Happy Anniversary

Today is my 4 year anniversary. I can't believe it's been so many years. But they really have been the best years of my life! I know Jared doesn't read my blog, but thank you babe for all of the fun times. I can't imagine my life without you!

So Freekin' Cute!!!

I have the cutest nieces and nephews EVER!!! So last night we were preparing dinner at the Nelson household and I look over to see my nephew, Jonah, wearing his gangster U of U hat around. Later that night he had it on sideways. He was so cute that I had to share him with you.

How can you not smile when you see that face?

Unconditional Love?

So at what point does unconditional love become conditional? Bella has been doing so well, so I thought. Tuesday night this is what I came home to......and the picture doesn't even do it justice...
I lost it. They were both dead meat! I had to cool down first because I was just too upset. After I punished them I decided to leave the mess so Jared could see it when he got home. I turned on the tv to try to calm down and relax. Seriously, not even 10 minutes later Bella started chewing on it some more. That just confirmed my suspicions that Bella was the master mind behind all of the destruction. Don't get me wrong, Floyd was just as guilty for participating, but we never had these problems until miss Bella came along. Here is a list of things that have been done since Bella joined the family....
1 couch
3 stuffed Christmas decorations
1 dog house (she has torn off the wood, shingles, and insulation)
1 back yard (it looks like a war zone. There are more holes than I care to count. One of them went all of the way down to the sprinkler pipes)
4 blankets
1 dog bed
4 plastic dog bowls (we now only use metal)
hundreds of dog toys, which is fine, but she destroys them in seriously less than an hour.
And I'm sure many many more things that I just can't think of right now.

Things destroyed before Bella came along, when Floyd was an only child...
1 pair of shoes

It has been a rough week in many different ways, and this just was the icing on the cake. Bella has now been sentenced to life in a kennel.

Someday I will forgive, but that day isn't today. Jared told me they are just preparing us for all of the things our kids are going to do to us in revenge for all of the things (mostly Jared) that we did to our parents. Maybe some day I will tell all of the stories I've heard of Jared as a kid and all of the things he destroyed. They are really funny stories, but I'm sure they weren't at the time.

I'm learning patience, but I'm still a beginner.

One by One...

This is what Jared and I came home to the other night. I thought I put my Christmas decorations out of reach, but I forgot my dog thinks she's a cat. So they have now destroyed one Christmas decoration...how many do we think they are going to get total this year? The best was the look on their faces. They knew they were in trouble the minute we walked in the door, but they weren't sorry at all. They would do it again in a heartbeat. I just wish I could have been there to see what really happened.

Last night I was working on the computer in our office and all of the sudden I noticed how quiet it was. I turned around and saw this...This is Floyd's favorite chair. Basically it's his. And he always seems to sleep in the oddest positions.

And Bella looks dead. I promise, she's alive and well.

I love my dogs. I love the entertainment and love they bring into my life!

I'm a GLEEK!

What can I say...I'm a Gleek! If you don't know what this is, you will become one soon, just you wait! It's a tv show on Wednesday nights on fox at 8pm. It's not a reality show. It's about a teacher trying to bring back glee club. The characters are AWESOME! My favorite character changes every week. Right now my favorite is Kirk. The characters sing and are so wonderful. You never know what amazing song they are going to choose each week.
Even Jared loves the show. He gets mad if I don't wait for him to get home from work before I watch it.
On really rough weeks at work, looking forward to watching it each week gives me the strength to get through it.
Anyway, point of the post...WATCH IT! You'll become a gleek too!

Happy Birthday...to ME!! (and Monique!)

Thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes! It was a great birthday this year! For my birthday dinner Jared took me to my favorite place, Ejo's. It's a Korean bbq and they have sushi. It was wonderful! Sorry no pictures of that, I always forget. But I really have the best husband ever! He spoils me!
The next week was Monique's birthday and we all went to Braza Grill, it was delicious! Here is Mo in her birthday hat...Yesterday my wonderful friends Andrea and Eliza took me to Cheesecake Factory :). We got the red velvet cheesecake. OH....MY.....GOODNESS....AMAZING!!!

Eliza...

Andrea...

The girls. At least what is left of us. :(

We had a blast having a girls day. We spend hours at the mall. It was so much fun!

Thank you everyone for making this year so wonderful! You are all so great!

Cleaning...

For those of you have haven't ever heard of or used a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, I'm sorry. These are AMAZING!!! They clean pretty much everything with little effort.

It's mean to keep it a secret. I've been using them for a few years but my passion for them was rekindled when cleaning the basement apartment at my mom's house last weekend. Um, I know, I sound like a drug attic. hahaha. Anyway, try them on your toughest caked on mess and you will never go back to life without them. I think they work best on really dirty bathrooms, really dirty ovens, and also the cooked on crap that you can't get rid of on your stove top. Try them on anything and you will see their power.

