The things we will do for free food

Wear a cow outfit to chick-fil-a today and get a free meal. We were the only one's in costume this morning- we got a few funny looks, but we had fun and thought it was totally worth it. Get your own cow costume here.

Welcome to Gatorville

We have been in Gainesville for almost two months now and have made it out to the La chua Trail twice already to observe nature and the slew of alligators that live in it. Our very first visit to the trail was with my brother, Alex, and his family along with my sister, Amanda, and her daughter. The second time was with Ryker, my sister's husband, when he came to visit. It's almost gauranteed that if you come and visit us in Gainesville, you will get taken down to this La chua Trail, which is also refered to as Payne's Prarie, to see the gators. The first 500 yards or so is fenced in and raised above the water. But after that its wide open with no fence-- just water, gators, and a nice little trail to walk along. The aligators haven't shown any hostility so far, and unless that changes we plan to continue our frequent visits.
Trent's usual involvement with this blog that I call "ours" is slim to nothing, the exception being this very post. I think he has reminded me at least once a day for the past week or so to post the pictures of the gators. So, per Trent's request, please enjoy the following slide show.

California, Arizona, Orlando Trip

This is so frustrating... I have so much to blog about, but so little time. And before I can blog about anything else, I have to get this post off my chest. It's another picture post, this time featuring pictures from our little trip from sea to shining sea.

We left on May 26th, our three year anniversary. We stayed the night at the Marriott Renaissance, which is some fancy hotel near the airport that we found on hotwire.com.
ps: hotwire is awesome for last minute reservations. However, you may think you are getting a good deal for a four star hotel, and you are, except for the fact that you have to pay though the nose for everything that is supposed to be free-- like parking, internet, etc. oh, but the weight room was amazing and it was free, phew.

Here is Trent in the little waiting area by the elevator, the hotel decor was wild

From Orlando we flew to Orange County where we got to see Katie and Joe again! I was in awe on our short ride from the airport to their adorable apartment in New Port Beach because it was so beautiful. It was around 2 o'clock, the sun was out, but it wasn't too hot, and there were tall palm trees lining all the huge roads. But the very next day June Gloom set in and we didn't get to see too much more of the sun. ANYway, Katie and Joe did such a good job entertaining us. Katie took us to Balboa Island via bike ride and ferry, made amazing smoothies for breakfast, had our favorite casserole pre-made, ready to throw in the oven, and took us to two of our favorite restaurants- Sweet Tomatoes and Red Robin. We had so much fun with them. Here is a picture with Katie right before we left.
From New Port Beach we headed to Temecula where we got to see Emilee and John at their rehearsal dinner. They are such a cute couple- we love them.
From there we headed south for San Diego to go to the wedding. The Temple was so beautiful, but I didn't get a single picture because it was raining. After the wedding we went to Balboa Park and Anthony's Seafood Restaurant, a favorite from Trent's childhood memories. We had a nice veiw of the Pacific Ocean
After our short stop in San Diego we went up to Menifee to go to the most fabulous reception I have ever been to. It looked like it was right out of a Martha Stuart magazine, everything was simply perfect.
Here is Trent shaking Johns hand towards the end of the night
Trying to capture the scene, it was so fun.

Next stop: Arizona. We flew into the Phoenix airport and got to see my Grandma, Uncle Brent, and cousins Ashley, Celeste, and Michael. Here we are with my adorable Grandma Jessie.

The next day we went to the community beach park at my sister's in Gilbert.Trent's sister came all the way up from Tucson (2+ hour drive) just to spend a few hours with us at the beach then turn back around and drive us back. On top of that she is pregnant with baby #2. We only had one full day in Tucson but we were able to cram a lot of fun stuff into it. This is easy to do when your host lives in a neighborhood with its own water park type of thing, gym, mini golf course, jogging trail (which I wouldn't recommend using at mid afternoon--but hello? it's Arizona, who would ever even think to try that one?). Here is a nice shot of their whole family at the mini golf course.
And our entire family too.
Trent with little Addie. It was so much fun spending time with Sabrina, Brett, and Addie.
After our quick stop in Arizona we flew back to Orlando where we stayed with my other Grandparents, Meme and Lee, for a couple of nights at their timeshare. Here we are at Downtown Disney.
We found a store called "Trent," at least that's what it appears to be at first glance.Trent found the neighboring ESPN store to be much more entertaining.We had Kalil choose her favorite helment.
I think she was a little more excited about the UF one than the FSU one :( She has that, "why is this on my head" look on her face.When we got home Kalil got to take a bubble bath in Meme's tub, so I put my swimsuit on and jumped in too.
Meme and Lee took us out to eat at a really nice seafood restaurant, Landry's- it was so good.
Lastly, our trip to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. Since this post is already too long, I consolidated all of our NASA pictures into one.

