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!

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. 

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.