Logan Love: A&W

Excuse the fact that most of these pictures were taken back before Christmas and are partially crappy quality. Also, excuse the fact that I have failed to grace you with a Logan Love post in what has been quite a while. Uh . . .my bad?

Now I get that you're probably all thinking that there is nothing special about A&W. Well, you're wrong. Because Logan's A&W is very special. It was the happenin' place when my grandparents went to school at USU, and I'm fairly positive it hasn't changed much since they were my age. I promise you that once you take a step inside, you'll be wishing you had a poodle skirt on. And that, my friends, is great.

Also, the cheese curds and amusing comments of the high school kids that work there will never disappoint.

701 N Main Street 

Logan, UT 

Sunday Best: Electric Slide

So I put off taking pictures of an outfit all week. I am the queen of procrastination. Doing this left me with only the option of featuring my outfit from today. On this fine and dandy Sunday. However, procrastination ended up being my friend in this particular situation, since I sported my new electric blue dress with some purple tights and heels. I mean, in such an electric blue dress I almost feel like the electric slide should be playing in the background, and then I could awkwardly dance and we'd all have a good time.

dress: Old Navy, tights: Kohls, heels: Kohls, belt: thrifted

Happy Sunday! I think I'll finish the evening off wearing my pajamas, eating junk food, playing board games with Brian, and putting off doing some homework. Told ya, I'm the procrastination queen! 

Little Girl

Last night, while reading through all my friends' latest blog posts, a song popped up on one particular friend's blog. This song is a very special song to me, and it floods back memories of my wedding day (which was almost six months ago). Even though six months isn't all that long, I hope I will feel the same way when I hear this song after being married for many, many years. And I hope I will always think of the same moment when I stood on the dance floor wearing a dress of pretty white lace with yellow flowers draped around my head, feeling so happy and young and free as I held hands and danced with the very first man I ever fell in love with . . . my dad.

The song is Tim Mcgraw's My Little Girl. Brian played it on his guitar and sang the words for my dad and I. We had planned it without my dad knowing, so when Brian played some chords on his guitar and called my dad to the front of the room, my dad was pretty surprised. Brian told me afterwards that he was so afraid he would choke up while he sang the words, because they just really hit home.


I am the oldest child in my family. I take some pride in that. I was the first baby my dad ever took into his arms and could call his own. I was the first one who gave him a Father's Day card that was probably made out of crooked paper and colored carefully with crayons. I was the first one he sent off to college. I was the first one to call him up and say, "Dad, Brian proposed," Although he already knew weeks in advance that it was going to happen. I was his little girl. And I always will be.


I'll never forget that summer evening of dancing with my dad, when he whispered in my ear, "This will be my favorite part of the whole day."

Listen to this song, and then go give your dad a hug and tell him how much you love him, because dads are special.   

Truth Tuesday

• I saw my grandma in the hospital today. She had a hip replacement, and boy is she tough! She was in great spirits today, and I couldn't help but think about how a person's attitude can affect countless lives. Awesome for happy people. Terrible for miserable people. My grandma is a happy person and I always feel happy after spending time with her. That's a great gift that I hope I can portray also. I really am beginning to think that making others happy is one of the most important traits to develop. 

• Now that I'm a News 2 in my Newscast class, I've made it a personal goal of mine to do as much as I can to help the News 1s so they won't go home crying as many times as I did last semester. I feel like I've done pretty good thus far. We'll see if I keep it up. 

• My husband is great. He brought me dinner while I was editing a news package on campus tonight. And he vacuumed the house. And he brought me ice cream in bed. Goodness, I am spoiled. 

• It's a hard thing to watch people you love suffer. Whether that suffering is physical, or spiritual, or emotional. Suffering is impossible to avoid and it really stinks that most of the time, you can't do much to take away another person's suffering. This has just been on my mind lately. 

• I accidentally sent a text about my grandpa to a guy that I work with. Talk about awkward. The text was supposed to go to Brian, but it didn't. Luckily, the guy was cool about it. I really need to stop sending text messages to the wrong person. I do it on a weekly basis. Gotta keep things random, I guess. 

