GNO. Girl's Night Out.

Last night we celebrated Stacey, my sister-in-law's, birthday.  We had a delicious dinner at Guru's, got pedicures, and went out for gelato.
Sorry in advance for all the feet pics.  I know, feet are gross.

At Acadia

Emmali getting her toes done.

Pushing back my cuticles and cutting them off.

Soaking my feet in lotion or conditioner stuff.

Getting a leg massage.

Finishing up with the paint.

Tada!  My purple toenails with my free flip flops haha.

At Gloria's just after eating gelato.

It was my first time getting a pedicure, and it felt nice to be pampered!

Trials in Marriage

I've been thinking a lot about marriage and how many people, including newly married friends we've had in our student married ward, get divorced. There are many things that can cause this to happen, but they all come about because of trials.  And I think Satan is trying his hardest to make sure that these trials break marriages and families apart.

Let's face it.  All marriages have trials, whether they be great or small.  Robert and I have definitely had our share in the past *almost* two years of marriage, both small trials and a big one.  Before I even met Robert or started dating him, I would think about my future husband.  A lot of the things I thought about were what ifs.

What if I married someone that I argued with a lot?
What if I married someone and we never could agree on any decision?
What if I married someone and they decided to leave the church?
What if I married someone and we just drifted apart?
What if I married someone and we could never have children?
What if I married someone who was abusive?
What if I married someone with an addiction?
What if I married someone who would leave me for some other girl? 

I kept thinking of these things, but then I started dating Robert seriously and then we got married, and I decided those questions weren't important.  The important question is What will I do when those trials come?  Because they will.  The trials might not even be huge, but each couple will experience them.

To be honest, I had no clue what I would do.  I didn't have an answer to how I would react when trials came.  I have learned a lot about myself as trials have come along in my marriage, and I am proud to say that I have an answer to my question What will I do when those trials come?  How will I react?  And my answer is: I sure as heck am not going to sit on my butt and hand my marriage over to Satan.  I am going to do whatever it takes to stay with the man I chose for time and all eternity.  Of course there are extreme circumstances where the only thing to keep you physically and emotionally safe is to get a divorce, but other than that, work and fight for your marriage!  The only person, other than your spouse and yourself, that can help you fight for your marriage is God.  Marriage is a three-way relationship, and if you have God in your marriage, it will not fail.

I have found that the trials in my marriage bring me closer to Robert (except for the trial of not agreeing on baby names.  Haha just kidding).  Trials bring me closer to Robert in ways that would not have happened otherwise.  Trials make or break you.  Trials make or break your marriage.  Let them make you.  Let them make you grow as an individual.  Let them make you grow closer to your spouse.  Let them build your marriage into something beautiful.

The 24th Birthday Weekend.

Robert turned 24 this weekend!  His birthday was Saturday, but we celebrated all weekend long, starting on Friday.  On Friday we stopped by Scheel's to check it out.  We didn't find Nemo, but we found Dory.

 Also on Friday after Robert had work, we went golfing with his family.  It was the first time I went real golfing (aka not mini golfing).  Let's just say I will probably never do that again hahahaha.

But I am surprised at how sore I was the next day.  Especially my abs.  Probably from turning and swinging my body.  I was probably doing it wrong haha.

The next day, Robert and I went to the store to pick him out some new socks for his present.  We also found a dress shirt for $10!  What a bargain!  Later that evening, we had hamburgers, and then we headed over to the BYU-Utah game.

Emmali made him a birthday crown.

Sad because BYU didn't play very good.

Robert all tuckered out from a super long day.  What a cute sleeper.  Hehe.

On Sunday we went to my family's house and had homemade pizzas.  They were delish!  We also went to my grandparent's house to play some games.  Later that night when we went to pick up Robert's brother, Thomas, we had some cake and ice cream (we didn't get to eat it the night before because we had to hurry to get in line at the BYU game).

Robert leading us in the birthday song.

Don't mind his blurry face... he went to blow the candles out too fast.

After a weekend of play (and a little bit of homework), it's back to school :(  I seriously can't wait to be done with the school thing.  Only 3 more semesters to go (hopefully)!!!

Halloween Crafts

Hallow's Eve is almost upon us (okay, kinda but not really) and here are the cute crafts Emmali and I did last night:

My "Spooky" block letters.

Emmali's cute lil' witch.

So fun.  Can't wait to put my decoration up in my apartment!  I might wait a little while though... it seems a little too early for Halloween decorations.  I mean, school just barely started!

#tbt 2

Back to when I  hiked Angel's Landing and found a bent tree.

Cyclops sunglasses at Claire's.

When I was crazy in Young Women's.  Chocolate staches.

And more craziness in Young Women's.  Giving awesome make-overs.

 Happy Thursday!  It's almost Friday!