job-search-story

To keep my long and excruciating job-search-story short-- I started my new job yesterday!! If only the double exclamation point could fully express my excitement...
So far it has been fantastic. Job heaven, if you will. Nothing beats the first few weeks on a new job when all the training/learning/deep thinking occurs.
The deal sealer was the location. One day I will have to pull out my stopwatch and get the official time it takes me to get to work, but until then the following map will have to suffice.

I almost forgot

In my last post I almost forgot to include this fantastic picture

With the exception of our other car, the above picture has everything that Trent and I have in our possession. After selling off most of the items we no longer wanted on Craigslist, Trent and I managed to stuff everything we owned into a little plywood box that Trent's step dad and my dad constructed on the back of our Isuzu Hombre.

It must have weighed a ton and a half. And those tiny little tires couldn't handle all that weight, hence the flat tire that we got. Did I mention we were only 60 miles from my parents house when we pulled over and noticed the flat? But we think we may have driven with the flat for some 50 miles before we decided to pull over. Whoops.

We finally made it

After stopping for 4 sit down meals, driving for 3 long days, sleeping at 2 different hotels, and repairing 1 flat tire, we can now say we survived our long trek to Florida. Life was nothing short of crazy before, during, and after the move, and it hasn't been until recently that it has started to slow down. Hence, a typical photo recap of the last few blog-less months of our life.

Our good friends Katie and Joe came to Utah from California during the beginning of April and we were able to spend the weekend with them in Park City at their grandparent's vacation home that's only a few small strides away from the ski lift. Here we are after lunch at the summit house restaurant.

Trent skied and the rest of us snowboardedSince we had so much fun with Katie and Joe, Trent and I had to go again before the big move. This time we checked out Snowbasin, which is one of the few resorts in Utah that has covered lifts that take you up the mountain. Here we are inside of one (gondola).Remember how I mentioned something about chemistry goggles in my previous post? Here you have it. Trent and I couldn't find either of our ski goggles before leaving so Trent brought his chemistry goggles and I bought some youth goggles up at the resort.
Here's Trent posing with his awesome goggles on.And remember how I mentioned something about black eyes? Here's what happened. I led Trent down a black diamond, going as fast as possible, when out of no where a big dip comes up and I start tumbling. Head first. Of course I freak out. It didn't help that I had just heard about Natasha Richardson's accident.
After a quick visit with the ski patrol we headed back up the mountain for a few more runs before the resort closed. Here we are on our way out, swollen eye and all. After our ski trip we hit the books and studied for finals. Once we finished our finals we packed. And then there was graduation. This is what our big day looked like:Here is a picture at the breakfast of me and my best friend from the accounting program, Katie.

We made several walks from our apartment on the southeast side of campus to the Marriott Center on the northwest side of campus. Wearing strappy heals was not a good idea.
Here is Trent showing us all of his teaching awards
And here we are in the Tanner building. I didn't get any teaching awards myself so the best we could do is stand in front of a statue and plaque about service.
This is at the Marriott school reception. They had a slide show going with all the achievements received by the various programs this year. The accounting program got bumped up to number one this year. Too bad no one knows this in Gainesville.
So happy to be done.
After the long graduation both of our families met at wallaby's for dinner.

Pyrophosphate

blog title courtesy of Trent. It has nothing to do with this post mind you. so dont get to the end and think, "so what is a pyrophosphate?" cause then you might want to google it- seriously not worth it. Rather, you should get to the end of this post and think, "oh, that's why she tittled it Pyrophosphate" Basically this post is so meaningless I couldn't even think up a good title. I could have done "4 days left!" or "Warner" but when Trent suggested the above word that starts with a P, I thought- perfect. done and done.