• I talk with my hands. Like I can't tell you how much I rely on body language while communicating with other humans. The other night, I called a bunch of high school seniors to tell them all the wondrous things about Utah State that they needed to hear (this was for my job, duh). And as I was sitting in a huge computer lab with other recruiters and student leaders who were all using skype to do phone calling, I realized I was waving my arms about like a mad woman. It's just . . .waving my hands around makes my voice more animated. And if I'm more animated then it's more likely to get kids excited about USU. So waving my hands about at a computer screen really is doing a lot of good. I promise. 

• And last but not even close to least, I'll leave you with this sweet little quote that is getting me through this busy bee week. Perhaps one day when I have an important job, I'll hang it in my office space, or creative nook. I like creative nook better. Here it is: 

Source: society6.com via Kelsey on Pinterest

Creepin on Old Men

So hey, I ran 13.1 miles and survived! In high school, I never would have dreamed of running that far. And you wanna know what's nuts? I have this itch to run another half marathon now, and another after that, and then another. I think I'll just stick to half marathons though. Nothing about a full marathon sounds appealing or fun. It doesn't even sound healthy to me. I mean, yeah, let's go run 26.2 miles and run our bodies into the ground, and then we'll have run so far and for so long that we will no longer be able to control our bladders and we can pee in our jogging shorts. Sounds fun, doesn't it? But really, after the way my body has felt since running on Saturday, I can't even imagine the soreness after a full marathon. Sunday and yesterday I was wobbling about like a grandma. I feel like I should have worn a sign that said, JUST RAN A LOT AND HAVE  REALLY SORE MUSCLES. DON'T JUDGE THE WAY I WALK.

Seriously though, I had such a fun weekend. Even though I was hanging out with a bunch of moms ;). Just kidding. Honestly, I think I like hanging out with moms more than girls my own age. Moms are actually a lot of fun and they aren't dramatic and ridiculous like some 20 somethings.

We woke up Saturday morning to hear rain hammering the roof of our condo, so that was pretty terrifying. Thankfully it cleared up, so most the run it was just overcast or sprinkling rain. At my last mile, the rain began to pour. Maybe it made me run faster though because I just wanted to be done. It was such an adrenaline rush to cross the finish with people cheering and rain drenching my clothes though. So neat. And I loved watching my mom cross the finish. I am so proud of her. God gave me a top notch Mom. She's bursting with fun, determination, and awesomeness. That's for sure.

I've had some people ask me how I got through the race and how I paced myself. Personally, I just focused on getting to the next aid station. I tried to not even think about how many miles I had left total. And also, I found it nice to find someone to follow. You just pick someone that is going at a pace you like and then stick by them. It's like you're becoming their friend without them even knowing. And then if your friend you pick ends up getting too fast or too slow, just ditch that friend and pick a new one. For some odd reason, all my pickings were old men. Not super old. Just older. Like late fifties, early sixties. And they were the type of old men who were in incredible shape. I followed one guy for probably about four miles. He was about six feet tall and shaved his head. He had ripped calves, like more ripped than college boys. He was a good looking older guy, so I guess I picked well. We took turns passing each other and then we'd run side by side. When we got to an aid station, I was supposed to eat my energy jelly beans. I pulled them out but I couldn't get the bag opened while running slowly. So I stopped. And fumbled with the package. I looked up to see my old man friend ahead of me. He was turned around and looking at me, almost like, "Are you coming or what?" I lost the good looking older man after that. I even bolted from the aid station and weaved through people for a while trying to find him, but I failed. Don't worry though. I found another man about his same age and speed.

Sorry Brian. I almost feel like I cheated on you in some weird way by running around with old guys and checking out their muscular legs. At least you know you have a lot to look forward to, right?

Well, due to the rainy weather, we didn't take any pictures of our race. Later Saturday night, we did meet up with my great-aunt and cousin, Megan (they live in St George) for frozen custard. So some random person took a picture of us with our medals. And Megan just got in the picture because she doesn't need a medal to be cool.

So the lady that is not my mom who is standing next to me is my aunt Amy. People always get us mixed up and think we look alike. Do you think we do?

