guess what came today!!!

i am so officially on my way to europe! :)

un-tagged

so i've seen this little survey-type thing floating around on some of the blogs i stalk. no one has "tagged" me to do it yet but brandon is at basketball and i'm groggily recovering from a minor migraine and have nothing better to do...it looked like fun :)

10 years ago:
i was 13 and in the 8th grade at vineyard junior high school. this was my rebellious phase when i finally came out of the shy little shell i was born with. i had a lot of friends (the "popular" kids for once...how exciting...*rolls eyes*) and i talked a lot...talked back a lot also. two different teachers threatened me that year that if my mom weren't on the school board, they'd kick me out of their class. to which i said "BRING IT."

5 things on my to-do list today:
1. research "the issues" so i can make an educated decision when it comes time to fill in my mail-order ballot before CA's Super Tuesday election (didn't do it...stupid migraine)
2. fax our pay stubs to our new apartment manager (check!)
3. just about a million things at work, some of which i did and some of which have to wait till tomorrow
4. watch last night's jon & kate + 8 (check!)
5. eat healthy (almost check...i just can't resist stupid cookies. i ate like 4 today.)

I enjoy:
lots of things! in no particular order: edamame, fiber one granola bars, laughing on the couch with my husband, project runway, planning for europe, mapquesting how close my new apartment will be to all the important places in my life like trader joe's and h&m, stalking other people through their blogs, facebook messages, crossing things off my to do list, text messages, making cards, sleeping in, huddling next to the heater, driving fast, checking email, wearing cowboy boots, cookies. the end.

What would I do if I were suddenly made a billionaire:
definitely extend the european vacation. and probably get a nicer apartment. and also take all the craft classes at the paper source. and also quit my job and bake all day long.

3 of my bad habits:
1. getting cranky at my husband
2. eating too much dessert
3. over-multi-tasking and forgetting to enjoy the journey

5 places I have lived:
1. new york city
2. rancho cucamonga
3. p-town UT
4. los angeles
5. pasadena CA (as of 3/15!! it's official!)

5 jobs that I have had:
1. movie theater concessionist/box office ticket seller/trash sweeper
2. day care teacher, quite possibly the best job ever (crafts, snacks and kickball all day with the most hilarious 5 to 12 year old children)
3. cashier at the byu bookstore
4. comms 211 TA
5. my only REAL real grown up job: PR specialist and now associate account executive at GolinHarris, working in communications and marketing for Toyota and Yamaha

5 things people don't know about me:
1. i had surgery on my eyes when i was 8 months old to correct a vision impairment. that got fixed but they accidentally messed something else up and now i don't have depth perception.
2. i refuse to eat anything that has fallen on my kitchen floor
3. i HATE wasting things. even if it means choking down stale cereal just so i won't have to throw it out.
4. my wedding song sounds like a really great love song but it's actually some born-again christian pop/rock song that has nothing to do with romance
5. hmm...this is hard...i could eat cereal for every meal? lame. maybe i'll come up with something better and let you know :)...hey, i AM recovering from a migraine.

i tag angela and anyone else who wants to fill in their own answers and re-post ;)

what stress does to brandon

so last week was a little stressful for my wonderful husband. he's been a little overwhelmed at work and is worried about taking the GMAT in a few weeks. not to mention he is elders quorum president again in our new ward, and we had to speak in church yesterday, and we're apartment hunting right now.

he kept telling me he felt stressed out but i didn't really believe him. for one thing, i deal with stress by crying profusely (which fortunately he is not doing), and for another i guess i wasn't being very compassionate. so therefore i didn't think he was serious until yesterday afternoon.

brandon went to church earlier than me so he could be at ward council; i drove myself and met him there. church was normal and fine and after young women i said bye to him and drove home in the pouring rain. he had to stay to see his counselors get set apart. i didn't know how long he'd be so i made myself lunch and was halfway through a delicious monte cristo sandwich when he walked in the door.

