Wow, the year has gone by fast

This last Sunday Gav and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary (I have to specify wedding because we've actually been together closer to 2 and a half years, and I'm just a bit neurotic :))  We celebrated in pretty typical Amber and Gavin style, not a whole lot of fanfare and spent mostly around family.  We didn't have church because of stake conference, which we probably should've gone to but didn't.  We had a relaxing sleep in and yummy waffles with, still slightly frozen, berries on top.  We then proceeded to be lazy lay-a-bouts before heading off to the dog park up the road.  We met my mom, her dog, and my two youngest nieces there.  Gracie had Gav and I laughing as she swam like a fish, when just a few short months ago she was afraid of the water.  We were all really impressed with Piper and Payton, who not only walked the whole, roughly, 2 miles by themselves but did so with the only round of crying coming after Piper had her feet swept out from under her by the dogs who were tied together.  That night we went to Gavin's parent's house for dinner, taking along the top of our wedding cake.  Yes, it was still good and still entirely too rich lol.  We managed to eat about half of it between us all.  The other half was succinctly dispatched by Gavin's co workers yesterday.

With all of the blessings and changes we've had it's hard to believe that a year has gone by.  We've been asked quite a bit lately if it feels like a year and the answer is, no not really.  For me at least, it is a bit of a paradox because while it doesn't really feel like we've been together that long, it also is as if there has never been a time when we weren't together.  I found my life, and while I am aware that I was in fact alive before we met, and it is better than I anything I could've come up with on my own.

Way to go Ry!

Gav and I are going to be seeing a lot of high school football this coming season.  Or, ok let's be honest, the next four years.  (probably six, Breaden will be at East in two years) we found out on Saturday that my nephew Ryan made the varsity team at Highland, and the coolest part...he's a FRESHMAN!!!! He's worked his tail off for it and it paid off for him.  Big congrats's for him.  The team did publicity some publicity photos and I'll post them as soon as I can figure out how to get them off my iPad because, apparently, you can upload them from just about everywhere except an iPad.

Our dog is apparently trying to poison herself

Having a sick dog is a very scary thing.  I imagine that the feeling of helplessness is pretty akin to having a very sick toddler who can neither tell you whats wrong or if something you've tried to alleviate their illness has helped or made it worse.  We got to experience this twice with Grace the last few weeks.

In the six months we've had her we've become quite accustomed to her puppy chewing habits and for the most part have found ways to curb them, for example, she will chew through power cords but not if they are plugged in, only when they are just left to lay on the floor.  So we have learned to not be lazy and just leave things like cords and the occasional shoe on the ground and to close closet doors at night.  But over the 24th her stomach was bothering her and so she, in typical dog fashion, ate some grass to help her get rid of whatever it was.  Only one problem, Gav had fertilized the lawn just the night before.  Poor puppy was sick and throwing up every morning for the rest of the week.  Luckily, my parents were willing to keep an eye on her the days when it was really bad.  After a little research I felt a bit less worried about her when I found out that it is a very common occurrence and that because she's not super little her system would just work it out.  Then, just a week after getting over that round of food poisoning, it happened again only this time it was truly frightening.  I got home from work this last Thursday to a nice pile of regurgitated food, gross I know, and after cleaning it up we found a mangled and punctured AA battery on the floor.  Even though the oils in common batteries aren't as strong and concentrated as the acids in, say a car battery, they are still very acidic and can cause burns and even ulcers in a dogs mouth throat and stomach, plus they contain a very scary concentration of lead.  She continued to throw up and be extremely lethargic for the next hour and a half.  We inspected her mouth and there didn't seem to be any burns and with a lack of battery acid even on the battery  let alone the floor or her fur, we concluded that it must have been dead, luckily.  As we debated whether a trip to the emergency vet was necessary we managed to get her to drink some milk and pepto to help neutralize whatever acid she did ingest as well as some peanut butter covered bread to help coat her stomach and throat and provide at least a little barrier. 

When she finally stopped throwing up we decided to wait on the vet trip and see if she would bounce back.  Thankfully all it took was the milk and pepto and then an hour or so of a good deep nap, closely monitored by my nervous self, and she obviously felt much better.  By the next morning she was back to her old self, as if the previous night had never happened.

Summer is only lazy when you're a kid

Oh wow, have I been a slacker.  No posts since April, yeah I should be fired.  I shouldn't be too surprised though, considering just how much stuff we've had going on between then and now, and how many posts I started but didn't get a chance to finish.  So here is a quick summer recap.

In April I started working at Zions Bank, originally I was going to be one of their Peak Time, or floating, tellers but the branch I was training at decided they liked me so on my last day of traing they hired me and after 3 weeks of floating I started work there on May 22.  And I have been working full time there ever since.

At the end of June we went with Gavin's family down to Disneyland.  It was a super fun trip!  We went to an Angels game and then  Gav, Maddie and I blew through both DL and CA in a day and then went to Newport to play on the beach the next day.  My extremely white self got stupidly sunburned to the point it was difficult to walk and I still have a solid tan line a month and a half later. 

July was a month of holidays and family.  Gav and I finally made it to Seven Peaks on our passes and I didn't feel quite as guilty about not using them until July as soon as I found out that regular admission is $30.  The Fourth was a day of family and fireworks.  We went to his families neighborhood breakfast and when the boys went to play golf I met my mom and we went to the Sugarhouse street fair, followed by dinner and swimming at Geoff and Dez's.  After that we got cleaned up and went over to my parents.  They live about 5 blocks north east of Sugarhouse park and you can see the fireworks from their back yard.  Poor puppy Grace was a nervous wreck the whole time, a combination of all the loud fireworks and the presence of my brother's dog, Miley, who is the sweetest dog you'd ever meet but is also the only dog Gracie does not like at all.  The 24th Gav had to work so the night before I took the dog and went downtown to camp out at the parade route, something my family has done for at least 20 years.  Afer the parade, per family tradtion, we hit up the water park.  Ususally we go to Cherry Hill but this year with having the Seven Peaks Pass of All Passes, we went there instead.