Well, that's all I have to say. I think I'll go stretch my legs out now. If you have any fun half marathon suggestions, I'd love to hear. Because I think it's in my blood now.

Sunday Best: Raining Cats & Dogs

I heard this story on the radio last week about how some 80 something lady in South America somewhere was walking out her front door one morning when a cat fell from the sky and landed on her head. It must have been a pretty big cat because she ended up in the hospital. Apparently the couple in the apartment above her had been fighting and, out of anger, the husband decided to throw the family cat at his wife. The wife dodged it, but the cat flew out the open window and hit the old lady below. Such a sad story and I hope that sweet lady is alright.

It hasn't actually been raining cats here, but goodness, it's been raining. With dark skies and angry weather, it can sometimes be an easy excuse to stay in sweats all day and not comb my hair. However, I was strong and still got dressed and also busted out the hair pomade. Okay, that's a bit of a lie. I didn't always bust out the hair pomade. On some days, I took the easy way out and just wore a hat. Like on Thursday when I wore a hat with this outfit. . .

dress: thrifted, blazer: maurices, polka-dot tights: Target, earrings: Claire's, hat: gift, ring: family air loom, boots: TJ Maxx

And yes, we took these pictures in a rush. Who wants to stand around in the rain and take pictures? Not I. And not Brian either.

I scored those boots last weekend for $16.00 and I was quite excited. And it's a good thing I decided to get dressed for the day because once I got home from classes, Brian took me out for dinner at Texas Roadhouse. He probably wouldn't have been as anxious to go out for a hot date with a wife dressed in sweats and with messy hair. Lucky me, because that medium rare steak tasted oh so glorious.     

Five Feel Goods (Running Edition)

Yeah, so I claimed I didn't want to do Five Feel Goods Friday any longer, but I decided I want to do one more. At least for today. You see, tomorrow morning I'll be running my first half marathon. I'm trying to get into this distance running thing, but I'm not that great. Maybe if I keep doing it then I'll someday be great. In high school and when I ran at college, I was used to running a little strip of the track. And usually I also jumped over hurdles as I ran down the strip of track. The race was over in the blink of an eye, and I was actually pretty good. I usually beat people. Well, I don't beat a ton of people in these kinds of races. And that kinda bugs me. Because I'm a fairly competitive person.

All the same, running is fun. It makes me feel healthy and it makes me feel tough. Even though I'm really not extremely healthy or tough. And for those of you that are trying to feel the love for running, here are five things that make me feel good and motivate me to go on a nice long run and (hopefully) not puke after.



1.

Fun running clothes are a must when you're running a race. I'm not into the whole matchy-matchy I took fifteen minutes to pick out my running outfit thing. But wearing clothes that are bright obnoxious colors always make me more legit when I am getting ready to run. I found these on Nike's website. That Nike, gotta love 'em.






2. 

I love using dailymile. It's an awesome website you can use to track all your runs. You can map your running routes out and see how long it is, track your times, and it counts up your miles for each week. You can also document how you felt during each run. It's awesome. And it doesn't just track running. You can track basically any type of exercise.


3. 

When it comes to running longer races, there are lots of nasty foods that give you quick energy. I tried these jelly beans over the summer for a relay race I did, and they were actually pretty tasty. And I swear they work! Every time I started slowing down and feeling dead, I'd just pop a couple jelly beans in my mouth and pretty soon I'd get a lovely burst of energy.



4.

Good music that pumps me up while I'm running is an absolute must. My playlist is seriously constantly changing. Sometimes I have mostly rap songs. Other times I have a lot of depressing piano serenades. And then there are those runs which are filled with classic rock and power ballads from the 80s. Above are ten songs off my playlist of around 40 songs for tomorrow.


5. 

Having great friends to run with is also a rad idea and probably my very favorite part of running in races. I would probably never go run many races by myself. I always go with friends so they can keep me motivated and so after the run is over we can party together.

I'm so excited to be spending this weekend in St George with my mom, aunt, and one of our other friends. It will be my first night away from BWell since we've been married, eek!

Wish me luck! If I don't cross the finish line after 3 hours, apparently they'll shut the course down.