"did you forget we drove together?" i almost spit out my sandwich when he asked me that. i said no, remember, we drove separately...and he started laughing. apparently brandon forgot he had his own car at the church and got a ride home with some friends, thinking his devoted wofe had somehow forgetten about him. HAHA. his honda just sat in the church parking lot all day until we went back for a baptism that night. i think his brain is beginning to short circuit.

poor thing. he's not really completely retarded you know...he DID fix a squeaky door in our apartment this week with nothing but a can of cooking spray. he is amazing...and sometimes amazingly forgetful. love you honey :)

president hinckley

if you know me, you probably know i have long had a freakishly unique love for president gordon b. hinckley, the prophet and president of the mormon church. he is the cutest little old man and the strongest, best example of Christ that i have seen.

so you'll most likely understand that i was sad to hear tonight that he has passed away at the ripe old age of 97. i'll save my emotions and extended thoughts on him and this occurrence for my journal, but i want to say that i am so grateful for his life and everything he accomplished for the church in the past almost-13 years he has been prophet.

one of the things i love most about this church is its order...president hinckley is gone but president monson will fall right into place as his successor and we will move on...and i will never forget the impact he had on my life.



gordon b. hinckley
1910-2008

by special request...

this blog is dedicated to angela rose (and erica rowles wilkinson) because i have received numerous requests for pictures of my new cowboy boots. yesterday i wore them with my new skinny jeans (which i am still unsure about as they are definitely SKINNY) so here you go:


(this is me standing in my favorite spot...right next to our heater. our apartment is poorly insulated and only has that one crappy heater, so when i get home from work i stand right there till my clothes feel like they're about to burst into flames. and then i switch sides :)


cowboy boots are gonna make a BIG comeback. mark my words.

this week has been FREEZING for LA. i haven't gone grocery shopping or done a lot of things i need to do because it's just too dang cold (even though we are rapidly running out of food) -- good thing i don't live in a place where it snows or anything :)

also i just wanted to share...part of my latest promotion means that I GET MY OWN NOTEPAD. i'm not going to lie, this was one of my most exciting moments of life, being important enough to have my own personalized notepad. yay.



and lastly i am going to start posting portraits of our apartment because i have a feeling we will not be living here much longer.



off to yoga...
xoxo from los angeles





(two shots i took this week...i love the sky with all the clouds.)

just cause i'm sure you were all wondering...

i'm such a baby. we ended up leaving work at 7 p.m. following my last post, which as i understand it is NOTHING to women married to lawyers, doctors, etc. it was no big deal having to wait...although i didn't make it to the gym, and i ended up leaving a WHOLE LOAD of laundry in one of the washing machines at the laundromat, which i didn't even notice (and probably still wouldn't have) until brandon asked where one of his shirts were, i didn't know, and he went back the next morning. haha. guess i need to slow things down a bit.

in other huge news, we may or may not have booked tickets to europe this week (!).

mark your calendars:
brandon & lyndsey
germany, austria, switzerland and france
sept 2008

CRANKY

UGH.
this is me, at my desk, at 6:07 p.m.
sad face.
i am waiting for my husband who is waiting for his boss to approve his document so we can go home.
thursdays are bad days for his team. i have now learned this.
this week's resolution: no more carpooling on thursdays.
i hate wasting time.
i could be at the laundromat...cooking dinner...watching project runway reruns waiting on my DVR...reading a book...anything really. anything that is more productive than playing scrabulous on facebook and reading pinkisthenewblog.
:(
6:09. pray for me.

you've had a birthday shout hooray

TODAY, january 15, is my beautiful momma's birthday!






i love you mom!!
she is my best friend and my number one fan.
i'm not kidding. i was in marching band in high school (a fact i don't love to publicize) and every competition or football game we performed at, we'd march out on to the field and wait to begin and i'd look up in the stands to see my mom, standing on her bench and waving her arms and screaming my name as loud as she could. friends from high school still tell me how much they loved to see my mom up there yelling "go band!" if that doesn't say biggest fan i don't know what does.
happy b-day to the best mom around. <3

goodbye cat lady

so we had this woman living above us who you might remember from such previous posts as this or this. i will not mention her name for possibly privacy issues.

turns out she really did have cats. turns out also she still liked to play loud hippie music in the evenings, that our ceiling leaked not once but TWICE while we've lived here due to her oversights, and that she's a little creepy.

on saturday there was SO much banging coming from upstairs. i could hear it while in the shower with the water running. sometimes in the past we had heard weird banging/rolling sounds (affectionately referred to as "roller cat" noises) but this new sound was nothing compared to that. then we left for the day and saw workmen going upstairs (presumably creating the banging sounds) but didn't think anything of it.

