*

Friday, February 28, 2014

Shimps Get Jazzed

I was 17 years old before I decided on a favorite sports team. It was then that my high school chose the Ravens' stadium as the site for our Prom. And just like that, I became a Ravens' fan. Don't challenge me on this with statistics. I have no idea how good of a team they actually are. I just know I had Prom there, so I like them.

Here are the other teams I cheer for, and why:

Cougars - because I am one. Fo life.

And now Joseph is going to be one, too! Woohoo!
Colts - because I married a Colts fan. (Stephen is from Indiana)

The BroncHawks - because that's who played in the Super Bowl this year. Say what you will, but my team always wins the Super Bowl.


And finally, the Jazz.

This guy does not play for the Jazz anymore, unfortunately. 
But he was there for my first Jazz game! The one where I sat in the 4th row and they fed me dinner and dessert during the halftime show....so yes. I am a Jazz fan.

Stephen and I got free tickets to the Jazz game this last Wednesday, so that was our second date night this week!

It started out good when Stephen won a $5 voucher for concessions:



It got better when they accidentally upgraded our seats! We didn't sit in the 4th row, but we did sit in the lower bowl seats.


It got even better when they started singing the National Anthem and I recognized one of the guys singing! My Mona cousin is so famous!

Worst picture ever, but what can ya do. 
We took the Front-runner up to SLC and back. It was my first time, and it was very enjoyable! We chugged along in near-silence! We dined in a booth! We won all the races with the cars on I-15! We misunderstood the schedule and ended up waiting 35 minutes at the train station. 


That's my cute husband, doing his homework in the train station. 
But it was okay, because we had this little baby to entertain us with her escape attempts. She kept trying to run off the edge and was thrilled to death every time she got close!
It's nice to have friends with babies, because that means that we don't need our own! {For now, at least.}

And it's nice to cheer for the Jazz, because when I do, they win.


Thursday, February 27, 2014

Look how the Turn Tables...

Have you ever tried to buy a kitchen table on KSL? It is a freaking battle. I know because we just barely got our's. And we've been married since August, so, yep. 

It's not that we haven't wanted a kitchen table. It's just that our kitchen in our first apartment was tiny, and there wasn't room for a big table. So we got a little counter-height table with two stools on Amazon, and that was good enough for us for four months. 

Then we moved, and our kitchen quadrupled in size, and it's just been kind of sad to look at our little two-person table. Like looking at a cupcake that has only one tiny swipe of frosting on it. 

So I took a gander over to KSL, not knowing beforehand that I was about to enter a two-month battle for a table. If you are hoping to buy a table soon, I hope the following guide will be helpful to you.

May I present,

How to Buy a Table: Hunger Games Style

1. You will start out with great confidence.


2. You will start out sending cagey texts, carefully wording them, trying not to appear toooo interested. And when your husband takes your phone and offers to pay more than the listed price for something....


3. Until you realize that that is just how it goes out here, in the KSL battlefield. Now, when you see a table you like, you will throw caution to the wind and jump on it like a dog jumps on a fire hydrant.


4. You might think that a quick text is enough to secure a table for yourself, but that's not the end of your struggles. Until you have picked it up, you are still in danger of receiving the dreaded "Sorry, I just sold it!" text. 

The first time you get this text, you will be annoyed, but understanding. 

Until it happens SIX times.


5. So then you will start camping out on the KSL Classifieds webpage, and texting people immediately after they post, and also calling them on your husband's phone when they don't immediately reply. And when they do reply, you drop everything, borrow a truck, and RUN.

6. Which will make it that much worse when you are on your way up to Salt Lake City and you still get the rejection text.
And there goes your table.
7. But finally. Finally! After a long, hard hungry game, you will meet the table of your dreams. 


And you'll take it home a mere three hours after it was posted online, from the nicest people you've ever met in all your KSL adventures. The kind of people who are sweet and successful and live in a beautiful home in Herriman, and if you can't be them, you are at least glad that you get to have their table.

So good luck in your table-buying ventures!

