A Long Work Day...And a Crop

Day 152-May 31st: I worked all day today. Ugh. But we went and played games with Allyson and Larkin tonight which is always a blast. We played the eBay game and one called Shadows over Camelot and both were awesome. But....my picture of the day is the fan in our bedroom, which keeps me nice and cool at night while I sleep (well, not really, but at least it keeps me from sweating!) For now I'm alright if we open the window and turn on the fan, but in a few weeks I'm sure it will be so hot outside even at night that it won't make a difference and we will have to turn the AC down a few notches! But for now, I am grateful for my fan....in fact, I always will be because I've got to have some type of noise to fall asleep to!

Day 151-May 30th: So I went to the Mania today without any plans. I worked from 10-3, then went to see Russell at work so that I could see him at some point during the day, then headed home to grab my stuff and then back to work. I got this page done about our Alphabet game date I wrote about a few posts ago. I had a great time scrapping with Kathy, Melissa, and Kara, I really wish I could go more often. I will when I am a millionaire and can not worry about buying supplies! I won a photocube and some stickers, which was also neat. Now I have a new project to do!

Here's the second page I started working on, it still needs a bunch of work, but it's the wedding details page. I get much, much, much more done when I go with things planned, but I did do pretty well for a spur of the moment crop! I will have to plan for the 13th.

A Muddling of Ideas

So Kathy Colton (a very frequent customer and friend) called me today and invited me to go to mania with her tomorrow night. Originally she was going on Saturday and I didn't want to go then because I'm working 9:30-5:30 and didn't want to stay at the store until 11pm, but her, melissa, and kara decided to switch to Friday, so I'm going! Because who can say no to a mania with friends???

So I've spent the evening trying to figure out what to do. I wasn't planning on going to mania so I hadn't even thought about anything to work on, and I've just come up with a muddling of ideas of what do to. I could make the little mini-album I bought for picking pumpkins and then add the pictures when we actually pick pumpkins this year, I could do an A to Z page about our date the other night, I could do a Thanksgiving in Angel fire page, or a wedding details page (with close ups of decorations, etc.). Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I am leaning towards the A to Z page and the wedding details page, so I might do those. There's also some really cute paper that I've been wanting to make a mini-album out of, maybe I will make a little book out of it and add some fun pictures later. I guess we'll see what happens tomorrow night. Hopefully being around some creative friends will help my creative juices flowing!

Dear Blogger.....Love Shyla

Russell and I just had a conversation for like 10 minutes that consisted of Dear Shyla, (insert sentence here), Love Russell and Dear Russell, (another sentence), Love Shyla. Sometimes we do that, I'm not sure why except that a few months ago it was like Wednesday and Russell said in the car on the way home from somewhere "Dear Mom, please call me on Sunday (meaning the Sunday before), Love Russell. Haha. I think she was waiting on him to call and he was waiting on her to call, but the way he said it was so funny. And now, we talk like that sometimes. So... that explains the title of my post.

Happy Birthday Willie! You're awesome! Wish we lived closer to you guys so that we could get to know eachother better. Hope you had a great day!

Here's the picture of the day. I've been in a wierd mood all day, so I decided to just take a picture of the shelf of teddy bears in our room, because I do like them....a lot!

Day 150-May 29th: All the bears have this special spot in our bedroom. Really, there just wasn't enough room on the shelf we built, so they ended up here. There's Sir Sterling Silver, the bear Russell made for me on our Build-a-Bear date and then faithfully sprayed with cologne every week until we got married! Then Buzz Lightyear, another Build-a-Bear I made one time we went as a family. Then my Stitch Bear that I've had since I was born, the bear I got at Aldura in Angel Fire named Snuggles, my Land's End bear that is a pilot, and finally Captain Rahlstrom, the bear I made for Russell on our date!

