a year in review

my favorite photo of 2009

on my drive into work today [yes, i am lucky enough to work on new years eve] i was thinking about all the stuff we did in 2009. this was a big year for the payzant-wells house.

so, in keeping with tradition [see 2008's recap here, which is arguably better than this year's], here is my 2009 in review.

• started off the year in the front row of the world-famous rose parade, just up the street from our apartment
• i started my stationery blog
• i planned and staffed my first solo event for yamaha in santa rosa, CA [in a hotel with nightly cookie deliveries -- heaven!]. the event went great; my stress level, however, was so elevated i broke my phone.
• we took great "engagement" photos with mollie jane.
• i got to go to the american idol finale AND meet all the idols :) [also went to america's got talent w/ jolee]
• i sadly quit my first job after three long years [my last day was incidentally the day michael jackson died]
• celebrated another world-class birthday month with tepanyaki, the beatles, sewing and family
• we traded our warm, sunny, urban california life for MBA books, a new marketing job for me, snow and mountains when we moved to orem, utah
• we found out we're having a baby!

whew! what a year. i can only hope 2010 brings us more sunshine, a healthy baby and some more trader joe's deliveries. and tonight i'll be ringing in the new year with a dinner party, games and sleeping by 10 p.m. :)

i'm sorry.

i would just like to use this blog to send a giant apology out into the universe. i have been a lazy, home-ridden, attitude-laden brat basically since the day i got pregnant. sure, blame it on hormones or whatever -- but for real. sometimes i disgust myself.

i'm sorry.
sorry to the idiotic cheapskate women at the warehouse sale whom i continually snap at.
sorry that i tweeted my frustration about those women and that my boss saw it and called me out.
sorry to new and old friends for bailing on EVERY SINGLE holiday invitation sent my way. i really wanted to come. i just couldn't do it.
sorry to my family for laying on the couch most of the nine days we went to california for thanksgiving. i really did want to shop with you.
sorry to the h&m workers for when i had a total meltdown in the dressing room during said thanksgiving break. no joke, my mom just patted my arm and said, "honey, i'll buy those two shirts and then you can go home and take a nap."
sorry to our long-lost bff's the fackrells for months of planning a thanksgiving rendezvous and then instead showing up at their house, trying not to gag the whole time, watching an ep of yo gabba gabba and then going home early.
sorry to in n out for STILL not trying out the orem location. beef just makes me sick.
sorry to my self-image for not going shopping for two months. i have no winter clothes so i just wear the same five long-sleeve shirts over and over.
sorry to 24 hour fitness for not coming back in three months. i really miss running.
sorry to conan o'brien for not staying up late enough to watch his show live. since october.
sorry to my work roommate danielle for telling her what i'm craving and what makes me gag, each day every day.

and, most of all, sorry to b. that poor guy has SERIOUSLY taken up slack around the house. when i stopped cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and even washing my hair regularly he just started asking what he could do to help.

his culinary repertoire now includes chicken quesadillas, spaghetti, omelets and deconstructed chicken pot pie. he vacuums regularly. he runs errands for me while i'm at work. he did most of the family christmas shopping. he watches tv w/ me at night and then entertains himself with band of brothers for the three hours he stays up later than me. he laughs at me when i go off on emotional rants during dinner about all the morons that surround my world.

so b, this post is for you. i love you. and i'm really sorry.

doing the slam

b's australian friend recently taught him about the "tim tam slam" [yes, it actually has a wikipedia page] and he came home raving about it. last week he bought some tim tam cookies from target, but we never got around to trying it and instead i went to town on the little cookies. they are delightfully good, even without dunking them in anything.

anyway, last night we had four cookies left, so b decided it was finally time to try the slam. to try to get me pumped up, we watched this funny little video and i was ready to go.

we didn't end up getting the full effect of the "official" tim tam slam, but i will say that those cookies are DELICIOUS when dunked in hot chocolate. too bad we're out of em, because i would love to eat some more right now.

and...if you've tried the slam yourself...don't you think it looks slightly like someone snorting cocaine? haha. i'm just sayin. delicious chocolate cocaine. mmm.

guess my days of eating raw cookie dough are over...

well well well. i'm pretty sure a ton of people already know [my mom is really good at spreading news], but due to work-secret-keeping i couldn't blog about it until TODAY...so now i'm free! i'm having a baby!

baby wells [or baby dub. or zool, as the majority of my family calls it...as in, "there is no dana only zool" from ghostbusters...except there is "no lyndsey" when this baby is around, because i'm grumpy and sick and tired all the time] is due to arrive on the 4th of july, 2010 -- my favorite holiday.

at first i was super anxious about everything. but then a few weeks ago i had my first doctor's appointment and i saw the little jelly bean floating around and we heard it's heartbeat and it was all REAL. and we are so excited now.

baby dub is already the proud owner of a few gifts [thank you doris!] and a blog giveaway for some baby products, so we're well on our way. the past six weeks have been awful, feeling like i had the flu and having to be in bed by 930 p.m. every night, but i think i'm pulling out of it. i'm not showing at all yet -- in fact, i've lost seven pounds -- and the baby is currently the size of a lime [i LOVE the babycenter.com updates that tell you the corresponding fruit size of your baby every week!].

we're reading books and researching online enough to start feeling prepared...but let's be serious, i'm also freaking myself out over all the scary possibilities that could happen. i'm also avoiding lunchmeat and hot dogs [and raw cookie dough] but i REALLY want to eat them. i'm hoping for a girl, but b says he needs a boy. we'll see who wins.