then yesterday when brandon came home from church he noticed all her pictures and knick-knack things had been taken down from her front room, so we asked the building manager about it and she confirmed that yes, she had moved. this is a direct quote: "it's probably better for everyone." they are now remodeling the apartment (hence the banging).

so now _________ is gone. and i'm actually kinda sad about it. i guess it IS time for us to move...the adams ward disintegrated, cat lady moved, etc.

but her being gone makes THIS story so much better:

a couple weeks before christmas i made cookie plates and made brandon come with me to deliver them to all the tenants in our building (some of whom i'd never met, but hey, it's christmas right?). _______ wasn't home when we stopped by so we left them with a little tag on her doorstep.

the next day there was an envelope stuck in our screen door. inside the envelope was a card shaped like a cat (i am not making this up). inside the card it said:

"Greetings.
Thank you for the baked goodies.
[name]"

i'm not sure i've ever laughed so hard. i was DELIGHTED that not only did the cat lady give us a cat card, she was so thoughtful and nice to send a thank you! i still smile thinking about it. after that i decided she wasn't so bad...and maybe i will miss her every time i hear "philadelphia." :)

i have thoughts too

so my friends noelle and valerie have started blogs where they send messages out into the universe regarding things they would like to have said. i thought this was a very clever idea as i have had many messages to send out this week.


dear morons who drive 50 mph,
really? are you not aware of all the open space, so valuable in southern california, ahead of you on the freeway? you'd think if you make enough money to afford that mercedes you'd maybe have a brain. apparently not.


dear see's candy,
thank you. from the bottom of my heart.


dear city of los angeles,
i hate driving to work with my husband, but i was feeling guilty for driving separately and wanted to do my part to save the environment. on the day i sporadically decided to carpool, of COURSE it would be the day for street sweeping and naturally my car stayed parked on the bad side of the road all day. i say screw the environment if it's going to cost me a $40 ticket. oh, and making me pay for my own postage on mailing in my ticket check? that's just adding insult to injury.


dear cereal,
you do not taste nearly as fabulous without my precious rice milk. you are now my favorite food only on condition.


dear stomach,
why is it that i fill you up beyond capacity with delicious japanese food one night, feel guilty and swear never to eat again, and then wake up the next morning to hunger pains? HELLO we need to work together here!

home for the holidays

well, not really home, but close enough. as previously mentioned i'm quite proud of how i held up during my first christmas away from my fam. i only cried twice the whole week.

utah (or shall we say inlaws-for-TEN-DAYS-straight) turned out great. we saw a lot of family, ate a lot of food (i was there 36 hours before going to cafe rio...which should be really impressive because 24 of those hours were on a sunday), did a lot of shopping, watched a lot of movies.

i thought i was going to go crazy around christmas eve because all we did was SIT. i haven't had a day with six consecutive hours of unplanned, unstructured time in possibly years, and i didn't handle it so well...but by the end i was a relaxed happy girl.

i wish i had more pictures to go along with this post but i don't :( but really, aside from skiing (which you already know about) and my visit to tai pan, you pretty much have the highlights.

did i mention it snowed like six inches while we were there?



i also got to stop and see my wonderful grandparents on our way out. i love them!!! my grandpa is almost 88 and just built a fireplace in their basement from scratch. grandma is 86 and can still cook and decorate a table like nobody's business.



(don't mind the byu shirt...i was still wearing it with pride after defending myself in a completely ute home while watching byu barely win their bowl game :)

here's something i have pictures of! two days before we left, my family came out for our traditional holiday outing to lawry's and to open presents. for those of you unfamiliar (or who know it as only seasoning salt), lawry's is a fabulous prime rib restaurant in bev hills (a couple other locations too...las vegas, chicago etc.). their food is AMAZING and my whole family goes for christmas, all dressed up.

grammie & grandad, mom & dad, me & brandon (rachel and grant were there too but no one wants your picture if you're not married...LOL):





and that's all. now that my house is all naked-looking and the holiday excitement is over, i guess it's time to get back to work :(

right now

this week i...