And....I guess I haven't posted it yet, but I got promoted to be the Receiver at work, instead of the assistant Receiver. Keera is now the assistant manager so they needed someone to take over for her. I'm in charge of opening all the boxes, scanning the product into the system, dealing with discrepancies, and pricing the product. I really like it, even though some may think that I'm crazy. It came with a raise too! I finally got caught up on all the boxes that piled up while I was recovering from surgery today and was able to start organizing some things in the back room which is great. Hopefully I will figure out what everything is in the back soon and know how to do everything the receiver is supposed to too.

Birthday Bling

Day 149-May 28th: Tonight I went to a class at work called Birthday Bling. We made these four birthday cards which are so fun and cute. I've been waiting a month and a half to go to the class, ever since they announced it! But then the first class was right after I had surgery, so I signed up for tonight. It was a lot of fun. I do wish I had gotten someone to go with me, but it was still fun alone.

Cupcakes or Cake???

Day 148-May 27th: Russell worked late today because of some problems with EFY rooming, so I ate dinner alone, and then I had a craving for some cupcakes. I had called my sister to chat while I was making myself some Pasta-Roni for dinner, but she wasn't there, and she called back right when I was about to make cupcakes. Sooo...thinking that it would be hard to hold the phone and pour the batter into cupcake holders, I decided I would settle on a cake, I mean it does taste the same anyway. And once it was frosted I took my Mom's advice and cut it all into pieces because sometimes Russell thinks if he just wants a bite of something he should just cut a bite, and then everything is cut funny and not to the liking of me, Mrs. OCD. Anyway, the cake is delicious, and a great end to the day!

A Spur of the Moment Game

Day 147-May 26th: So I taught Russell a game a few months ago that I call the Alphabet game. Basically you choose a topic, let's say animals, then the first person says an A animal, like Armadillo. The next person has to repeat everything said before them and add the next letter, like Armadillo, Beaver. Then Armadillo, Beaver, Camel. Etc. Anyway, today while we were on our way to Barnes and Noble to just look around Russell said "Stores.....Albertson's" and it went from there. Then about halfway through the alphabet I got the idea that it would be a fun date to take pictures of all the stores we said so that I could scrapbook our game! We did, and it took us about 3 hours (which included eating dinner) but it was fun. Barnes and Noble was the "B" store and it's the reason we started playing the game, so that's why it's the picture of the day. Here's what our list ended up being: (we ended up doing stores, gas stations, and restaurants, basically places where we spend money!)

• Albertson's
• Barnes and Noble
• Chevron
• Dillard's
• Emergency Essentials
• Fuddruckers
• Goodwood
  
• Holiday (Gas Station)
• Ihop
• J-Dogs
• K-Mart
• Lowe's
• Macey's
• Nordstrom's
• Outback
• Pebbles in My Pocket
• Quilted Bear
• RC Wiley's
• Sierra West
• Target
• U-Haul
• Victoria's Secret (Which we got in trouble for, because apparently there is "No Photography Allowed in the Mall!" What???? Who cares if you take a picture in the mall? No where is it posted that there is no photography allowed!)
• Walmart
• XpedX (a paper store)
• Yoasis (yogurt)
• Zupas (a soup and salad place)
  

A Sweet Dinner

Day 146-May 25th: Happy Birthday McCall! I don't even think she reads my blog, but she was my Young Women's President for a couple of years and I was the Laurel President, and we talked at least once a day, usually more often than that. Anyway, she's one of my best friends now. I found a recipe on a random blog for sweet and sour chicken, and since I'm addicted to Chinese now I figured I would try it out. It was a lot of steps, but I did it and it tasted sooooooooo delicious. It looked just like at a restaurant too! I was pretty proud of myself. I will definitely be making it again!

This other picture is from our trip to Hobby Lobby. We walked down the Memorial Day/4th of July row just to make sure there weren't any decorations I couldn't live without, and Russell found these. I don't think they are really earrings, but I have no idea what they are supposed to be either. They have hooks at the end though, so this is what happened.

