A Heart, a Circus, and Free Food

At the risk of sounding like a spaz at the start of a blog post.....THIS WEEK has just been so great!! Here were my favorite parts:

Friday - when Alex got a new heart! I walked into school on Friday morning, and Margot walked out of her room and said "Heather? Did you hear about Alex?" I said no, and she said, "He got a heart!" My brain couldn't even figure out what she was saying at first because it was such a big deal and such a surprise! If you don't know who he is, Alex is a boy in my class who was born with half a heart. Last year, he got put on the waiting list for a heart transplant. This whole year he hasn't been able to come to school except for one hour on the first day, and another hour to do his Spotlight, and on Halloween to participate in the parade. He is just about the best little boy I've ever met, and his whole family is like angel people who barely even belong in this world because they are just way too good. They're the kind of people who are so happy and positive and humble and giving and sweet all the time, and you just know that that they are like that with everyone they meet. Anyway, it has been a long time waiting for a heart, and it was a huge celebration in the class on Friday morning!

Top: what was written on his DIBELS test that he obviously wasn't here to take on Monday.
Middle: When I visited him at the hospital.
Bottom: What we wrote in our Shimp Shoutout on Friday!

Saturday - when we went rock-climbing for like 4 hours and I climbed my first 5.11! I am so proud every time I reach a new milestone in climbing.

Monday - when I won a radio contest! Thanks 93.3! In case you were wondering, carrots are the #1 healthy snack food that is consumed more on Super Bowl Sunday than on any other Sunday of the year.

Tuesday - when Julie and Kelly and I went to Zupa's for dinner. Yum and fun!

Wednesday - when we cashed in on my radio contest winnings and went to see THE CIRCUS YOU GUYS! The Jordan World Circus came to Utah, and Stephen, Julie, Michael, Logan and I were all in attendance.

He is so happy to have a wife who wins stuff.

Side note: I feel like I should add that I do not support animal abuse! I was a little sad for these elephants. But the good news is, they mostly just had people acts. 

Also, it is surprisingly difficult to get a picture pretending like you have elephant trunks. I don't know why?? But Stephen kept putting his trunk in front of my face and blocking me!

Like so. 

And then when we finally got ourselves, our trunks blocked the elephant. And I....got pregnant? Whate'er.

Cuties :)

Thursday - when the Consule Generale came to our school! This person is a big deal. I didn't know who she was, but I have been thoroughly educated and now I understand that she is a big deal. If 20 people tell you someone is a big deal I think it's pretty safe to trust that assessment. Margot said she is kind of like the president, or kind of like a diplomat, who lives in San Francisco. There are only 2 French General Consulates living in the USA, and they help out all their French peeps who come over here.

She came to our school to see how the kids are learning French! Everyone was in a tizzy. The lunch ladies came and hugged Margot and wished her good luck, and the librarians almost fell over when I walked in the library later on. "Is she here?" they gabbled. "How did it go?" The secretaries set out water bottles with little paper jackets that said "Fox Hollow Elementary School." My principal wore a suit and probably combed his beard.

We threatened prepped all our kids and practiced our assembly for this important person like 3 times, and in the end, it turned out just fine.

She is such a big deal that I texted this picture to Margot on Wednesday night asking what I should wear.  

I would have been so remiss to not get a picture of the famous person, so here's my first attempt. {I was trying to hide my phone and be discreet.}

It did not go great.

So I gave up and just be'd obvious about it. *Side note - at this point in the program I thought the blonde lady in black was the Consule Generale. Turns out she was not. Oh and when I found out the blonde lady was not her, I next thought it was the lady with the patchwork kinda skirt. She is also not the Consule Generale. The guy with a scarf is the consulate's personal assistant, and my principal is on the far right.

All the kids sang a song for her.

And then finally, I figured out who she is, when they presented her with a gift basket. She is the brunette with the khaki jacket.

Now all the famous people want to come to our school because it went so well! So you know I am happy about that. One of these times it's bound to be a famous person I've heard of.

Friday - when we had PLC after school, per usual on a Friday, and our principal gave us Chili's chips and salsa and French cookies and chocolate.

Moral of the story: Be nice to animals and famous people. And also not-so-famous people. They are important, too.

By My Own Self

Stephen is pretty much the handyman DIY-er around here. He has handymanned the bathroom, the air conditioning, the living room floors, the bedroom floors, and done a whole lot of painting, besides. And I haven't even mentioned the ladder that he built in like 8 minutes yesterday out of some 2x4's.

I am also a little bit of a DIY-er. I have made a garden, a skirt, a love story sign....uh, one time I made this needlepoint thing in Young Women's....I went through a big latch-hook phase in middle school....plus I also make dinner almost e'er night.

