Innocent and Shameless . .

I am always blown away by the hilarious things children say without meaning to be funny. . . I was sitting in singing time with the 4 & 5 year-olds that I teach at my church, when out of my peripheral vision I caught one of my young boys gazing at me with utter disgust. I asked him if everything was ok, when all of a sudden he picked up my hand, carefully examined my fake nails, and looked me straight in the eyes and said ,  "You need to trim these." 

"Mom, what are hot dogs made of?"

I came across this picture today on someone's blog and was slightly disturbed that it was likely fed to a poor child because their mom saw it in Martha Stewart Magazine and thought it was sooo clever & cute. Sure, I agree that it is sometimes necessary to be deceptive to make your kids eat well. But, an Oscar-Meyerpus a la green ramen noodles? Hid-e-ous.  

Are you kidding me?

10 days is a little much . . 

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Aspen Grove 2008

Cuddle Sutra

One of my gifts from Niels was this book. It has over a hundred different cuddling positions. Hence, Cuddle Sutra. Hil-arious

"Matching Pillow Set"

"Over the River and Through the Woods"

The Gift That Kept on Giving . . .

We had ourselves a merry little first Christmas together. We spent a lot of time with Niels's family at the Aspen Grove Lodges by Sundance. There were over 30 people from all over the country and a handful of little ones. We had a great time playing games and ping pong, watching movies and having snow fights. We also went skiing at Park City and snowmobiling nearby the cabins.


The older we get, the less it seems like Christmas to us. That is why we decided that is so much more fun to be around children on Christmas because they are so enthusiastic about it all! So much fun to see their little eyes and expressions light up as I tell them that I can hear Santa and his reindeer on the roof. It is so wonderful to have the ability to encourage good good behavior from them by threatening to call the elves at the North Pole to tell them not to bring any toys if they are bad.



The one drawback about the week was that many people got sick from a 24 hour stomach bug, a.k.a. -the gift that kept on giving. A few people fell victim to it everyday, including Niels. I didn't catch it luckily, and there were many others who had spouses who had it and didn't catch it themselves. So random- there was no real rhyme or reason to it.

The Pressure is Off Baby - We're in!!

Niels was accepted to dental school in Arizona!!! After 7 months of stress, essays, application fees and secondary applications we are happy to have this huge relief off our backs. I am especially happy that I can stop worrying that we would become the people in the grad school horror stories you all hear about, the ones people have been haunting us with all year . . you know the ones I am talking about . . . . " I know someone who applied to 20 schools and didn't even get invited to one interview!" or I love the ethnic ones . . "My friend had a 4.2 GPA and and a 24 on his DAT and has been rejected 3 years in a row, and he is BLACK!"

These are the type of stories have kept me up at night.

The way Niels told me was pretty funny, for him at least. Two Fridays ago we had decided in the morning that we would go to a nice dinner to celebrate Niels being done with finals and me being done with my huge office move that took place that week. I called Niels twice during the day and he didn't answer. Finally he called me later in the afternoon and was being really weird and distant on the phone. At one point he even cut me off and answered one of my questions with , "So how is work going today?" By this point I was officially annoyed with his super strange phone behavior, so I told him I would see him at 6 for dinner and got off the phone.

Because I am a woman . . . I began to assume the worst cases possible, naturally. What was he doing at home that he couldn't tell me? Why was he so jittery on the phone? Then the logical thought came to me that maybe he got into school and is excited to tell me . . . but I quickly dismissed that idea, because he had only interviewed 8 days before. The school told him it would be at least a month before a decision was made. I was so annoyed/perplexed at work the rest of day.

6 o'clock rolled around and Niels came to my office to get me for dinner. I came down the elevator still irritated about our earlier phone conversation. The elevator door opened and there was Niels with a long red rose in hand. (*For those of you that know Niels, know that the flower is a BIG deal*) I hugged him and we walked out to the car. I just sat and waited for him to say something, but instead he just sat there with a huge grin on his face, enjoying the fact that I was completely confused.