Warm Fuzzies

This January weather can freeze a girl to the bone. But there are still those moments that just give me warm fuzzies. Like going on winter walks with that boy I love and sliding across the ice on the lake.

Puke

As a child, I must have had plenty of worst nightmares.

Like my friends finding out what boy I had a crush on. Or like falling off the monkey bars and cracking my head open. Or my dog dying. Or my mom not being home when I got off the school bus.

But probably my worst of the worst nightmares I had as a child was puking in public. Or just puking at all. Back in the day, when I was about four feet tall, I took ballet lessons. After one of my ballet recitals, my family and I stopped by Taco Time since it was late and we were starving. Later that night, I remember waking up and feeling completely sick to my tummy. In a half sleepy daze, I attempted to scurry down the ladder from the top of my bunk bed, where my brother Jace was sleeping peacefully in the bottom bunk. I then blindly wandered through the darkness and down the hallway toward the bathroom. I was determined to make it to the toilet. Well, my stomach beat my determination and I puked all over the wall. It's a scarring moment which I'll probably have engraved in my brain forever.

Luckily, that was my very worst experience throwing up. I remember watching many a kid chuck up on the school bus, leaving the rest of the kids to suffer through the rest of the ride with the putrid smell of throw up reeking through the vehicle. I couldn't help but always feel terrified for the thrower-upper. What a horrible and degrading experience; to be the kid who threw up on the bus.

Last Sunday, I had the not so great experience to deal with some puke. So I serve in the Primary at my church now and have been for a couple months now. I teach the four-year-old children, and let me tell you, it's a jolly good time. While sitting and enjoying singing time last Sunday, one of the girls in my class was acting odd. She is usually the type to be very animated and dramatic and very involved in everything going on. She wasn't acting so on this day. On this day, she was slumping over in her chair, sprawling out on the floor and making small whining noises. She then informed me and my partner teacher that her tummy hurt. So we took her to her dad. He soon brought her back and informed us that she was just being dramatic and was fine.

Well, he was wrong. Real wrong.

About ten minutes later, the girl came up to me and said, "Teacher, I still don't feel so good." So I rubbed her back and told her I'd take her to the bathroom. Promptly after telling her this, puke suddenly escaped her mouth. I jumped back and watched the throw up land on the ground where my shoes had just been. With that, I grabbed her arm and drug her into the hallway and in the direction of the ladies' room.

We never made it. She threw up two more times. I'm pretty sure she had peaches for breakfast.

Her parents came pretty soon after and began cleaning up her puke. In the meantime, I sat on the couch and rubbed the girl's back and wiped off her face. When I asked her if she was alright, she sadly replied with, "My dress is dirty," and she pointed to the spot on her dress where some puke must have dribbled.

Puke is bad. And watching a kid puke is just heartbreaking.

I don't plan on having kids for a while.

MLK Weekend

Virgin drinks while watching season three of 24 with BWell. Going on double dates with friends. Scoring a pair of black boots for $16. Watching my brother break his personal record in pole vault at an indoor track meet. Reaching that stage in life when you start getting invited to baby showers and it's kinda awkward, but you enjoy buying lots of fun baby books for unborn baby. Playing card games with friends while snacking on cherry cupcakes and drinking Mountain Dew. Having my first ever Five Guys burger with Brian and his mom. . .and loving it.

I'm all about those long weekends. Presidents' Day . . . I'm holding out on you.  

Why I'm Not a Fashion Blogger & Introducing Sunday Best

I like fashion as much as the next girl. But I guess I'm just not as committed as some. Yes, I'm talking about all those fashion bloggers out there. I honestly have no idea how they do it. Taking pictures daily of outfits sounds extremely tiring to me. Not to mention I feel completely awkward posing for a camera and acting like my clothes are the bomb. Oh, and have you seen those "What's in My Bag" posts? If I tried one of those you'd probably get a picture of a pile of receipts and gum wrappers. I mean, really.

So, props to you fashion bloggers. I could never do what you do, but I'll continue enjoying your creativity and hard work.

I have decided I want a taste of this fashion blogging world. But just a small sampling. Like we're talking when you go in the grocery store and they give you a free bite size sampling of cheesecake. So this is what will go down.