Miss Bella...

Thank you everyone for your comments on my last post. I really appreciate the support.
Now as I promised, I'm going to blog about happy things...like my dogs. Today specifically about Bella. We think she is about full grown. She isn't as big as we thought she was going to get, thank goodness! She's just a little bit bigger than Floyd. She is so funny. She is a puppy though, she destroys everything. She always wants to play. My biggest complaint is that when she plays she has this deep mean growl that is really scary, but her tail is wagging a mile a minute. She is a really happy dog. We love her almost as much as Floyd does. They don't do well without the other one there. It's really cute.
This picture shows how curious she is, always in the way wanting to know what's going on.

As I have previously posted, we think she is a cat in a dogs body. When I vacuum I put stuff out of the way. Well, this just gives her something higher to climb on.

We love the little princess. I'm still working on a picture of her costume. She doesn't exactly cooperate.

The Truth

So I’ve been thinking about blogging about this for awhile. I’m going to talk about this for two reasons. First reason being that writing things is very therapeutic for me. Second reason being that I know a lot of you have a lot of questions. The longer I’ve been married the more people are asking me when we are going to have kids. For the past few years I’ve made up many excuses. I’m sure some of you have heard them. But I can only say that my dogs are enough for so long. All of those excuses have been a lie. You see, in my family we don’t talk about personal problems. You keep things to yourself. That is exactly what I’ve been doing. I’ve been trying to fight this battle by myself (with just Jared) for a couple of years. By blogging about this I can have a somewhat intimate conversation with my close friends and family without actually talking to you. If I have to talk to you about this I will just start crying and that would be awkward for both of us. Therefore, here it goes…
I went off of the pill almost two years ago. I thought it would be so simple, go off the pill and you’ll get pregnant right? Wrong! After a few months of no luck I started having some female health problems. I went to my doctor who put me on some medication that is supposed to get me back to normal and pregnant. Well a year of that produced nothing but the fact that my doctor wasn’t being aggressive at all and still didn’t remember who I was. So then I was referred to a fertility specialist. He is not covered by insurance, so just to see him we had to pay $250 up front. So we did. He was really helpful and spent a long time explaining to us (mostly me because Jared was only there physically, not so much mentally, he was really overwhelmed) what the problems most likely were. The first and most serious was endometriosis. It’s a very painful problem that is hereditary. My mother had it so bad that she was only ever able to have one kid, me, and that was a long shot. The only treatment is surgery. So I was referred to a great doctor and had the surgery this past September. I feel so much better after it. It made such a huge difference. The problem is the longer it takes for me to get pregnant, the more it will come back. There isn’t a way to prevent it. Which leads me into my second problem. I’m not regular on my own. So now I’m on more aggressive medication. I’m at least still on medication and haven’t had to do shots yet. Anyway, it’s still not fun. They cause nausea and weight gain. Plus I’m sure the stress isn’t helping the weight gain. At least those are my two most common symptoms. But I can handle all of that. The hardest part is having to map out on a calendar every month every pill you take, every ovulation test you take, and make sure everything happens on the right day and time. It invades the most intimate part of my marriage. Only to take another pregnancy test and have it be negative, again. It’s an emotional rollercoaster. It has tested my faith so much to have such a righteous desire that I want so bad but I can’t have. Sometimes I feel like a failure that I can’t have kids so easily. I feel bad that I can’t give that to Jared. I feel bad that the expense is so much that we can hardly afford the cheap treatments. If these don’t work I have no idea how we are going to pay for other stuff. And if it comes to invitro, I have no idea what we are going to do. I’ll be honest, it’s really depressing. Some days it’s really hard to be happy. I try really hard to be grateful for what I have and not dwell too much on what I don’t.
I’m sorry this is such a depressing post. I just wanted to put it out there. Now you all know. I know this is dumb, but please don’t talk to me about it. I will just cry. I'm not ready to talk. No, I’m not okay with it. I don’t understand why. But it’s my life. I will survive. I’m going to continue from now on to only post about the happy things in my life. I’m not expecting a pity party. The only thing I’m asking is that everyone stops asking me when we are going to have kids. We will someday, I hope.

What happens in Vegas...

We had such a blast in Vegas! We went down for a wedding of a close friend, Jeff Tingey. It was beautiful! Thank you for giving us a reason to go on vacation.
We convinced our friends and neighbors the Putnam's to go on the road trip with us. We have a blast with them. And as you can tell in the picture below, Jared and Nate have quite the bro-mance. This is them having fun with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle hats.
Friday and Saturday night we went to see the Bellagio fountains. I hadn't ever seen them. They were amazing! It was worth braving the gross strip for them. I can't count how many we went to, but I would guess we stayed for like 6 or more. Love them!
This is me and Jared waiting...(and sorry for the bad pictures. I forgot the camera, so everything was taken with the phone)

The amazing fountains. I think this one was to a Sinatra song. Amazing!!!

