home sweet home

so general conference is next week :)

also looks like we will be staying in the hood for a bit longer. i can't remember if i posted about our househunting escapades but it was a little more daunting than anticipated...and then two weeks ago i was called to work with the young women in our ward. i will be teaching the 12 and 13 year old girls and i am really excited for this new opportunity. so we are staying...at least six more months.

work has been busy. i destroyed a crock pot dinner the other night. (if any of my loyal readers have tips on good crock pot meals please pass them on...i suck at it) the office starts up tonight (YAY). my one year anniversary of working at golinharris was tuesday (can you believe it's been a YEAR??). and that is all.

oh also p.s. -- i just finished a great book, the glass castle, by jeannette walls. check it out if you have time.

work can buy me breakfast any time it wants

so it has been a busy week but i just got home and i am WIPED.

the business trip went well. i arrived at the airport sunday to find my flight delayed (what else is new) and eventually cancelled; we managed to rebook but arrived in eureka, california to find that not only had my suitcase not made it on to the new plane, the rental car place was closed so we had to take a shuttle to the hotel and then come BACK the next day to get our cars. (please see my sweet minivan below :)

to make a long story short everything ended up relatively fine; when you plan an event involving ten journalists, a private jet, three hotels, and a catered lunch stop in the middle of a deserted forest something is bound to go wrong (and of course a few things did) but overall i had a good time and felt it was successful. i put about 350 miles on my little minivan and didn't sleep very much. but who am i kidding -- not only did i get to eat fantastic meals the whole time, everywhere i went they gave me free cookies!

the best part was that i got to fly on the private jet home this morning. it was soo swanky...hot towels (like on the wedding singer...haha), fresh fruit served on a real plate, even free gum when we disembarked. :) then as soon as we landed a fleet of private cars drove up on the tarmac to transport us each individually home...my first time having a personal driver. lovely.

please enjoy the pictures below (sorry there's not more...i was so busy the whole time i didn't have much room for sightseeing or even documenting the trip much) while i go take a nap. four 14-hour workdays make me a little sleepy.

my pimp ride.

BAM. star motorcycles. what.

the jet in question.

just a lovely view of the redwood forest. beats sitting at a desk all day right?

in the private car.

not much new around here

it's the halftime of the U of U/UCLA game and my husband is dutifully cleaning the bathroom. :) finally the dark cloud has been lifted from the wells' household because the utes are actually winning and brandon is happy. i'm just mad BYU couldn't play like this against UCLA last week.

things have been quiet for us lately (or rather, i don't have many pictures to illustrate our recent activities). work has been super busy for both brandon and me -- my event is only a week away, and brandon was just promoted to account executive at ruder finn. he has been celebrating this milestone by doing important things like attending pre-emmy parties on behalf of tivo and meeting all sorts of b-list celebs.

i was fortunate enough to go to utah and idaho last week to take my sister back to school. it was a super busy whirlwind trip (we had less than 24 hours to move in rachel's boxes, empty her storage unit, clean dishes & do laundry, unpack all her crap and do the infamous grocery run...it was intense) but i had so much fun. after dropping her off my mom and i hung out in provo for a day and a half. i love utah! don't hold me to it but we really might move back there one day. i miss seasons, and friendly people, and the mountains.

even though we were so busy i was able to do a session in the SLC temple, have dinner with my MIL, visit with my grandparents and UT-residing family, shop at the BYU bookstore and lehi mill and great harvest bread (don't worry i stocked up on supplies! i think i'm set for the next year...or at least till we go back for xmas), and of course dine at the world-famous j-dawgs and cafe rio. YAY!

although i don't have many exciting pictures to represent the trip, here are a couple:

gotta love utah storms

only in idaho would you see a back of a car that looked like this (my mom contends that it represents some married children too, but i maintain that it is STILL a lot of kids)

my 87-year-old grandpa decided this year to put a fireplace in their basement. this was previously a flat wall that is now transformed into an amazing electric fireplace! (this one's for you steph :)

fight on

yesterday was an all-around great day for college football. although i did spend maybe 8 hours of my day doing activities that involved watching football...and that is a little much for me. geez, three years ago i couldn't even sit through a whole BYU game. haha guess that's what being married to a football freak will do to you. i'm even learning things, like about conversions and tipping and lots of things that are most likely common knowledge to the rest of the planet.

hmm our K key doesn't work on this laptop and i have to bang it to get it to come up. boo.

anyway we spent the afternoon watching BYU kill Arizona (don't worry, we just added a whole extra sports package to our cable so we can watch all the Utah and BYU games...hahaha), which made me very happy but made brandon cranky. (after the U lost so bad earlier this week, i think he hated BYU even more for having a successful first game.) it is sad to cheer by yourself.

THEN we went to the Coliseum for the USC/Idaho game, which consequently USC won by a million. we were in the 16th row and it was so much fun. the trojans are an amazing team and i love how everyone gets so into it...i've never seen so much red and gold in my life.

GO BAND!!!!

we were right on the end zone so we had a pretty good view of the trojan touchdowns :)

just so you know, i am not a traitor or anything. i was raised a trojan fan because my grandparents are alumni and have had football season tickets for 50 years. now they live in AZ but still come out for most games...but we are the beneficiaries of any tickets they don't use :) i love my cougs but i gotta say...nothing really compares to USC.

and now i'm off to the mormon corridor (a.k.a. idaho and utah) for the week to take my sister back to school and catch up on some much-needed cafe rio time. :)