Carmelitas

My boss introduced me to carmelitas.  They ooze with caramel, and they are crumbly with oats and brown sugar.  So good!!!! They're super unhealthy, but you might as well indulge yourself in this once in a while. I thought I'd share this recipe because everyone needs to make them!

Ingredients:
32 caramel squares, unwrapped
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

Combine caramels and cream in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until completely smooth; set aside. In a separate bowl, combine melted butter, brown sugar, flour, oats, and baking soda. Pat half of the oatmeal mixture into the bottom of an 8x8" pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Remove pan from oven and sprinkle chocolate chips over crust. Pour caramel mixture over chocolate chips. Crumble remaining oatmeal mixture over caramel. Return to oven and bake an additional 15-20 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned. Remove from oven and cool completely before cutting.
*A stint in the fridge will help them cool off if you're pinched for time. They shouldn't be served cold, but all of that molten caramel takes a long time to cool down. They should be stored and served at room temperature.
**If you want to use homemade or store-bought caramel sauce in place of the caramel/cream mixture, use 1 1/4 cups of sauce.
***To make a 9x13" version, simply double the amount.

Oh, and she said her sister said she got this off of Lulu the Baker's blog (just citing my sources so I don't get in trouble for plagiarizing haha).

Yeah, not the best picture to capture the deliciousness, but just take my word for it.  Okay?  Okay.

Simply U

For Christmas my parents bought Robert and I a few essential items, which included shampoo and conditioner by Simply U.  This brand makes their shampoos and conditioners safe to use for hair, leaving out sulfate and paraben (those two things damage hair).  We still had shampoo and conditioner to use at the time, so I haven't started using it until about 2 weeks ago.  At first I didn't think it would make a difference to my hair.  I was just using the Organix Coconut Milk shampoo and conditioner (sulfate free), and that stuff wasn't doing anything to my hair (at least that was noticeable).  So I thought the Simply U stuff was just another brand of shampoo and conditioner that claimed to make your hair moisturized and soft when in reality it didn't do squat.  On top of that, the shampoo and conditioner smells gross.  They literally smell like bathroom cleaners, especially the conditioner.  But after 2ish weeks of using this stuff, my hair has gotten the softest it has ever been!  I wash my hair every other day or every other two days, and one time I noticed after not washing my hair for two days that it was still super soft when I got it wet to wash again.  And it has been noticeably less frizzy (still ugly wavy but less frizzy).  Luckily my heat protector smells divine (I posted about this a while back) and covers up the bathroom cleaner smell.  I looked on Walmart's website to see how much this stuff costs and I was surprised at how inexpensive it is.  Especially for the sizes of the bottles.  They are about $6 each!  And I think they come in like 24 oz. bottles.  My Organix ones I bought were in small 13 oz. (okay it doesn't sound small, but they definitely look small) were $8 each!  So I will definitely be buying this stuff in the future.  I also noticed that the shampoos and conditioners now include keratin (which does a lot of things to help hair), so I will buy that kind once I run out of my current stuff (hopefully they improved the smell.  But oh well if they didn't haha).  If you can get past the smell of the shampoo and conditioner, I would highly recommend this for your hair!

Support Your Local Sheriff

July is the month of family reunions.  We had one on the 4th for Robert's family, and this weekend we had one for my family.  Every year my family goes camping down in Beaver on Tushar Mountain, and every year there is a theme (the siblings rotate turns to be in charge).  This year the Mills chose to center their theme around the movie "Support Your Local Sheriff", a silly cowboy movie.  Robert and I left Friday morning and got there right when all the activities were dying down :(.  But that's okay cuz we got to play games later anyway.

Driving down with our cool twinner Jazz glasses.

And it was raining like crazy so we didn't need the sunglasses.

Asian man wanted.  Jk.

Robert the outlaw! P.S. that bandana smelled really weird hahaha.

Ridiculous.

Our Friday consisted of a few card games (7 Up, Hand and Foot and Scum) and my cousins brought a projector for my aunt so we could watch "Support Your Local Sheriff" under the canopies (it was raining) while eating popcorn.  Speaking of rain, luckily we got to have a campfire this year.  Last year it was raining and we didn't get to have a fire and it was freezing!  I thought for sure we wouldn't be able to have a fire again because of this drought Utah's had this summer, but luckily we did!  Camping just isn't the same without a campfire.

On the way home we stopped at a gas station in Beaver and took a picture with a beaver.

The 4th.

On the 3rd Robert and I went down to Fillmore with his family.  We went down for a family reunion, and we also went down to see Robert's grandparents in the parade (they were the grand marshals).  The day before the parade we got to watch a free movie at this old school theater.  We watched "The Croods".  I love that movie!

The movie screen is behind those curtains.