Pictures from the car of the strip

And their little girl Haven on the car ride home.

It was a much needed trip! I was even way lucky in gambling. I started with $20 on the roulette table and left with $80.

Happy Halloween (early)...

Here are some funny Halloween cartoons. I thought I would give you a week to read them.
This one I saw last year but still think it's relevant and funny now.
Not much needs to be said about this one. I think we have all felt that way at one point...

This one is funny because it is of course the boy who is the insane one...and the girl is the angel. Us girls can do no wrong. ;)

This one is really cute.

Thanks for reading my ridiculous blog.

We are going to Vegas this weekend with some friends so I will post pictures after we get back.

I need to vent...

I HATE insurance companies so passionately it's probably a sin. Here is a few of the larger reasons why...
-When Jared and I first got married he was diagnosed with sleep apnea. No big deal, all he would need to do is sleep with a machine the rest of his life. He really doesn't mind it, he actually sleeps much better and doesn't snore at all like he used to. So, we did what we thought we should, we got the machine and had them bill the insurance company. Every little while a would get a bill for the "unpaid" amount. I would pay it. And then another bill for the "unpaid (by the insurance company)" amount. So a year later I had spent thousands of dollars for this machine and come to find out, I could have paid for it outright for half of what I paid going through the insurance company. On top of that, our insurance premiums were like $400 a month.
-I got a job for the state with the impression that not only is health insurance cheap, but it also covers almost everything.
-Last month a went in for a little out-patient procedure, simple, no big deal. My doctors office called and had it "pre-approved". I got a call saying out of the over $8000 it would only cost me $500. I was thrilled! Well...I WAS thrilled until I just got a bill in the mail from the hospital saying the insurance company only covered HALF...and not the 95%ish that I was told. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. All because it was "codded" wrong. The curse words going through my head right now are not going to be written.
So now I have to call my poor doctor and have him write a letter for me to submit to the appeals process crap AND resubmit the paper work AGAIN recoded. And all of this could be work for no reason. The insurance company, even after they said they would cover it, could still come back and say they decided not to cover it.
Point of my blog today....I HATE INSURANCE COMPANIES...THEY DON'T COVER ANYTHING!!!
Remind me why we have to health insurance?

Okay, so I know I'm being dramatic, and I really am grateful for having insurance that at least covers half if this stupid thing. It just makes me mad that they can say one thing and do another after we pay them so much.
Thanks for listening to me vent, I really needed to.

Is it inhumane...

That I'm dressing my dogs up for Halloween?

If you can't tell, Floyd is Yoda. But the legs are WAY too long for his stubs, so he can't walk with it on. That is why Jared is holding him up.
Bella will be Princess Leah if I can get her to leave the costume on long enough to take a picture. I haven't had success with her yet. But as soon as I do I will post pictures. And Jared dresses up as Darth Vader, so my hope is to get a family picture of the three of them...but I might be wishing for the impossible. Oh well.

My Weekend...

...Was really crazy. Our wonderful friend Ehin made us this beautiful dog house. The green stuffing is from the first bed they tore to shreds (literally). There is now white stuffing to match the green. That blanket you see inside the dog house very quickly became a tug-of-war toy. No more blankets for the dogs. And Bella, despite my efforts with that bitter spray on the whole house still chews up the wood and insulation. So even though I haven't even had the house for a week it is no longer this pretty :(. Bella might look and act so sweet and innocent, but don't be fooled, she leaves a path of destruction! But we still love her.

Friday night I made Jared take me to sushi since I used my whole day off renewing his expired plates. Below is the most beautiful sushi plate I've ever seen. It was really good, but not the best I've had. My favorite is still the Vegas roll at Ejo's. Sunday was a busy family day for the Nelson's. Almost the whole family was in town. Jared's dad was called as bishop. He's really excited and so are we.

I'm still not happy it's Tuesday, but soon the week will be over so I can sleep in :)

Cake...

So last night I was making some cupcakes for work. As always, both dogs never leave my side in hopes of getting a crumb or on really good days they get to lick the spoon. Well I guess I spilled a little bit of cake batter without even realizing it. A few minutes later I notice Floyd...
Floyd seemed to not even realize it was there, and Bella hadn't licked it off surprisingly. Anyway, it gave me a good laugh and I luckily had my phone nearby to take a picture.
These dogs bring so many funny moments in my life. My life would be way too serious without them!

