chocolate and m&m's

i love me some chocolate ice cream or frozen yogurt any day of the week.

i won't discriminate - i'll take either :)

and of course, some m&m's to top it off is never a bad thing.

i am grateful for it's creaminess. i'm grateful for the crunch of the m&m's. i'm grateful for the splash of color amid the neutral chocolate. i'm grateful for the happiness it gives me.

{i know this sounds silly, but i am oh-so-seriously grateful for this lovely treat that not all get to enjoy.}

next on the list...

we've already established that Jae is my favorite person.

next up, we've got the rest of my family.

i'm grateful for their loads of personality. i'm grateful for their willingness to jump in whenever someone needs anything. i'm grateful for their kind hearts and their goofiness. i'm grateful for the constant love and support we always have for each other.

my favorite person

i figured there's no better way to kick off the month of November than to blab on and on about my favorite person and how grateful i am that he's mine! am i right?

{there may or may not be some sappy parts ahead - consider yourself warned.}

i am grateful for him because he makes me happy. i am grateful for him because he knows how to cheer me up. i am grateful for him because he's such a hard worker. i am grateful for him because he pushes me to be better. i am grateful for him because he cares how i feel. i am grateful for him because he's a dork, which makes me feel better about being such a dork myself. last but certainly not least, i am grateful for him because he does laundry on his days off   :)

halloween 2012

our halloween festivities this year went a little something like this:

 

a couple of weeks ago, i got together with my bff Leslie and her baby girl Izzie to paint some pumpkins. i'm super artistic and talented like that, so be prepared to be amazed. (not).

Izzie and her pumpkin

my pumpkins

Les and her pumpkin! she was super happy i made her stop and pose for a picture while carrying her oober heavy pumpkin.

our church put on a trunk-or-treat. no, we don't have any kids, so you're probably wondering why we'd be going. we just wanted a bunch of free candy for ourselves! ha! no just kidding. Jae was part of the crew that was in charge of putting it all together, so i decided to put on my big girl undies and sign up to make soup for it. i've never made soup before but i did and it went pretty good i think! (more on the soup-making later).

our friends, Cody & Steph, who also don't have kids so we hung out for most of it. until Cody decided to put this deer thing on. then we kind of kept our distance ;)

on Halloween, there's pretty much no better place to be than Primary Children's Medical Center. seriously. and it just so happens that that's my place of employment :) it also just so happens that my boss goes a little bit cray-cray over Halloween, so it's even more fun! we made crafts with the kids/patients, stood in the main hallways as they trick-or-treated, and had a potluck with all the employees in our area. everyone in our department had some awesome costumes, and it was just a fun, no-work work day.

that would be my boss Lyndsy and i at our craft table.

 

after work tonight, i went home and grabbed the pup and her costume and headed to my parents to go trick-or-treating. i promised my mom i'd bring Zoey over in her costume, plus we got to see all the nieces and nephews dressed up! Zoey was the cutest "grandchild". just sayin.

i think it's safe to say Zack was pretty excited he got to wear his cool superman undies on the outside of his costume, just like the real superman



she's not spoiled at all

tonight, Jae is working til late, and turns out we don't get many trick-or-treaters at our house, so i'm sitting at home with the pup, watching the Jazz season opener. and blogging. we did get two visitors at our door, so that was fun!

i mean, look at that puppy bat! cutest ever. she most certainly didn't need the bat ears that came with those wings.

 

ps: you guessed it, Mary, i was a bumble bee!

 

happy halloween everyone!!

{halloween eve}

here's a preview of my costume :)
any guesses?

ganglion cyst no more

so for the last few years, i have had on and off pain in my wrist(s). i wondered if it was maybe carpal tunnel, but decided it wasn't. then thought maybe it was just some random tendinitis. but wasn't sure. i used to help teach a tumbling class, and i remember trying to help a girl fix her cartwheel technique. i did one to show her how she was doing it wrong, and then was going to do another to show her how to do it correctly. well i barely made it through the first one, and i'm pretty sure the second one didn't look any better than the first. bending my wrist back and putting weight on it like that caused so much pain it just about landed me on my face. you should've seen me trying to do push-ups.

then one day in july (sounds like the beginning of a song, doesn't it?), i was chatting with my sister about this dumb wrist pain, and showed her the little bump that seemed to stick out more when it was hurting more, and she's like "oh, well it's probably a ganglion cyst. i've had one of those before."

duh.

i knew she must be right. she had the exact same symptoms and pain and stuff that i had, and it totally made sense. so a couple of weeks later, after a bit of research, i decided having years of this lame pain was enough, and i called the ortho guy that had just done some surgery on my mom's fingers and made an appointment. i assumed they'd be able to aspirate it, as they did on my sister's years ago, and from what i read, they did a lot of times for these types of things.

not so fast.

it was, indeed, a ganglion cyst, but it had become too hardened to be able to aspirate. it had to be surgically removed. without much hesitation, i said sign me up. i was ready to be rid of the dang thing. they wanted to schedule it the day before we left for malaysia. ha! i told them that just wasn't going to work, so we scheduled it for two days after we got back.

my surgery call time was 5:30am (eek), and i had it done in same-day-surgery at LDS hospital. the cyst was about the size of a large grape, and was mostly down in my wrist rather than poking up above my wrist. i guess they had to do some digging and moving of tendons and such to get it all out. hence my fingers are pretty sore when i move them. i remember trying to wake up out of the awful fuzziness of the anesthesia in recovery, and then they took me to Jae in another room. i was anxious to wake up and just go home to sleep. we left around 1:30pm (i think...that day is a little fuzzy) and Jae took me home. him and Zoey took care of me, and i was back to work 2 days later (boo).

it's an awful, straight-out-of-surgery kind of picture, but i had to show how cute miss pup was. she stayed/slept right by me all day.

got to sport this for 2 weeks. makes hair washing awfully difficult.

not the greatest picture, but my thumb bruised right up, and so did my knuckles on my fingers. my thumb looked like i was rockin some special tan line or something.

finally, after having that cast/splint/thing on my arm for 2 weeks, i got it taken off, got the stitches pulled out, and was sent on my way. it's been sore and stiff, but it's healing. oh, and geez, talk about some scaly, dry, peeling skin.

this is from today! i still feel like my hand is bruised, but it's definitely on the mend.

belated birthday date night

one of my bff's, miss mary, had her birthday while we were gone on our trip. so i wanted to take her out on a hot date when we got back.

we started the night with our classic go-to....wendy's. although the ketsup didn't want to play nice. (it totally squirted out, passed the little cup right on by, and landed nicely in the palm of Mary's hand. so funny.)

next stop: pedi's

and the grand finale....froyo.

{please disregard photo quality - they were taken with phones. also, you can disregard me. i was 1 day post-op, a little drugged, and looking fab. obviously.}