And last week, I DIYed a jewelry hanger! Here's the final product:

Just hanging on the mirror for now...

I don't usually blog about my DIY adventures, but Daily Tay blogged about her's, and she said that if I blog about mine, I will be entered to win a $100 Visa gift card! So, motivated.

Here's how I DImyself:

Step 1. Find a cute picture frame. I got mine at a fundraiser carnival for Alex Homer, this absolutely adorable little boy who is going to be in my class next year. They had a boutique set up at the carnival and I felt like I was walking through a real live Etsy. I bought my picture frame already painted black, already distressed on the edges, and already hanging on the ribbon. But you could really get any thick picture frame that you like, and then you're of course welcome to paint it and distress the edges and whatever else you want to do.

Step 2. Get cup hooks. I got mine from Home Depot, here. I got the nickel-plated ones, but they also have them in white and gold. These are super-easy to work with on one condition: your picture frame has to be pretty thick. Otherwise, when you screw in the cup hooks, the wood will bump up and pucker and bulge and splinter.

Step 3. Screw in the cup hooks. I've seen a bunch of these on Pinterest where people put their's on the bottom of the frame, too. I chose to put mine on the inside of the top.

As you can see, I didn't quite screw my hooks in all the way. 

Step 4. Hang up all your jewelry and rejoice because it doesn't need to sit in a clump in the spare bedroom anymore!

I put like 3-4 necklaces on each hook, and so far, I have not had any problems. They've held up great! 

By the way, does anyone have a great idea for what I can use an old window for? It has 3 rectangular sections and I just know I could make it into something awesome!

Puckin' Shimps

After two official dates, but before we started "officially" dating, Stephen asked me to go ice-skating and to look at the lights at the SLC temple.

"Yes!" I said. "That would be so much fun!" 

As I said it, I vowed inwardly that I would never tell him about the ice-skating class I had taken earlier in my college career. I knew that if I told him about that class, he would never understand why I still sucked at ice-skating. So I would keep it to myself, and maybe after 5 years of peaceful marriage, I would tell him. We would laugh about it then, because my ice-skating would have drastically improved. 

Unfortunately, just a few weeks later, his roommate decided to bring up the fact that BYU has hockey classes that you can take, and how do they do that? Is there a rink somewhere on campus?

So I helpfully piped up that no, they have the classes at 7 Peaks, and I know because they always had them at the same time as my ice-skating class that I took a few semesters ago. I can still picture the incredulous look on Stephen's face when I said that. 

"Wait, you took an ice-skating class?" he asked. 

Too late, I realized my mistake. "No...." He looked at me, confused. I tried frantically to think of a way out!

"....What?" I said. So, that didn't really do anything. The game was up. Thankfully, Stephen didn't care that much about ice-skating, so it ended up okay. 

Although hockey threatened to ruin our relationship then, it made for a great date night on Saturday. I won Grizzlies tickets on the radio, so Stephen and I were able to go to our first big-deal hockey game! It was a lot of fun. There was less blood than I had expected, but I left with more questions than I thought I would. 

Here are the things that confuse me about hockey:

1. How do they move so fast with so little regard for their own safety? 

 2. How does anyone know where the puck is? Sometimes they like fake-pass it, and I get faked out every time. And that's sitting in the stands!

3. What can you possibly do that's so bad that it lands you in the penalty box? It's clearly not fighting or running someone into the wall, so what is it?

4. How does anyone ever score?

5. Why is the goal so tiny? Especially in proportion to the goalie? The game would be even more exciting if they could score more. Every time the Grizzlies got a point, they blew this huge train horn like 5 times,  and the lights flashed, and everyone went crazy. It was fun! But it only happened twice.

6. Why is the glass so low in front of my face. Seriously I'm pretty sure I had a 38% chance of decapitation. I'm lucky I made it out of that game with my head still attached because if the puck had come flying at me, it would have been over. 

The mascot is always one of my favorite things about any sporting event. 

As is the kiss cam! We got on the screen and I almost peed my pants. We didn't get a picture in that exact moment, but we did afterwards.

Cowshimps

One of my favorite things to do is win stuff. It all started when I sold one $8 thing from a fundraising catalog in 6th grade, got my name entered into the drawing because of that, and I walked away with a prize. I don't even remember what it was - maybe a microphone for my karaoke machine? I just remember that feeling.

"How embarrassing," 6th grade me first thought, walking up the stage steps. 

Then, "Hmmm, actually this is kinda cool," as I surveyed the prizes I got to choose from. 