- started out in utah
- drove 10 hours home and ended up back in LA
- didn't stay up till midnight on new years eve for the first time in my life
- hurt the muscles in my arm from playing too much wii (once again, further proof i'm not the most athletic person)
- went back to work ... (i would go into further detail but i have decided not to write about work anymore due to previous privacy issues)
- spent entirely too much time and energy eagerly reading up on the latest spears family drama...is it wrong for me to enjoy the soap opera that is their lives SO entirely much? that is, until britney pulls an anna nicole smith...which will prob happen soon...but up till then i will continue to love every second of it
- cooked some lovely teriyaki chicken on my fabulous new cast-iron grill pan from crate & barrel (thanks momma :)
- finally started to understand my ipod
- used the ipod at the gym...where i began my 2008 training resolution for more toned, more buff arms and now i hurt again
- came across and subsequently became obsessed with many more blogs belonging to people i have never before met (does it make it less creepy if i'm connected to them in less than six degrees? please?)
- SIGNED UP FOR MY 401K!!! yes it's true...i'm only 13 months late in doing that. feel free to calculate just how much money i've lost by not doing so earlier. when i was talking with the real simple editor she was so surprised how financially savvy i was -- until she heard i don't have a 401K. and then she thought i was an idiot.
- put away all my christmas decorations, reorganized our front closet and cleaned my whole house (that was all today, thank you very much!)

now i plan to...

- play some more wii with my fantastic husband
- find out our new ward boundaries tomorrow at the reorganization ward conference
- finallyyyy figure out an appropriate outfit for my AWESOME new cowboy boots
- eat cookies
- continue my new daily blessings journal (another resolution, thanks to henry b. eyring...except so far i've missed three days in 08 and we're only five days in :(! )
- sit back and relax because i crossed everything off my to do list and i am so happy about it :)

happy 2008 from downtown los angeles!!

adventures in skiing

our christmas was great. we drove to utah on dec. 22 to stay with brandon's parents in sandy; i only got a little sad that i wasn't with my family. we got big-time spoiled in the gifts area. except i really had no reason to be sad about the fam thing because MY fam was in provo, visiting my grandparents, and the day after christmas they came up and we went skiing together.

now i should stop here and say that i have never been skiing before in my life, nor have i had any interest. i'm not really into snow. but, like playing tennis and watching college football, there are many things i never knew i enjoyed until i married brandon so i was game to try it out.

brandon was great and made sure i was very bundled up...he even bought me awesome ski pants and high-tech gloves. but i was still a little apprehensive.


this is me before we started...still not so sure what i'm getting into.



my cute husband



rachel and grant gearing up

so we started out on the bunny slopes...i only fell when i tried to get off the ski lift the first time (seriously, who decided to put the hardest part of the trip right at the beginning??) i was a little nervous but i got the hang of it pretty quick. my dad and brandon were great teachers but i could tell i was slowing them down; after a while the boys decided to go try some harder slopes and left my mom and i to practice. please note i was still on the bunny slopes...not even the green beginner ones yet. and i was still going slow.

after a while my mom and i were feeling a little more confident and ready to try a beginner slope. so we trekked over to what we heard was the nearest green, but it was actually a blue/green. i knew we were in trouble when we rode the ski lift for 10 minutes straight -- it had 21 towers along the ski lift, and the one i had just come from had only 6. bad news.

so we get to the top and let's just say it was WAY more advanced than i could handle. i asked the lifty if i could ride the ski lift back down but of course he said no. so we started going down....very slowly...but it was way too steep and i was really scared and couldn't even force my legs to snowplow. some other skiiers came by and tried to help me but it was no use...basically i just sat down in the snow and cried. i was SO freaked out. looking back it's pretty funny, but at the time i was very unnerved.

but wait...it gets better. i started stepping down the hill...it would have taken me two hours to get down that way...and i asked if they could call ski patrol to help me down. so the guy comes and asked if i wanted to try going down on my own and i said NO and he said well i can take you down on a sled and i said YES. so he went and got the sled they use to transport injured/dead people and i hopped on and rode it down, snow flying in my face the whole time. HILARIOUS except i thought i was going to die. hahaha who rides a sled?? and then i was 1 1/2 hours late for lunch, where no one knew what had happened to me. i totally got the award for lamest skiier that day...which says a lot because my sister twisted her knee snowboarding and only rode for a couple hours.

so i survived. and then i spent the rest of the afternoon on my happy bunny slope, trying to get my confidence back up. by the end of the day i felt a lot better ... maybe next time i'll try a real green. or maybe not.

i'll be back soon to post more about our utah trip and holiday festivities. just wanted to share this lovely experience :)