and there you have it! if you noticed a drop off in blog posts, those started happening around the time i found out. i'm not good at keeping secrets, and since i didn't have much else to say besides baby stuff i just didn't post. now we should be back to regularly scheduled programming :)

the headless snowman & other funny tales

if you're a long-time follower of one-eyed wonder, you'll know b and i have been blessed to have some pretty crazy apartment-neighbors. [see: example a and example b.] most of these stories involve cats and odd pot-smoking single women.

in orem, we live on the top floor, so sadly there are no crazy cat ladies living above us. it has taken five months, but we've finally discovered something even better than a cat neighbor: the snowman drama downstairs.

we don't really know any of our neighbors here but have seen them around and delegated nicknames. the people who live directly below us are named 'ariel + husband' [the chick's name isn't actually ariel, but b heard her belting out the little mermaid soundtrack one day and it stuck]. they're nice enough; they let b borrow a wrench once, and we've smiled at each other in the parking lot.

ariel has a certain fondness for seasonal decor. every month we've lived here, her front step has been decorated with some trinket or other. scarecrow, labor day flag wreath, pilgrims, etc. a few weeks ago she put a snowman made out of white pumpkins next to her door. he was wearing a beanie and scarf and had a little painted face. not really my type of holiday display, but to each his/her own.

on sunday, we came home from church to find the snowman missing his scarf. there was also a note taped to his face in ariel's handwriting -- a full notebook-paper-page long. of course b and i read the whole thing; i SO wish i could recall the entire letter. it started off like this:

"to whom it may concern: i hope you are proud of what you've done! it's people like you that are ruining this country. why would you steal my snowman's scarf? that is rude and inconsiderate and i hope if you have children you teach them better morals than what you have. i like to put up holiday decorations and i don't know why that bothers you so much. you should leave other people alone!"

the note continued for the rest of the page; sorry i don't have more details. make them up in your head. we laughed about it and went inside and didn't think about it again [it's been in the 20s all week...we don't leave our apartment much].

yesterday i came home to eat lunch and the note was gone. also, the snowman's head was completely off and laying in the walkway! poor guy got beheaded. i was startled that the snowman war had come to blows like this. when i left to go back to work an hour later, his head was replaced.

and THEN. when i got home last night, the head was back on the sidewalk. we have a snowman civil war going on! i texted b the update and he requested a photo, which is what you see at the top of this post. poor little guy. i'm kind of hoping the next installment of this story involves a baseball bat, but i'll keep you posted.

p.s. just to keep things in the jovial mood, here's another humorous anecdote for you:
last night while we were sleeping b kicked/kneed me no less than four times. of course i kicked back every time, but i was still annoyed. this morning:
l: you're in trouble.
b: why?? what'd i do?
l: you kicked me the whole night last night!
b: sorry, i had a dream about hitler. what else do you expect me to do?

family photos

while we were home for thanksgiving, my mom made the whole fam get together for family pictures. i'm not entirely thrilled with how i look in them [hello utah-white skin :( ] but i think they're a great documentation of our little family right now. jennifer stock, photographer extraordinaire, took em.

some group shots:

the requisite couple shots...

poor sparky, the only unattached family member...but who cares. couldn't this kid be a hollister model or something?

i was hoping to use one of these photos for our christmas card this year, but ixnayed all of them due to the fact that they look too engagement photo-y. sorry. if you get a card from us, it will have no photo. feel free to refer to the blog for more photos than you could ever want.

and speaking of xmas cards...if i haven't emailed you to get your address and you want a payzant-wells card, send me your digits. we have a few extra cards and i'd love to send you one.

snow.

[view from my office]

i'm not so good at estimating measurements of these things, but i'd say we've gotten at least six inches of snow since saturday. it is COLD! yesterday i watched snowflakes dump from the sky for hours on end...coming from a place where it rains for maybe 20 minutes at a time, i was totally amazed that this precipitation could last for so long.

here are my thoughts on snow:

+ it is really, really pretty.
+ i love nothing more than a pure white field or sidewalk that hasn't been littered with footprints. gorgeous!
+ gives me a good reason to put on my sweats, grab a blanket and force b to watch home alone with me [movie was an early xmas gift. thanks babe! he also makes delightful homemade hot chocolate. this one's a keeper, i tell ya.]
+ sorta puts me more into the christmas spirit
+ makes me really, really thankful to live in a warm apartment with a warm bed

- it's cold. duh.
- my car is FILTHY. wow. i've never seen it so dirty. and i don't foresee a car wash in the near future because i'm currently trying to avoid anything involving water and the outdoors.
- driving in snow is scary and hard. yesterday when i left for work it was still snowing and the roads weren't plowed. i drove 10 mph the entire way to work. also, i like to drive aggressively. you can't do that when you're too scared to drive normally. therefore driving is not fun right now.
- i have a tendency to slip and fall in the snow. no all-out faceplants so far, but i have bad memories from the college days. note to self: buy more shoes with better traction.

bottom line: i guess there's a reason they say utah has the greatest snow on earth. i just wish i could stay inside until march and observe it from the comfort of my blankets.

obligated.

because i am just SO devoted to my workplace. here i am using my personal space to slang work-related ads. oh well. you were warned.

for real though. if you live around here, come! i'd love to take a break to shop with you...not to mention you will be highly rewarded. we've got awesome stuff down there for cheeeeeap.

and, just so this post isn't a total ad, here's some personal sharing.

i LOVE the thai food i ate for lunch. love love love. massaman curry tastes like candy and me likey.

also the high today is 28 degrees. BRR.

and our christmas tree is up. yay for the holidays!