A Very Unsuccessful Trip to Salt Lake

Today we did a lot of driving. I had been needing to go to Salt Lake for a few months to look for several things. I wanted to get a duvet cover set from Linen's and Things that I had found on their website and looked perfect, I wanted to go to a good Kohl's (Elaine kindly told me where one was) to spend my giftcard, and I wanted to go to Hobby Lobby to find material to make curtains. Well, turns out the duvet cover at Linen's and Things was not great quality and kind of a scratchy material....so that was out. I did manage to spend my giftcard at Kohl's and got a Horton shirt and some shorts. But....Hobby Lobby didn't have any material that jumped out at me. Maybe I will just buy the curtains I saw at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Anyway, we decided we would come back down to Orem and look at the duvet we registered for again.

Day 145-May 24th: And here it is! It didn't come in a set, so we could only afford the duvet cover and a duvet for now. I will have to get the pillow shams another day. We've been wanting a good bed set for a while and we've liked this one ever since we saw it. It is a little big, we decided to go ahead and buy a King since Russell wants to buy a King bed at some point. That way we don't have to buy a new duvet along with a new bed! We put it on the bed and then tried it out, it's very poofy and comfy, and will definitely keep us warm in the snowy winters!

Wild Flowers

Day 144-May 23rd: So....All of the flowers I planted are not looking so great, even though I have fed them miracle grow and watered them faithfully, and it's rained the last three days. However, these flowers growing behind our fence and coming through our gate are growing wonderfully. What???? How frustrating.

Day 143-May 22nd: About 10:00 tonight I got really hungry, and then we started talking about muffins and they sounded like exactly what I needed. I remembered I had some lemon poppyseed muffin mix in the pantry, and after a few minutes of debating it in my mind I went downstairs to make them. But to my surprise, the mix was not there. I didn't have ANY muffin mix! Ugh. So much for muffins. I did find this pile of Sonic mints. Yes, we are addicted to Sonic. This pile of mints used to be in the Outback, but when we traded it in they migrated to the pantry. Kind of funny.

A $20 Treat

Day 142-May 21st: Here's a funny story. Yesterday when Russell got home from work he said "I will ask you the mystery question of the day, and if you get the right answer you can have $20 to spend on whatever you want." I thought, wow, this must be some crazy computer programing thing that I would never know in my entire life but really it was just "Did you get your paystub?" Much to Russell's surprise, the answer was a resounding YES! So I had $20 to my name and I bought this Photofall today at Archiver's with it. I had wanted one the first time we got them in, but they flew out of the store. We got six more in today and I grabbed one before I let them out on the floor. That's one of the fun things about working receiving, I get to see, and sometimes claim, things first! Haha. Now I just have to print some pictures to put on it. I'm thinking some of the funny ones we have from random moments/dates would be good. It does usually take me a few days to get my paystub. Since the money is direct deposited I guess I just don't remember very well, but for some reason I remembered yesterday.

Day 141-May 20th: Today was my first day back to work after having surgery, and it was wonderful. I was soooooooo tired of just being at home that work sounded great! The back room was stacked high with boxes so I just worked and worked for four hours and got a good chunk of boxes taken care of. Hopefully by the end of the week I will have gotten through the mountain of boxes and by caught up again. I have to have people lift anything over 20lbs for me for 6 weeks, which is kind of annoying, but I just do what I can and then when I need a bunch of heavy things moved I call someone back to help me.

A Not-So-Friendly Friend

Day 140-May 19th: This spider apparently wants to be my friend. He spends most of every day on the window above my kitchen sink. I am not brave enough to go outside and get a picture of him, so here's his underside. I really don't like spiders....at all. Russell is in charge of getting rid of any spiders that are in the house. Unless, of course, I am home alone and then I get brave and do it myself. Anyway, I wish this spider would understand that when I bang on the window, it is not to say "hi" but rather, "hello Mr. Spider, could you please find another place to spend your days, preferably somewhere far, far, away from my little home?"