Finally I looked at him and said, "Honey, are you pregnant?" We both had a good laugh, and still . . he didn't say a word. Finally we got to the restaurant after 20 minutes of driving and right before we ordered he leaned over and said, "We got in."

Needless to say I was VERY excited, but I had to play it down because we were at one of those nice, quiet and dark restaurants. Had we been somewhere normal, I probably would have jumped on the table. I was so shocked because had only been 8 days after his interview. So proud of him.

This is very long so I will close, but I will end with an update on our application status. Although we have been accepted to Midwestern University in Arizona, we still are waiting to see if we have any other options before making a final decision.

Quick Stats:

• Applied to 15 schools total
• Denied by 7 schools
• Accepted at MWU Arizona
• Interview @ UNLV Jan. 17th
• Still waiting to hear from: University of the Pacific, Howard University, University of Louisville, Boston University, University of North Carolina, Virginia Commonwealth University

Looting

We were sitting the fence on whether or not to put up a tree this year as we would be so busy to enjoy it very much.  However, since my office is moving this Friday, I didn't bother setting up the tree there only to have to take it down for the move.  Also, the office is shut down for the week of Christmas, so it wouldn't make much sense to set it up at the new space either.  

I figured the office tree and all of it's decor needed a good home this XMAS, so we decided to loot and to adopt it this season =)

 

The only problem once we brought it home was that this 10' tree was way too tall for our itty-bitty house. So we were crafty and took out the middle segment of the tree and decided to use the top and bottom half to make our first little Xmas tree. It's wobbly if you touch it too hard, but it's just great for us!  

Niels is like a little boy in this picture

                    

Ta Dah!

 Well, I learned here, that pictures of trees never do justice because you can't see all the detail.  

Only in Utah Part II

Christmas Goodies

So, this is my (Niels's) firsts post on our little blog. I thought I'd spread the love and post a few Christmas songs. This year I've been listening to more "modern" Christmas tunes, so here's a few that are pretty hard to come by.

Good times, good times.

We are always happy and very willing to escape the cold and the snow. Last weekend we traded Utah's first snow day, for a heavy weekend of rain in Arizona! We flew down along with the rest of the family to celebrate the retirement of Dave Colton, Niels' step-father. It was a great and relaxing time filled with late-night girl talk among the sisters, and lots of sports watching among the brothers (and grandpa, of course).

Niels and I have been fairly spoiled the past three weeks with complimentary, fancy schmancy dinners. We have eaten at Sundance, La Caille, Ben & Sara's (my sister-in law who is in culinary school), The resort where Dave's retirement dinner was held, and Bambara at Hotel Monaco, SLC. Not too bad for newlyweds, eh? We have struggled with our transition back to normal people food this week. =)

A VERY Rare Occasion: The Colton/Jensen Crew Minus all the grandchildren at the dinner.

My mother-in-law treated the girls to pedicures! (oh yeah, and my my brother- in -law Dave too!)

Usually wives get baby hungry before their husbands do . . . These pictures of Niels and our niece Abby make me wonder if that will be the case for us.

Only in Utah . . .

A bumper sticker I saw in the Target parking lot tonight.

Domestic Woes

This is in response to my sister-in-law's blog entry where she talks about how she melted a frozen ziplock bag of soup to the bottom of her pan. As she puts it . .bottom of hot pot + plastic bag = big hole and ruined soup.

I had a similar domestic casualty. I made some pasta noodles, strained them, and decided that it would be fine to rest my plastic strainer back on the stove while I finished making the other stuff. (We have the old school coil burners stove) Niels and I ate our entire dinner without realizing what I had done. We soon realized this destroyed burner when we started to clean.

Human Tetris

This is hilarious! Crazy Asian game shows.

Our Wedding Album

Our wedding photographer was incredible. If you know anyone who needs a good one, you can visit her site at mkimagery.com. (No, we didn't get a discount for saying that, although we probably should.) Here is the link to our wedding album.


http://www.mkimagery.com/weddings/susie_niels_book/