The Fillmore parade sure was somethin'...  I thought the Mapleton parade was small, but boy was I wrong hahaha.  It took like an hour, but there were like 10 cars (okay maybe like 15) throughout the entire parade so each group was spread out in 5 minute intervals.  So it felt like the majority of the time I was just sitting there staring off in the distance as the next car slowly drove toward us.  On the plus side, I got a huge otter pop :)

The Grand Marshals sitting in the back seat of a spiffy car.

Someone brought coolio hats that we wore.

Making a dumb face cuz the sun was in my eyes.  And look at my horrible posture.  I look like a giraffe with my neck sticking out.

Yup.  That was the bumpin' parade. The family reunion was shortly after.  It involved lots of good food, chatting with others, and cleaning up.  We got to relax a little after all the hard work before we got back in the car to go back up north.

That night I went to my grandparent's house with Robert and we met my long lost cousin (okay not really long lost, but that's a whole 'nother story).
**Random tangent:  Saying  "a whole 'nother story" out loud sounds normal, but "nother" isn't even a word...  But it sounds just as weird saying "a whole another story".  Anyone even know what's correct??
Back to the story.  We met my cousin and her adoptive parents, and we played volleyball outside on the lawn (which is definitely not my sport).  After we got a private concert from Emma/Kandice (my long lost cousin) and her dad.  Robert sang a song as well, along with McKell and Tanaya.  After the "concert", my dad performed some magic tricks for Kandice and her parents while we waited for it to get a little darker for fireworks.  My uncle, Gary, then gave his annual reading of the Declaration of Independence, and off went the fireworks.  There was no need to go to the Stadium of Fire since some of our fireworks were pretty much Stadium of Fire worthy.  I stuck around for an attempted game of Capture the Flag (attempted because the layout was weird and we didn't really clarify some of the rules so both teams were doing different things haha.  And we just weren't getting anywhere with the game.)  The rest of the group decided to play Sardines, but it was late and Robert and I needed to get home for work early in the morning (bleh).  So here I am... at work... where hardly anyone is.

Here were some of many hot air balloons above our apartment complex as Robert and I left for work in the early morning.

Birthday Balloons

This weekend was Tina's (my mother-in-law) birthday.  Here's a cute idea for a birthday surprise if you don't have an idea.  Emmali got this one off of Pinterest.

These were originally supposed to go on her bed but under the circumstances, we decided to put them in the living room so that when she got into the house she would see them sooner.  They are just a bunch of balloons and there are pictures tied onto the ends of each string.  It didn't take too much work, but I don't think I'll do this ever again.  The balloons were being difficult when we tried putting them into our car.  One popped and another escaped as I was trying to stuff them into the car without letting them touch the outside of our car because the heat would have melted the balloons and popped more of them.  If you have a van with big doors or something then I don't think the balloons will cause you any trouble.

It was such a busy weekend with the birthday and with Stacey's (my sister-in-law) baby shower, so I had a hard time getting up this morning.  Yay for another week of work.  But for reals... I only have to work 3 days this week because I'm taking the 3rd and 4th off for the 4th of July.  But I could go for a nap right now... just 10 more minutes until my lunch break and I'm out.  Well.  Maybe after I eat some food.

New Swim Suit!

Last week I went swimming on Monday and Tuesday, but before I went, Robert said he had a surprise for me (he surprises me a lot!).  So we got in the car and he just started to drive, while I sat there trying to get answers out of him.  He started driving the direction of the Riverwoods, so I thought maybe he was taking me to get Kneaders.  Of course he just smiled and didn't answer, so I really thought I guessed right!  Wrong.  Instead we went to Lime Ricki cuz he wanted to buy me a suit.  Unfortunately I wasn't swooning over any.  There were some alright ones, but they didn't win me over enough to make me want to buy them.  We then went to Downeast but no luck there either.  I kept telling Robert that I had swimsuits and I didn't need anymore, but he kept insisting the he should be me a new one.  We went home after our treasure hunt for a cute suit and I got my swimsuit on while Robert continued looking for a suit online.  He found a website with cute suits that I pinned on Pinterest and we looked on there.  The one I originally pinned was all sold out (it's super cute and too popular), but I found one that was still really cute and not sold out.  My new suit arrived yesterday!  I can't wait to wear it the next time I swim!  It's the perfect swimming weather (100 degrees!) but too bad I am stuck inside working :(  I wanted to try and go swimming on Saturday since it will still be in the 100's, but Robert's mom birthday is that day and we're still not sure what the plans are.

Robert sent me this pic while I was still at work.

That picture isn't the best, but I promise it's cute!  Hopefully I get the chance to wear it to the pool soon.

Ragtime

It was quite the weekend.  Friday night Robert went with his dad to a Father and Son's outing with his dad, so I went to "Ragtime" up at the Hale Center in Salt Lake with his mom and one of their ex-single's ward girls.