Lately

I took these pictures last night while watching dancing with the starts. They were so tired! Sorry I haven't posted much, life has been crazy. I am really glad that some good shows are finally coming on tv again since there for awhile I didn't have anything to watch when I got home from work. :(. Poor poor me. Anyway, enjoy the pics. Hope all is going well with everyone!

I have a cat!!!

This is Bella's preferred spot to watch tv with us. She's getting way to big to climb on the back of the couches but she still does it anyway.
I think she will always view herself as little even though she isn't little at all anymore! She has officially outgrown Floyd. She's much taller (which isn't hard to do) and longer and heavier.
I think I have her pretty much house trained. However, she is not even close to being out of the puppy stage. She destroys anything plastic. And her newest found love is digging. She has almost dug under the fence a few times and her greatest accomplishment was digging all the way down to the sprinkler pipes. Thank goodness we came home because she could have chewed on the plastic sprinkler pipes for sure. I would love any advice from dog owners of how to stop the digging. I'm hoping she grows out of this soon. Either way I'm going to have to redo my whole backyard in a few years when she grows out of it.
I know I'm talking too much, but another thing is I never really believed that dogs only have one owner. However, Bella has decided Jared is her owner. Which is fine. They go everywhere together. It's really cute. But it is so frustrating because she won't come to me when I call if Jared is home. If he isn't home she will come, but I don't exist if he is home. It's kind of funny. Especially considering he never wanted a puppy in the first place.
Thanks everyone for letting me ramble! We are getting a dog house this weekend I think, and it should be crazy big so I will post pictures and tell the story when we get it.

The Bowtie...

So my husband Jared has worn a bowtie to church almost every Sunday for as long as I have known him. In our newest ward in North Salt Lake he is infamously known as "the bowtie guy". Many people in the ward don't even know his name, they just know him as the guy who always wears bowties. So a few of us thought it would be funny to distribute some of his bowties to others in the ward without him knowing and see his reaction when they all come in wearing bowties. I totally thought we (me especially) wouldn't be able to pull it off. I'm not good at all at keeping a straight face. And I was also so worried he would notice them being gone. But it worked! In the middle of church, when he finally realized what was going on he busted up laughing. It was awesome! Below are the participants...Nate, Kevin, Jared, and Brady

I will never forget this day! It was too funny! Thanks everyone!

Weddings!

Last weekend was a very busy weekend for us. We had two very close friends get married. Thursday was my close high school friend Brooke. She married an awesome guy named Josh. Congrats guys! And Brooke you looked amazing! However, I was a slacker and didn't take any pictures of the bride and groom. I did take a picture of Andrea and Mike though...

They are still under the newly wed category. They have been married for a year now.

Then on Friday we made the trek up to Logan for one of Jared's missionary companions and our very close friends Hayden and Melissa. I almost didn't get to go to this wedding because brilliant me forgot my temple recommend. But apparently it's a fairly regular occurrence. So they did their magic with computers and let me go. Thank goodness! It was beautiful!

The beautiful bride and groom!

Hayden and Jared, they have way too much fun together!

Melissa, the gorgeous bride

And the back of her dress.

Thanks everyone for letting us be a part of your days!

Brownies

So Sunday afternoon I decided I wanted to make brownies. The first thing that goes through your head is if you have all of the stuff you need. Brownie mix, check, oil, check, egg, check (or so I thought). I had just gone to the store and purchased 30 eggs. It would usually take us about two weeks to go through that. Well I forgot that Jared was my husband and that he loves to cook. So he decided to make a few things and use ALL of the eggs. So after a search around the neighborhood I finally find an egg. So I make the brownies and by this time I'm tired and just want to go to bed. So I didn't eat any. Jared goes in and looks at them and tells me he doesn't like this kind of brownie mix. I think to myself, good, more for me! Well I come home from work yesterday to find this...

Jared's definition of NOT liking this brownie mix. At least he left me a little bit :). Thank you babe for giving me a laugh after a long day at work!

Random Dog Stuff

I really don't do anything exciting at all. So if you're wondering what I do in my spare time, I spend time with my dogs. They bring me so much happiness! They are SOOOOO funny!

This is Jared and Bella at the vet getting more of Bella's puppy shots. (Obviously BEFORE the shots)

This is what I wake up to on a regular basis. Bella loves to cuddle!
Floyd is still a lot stronger than Bella is, so this is how Bella tries to fight him off when treats are given.

And last, but certainly not least... Floyd has really been struggling with the heat so we decided to have his hair shaved off. So below are before and after pictures. The after pictures aren't that great, but you can still tell that he doesn't even look like the same dog. He does seem SO much happier.

Before:

After:
After:

That is all that's going on with us. Hope all is well with everyone else! Happy summer! :)