Wahoo

• It feels like a microwave in our apartment. 
• Next week is Independence Day!
• Also, it's my Birthday!
• Sean made me a velociraptor sticker for my car. (This is true love.)
• Erma sleeps with her belly up because it's hot.
• Netflix is magical and Kid's Netflix is too.
• 90's TV is weird. (but I like it). 
• We're going to an amish market, the Pepperidge Farm factory, Gosner Cheese Factory, Idaho, and possibly Smith & Edward's tomorrow. And then to our friend Erica's play. Sweet!
• Days off are great.
• Please bless my car passes it's registration test. It has studied hard, I promise.
• My car's name is Roxy.
• I forgot the next thing I was going to say.

Property Brothers

If you know anything about me (or have looked to the right of any post on here and read the "about me" snippet), you should know that I watch HGTV all too often. I love House Hunters and Love It or List It, but my absolute most favorite show on the whole channel is Property Brothers. Sean could tell you that I say the sentence "I wish I had Property Brothers" all too often. 

For those of you unfortunate enough to not have HGTV or uncool enough to not watch it (I forgive you, but you really should), the PB's are Drew - the Real Estate expert, and Jonathan - the Contractor. They take people out of their apartments and into a fixer-upper which they then fix and make look INCREDIBLE. Seriously, I wish I had PB's. 

Of course, the people they're working with never believe they can pull it off at first because it's too crazy but they do! And, even if they run into problems or added costs of other types, they do it at your budget! It's so cool. 

Sean and I have been looking into moving a lot lately. We've been looking at houses and apartments and considering all the options. Of course, it would be a lot harder for us to get into a house than an apartment, but if I get a full time job somewhere, it would be a whole lot easier. 

For now, though, we're thinking about painting a few of the walls in our apartment to brighten it up and personalize it just a little. We haven't passed it by the landlady yet... but she's pretty great and seems to like us a lot, so it's possible. I can't wait to get started! (If we can, of course.)

I'm going to end this here and get back to watching PB's. (Seriously, I recommend watching it.)

love, Ellen

Apologies, News, and MN trip

Sorry for my nearly 2 week hiatus... It seriously has been non-stop for me lately. As soon as we got back from MN, we got surprise tickets to the Barenaked Ladies concert (with Ben Folds Five and Guster) and then on Friday night, we went to a Bees game (Utah's minor league baseball team) with Brady and Katie (Sean's brother and his wife). Now we're just trying to fall back into normalcy. I'm still trying to catch up on sleep and house cleaning.

However, even our normalcy is something other than that. Sean and I are still trying to figure our situations out. I'm on the look for a new job, preferably something in the Utah Valley area doing something along the lines of Proofreader, Copy Editor, Reading Tutor, the like. If you know of anything... let me know.

We started looking for a new place to live just North of SLC but then we found out today that our ward needs us to revamp the nursery. It's a problem for our ward that's too big to just fix in a few weeks before leaving, it seems. It seems like there are more things keeping us here than there are opportunities for us to move. It's just something we've been questioning for a while and we finally have a bit of an answer.

Anyway, I just thought I'd let you know what's happening. Also, on a side-note, Sean and I started our Academy Award Best Picture Winners movie challenge. We're still in the middle of the first one which we started yesterday. It's a silent movie from 1927 called Wings about a couple of pilots in the war. It's interesting but pretty long (2 hours).

And remember how I promised that I would tell you about our trip and have pictures.

This is one of the first places I saw in the Mall of America. IT'S A FREAKING AMUSEMENT PARK. ridiculous. Of course, I didn't go on any rides... Roller Coasters are not our thing. We also had lunch there and then  went shopping. I got a new pair of pants at H&M. By the end, my feet were so tired!

 This is some incredibly delicious lemonade from Matt's Bar (Home of the Jucy Lucy) in Minneapolis. It's the best bottle of lemonade I have had, I think. 

 This is the afore mentioned Jucy Lucy burger with grilled onions. Absolutely magnificent. If I talk about it too much longer I'll have to change my shirt from drool. If you're in Minneapolis, GO HERE. 