It was a pretty good musical.  The stage was interesting too because it was in the center of the room with the audience surrounding it.  I was wondering how they were going to do the acting (keep turning around and spinning in circles?), but it turned out the stage could spin around.  The sets were really good too.  Reminded me of back in the day when I took a theater class where we built sets and did all the backstage stuff.  Good times.  My favorite part of the play was the soulful voices of the black ladies.  Loved it.  Oh wait.  Rewind.  I got to eat pho for dinner!!!  So good!  Okay moving on.

I stayed over night at the in-law's house.  The next day Robert and I went to a little boy's birthday party in our ward, then we ran over to the movies to watch "Man of Steel" with Robert's family (his sister, Emmali, gave us a surprise visit from Idaho). 

So I ordered the tickets earlier that day, thinking I ordered the tickets at the Provo mall, so Robert and I are waiting there.  And waiting there.  The movie started at 3:20.  It was 3:30 and they still didn't show up.  Then Robert gets a call saying that they can't find us and they ask us where we are.  Come to find out I ordered tickets for the movie theater at the Orem mall.  Are you kidding me?!  (Just so you know, I hate missing the beginning of things, such as T.V. shows.  Like if I even miss 5 minutes, I don't wanna watch the rest and just watch it on Hulu the next day.  I know, maybe it's a little extreme, but I don't like missing details!!!)  It took us another 15 minutes to get down there (and we hit like every red light possible).  Luckily the beginning commercials were super long, so by the time we got there we only missed the birth of Superman, which I didn't mind missing.  Phew!  I was so excited to see the movie, but it turned out to not be as great as I thought it would be.  I loooved the Smallville series and I like the other Superman stuff, so this one was kind of disappointing.  First of all, they didn't even have Kryptonite in the entire movie!  Second of all, he has random flashbacks which makes the movie jump everywhere.  Third of all, I didn't grow to love the characters.  They didn't really develop the characters enough to make you grow attached to them.  And the last thing... the love of his life and girl-next-door Lana Lang was like in one scene of the movie.  Plus Clark and Lois Lane just randomly fall in love.  Retarded.

Art City Days

This week in Springville was Art City Days.  Robert and I were going to go to the carnival on Friday, but decided not to go after driving by and seeing that there wasn't much to it.  But rewind.  Thursday Robert and I had our date night.  We ate at Buffalo Wild Wings, then went and saw the Star Trek movie in Lehi (we got a gift card to spend there so we thought we'd use it).  It was a fun date, even though the dinner was too much meat for me (I need variety... like throw in a salad or side dish or something), and even though I'm not a huge fan of galaxy spaceship type movies.  Star Trek was a good movie, don't get me wrong.  It was just a good one-time see.  Part of it may have been that the earliest showtime (it was a school night after all) was in 3D, and that movie was not a good movie to see in 3D with all the movement and lights and all.  Yes, I got a headache.  But mostly it's because of my reason number one of not being a huge fan of those types of movies.  I would have to be in that type of mood to watch those movies (which is rarely, but it does happen... like when Robert and I had a Star Wars marathon).

Fast forward back to Art City Days.  Robert and I decided to sleep over in Springville because I was going to the parade with his parents the next day and he had work early in the morning, and with the roads being closed for the parade, we decided we might as well sleep over.  So instead of going to the carnival on Friday, we just washed our clothes at his parent's house and listened to the bands that were playing down at the Arts Park (they live just above it, so we got a free concert in their backyard).

Just waiting for Foreigner to start singing

Saturday was the parade day.  I didn't really take pictures, mostly because we sort of sat behind a bunch of people so the view wasn't that great.  Plus there wasn't much to take pictures of ha.  They gave out lots of free stuff (like at most parades haha), but the thing I remember most was just being super sweaty.  It was pretty warm, but the sun felt nice up till I was soaking through my clothes.  After the parade Robert got home from work and we took a nap, then after the nap I washed our car while Robert went to the neighbors' to mow their lawn.  Later that night we made homemade ice cream and hit some golf balls around the yard.

We ate some ice cream, then took some over to my family.  We stayed a little bit to play a couple of games of Uno (which weren't fun because Robert won every time!  JK.  It was still fun.) and then we started a game of Hand and Foot, but the fireworks were starting so Robert, Karson, my dad, and I went back over to Robert's house (well, his neighbor's house) to watch the fireworks.  We got there just in time to unfold our camping chairs and sit down to watch the finale.  Hahahaha. 

So after two seconds of sitting, we went back to my parent's house and finished a couple of rounds of Hand and Foot.  And I lost horribly.  Like negative points horribly.  The two times I have played that game I have not been good at it.  But it's still fun.