Park it Here

 Today we're outside. We're sleeping in, we're at the park, he's in St. George, I'm in Salt Lake, I'm at Jamba Juice, he's driving home, I'm cleaning apartment and enjoying the weather while I wait for Elliott to come home. Obviously, I have been hanging out with Mollie while I wait for him to come home after a wedding weekend (warning: numerous pug pictures to follow, but she's just so cute, and quite a good model)

This weekend has been nice break from the usual grind. Dinner last night at a local wood oven pizza place, scary movies with my little brother, park today. This week I will be jamming in as many little tricks to math problems and reading comprehension as I can. GRE is on Saturday... laaaaame.

Today I am especially grateful for the family I have, my job which I love, my best friend who I'm also married to, spring weather, and SLC. It's weird, the older I get the more I appreciate all of the simple things in day to day life. And when I look around, my little things are really good.

Chipotle Won Our Hearts for $12.50

This is what's going down at our house right now:

Sunday mornings aren't much of a break for Elliott. He doesn't really get to sleep in as late as he would probably like or spend time making breakfast. So sometimes, when you're really tired, you just take afternoon naps.

I think one of the reasons I have such a hard time keeping up with this blog is because I don't feel like many things change from week to week. We don't have any kids to post a million pictures of, we aren't living in some new place to go out and explore, and I'm really bad at taking pictures with people in them (but really good at taking pictures of food/dog/flowers.. see pictures below) which probably gets old for everyone but me. 

THIS WEEK

Things gone right: 

Hanging out with friends

Dad turns 53

Getting dinner at Chipotle for $3.00 because they were out of the salsa you like.

Spring flowers are definitely going right right now.

Mollie is always making the week better with her wrinkly face, her larger-than-it-should-be belly, and her curly tail that never fails to wag when she sees you (or when you take her to the park). For a "big-boned" dog, this girl sure runs a lot. Whenever I take her over to the park she turns into this crazy self-exercising dog. Yet... that belly still remains. I love it, but the vet doesn't.

Things gone wrong:

H&R Block. I thought they knew how to do taxes?

Cleaning went horribly wrong this week (or lack of cleaning)


This week I hope to finish grad school applications, study for the GRE, screen print, and make curry. That's all.

Pendergrast

When Elliott is up at the Chronicle working on newspaper stuff, I usually make things. I had seen a tutorial for this penguin on Pintrist a few weeks ago and have been wanting to make them, and so last night, I did. I took a few hours which was longer than I expected, but it was really fun and it turned out super cute. I will be giving them away as future baby gifts for friends who have little chunks on the way.

 Elliott usually names the things I make. He named him Pendergrast.

My mother in law gave us this amaryllis bulb over Thanksgiving. When we got back from St. George on Sunday, it had bloomed! It's so beautiful. Thank you Karen. This makes me want to always have some sort of flower/plants growing my kitchen.

Elliot interviewed a local author for his radio show on Monday. She wrote a book about a local man, Pablo O'Higgins, who moved to Mexico and became a part of the muralist movement. I'd send you to his Wikipedia page but, as you probably know, they are on strike today to oppose the SOPA legislation. It's a pretty cool story and it sounds like he got some great audio. Hopefully the episode will be ready to air in a few weeks. The theme will be running away. Stay tuned.

One of Pablo's pieces:

SLC

Salt Lake, we forgive you for skipping spring this year and replacing it with rain/snow storms. Why? Because now the weather has been great and everything is so green. We had an incredibly wet spring (if you would even call it a spring) and now it's sunny but it's still not too hot.

Salt Lake has amazing garden shops. I went with my momma to one this weekend: Cactus and Tropicals.

This place has it all: trees, flower baskets, bushes, water fountains, a coy pond, gifts, and friendly workers.

Huge coy! ^

Nick and I took Mollie to Sugarhouse park last weekend. We wanted to try to get Mollie in the water  (she's afraid...she even avoids walking by sprinklers). We slowly dipped her feet in... and then she started getting in on her own. She really wants those ducks!

In about an hour, we are taking off to go up to Logan for the MS bike ride (same one we did last year). For everyone who donated this year, you are amazing! Seriously, we have such a great support group of family and friends. We are camping tonight at the campsite and then getting up for the ride which starts at 7. We are way excited. I'm only doing the 40 mile ride this year but Elliott's going to upgrade and attempt the 100. Wish us him luck.

Flowers

As Elliott and I were at the gym last night, I knew that I had the day of today. I was stretching on a mat and my thoughts were split between finding something to do today and finding something to work my weak little legs. We went to the gym without a real plan of what we wanted to do so I was trying to figure out a good leg exercise on the spot. I tried to think of something that I could draw out from my exercise bank from all my years of soccer. Lunges immediately came to mind. I haven't done them in a while and was afraid of embarrassing myself in front of all the people on the machines but at that very moment, I looked up and saw a guy on the elliptical to my right passionately mouthing the lyrics to the music on his iPod. Well, nothing I'm going to do can be as embarrassing at that right? So I gave the lunges a shot. Now that that decision was made, I began to think of something to do today.

Planting. This is what I came up with. Our porch is screaming for some color. We have been meaning to get some flowers for our porch for the longest time and today, we did it. We were given a big blue pot filled with greenery and flowers last year (thanks mom) but ever since it's sad death in the winter, it has been sitting on our porch brown and shriveled up. So today we went and got a few things just to get started. Our porch/stair situation may not be very easy on the eyes, but the flowers definitely help.

Elliott's brother Graham bought a a money tree last year and it has been stuck in the tiny plastic pot it came in ever since. We bought a larger pot a while ago but have neglected to buy some soil to fill it, so this also happened today:

Three ceramic pots (yellow, purple, green)= $22.00
Flowers to fill them= $17.00
Much needed potting soil= $7.00

It's amazing what $46 can do to a porch, especially one that's as small as ours. It's already looking a lot better (and more welcoming). It finally looks like someone actually lives in our apartment. Beth has the gardening fever now. Too bad our backyard is filled with weeds.