay for seeing friends again :)  Ed was there judging, too.  SL Scots took first in Timed Medley and QMM :)  White Peaks took 4th in Timed and 5th in QMM.  I have pictures from my phone, but they need to be enhanced since my phone doesn't have flash :(  Also, I'm still not at home, but maybe the next post will have pics.  Don was excited that the band was led by Jason Paguio - the current world champion drum major. Other highlights - the hot tub at the hotel! (I wish our HOA had ours open...) Also, seeing the ocean - oh! and shout out to Jim Hull - the Wicked Tinkers' sales guy - whom I spent a good while chatting with about vampires.  Check out his book: A Vampire in Free Fall.  I bought his book Saturday and had it finished by Sunday.


*Side note* I'm pretty amazed with my linking abilities - everyone's getting advertising today, aren't they?  Go me!


*Another side note* One of my co-workers severely annoys me......grrrrrrrrr.


So, that leaves us with Halloween.  I ♥ Halloween.  Stupid Halloween was on a Sunday, though.  I did decide to dress up for work Friday.  Yes, there are pics of that too at home.  We handed out candy on Saturday to those who didn't go to our ward Halloween party. (I'm so against those.)  We also got one family from our ward who came around on Sunday.  Yay for condo living.  I love handing out candy, and I absolutely love that we actually got trick-or-treaters this year!


So on to November . . . I actually have events for November. Yay for putting stuff in the calendar on my phone.  First - primary program.  One of the easier programs for the teachers I think.  Downside?  They had the brilliant idea the kids would sing the prelude music.  So . . . we had to be there early and then sit on the stand with the kids through opening exercises and the sacrament.  My poor 4 and 5 year olds were tired by the end of it - and then we still had 2 hours of primary to do!  However, the kids did well.


Next, Turk got to stay at the vet overnight.  He stopped eating well and started acting sick, so we gave him seeds because he would still eat those.  (He's a freaking seed junkie.)  He ate well for awhile, but then he stopped eating anything and was all poofed and his droppings changed, so we drove up to Centerville to see Dr. Folland.  Apparently the little bum gorged himself on seeds and filled his crop way too full.  Fortunately, it was nothing more serious than that.  He stayed overnight and I picked him up the next day.  Now he gets limited amounts of seeds throughout the day, but has access to his pellets always.  He eats both, but he doesn't eat enough pellets to stay healthy.  The little booger.


My cousin Matt got sealed in the Manti temple on Nov. 19.  I was able to go to the sealing.  I went down with my aunt, a cousin, and my grandparents.  It was fun because I don't normally sit and chat with Tammy.  We had fun.  We also saw lots of hawks ;)  The sealing was beautiful (aren't they all?)  However, I realized that our family is a bunch of cry-babies.  I was fine until the sealer brought up the fact the ceremony is performed in front of angels as well.... ugh.  Matt's sister Kari was able to be there with him, and that was awesome.  I thought it was funny that Matt cried, but Holly (his wife) didn't. :)  Of course we did pictures afterward and it was cold!  The poor couple was out much longer than we were, though.  We also had the luncheon at the Manti House.  It was pretty yummy and we sat with some of Holly's aunts and an uncle.  Can I just say that it really is a small world?  Good times, though.  My Matt worked in the morning, so he wasn't able to go, but we did go to the reception together.  It was good fun and we got to visit with lots of family.  We're happy to have Holly as part of the family, too. :)  (Yes, I have pictures.  Yes, they are on my phone....)


Oh! I got to go to breakfast with one of my boys from the RTC.  The family he is living with now just moved to Georgia, so we decided we should do something before he left.  It made me happy to catch up with him.  He's doing so well. :)

Right - so this brings us to Thanksgiving.  We did dinner at Matt's parents' and his mom's side of the family, and then we went to Grandma Wilson's for dessert.  Rebecca's birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year, so we had a little birthday party for her afterward too.  Koreen and I then looked through the ads in preparation of Black Friday. :D