So that about does it.  Summer has been quite a bit of go go go for us around here but now with the approach of fall maybe, just maybe it will slow down just a little bit.

Hey all,
I just wanted to let y'all know about a really fun event for a good cause.  The teacher is amazing and it is a great way to come and have fun and exercise at the same time.

Puppies are funny things

Our Garcie keeps us constantly laughing with all of her antics, here are a few we thought we'd share.

She just can't understand why cats wont play with her, but she knows a couple of kids who will.

She's not entirely sure about what to do with large soda bottles either.

A Great Weekend in Chi-town

So I know I'm like two weeks late on this post but oh well, things have been nuts since we got back! Over the 17th Maddie, Linda and Myself all jetted off to Chicago to do some sightseeing. My particular favorite piece of scenery was Gavin, who'd been there for 5 weeks.

We packed a whole lot of stuff into our four and a half (you can't really count the day we landed since we got in at 7) days that we were there. We decided to buy CityPasses and that was definitley the way to go. Not only did it let us in to 5 very cool places for free but it also let us bypass most lines and go right in.

We went to 5 different museums in 2 days. All of them were enormous and we could have easily spent a day each on most of them. The Field Museum of Natural History was incredible and has the most complete T-Rex skeleton ever found. The Aquarium was way fun with large underwater viewing areas where you could watch whales and sharks. The Art Institute was enormous, it covers about 2 city blocks and is a three storied maze of beautiful works (including the 2nd largest collection of French impressionism in the country). We all got mildly motion sick on the Skydeck, even though you couldn't really feel the building swaying. And lastly, we went to the Museum of Science and Industry, sounds really boring but OH MY GOSH!!! It was awesome! Definitely a must see, especially if you have kids. It was so big that most of it is between 3 and 4 stories underground. It had full sized trains, tractors and antique fire engines. One whole wing was devoted to weather and natural phenomenon so there were avalanche and tsunami simulators, a giant wind tunnel that generated a small tornado. Plus an actual German U-Boat in the basement. It was way cool.

Saturday, when Gav was with and not at work, we went on a tour of the old Chicago Theater and then went over up to Lincoln Park to escape the press of green people who had come out in force to show chi-rish pride for St. Patty's. We walked around the park for an hour or two then headed back to the city. We did a little shopping on the "Magnificent Mile", a large high end shopping district, and then went to Navy Pier. We sat on the end of the Pier and then walked down and had dinner at Harry Carrey's Tavern. It had really good food and had a small sports museum running through the middle of it.

Sunday, we had to leave for the airport at 2 so we decided to go on the Untouchables Tour that Maddie had found in a magazine the night before. It was a two hour tour and it was really interesting to hear some of the stories and history from the cities most infamous time period. We definitely went through some parts of the city that we wouldn't have gone to, and I don't recommend you go to them outside of this tour. Sadly most of the sites were no longer there, the only two sites that really remained standing were the Holy Name Cathedral and the movie theater where John Dillenger was shot.

It was such a fun trip and we saw so much! Including the Chicago river dyed bright green (they take they're St. Patty's very seriously). On the whole a great weekend and a place I'd definitely recommend.

A New Addition

Yesterday Gav and I added a new member to our little family. Meet Gracie, our year old cockapoo, whom we intend to spoil rotten!
When we first started talking about getting a dog Gav teased me that the dog wouldn't get super attached to him since he's going to be gone for so long. But I can now roll my eyes with a snort because she follows him EVERYWHERE! She's a super sweet baby who loves everyone, kids and cats included, we were lucky to get her and are so excited to have her!!

New Year, New Job

It's official, Gavin has joined the Scotts (or the Swedes if you ask his sister Maddie). Starting February 8th Gav goes to work for the Royal Bank of Scottland Group (think smaller version of Goldman Sachs). He gets to kick off his new career path by being shipped back to Chicago, at probably the worst time of year poor guy, for training.

New Years Resolutions...NOT!!

So fully realize that its been a lazy start to the new year on the blog front but, to be quite honest, I'm not really surprised by that fact.

This time of year everyone is talking about resolutions and goals they have set for themselves, most, if not all, of which will be broken by the end of next month. Then follows the inevitable and irritating feelings of guilt and self pity. Most years I avoid this completely by simply not making any resolutions. This year though I ran across an idea that I really liked and decided to give it a shot. Instead of a list of, lets faceit, usually wildly unrealistic goals I've decided to go with a broad, general mission statement for the whole year. By making it general and then finding specifics within all the pressure, and eventual self loathing, is magically gone and it makes actually wanting to accomplish things easier. Now, my mission statement is still far from complete, and in truth I'll probably still be adding to it in August but here are the two main catagories:

1. Live a fuller and healthier life
This catagory includes getting back in touch with friends, being more active and living an over all healthier lifestyle (ie cooking more at home and choosing water over soda, etc.)

2. Be better about making the Spiritual stuff a priority
Pretty self explanitory

Like I said, its a big umbrella for life improvement and I'm sure I'll probably fall short on many of the specifics but that ok because they roll over easily. And besides, its all the little things that really count :-)