My little countdown gadget used to excite me. I would read "55 days, 19 hours..." and think- less than two months, I can do this.
I needed it then. I wanted the end to come fast, and boy howdy did it.
Yesterday I took my very last test ever in the BYU testing center. With all my bazillion final exams and projects going on the past few weeks, I haven't had time to check the countdown on a daily basis, but now that I am practically done with school(with the exception of finishing up two group projects) I finally feel like I have time to post about life. That is until I pull up my blog site and the first thing I see is "6 days...", "5 days, 8 hours...", now its telling me I have a mere 4 days and 19 hours to get everything done that I need to. At this point I usually close down the computer down and scamper somewhere else to do something productive. But so is not the case today. I got an email from my mom on behalf of my beloved little nephew, Warner and I just had to share:

AMELIA and TRENT, ujsj54udiuoheeeeu 48u07--054029198`98`89`89899iyoioo7oo8[plnkfvfrewazswert5432qjhgyu7 8hhggf (Remember when I use to wrestle with Trent? That was fun. I want to come to your house.) Love, WARNER

love that boy to pieces. More posts coming soon- black eyes, chemistry goggles, and top ten lists

hair picture

I haven't been super excited about posting the pictures of my hair drama because I unfortunately didn't take the before picture as was promised. Its okay though, all you have to do is think of the worst underdeveloped color of highlights you can possibly imagine and just paste that on the tip top of my head and there you have it. I tried to do a google image search but nothing even came close to how bad the bleach sploch was that I created on my hair. I did however manage to get an after picture.

Its amazing really how well it covered it up. You almost can't even tell a bleach spot exisited underneath the *ash* brown. It's ash people. She put straight green and blue on my hair, no red. I know, it still pulled a little red. But I like to pretend that it pulled perfectly ash, 'cause I don't do red y'all.

even more goodell goodies

While I was at work two nights ago, my friend Ali surprised me with a bag full of her famous cookies and rice crispy treats. She came all the way down to the basement of the library just to deliver her most amazing goodies to me. Who does that? now I've got you thinking about your visiting teacher, but did I mention Ali is not my Visiting Teacher? Yep, she's amazing. It's like she can read my mind. After being in the basement for four hours straight with one hour remaining, and three days into my detox, there was nothing more that I wanted than a bag full of Ali's cookies and rice crispy treats.

Two weeks ago she dropped by my basement apartment with some amish friendship bread, along with a bag full of the starter mix. The bread she had prepared was so amazing, more amazing than I ever remember amish bread being. I went out and bought whole wheat to continue the starter "healthy" style. It actually made really yummy chocolate muffins which I decided to share with my sunday school class. I waited until after the class devoured them before mentioning they were "healthy". Wikipedia says you can freeze the starter for later use, which I think I will do instead of giving the friendship bread to a friend. I am so bad, I know. But that way I can use the remaining three starter bags to make more muffins for my class. At least I'm sharing with someone, right?

Finally, Something Good to Blog About

In high school I had a hairstylist that I absolutely loved. Her name was Holly and she was amazing. But ever since I moved to Provo trying to find a stylist that did as good of a job as my Tallahassee stylist has been an ongoing battle. In fact, it wasn't until April 23rd of last year that I actually found someone who did my hair exactly how I wanted it. Her name was Maren and she worked at 7th Street Salon.

Remember this post? It is the one that originally had a picture of a sliced ham to go along with the new slicing technique that I had recently discovered (I later took off the picture of the ham since I thought it looked stupid). The part of this story that I failed to blog about later, was my search for Maren, the girl who introduced me to this new hair technique. About four months after my first slicing, I decided I needed to have her do it again, and for the first time in four years, I was planning on calling the same stylist for a second appointment. All I knew was her first name, as she had given me a salon punch card and wrote Maren on the back.When I called the salon and asked for Maren they said they didn't know anyone by that name. Come to find out, the salon had been sold and Maren had left. I tried calling the previous owner to see if she knew where Maren went, but no luck. At one point I got so desperate that I started calling different salons around town asking for Maren, but of course I never found her.

And then came last Friday. There I was, one horrible hair stylist, one decent hair stylist, and one person who didn't know a thing about how to do hair (myself) later. My hair was pulled to the side with a bobby pin hiding the big splotch of orangish-yellow hair-- from my recent do-it-yourself mishap-- on the top of my head. My poor hair was at an all time low. I decided to go to the VITA(volunteer income tax assistance) lab early since my class got out early. Turns out they were a bit behind in the lab so I was able to take one of the prior hour's appointments. I sat down with the couple and started thumbing though their W-2s. And that's where my story comes to an end.

I got to a penciled-in 1099 MISC form that read "Seventh Street Salon" in the Payer's name box, and "Maren" in the recipient's box. I preceded to tell the couple the whole story which they of course got a kick out of it. I was really weirded out and excited at the same time- afterall, I was siting next to The Maren that I had been looking for for so long.

I will post a picture of the before and after later this week once I have Maren fix it.