Black Friday . . . yes, I shopped. I have been anticipating it for at least a month now.  I went to Walmart at 2am.  I intended to price match some stuff, but the major thing, the Wii Fit Plus with balance board, was already gone.  I got some other stuff though.  Fortunately, my awesome aunt went to Target and was able to get a Fit for me and her.  Guess I should have just driven to Orem in the first place.  Oh well.  That finished off my Christmas shopping.  I did a lot online this year, and I'm a huge fan!  I'm still waiting for one thing that shipped Thanksgiving weekend, and I need some stocking stuffers still, but everything else is done! I'm so proud of myself. :)


I believe that brings everyone up-to-date on these last few months.  Maybe I'll actually blog since I don't care about doing it at work now :)  Plus, I need to post pictures - good thing it's the weekend.

I've been gone for ages - I know.  And right now, I really don't have time. Yay for over time at work - more money. I'm ready to be done, though.  Anyway, perhaps in a week or so I will take the time to actually post something again. Just know we are alive and well :)

Wednesday was our 3-year anniversary.  Crazy how time flies, eh?  We both worked because we're poor and had nothing planned.  With my boss being out of the office a lot, my schedule has changed some to compensate, so I worked 11-7.  Matt and I hung out in the morning, and then I came home to BROWNIES! mmm.... brownies.... I have the most awesome husband ever.  After his first time making brownies and rinsing the bowl and spoon (*gasp!*), he has learned that I love to finish off the rest of the batter myself.  So even though he'd made the brownies earlier in the evening, I came home to a bowl and spoon just waiting for me. :D  He also made a yummy dinner of marinated chicken, corn, and rice-a-roni wild rice.  It was rather tasty.  Pretty much, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary for us.

On Thursday, my cousin Lindsay was sealed in the Salt Lake Temple.  Matt picked me up from work (at 6pm this time), and we headed up to Sandy to their reception.  It was held at the Heritage Gardens in Sandy - so pretty!  They had live music and yummy food :)  Best part, of course, was seeing my cousin and some of my other family.  We don't see the Erdmann site pretty much ever, so it was a treat to catch up with a few people.

Friday was uneventful.  I got up and worked on removing boxes from our living room.  Yeah, they're not all gone still.... I worked 12-8, and then I came home and tried to get a bit more cleaning done.  Mostly I didn't do too much, though.  Then about 11-ish we finally fell asleep . . apparently Garth and Sarah came by around 12:30 and stayed 'til about 1:30, but I was out.  Matt and Garth can both attest to how heavily I sleep :)  Then at 2am, Matt came to wake me up.  Why on earth would he do such a horrible thing, you ask?  You see, the World Pipe Band Championships were today.  BBC Scotland was broadcasting the grade one competition live on the internet.  Qualifiers started at 9am BST, which translates to 2am MST.  I missed the first two bands, but made it out for the third.

It was fun.  We hooked the computer up last night to the TV.  In fact, it's still hooked up, so I'm sitting here typing this on our 32" screen :)  Matt started falling asleep near the end of the qualifiers.  We both took naps during the 1 hour break.  Mine was much shorter though because I stayed up for about 20 minutes because Cinco was actually being cuddly and sleepy on me.  We woke up again at 5:30am when Stubbs came over to watch the finals with us.

Matt made us pancakes.  They were yummy :)  For all of the Mountain Dew he consumed, I think he slept the most during the competition.  Funny how that works.  The three of us dozed intermittently during the MSR finals and again during the break.  I managed to stay awake for the whole medley competition - which was pretty awesome. :)  I also checked Facebook periodically.  It was fun to see my pipe band world friends' comments throughout the morning, especially the predictions of who would win and the comments on how bloody early it was.  My poor Vegas and Cali friends were up at 1am :)

Stubbs didn't stay for the results because we weren't sure how long they would take to get closing exercises all ready.  I worked on the dishes during the break while Matt napped some more.  I came out when they started closing, but fell asleep part-way through the march around.  Matt claims he shook my pillow to try to wake me up, but it didn't happen, so I slept through the rest.  I woke up to see everyone on the field and the camera on the PM of SLOT, so I knew they had won.  For the rest of the results, I had to ask Matt, who had to text them to Andrew because he was out at a games judging last-minute. :) 

Now, after lunch and finishing most of the dishes (stupid gridle can't go in the dishwasher . . . but it has made it to the sink), I am quite awake and ready to do stuff . . . and Matt is asleep in the bedroom.  I suppose I should go wake him so he's not up all night and asleep again during church....