Reading Worm

Day 139-May 18th: We stayed home from church today, I'm not quite up to that adventure today. But...I am getting pretty tired of just being at home. So at some point I remembered that Holly reminded me last night while we were at Caleb's birthday BBQ that it was time to make a summer reading worm. This was something her mom did while they were growing up, you put a worm body piece on each time you finish a book after school is out for the summer. Then you get prizes depending on how many books you read or pages you read or something like that. I really liked the idea and did one starting the summer of 2006 when I moved up here. I did keep that one all through the school-year and into the summer until I moved out to get married, and he was about half-way around my room. Anyway, I have read these two books, start to finish, since school has been out. That's what surgery will do for you. I've started a third, but it's going a little slower, for some reason I'm really confused by it. It's called The Peacegiver and Russell's mom bought it and wanted all of the kids to read it and underline what stood out to us, but it's written as a story, and I'm really confused by what is going on right now in the storyline. Anyway, here's our short little worm. I told Russell he needs to contribute to the worm so it can be longer.

Prepared

Day 138-May 17th: With part of our stimulus check, we decided to get some emergency preparedness going on in our house. So....we decided this morning that we should focus on getting our 72-hour kits up to date first. Russell mostly had his except for new food, but I hadn't brought mine from Houston. So off we went to the Emergency Essentials store first, and then to Target and got most everything we needed. There are still a few loose ends though. We got some MRE's, 100-hour candles, flashlights, lightsticks, fire starters, matches, hand and body warmers, bug spray, and a water filter pump. Plus a bunch of other things. Anyway, we are feeling much better about any disaster that might come along. Now we can focus on getting our 3-month supply and then on to a year.

Delicious Dinner

Day 137-May 16th: First of all, Happy Birthday to my very cute niece Emma. She is the great big 2 today! Russell and I went to Brick Oven for dinner with our giftcard from the hospital. When we tried to pay, the girl only took the five dollar bill and the receipt and left our giftcard on the table. We weren't sure what was going on and for a split second I thought, "Well, let's just take the giftcard and we can use it again!" Haha. But....I know better than that, so we left it on the table, and hopefully the waitress figured it out at some point tonight. Dinner was delicious, even though I only ate about 6 bites and brought the rest home. I guess I will enjoy it tomorrow for lunch. And...it wasn't even too busy for a Friday night. I was convinced we would have to wait, but they got us right in!

I went to the surgeon for a checkup today. He said everything went well and that my hernia was actually pretty large compared to most of them he fixes. I don't think that's good, but he made it sound exciting! Anyway, I felt alright this morning, until he decided to poke and prod at it, and now I'm all swollen up again and can hardly walk tonight. Great! Just when I was getting better. I guess we'll see how tomorrow goes. He said I could basically do anything I want unless it hurts, and then to stop it. Great advice, I could have figured that out myself! Anyway, he said I should be feeling pretty normal in another 2-3 weeks but I may have bouts of pain for up to 6 months while everything heals up all the way.

Finally Planted

We bought these flowers a couple of weeks ago and finally got them planted tonight. I didn't do the hard parts, Russell weeded everything and planted and I got the dead things off all the flowers and pushed the dirt around a little. We can't afford flowers for everywhere, but I got some in the smaller bed. The other side is weeded now though, which is good. Those weeds were tripling in size over night! It was ridiculous!!! Anyway, we kind of want to redo the back yard, but we have to save up some money first. Money, Money, Money.......I wish everything didn't cost Money.

Close-Ups of My Quilted Bear Treasures

Here's some closer-up pictures off my treasures from Quilted Bear today. I went $2 over the budget, because I needed those firecrackers! Luckily though, Russell loves me and the things I buy at Quilted Bear, so it will be okay!

Recovering and Playing Catch-Up

Day 136-May 15th: Today I am feeling 10 million times better! Last night I decided I was done with prescription pain medicine and would just take extra iBprofin (I don't think I spelled that right). Anyway, I was tired of being nauseous and hoped it would help, and it did! I feel great today. Well....as great as you can a week after surgery I guess. I went up to Archiver's and returned some notecards, and then I went to the Quilted Bear to buy these 4th of July decorations I've had my eyes on with the $50 I had to spend from our stimlus check. My other $50 is going towards a duvet cover set. Now if I can just get up to Salt Lake to Linen's and Things to buy the duvet set!