Go TWINS! This game was seriously SO much fun. We sat so high up, I almost puked. They shot off fireworks during the national anthem (while I was still trying to get used to the height) and I almost collapsed from fright. The Twins won the Phillies that night 4-3. It was a great game and we ate nachos out of a Twins helmet bowl (YUM). And we got to hang out with a couple of Sean's friends from MN. 

Overall, it was a fun trip. After all these things, we went to the family reunion and that was a blast too! I met so many great people and, if you can believe it, I can remember everyone's names. I also learned how to make little creatures out of sewing and felt. I'm thinking about selling them or making them for needy children. 

Anyway, I thought I'd just send you an update. Have a great week!

love, Ellen

Minnesota? Nice.

Hi, everyone! Guess where I am. Minnesota! Sean is in the shower and I thought I'd just post a little bit about what's going on. So far this trip all we've really done is gone through old pictures, played video games at Sean's friend Bloom's house, had dinner with our friends Marcus & Whitney, and gone to a graduation party. Woo fun!

But now the real fun stuff starts. Today, we're going up to the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul, for those of you who are wondering) and shopping the Mall of America! And we're probably going to see the aquarium in the mall and maybe I'll get a new outfit. Woohoo! Sometime after we go to the mall, we'll drop our stuff off at my brother-in-law, Damien's house where we're going to sleep tonight. Tomorrow, we're going to bum around the cities and then go to a Twin's game! awwwww yeah. I can't wait for the delicious stadium food and game! Apparently, we have really great views of the city skyline from our seats. We're going to the game with Marcus, Whitney, and 5th wheel Bloom. I'll take some pictures or something for you.

Our last leg of the trip will be a family reunion on Sean's mom's side where we're going to be camping (with beds and showers... but it'll be in the wilderness!) and then we're on our way home.

Let me know if you know of anything fun to do in the cities tomorrow so we don't just end up sitting on the couch all day. It probably won't happen, but it might.

love, Ellen

My house is a mess...

and I'm here sitting on my couch watching The Talk. Ahh... life. It will get clean before Sean gets home, but right now, I might just take a little nap.

This week, in preparation for our vacation, Sean and I went through a bunch of our old pictures to bring to the reunion. I love having physical pictures to look through. Facebook and other computerized photo albums are fine and all, but having the actual picture in my hand is a lot more of a memory (anyone else catch the irony?)

The problem, however, is that photo albums are almost obsolete. Either everything is on the computer or in some time-consuming scrapbook. I just want to be able to flip through all those photos without having to glue them to expensive paper with cut outs of whatever and cutesy letters. I just want photos with years and descriptions on the back. Easy peasy.

I just barely finished building our driving playlist with only fun music and... 1.9 days. Whoops. that's about a day too much. It's fine. Now we have a fun playlist. I better get to cleaning.

SEE YOU IN SOME TIME!
love, Ellen

May... wait...

It's kind of weird coming back and blogging with out a prompt... but I like it. I'm glad I took that challenge, I read a bunch of new awesome blogs and got some really cool comments that I really appreciate. I don't know how to reply to them... so if you know how, it would be cool if you could tell me.

I don't know if you know this about me, but I love lists. I saw this today and laughed:

I found a pretty cool to-do list app for my phone and I am glued to it all the time. I have a list of things I've got to do, my grocery list, and all the things that I need to pack for our vacation. I used to have my list of homework on there, but then I graduated and now it's gone. When I check off the tasks, it says "Completed!" and I get excited.

Speaking of my vacation checklist, only 3 days till we drive our tails off and then we'll be in MN! Currently, I'm going over my lists a million times trying to make sure we have everything and I'm not going to forget anything. I just hope I can fit everything in our duffle bag. Eek! If not, we have like 2 other duffles and a bunch of backpacks and a carry-on. We'll be fine.

Okay, I've got to get to work on our fun driving playlist.
Love, Ellen