Updates - still haven't heard from the plumber . . . I was going to call the builder today, but I just remembered, and it's 9pm now.  Next, even though we've had the gift card, I just picked up paint today.  On the plus side, two gallons cost $50.11, so with the gift card, I only had to give her a dime and a penny :)  Really by this weekend we should be painted :)  I don't think we have anything planned for Saturday :)  Oh! I found the mailbox.  I'm an idiot . . . . it's pretty much straight out from our building.  (In my defense, I'm not used to brown mailboxes, and the construction people for the next building have stuff parked in front of it...)  Last, but not least, the bird is officially named Turkleton.

In other exciting news - I got a $1/hr raise :)  My boss is gone a lot helping with a new phone center, so I'm getting a lot of her responsibilities here, and that equals more money, which is awesome because we'll need all the help we can get :)

Unpacking is slowly coming along.  I have all of the easy stuff done, and now it is down to stuff I have no idea where to put :)  or random stuff.  I did, however, get all of the blankets out of our storage shed and have found a few to get rid of, which is a plus.  I have also repacked most of the rest . . . so now I just need somewhere to put these plastic boxes.  It's okay though, because it is still progress :)

And as disconnected and short as this post is, I am done with it. :) 

Yeah, I know.  I did so well for like a week.  But then stuff happened and I didn't want to blog.  I wasn't ready to.  Then we got busy and didn't have time.  Then we didn't have internet, which greatly hinders the blogging process.  But now, I find myself with nothing better to do (k, not true, but I don't want to do it right now), a computer, super speedy internet, no husband, and a strong realization I should probably put a post up.

Well, for the bad news... you know, the one that I couldn't blog about for awhile.  Our cutest little bundle of feathers, Bhuvan, got sick and passed away . . . goodness, 3.5 weeks ago now.

I believe he contracted psittacosis, after all of my reading after his passing.  It was tragic.  Bhuvan was Matt and I's first baby together...  I still feel horrible.  We didn't take him to the vet (it's treatable).  You see, birds are super good at hiding their illnesses so predators won't pick them.  There were a couple signs, but I didn't think much of it because he'd gone through similar things before and been fine.  Another sign that should have been so obvious, I didn't know what it was.  After reading all of the symptoms of the common cockatiel illnesses, I found out.  I feel horrible that we had at least a day or two that we could have gotten him into the vet and maybe still have our little birdie-boo with us.  Friday night (June 11) we knew he wasn't doing well.  When we got home from the tattoo, we just hung out with him and tried to keep him warm.  Poor little guy.  We didn't call the vet at that point because afterhours visits are super expensive.  In retrospect, I'm glad we didn't at that point either because I doubt there would have been anything he could have done for our little bird. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning on Saturday, June 12th, our little Bhuvan passed away.  I awoke to find our little bird on his back on the bottom of his cage.  I bawled and bawled.  For like three days.  It was hard because we had to leave so early in the morning for the Scottish festival, but in some ways, I think it helped me to still go do something all day.  It was hard to come home and not have a little bird squeeking at us, happy dancing to get out of his cage.  The next day, I still broke off a corner of my toast for him... it was habit.  We sure miss our little guy.  He was only about 2 1/2 years old.  (Average lifespan of a cockatiel is 12-15 years.)  Matt buried him in my dad's garden Sunday afternoon.