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Spaceshimps

Hello. My name is Heather, and I have a thing for free food. Free anything, really....but especially free food. I am just such a college kid when it comes to free food. Here are some things I have done for "free" food:

-missed a class

-or, like, 4

-liked groups on facebook

-shared things on facebook

-sat through an ILP meeting 

-sat through a Vivint meeting (not my proudest moment)

-sat through a hymn fireside

-gone to a Google Fiber switch-to-us meeting

-every time I went to Ward Prayer in my singles wards was either for the free food or for a boy, okay I admit it

-driven all the way out to my school in West Jordan, while I am off-track, on the day of Parent-Teacher conferences for the other tracks, because I knew they would serve dinner to the teachers right after school and I was not about to miss that

-worked for free as a Disney College Campus Rep for 3 semesters because once every semester my favorite man, John, would come out to Utah and take us all to Goodwood and it is delicious there

-worked for basically free as a teacher. Also I feel fulfilled and I like working with kids, but every time there's a holiday, I get some delicious food on my desk and that is a perk if I ever saw one. 


Anyway, I had a really great experience with free food last night that I would like to tell you about. It was a movie night at UVU. The movie was "Gravity," and the food was popcorn, chips, candy bars, peanut M&M's, and soda. I. Was. In. Heaven. 



They also gave us a free book and let us take home the inflatable star chairs we sat on! So even though I got very stressed out watching that movie and crushed Stephen's plans of us going to space one day (why would I ever do that. Not interested.), it was a fantastic night. 

Monday, February 24, 2014

Will you be my Stephentine?

I think I kind of shocked Stephen on Valentine's Day morning. I was standing by the griddle, making some delicious pancakes, and I said: "I hate Valentine's Day."

I know that Valentine's Day is a popular holiday to hate on, but I have always loved holidays, and I have especially LOVED Valentine's Day. Which is why that was a little shocking to Stephen.

But this helped to clear up some of the confusion.
My heart pancakes were just NOT turning out the way I wanted them to. And they actually ended up being kind of a metaphor for that whole day....I mean, all we did was eat did-these-get-run-over-by-a-truck-heart-shaped-pancakes and drive forever. But luckily we just decided to push Valentine's Day back a week, and it was a wonderful Valen-weekend.

Here is how we celebrated:

A trip to the temple, where someone left a little bag of Hershey kisses and this note on Carbaby:


Mormons are funny. 
Stephen got me roses! Also chocolate, but that might have been more for him ;)
He also got this sparkly sign to decorate our house for Valentine's Day. 
 
 This is how we eat chocolate: take a bite and then put it back. 


We also went out to eat at Rib City Utah, which I highly recommend! Then we went ice-skating at the Gallivan Center. 
December 2012
February 2014
Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! Not all pancakes need to look crappy.


Friday, February 21, 2014

The Shimp Always Wins

You've heard that the house always wins in Fabulous Las Vegas, but the last time I went, I won. Fifteen dollars and seventy-seven cents. Ohhhh yeah, I'm pretty much a high roller. 

This time I went, I won again! I won
the alphabet game. Actually we weren't playing, but if we had been, I would've won right there. 
the photography contest. I didn't actually enter any, but I am pretty proud of this picture. 
I am only a little proud of this picture. This guy got all up in our faces about taking a "picture with your father" and Stephen stood next to him while I pulled up the camera on my phone. Then Darth Vader took off his helmet and asked if we had money to give him. Which we didn't because, who carries cash now? So this picture is the best we have. 
We won a front-row view of the Bellagio fountain show. 
We won a free showing of the 3D M&M movie.

In M&M world, we decided that whoever got 3 in a row on one of these little M&M slot machine toys would get to choose where we bet our $5 in the real world.
It's a good thing I won that little wager, because then I went on to turn $5 into $30.35! It's also a good thing I won because Stephen says he can see himself getting quickly addicted to gambling. He wanted to keep going and try to win more money, but $30.35 is enough for me :) 
The thing about gambling is, you really shouldn't do it. Because it ruins lives and you can't make a living off of it and it truly can be addicting. 

But it is okay, Iiiii think, if you go to Vegas only once every few years, to pay $5 to play a game. If you ask me, that no gamble-ier than paying $90 for a ticket to Disneyland and hoping you get a chance to ride the rides you went there for. There's no guarantee that you'll win $30 in Vegas, and there's no guarantee that you'll get to go on Radiator Springs Racecars. But this time, I did win $30, and Radiator Springs Racecars is just going to have to wait until next time. 