Day 135-May 14th: Happy Birthday Caleb! Today I finished up the recital program for my little sister's dance center and sent it off for approval. I've been doing the program for 3 years now, and it's really not too bad. Lot's of typing, but hey, I tend to like that. This picture is an image in Adobe, so it's probably not great, but it's the cover for the program. (I didn't want to hook up my printer to print in color!)

Day 134-May 13th: So my great accomplishment today was walking down to get the mail! It took me about 10 minutes to walk that far and back (something that normally takes about 3 minutes, but I did it! We went to Caleb and Holly's tonight to deliver Caleb his birthday present. We stayed for about an hour just chatting, it was nice to catch up with them. And....I got some ice cream from the BYU creamery on the way home. A single scoop is really like 3 scoops, and that's the most I've eaten in several days!

Day 133-May 12th: I got pretty sick of just laying in bed today and so I decided to see what scraps I had in my scrapbook stuff to make a birthday card for Caleb. I found some cute things and went to work. I didn't do anything super-cute because I didn't really have any energy, but I think it turned out good. The card was my great accomplishment for the day!

Another Hubby Tag

I've done a tag super close to this, but Keera tagged me so here we go again!

HUBBY TAG! !
What is his full name? Russell Sterling Ahlstrom
How long have you been married? 10 1/2 Months. Already!
How long did you date? 6 weeks before we got engaged, about 4 months total
How did you meet? At Archiver's. He brought a friend in to help her make her wedding announcements, then looked me up online the next day!
Who eats more sweets? Russell
Who said "I love you" first? Him
How old is he? 28
Who is taller? Him....by a foot!
Who is smarter? I think we are about equal really, but he does have the master's degree.
Who does the laundry? Mostly him.
Who pays the bills? Russell
Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? Him
Who mows the lawn? We don't have a lawn to mow.
Who drives? Him mostly when we are together, but that might change until I teach him to drive my manual and can steal the new car!
Who is more stubborn? Probably me.
Who kissed who first? He did.
Who asked who out? He did.
Who has more siblings? Russell
Who wears the pants? Both of us really.
I want to TAG: Ummm...I think everyone I know has done this one, so just enjoy reading mine!

A Quick Update

Day 132-May 11th: Keera not only brought dinner last night, but she brought back my favorite movie in the world! Just in time for some post-surgery movie watching! I watched it this afternoon, and I just might turn it on again tonight! I haven't watched it in months! Imagine!

Day 131-May 10th: I stayed in bed most of the day again. Keera brought us a wonderful dinner of chicken enchilada's, salad, garlic bread, and brownies. Thanks! Russell worked on getting the rest of the things from his mom sorted and put away. As he was doing something in the closet, all of his ties fell off the rack! Oh no! He sat down and sorted them all back out into colors and hung them back up.

Day 130- May 9th: This is pretty much where I stayed all day. I got up to go to the bathroom and that's about it. I didn't wake up on time at 6:00am to take the pain medicine, and it literally took all day to get the pain under control again. I look terrible, but I'm feeling better now.

Day 129-May 8th: I went in for surgery today. We got there at 8:30am and finally I went in at 2:00pm. Ugh. It was a long wait at the hospital, but they did give us a gift certificate to Brick Oven. Here's a picture of my beautiful bracelet. I think it's funny how many times I had to tell them my name, birthdate, and procedure while they checked it on my bracelet. I guess better safe than sorry though. Everything went well and I'm home recovering slowly.

Surgery in T-Minus -1 Day

So....I was supposed to have surgery this morning at 7:00, but they called last night and had noticed that our insurance didn't cover the surgical center. So our options were to pay more and do it anyway, or wait until Thursday and do the surgery at the hospital. We choose the hospital. So...one more day.