Shortly thereafter, we finally got word we would be able to close on our house.  Huzzah!  The builder let us move some stuff in and paint while we waited for our closing date to be set.  The whole mortgage process was a pain.  From what I hear, worse than normal.  It refused to give up the fight right through to the end, too.  Setting a closing date was a pain.  Then we finally got that figured, and had to close again.  (The papers were dated for the next day - June 25, when we though we were going to have to move the closing date to, but then the title lady was able to meet with us at 8:30 Thursday night . . .so we signed the 24th and had to go back to her office Friday after work to re-sign everything.)  However, we finally got it all done and signed and paid for on June 25th.  On Tuesday, June 29th, the loan funded, and we were officially homeowners (which was a good thing because we already had most everything moved in and had spent our first night there Saturday, June 26th :))

Already (being about a week since moving in), the kitchen and dining room is put away and clean.  Oh how I love having a dishwasher! The living room is mostly done.  The office has made good progress.  The laundry room is done.  The bedroom is pretty good . . . just have to finish finding where I'm putting all of our clothes :)  And the storage bedroom doesn't really have a whole lot of stuff in it.  The bathrooms are another story.  Not looking forward to them.  We painted the kitchen/dining, living room, hall, and 3/4 of the master bedroom.  I quite like the color.  My gift card finally arrived so I can buy the paint for the accent wall in the bedroom and the hall bath color.  Those should be painted by the end of next week. It's quite exciting to have our own place. 

It's super spacious . . . granted, it's like twice the square footage as our apartment, plus has 2 extra bedrooms, and extra bathroom, and a laundry room.  I love being able to do laundry at my own house too.  Even better is being able to do dishes, laundry, and shower at the same time :)  Or do anything else, really, but we have enough hot water to accommodate all three simulatenously.  It's swell.  The internet is super fast.  We have TV (which I will now insert a complaint about . . . with the HOA, we get the first 2 tiers of programing from PrimeTime Communications . . . and BBC America is in the 3rd tier.  I wanted to cry . . not really, but I was super bummed.  No Top Gear for Amber . . . oh, that's my new obsession . . especially since Vampire Diaries doesn't start until August :) )  Back to the pros...we have Cinco with us - the laundry room holds all of his necessities so nicely :)  We have a fun little patio.  We know some of our neighbors, so we have friends in the neighborhood :).

Cons, aside from the lack of BBC America: The kitchen cabinets and the dishwasher are a bit small.  They look normal, but the cabinets are just a bit skinny.  Oh well, we've managed to put everything away.  Tiny tiny coat closet.  Build issues that have to be taken care of... we had to have the heating guy come put a valve on at the dryer so we could use it already.  Stan had to fix the door to the lazy susan cabinet so we could actually open it enough to put things in it.  We are missing 7 pegs for various shelves through the house's cabinets.  We are missing 15 dots that go on the corners of the cabinet doors and drawers.  The plumber still needs to come fix the shower head in the hall bath so it doesn't just drizzle on you.  And I need to ask the plumber or builder about the sprayer at the kitchen sink.  Oh! and we have no idea where the mailbox is..... we finally got the keys to it (funny story), but don't know where to put the key to get our mail.  I did drive around today when I got home and found some mailboxes, but they were for the first five buildings....ours is number 6 . . . so I still don't know what to do about our mail. 

Anyway, back to the keys.... we went, I think Saturday, to the post office to change our address and pick up the keys.  We changed our address just fine, but they couldn't give us the mailbox key without some proof we were moving into the unit...... We had to bring the HUD back that had our name and the address on it before we could get the keys.  We thought it amusing that we could get our mail sent there with no problem, but we couldn't get keys to access said mail without proof of moving there. :)  Matt found it even more interesting that neither transaction required any ID.  Ah, the government :)

Sorry this is long.  You're not obligated to read it :)  Last week, after missing having a feathered baby, Matt got me to consent to get a budgie.  We purchased him at Petco in Orem.  He/she/it is awfully cute, and quite a little stinker now that he has gotten comfortable with our bedroom.  He wasn't hand-fed, so we had to work a bit to tame him to come to our hand, but he does a pretty good job now.  We are accepting applications for names.... I think he looks like a half and half dipped Easter egg, but we haven't found anything to go with that idea that would work for a name.  We though of calling him Squirt (like from Nemo), and today, Matt is set on Turkleton (from Scrubs) because he is turquoise, and that's like Turkleton.  Then when we get a second, it will be white, and we will name it JD.  (He was begging me via text today to let us name it Turkleton...sigh).

So, if you read this far, here are couple of pictures (yeah, not good, I know) of our new family member.  Feel free to comment and let us know what you think it should be named.