I'm doing away with Five Feel Goods on Fridays, at least for now. And as a replacement, I will test the waters with a Sunday Best post every Sunday. You know back in the days when people weren't so spoiled and they had maybe two or three outfits? And they always saved their nicest outfit for Sundays? Same idea. Well, sort of. Okay, not really.

The whole idea is that on Sundays I will feature one of my successful outfits from the week as a Sunday Best. Unlike those smooth and well-dressed fashion bloggers, I just lack the motivation some days to get all dressed up. Some days my outfits are utter failures. Lots of times you might catch me in my husband's clothes. Or better yet, you might catch me in my pajamas. So hopefully on at least one of the seven days out of the week, I'll have a snazzy outfit to feature as my Sunday Best.

That way you won't have to suffer through looking at outfits like this one:

Yeah, that's right. You're welcome.

After Dinner Mint & Poetry in the Park

I took on a little project and I ended up feeling real swell about the results. All I needed for said project was a glass frame, glue strips, letter stickers, and a stack of paint swatches.

You know what is wonderful about paint swatches? They are free. And it also doesn't hurt that I have a friend that works in the paint department of a home goods store so she doesn't question me when I'm picking out my paint swatches.

And those paint swatches have wonderful names. Whoever has the job of naming paint swatches better love their job. It's like they just look at colors, close their eyes, and decide how the color makes them feel. Like Poetry in the Park. And Pedicure at Lunch. And After Dinner Mint. It's really just delightful.

Any ways, I followed this tutorial off one of my very favorite blogs, A Beautiful Mess. She used a really big poster size (which I'm going to try in the future) and I just used a smaller size to first try it. You can color coordinate your art if you'd like and pick paint swatches in the same shades of colors, but it really doesn't matter. I just picked lots of different colors that I liked and combined them. I also varied on the sizes of the squares. I like how mine turned out and I'm glad I combined totally opposite colors together. It's basically all up to you. Play around with different colors and keep arranging them and moving them around until you get it how you like it.

I'm so excited to show this little art piece off in our home. As a college student who is also a renter, it can be difficult to sometimes decorate a place the way I want to. All the drab white walls can get real old real fast. So finding new ideas to brighten up my walls is ideal. Especially when those ideas are affordable and easy. I think I better find a place to hang this pretty up by our door, so when anyone leaves they can be reminded to 'have a nice day'!

Happy creating, all you crafty people!

Chloe Ann Comes to Town

My nine year old sister, Chloe, stayed with me and Brian over the weekend. If you're real tight with Chloe then you may call her Chlo Jo. But she's nine and nine year olds want to be tight with everyone. So just call her Chlo Jo.

You know what else nine year olds like? Well, they like arcades. They probably like arcades because they enjoy touching filthy machines with flashing lights and loud beeping noises, and then they like to gather up as many tickets as possible from the arcade games so that they can hopefully purchase something like a whoopie cushion or rubber bracelets.

21 year olds and 23 year olds also like arcades. They just don't like to openly admit it as much since it involves filthy machines and gathering up tickets to buy some garbage like a whoopie cushion or rubber bracelets.

So we figured having Chloe with us was the perfect excuse to wander off to Nickelcade. Nicklecade is the magical world where you can play all kinds of arcade games using nickels. It is absolutely delightful. Walking through the doors to that place would make anyone of any age feel like a nine year old. But the moment you walk out . . . I'm afraid you feel your age again and immediately want some hand sanitizer.

 

I believe I could probably play skee ball all day long. If I had enough nickels that is. Oh, and we ended up with over 700 tickets so we got all kinds of random prizes. Oh the joy of arcades.

I forgot to mention that Chlo Jo has been playing basketball. Saturday morning, prior to Nickelcade, we cheered her on. They were down, but made a wicked comeback and ended up winning by a mere two points. Good thing Chloe put her game face on and made three baskets in the last few minutes of the game.

We decided we didn't get enough basketball that day so that night we took Chloe to enjoy some Utah State basketball. We had to show the girl what it's like to be an Aggie since she'll be one some day.

 
And of course, she played with Luna a lot. That girl loves cats. And we love her. Thanks for entertaining us, Chlo Jo.