Day 128-May 7: I started cleaning my car yesterday and finished today. I went and vacuumed it and drove it through the car wash and now it looks great! I had been trying to find time to clean it since before we got married. WOW! I do love a clean car, and now we have two clean cars for a while.

Day 127-May 6: So while I worked on finishing up the dance recital program tonight, Russell tried to conquer some of the buckets of his things his mom brought up to us. This is what the room looks like right now! Good thing we don't have any kids! He doesn't think he's getting anything done, but he is. It really won't take too long to get everything organized.

A New Vue on Life

Day 126-May 5: We bought a new car today.....a Saturn Vue. And....Russell is so sad, he hates to go into debt, but he does say it was a good decision. It's a 2006 and drives really nice, we like it a lot already. Russell will drive it for now, and probably until we have kids and then I will steal it. The crazy thing was the sales guy I worked with on Wednesday was not there so another guy helped us and it turned out to be Russell's old bishop from when he was 14 in Albuquerque! What a small world. Anyway, here's a picture of the Vue, I'll probably post more of the inside or things tomorrow or something.

And....I finished the last dinosaur page today! Here's a peek.

Employee Crop + Some Individual Time

Day 125-May 4: We had an employee crop today and I couldn't wait! I had pictures from our Dinosaur Museum date on Monday that I just HAD to scrapbook! Plus, employee crops are always tons of fun. It's great to be able to just have fun with everyone without having to worry about customers. I went after church was over and started by making some mother's day cards (which are not posted so as to not ruin the mother's day surprise), then made a graduation page for Russell's graduation last summer, and then got one dinosaur page done. At that point we had to pack up because the last manager had to leave, but I decided to finish what I wanted to get done today at home. I mean, I already had the stuff bought and ready. So I finished another dinosaur page here at home and have the last one almost done. I would have finished it, but I left the letters I cut out for the title at Archiver's! So...no one at the employee crops ever wants to take a picture....which is dumb....HELLO WE ARE SCRAPBOOKERS!!!! Anyway, Russell took this one of me working at home tonight. 8 hours of cropping today...that's great!

Here's pictures of the pages I did.

A Few Days....Including Mario Kart

Day 124-May 3: I came home from work to find Russell and his mom working on getting her new computers networked for her store. But....I also found Mario Kart Wii on our kitchen counter! Thanks Mom! I enjoyed trying it out while they worked on computer stuff. Rachel and I even raced together. There's new tracks and motorcycles and you can play with people in other places over the Wii Wi-Fi network. It's awesome!!!

Day 123-May 2: We went to the temple tonight with Rachel and Russell's mom and it was great. The temple was super busy but it was a great opportunity to go before I have surgery again. Russell and I had been trying to find a time to go for several weeks but things kept creeping up on us or we were just too tired (I know, bad excuse). But we got there tonight and that's what matters. I love going to the temple. Sometimes I wish I could just stay there and not have to go back into the world and deal with everything that is going on. Hmmmm...maybe one of these days. The picture is of my cool temple bag that folds onto a hanger. Russell's mom loved it and ordered herself one.

Day 122-May 1: I went to look at more cars today after work, and the people were not nearly as nice as Brian from Saturn. The Toyota guy pressured me into driving a Jeep Cherokee over to his other lot to see if he had a Sienna or Rav4. Well....they only had super old Sienna's and the Rav4 had a flat tire which "we can't get someone out here to fix, so it's not drivable!" Baloney! Anyway, I left there promptly and went over to Honda. I drove a CR-V and an Odyssey. I like them except that the CR-V smelled like smoke and on both cars I could not see the front end when I drove so I kinda felt like I was going to run into something. So....the search continues.

Day 121-Apr 30: Russell's Mom got into town tonight and dropped by to unload. She brought us these dishes from Camille's wedding....16 place settings! That is wonderful news. We have just had the 4-place setting we registered for and then some plastic plates so it will be great to have some nice dishes. I think they will be everyday until we order the others we wanted from her store, and then they may become for special occasions, because who knows if I will ever have real china.