Thanks for the Earl of Sandwich, Vegas! 


Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Not a bad end to our road trip :) 
We stayed with my cousin Jonny and his lovely family, just 20 minutes from the Strip. When Stephen and I have kids, I hope they are half as cute as Jonny and Tiff's kids are! They are just the cutest family. Whom we also did not get a picture with....just fire me now.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Destination: Disney

There are lots of good things about living in Utah. The mountains are beautiful, my hair feels very happy here in the summertime, and we're this close to getting Google Fiber. But sometimes, you just need to take a break from your home, even if it's only for a weekend. 

Which is why, when Mickey Mouse emailed me 2 free tickets to Disneyland, we joyfully planned our trip for this last weekend. 

I thought that scheduling the trip for this weekend was the perfect idea, because it was right in the middle of my 3-week break at school, and Stephen had Monday off. Disneyland was sure to be practically empty if we went in February, and plus, it was Valentines Day weekend! What better way to celebrate than with a road trip? 

{As it turns out, everyone else had the same idea. But whatever.}

I also thought I would make Stephen's year and cancel Valentines Day, since we were just going to be driving all day on Friday anyway. I felt like a very benevolent and understanding wife when I told him, back in December, that we didn't need to do anything extra for Valentines Day. 

But then he took me seriously and I did not feel very benevolent anymore. So we'll be celebrating Valentines Day this weekend :) 

Anyway, we did celebrate a little bit on Friday morning. Our celebration looked like this:



All packed and ready to go! Sorry about the background.....
We drove and drove and drove until finally, we arrived in California. 

It was very hard to get a decent car pic.  



Whew, finally.
The first sighting of palm trees was very exciting! 
We stayed with Stephen's cousin and her family, who live just a half-hour from Disneyland and 15 minutes from Hermosa Beach. (Hashtag, dreamlife.) They were the sweetest hosts ever! I wish we had gotten a picture with them!

Here is how they greeted us.
There were also some balloons. Have you ever known such adorable people??
Saturday was Disneyland Day. We left a little later than we had hoped, but we still had a magical day doing mostly everything we wanted to. 




This is us in the maintenance elevator in the Tower of Terror. Stephen had no idea what was coming!

My favorite was this little kid who unfortunately got hidden behind the peace sign our Nike friend is threw up for the camera. He was so cute! He was right in front of us in line and he kept telling us how great this ride was. "You're bigger than 40 too, like me?" is how he introduced himself. 



We were having a hard time taking this picture ourselves until a nice lesbian couple offered to help.  Thanks again, ladies! 
Toy Story Mania is my favorite ride at Disneyland.
I'm only a little sad that Stephen beat me on it :/



As you can see, the whole take-a-picture-of-the-picture did not work out too well for us. But we continued to try it anyway. 
When it started getting dark, they roped off the area around the castle so no one could sit in the danger zone while fireworks were going off. There were two workers there making sure that no one went under the rope, and I knew that they would be willing to take a picture of us in front of the castle. 
 Our conversation went like this:

me: Could we just get a picture with the castle?
her: Unfortunately, no, we're roping this off for the fireworks show.
me: I know, I just was wondering if one of you could take a picture for us.
her: Oh sure! (handing her coworker my phone) They want a picture with the castle.
him: Oh okay! (He walks towards the castle. What?)
me: Well....we kind of wanted to be in it?
him: Oh! Sorry! (He turns his back to the castle and prepares to take the picture.
me: Oh, could we have the castle in the background?
him: Oh! Yes, sorry!

It was a very complicated thing to ask, I guess.
The fireworks were amazing. Phone pictures do not do them justice. 

We had to treat ourselves to this lovely Ghirardelli's peanut-butter chocolate sundae for dinner. Had to.  

After dinner, we watched World of Color. In the spirit of Valentines Day, Stephen held me on his shoulders. Also in the spirit of Valentines Day, I recorded most of the show so he could get a good view of it later. We are good valentines to each other :) 

Our next stop was Vegas! That adventure will be coming up in a future blog post :)