Then, "I am a winner and THIS IS AWESOME!" as all my friends (and a bunch of people I didn't know) gathered around me back at my lunch table to see what I had chosen and to tell me how lucky I am and what the heck they had sold 20 things so how did I win from just selling one. 

Since then, I have tried to win as many things as possible - especially radio contests. I've gotten pretty good at being Caller #9, since I have almost an hour drive to and from school every day, and when I'm not talking to my mom or padre, I'm calling in to radio stations. 

On one such call, I won tickets to PBR! I don't even know what that stands for. I think Professional Bull-riding Rodeo? It was at the Maverick Center, it was Stephen's first ever rodeo, and it was wonderful.

Once I dreamed of marrying a cowboy, but that dream was not realized, because I met Stephen and he is not a cowboy. I'm okay with that, because there were a bunch of cowboys that we saw walking in, and a bunch of them were smoking, and one of them picked his nose and flicked it, and another one got kicked out. I think for being too drunk, but who's to say. 

I'm also okay with it because I get nervous when Stephen climbs up high in a tree, or takes pictures that look like he's about to fall off a cliff. So if he had a career in bull riding, I would die. I mean I would think it was really hot, but I would also ask him to stop, because I'm not trying to be a 25-year-old widow. 

Dinner at the PBR :)

Winner, Winner

Last week, Mama Shimp came to town! And right after she left, all my children's parents came to school for Round #2 this year of parent-teacher conferences. Since these events happened so close together, it made me realize that parents, if not entirely the same, are very similar. 

"Parents," I have discovered, is really just a euphemism for two things:

1. Food. We eat like kings whenever either Stephen's or my parents come to town! And now, my other parents have jumped on the bandwagon. They fed me two dinners and one breakfast, as well as a host of desserts. I had lasagna, rolls, caesar salad, Cafe Rio, cookies, and cupcakes from the Sweet Tooth Fairy, and that was pretty much heaven for me. 

2. Beautification. My house, two weeks ago, had nothing hanging on the walls and minimal decorations. That all changed when Stephen's mom and her big time interior design sister from Portland got inside! Similarly, when parents come to volunteer in my classroom, they almost always leave it cleaner / prettier / better than they found it. I love it. 

On a side note, now that these two things are over, I now have a little more time for blogging! Slash, catching up on The Bachelor. Oh, that ended 3 weeks ago? Well I never said I was perfect. 

Speaking of blogging, only two people two whole people entered my giveaway, so I guess both Kelly and Holly are the winners! I can't wait to make their recipes :) 

Shimps at Sea

The other day, I heard a story on the radio about a man who was at a restaurant with his family. He waited for 90 minutes for his food and decided to go find a server. After not finding a server anywhere around the restaurant, he went into the kitchen to start making his own food. He was kicked out shortly afterwards, but what can we learn from this story?

1. If you want something done, sometimes you have to do it yourself.

2. Men can cook.

3. Radio people are really nice, and

4. Stephen and I mightttt be jetting off to the sunny beaches of Florida soon!

*What, how did we learn that from this story?*

Well because. I heard that story when I was on the phone with Lexi and Banks when I was Caller #10 and I got to compete in their contest for a Spring Break playlist and vacation, and they maybe helped me win, and they entered me into the drawing for the grand prize, and on Monday, I will get a call and find out if we won!

So this is how I will be spending my weekend. 

Pin Me, I'm Dreaming

The first time I got on Pinterest, I felt overwhelmed. And confused. And sensorily overloaded. But that was in February 2012, and I have since learned how to navigate this world a little bit better, to the point that I love it and have an app for it and I consult it for almost every recipe I ever make and every decoration I've ever dreamed of making and I can't imagine life without it.

That being said, I am still a little bit Pinterest-stupid. As in, I don't know how to find people that I know and follow them....and I want to! I know if I was following the people that I know and love in real life, my Pinterest feed would be cooler and funnier and yummier. Right now it's very pretty, but I just think there must be more to this provincial life.

SO I thought I would do a little mini-giveaway :) Have you ever pinned a recipe that looks amazing but then you never got around to making it? I would like to make it for you! Leave a comment on this blogpost with your Pinterest....ID? I don't know. Some link to your page that will let me follow you - and the recipe that you want me to make for you.

I'll choose a winner from the comments! And I'll make your chosen recipe just for you.

Other rules:

1. You can still win if I'm already following you.
2. You can win if you don't live in Utah, but only if I know that I'll see you sometime in the next year and I can make your recipe for you.
3. Even if you don't have a recipe you want me to make, or if you're not in Utah, I still want to follow you! So feel free to just leave your Pinterest address in a comment.
3. You have 3 weeks to enter the giveaway! I will choose the winner on Tuesday, March 25. So get entering / pinning!

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.

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!

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.