Conversation of the Weekend

Scott is a brilliant man. Seriously. He is very intelligent. We debate often and his arguments are really difficult to battle. The man has mastered the art of debate reasoning. He is a word smith. I consider myself somewhat of a word smith with an enjoyable amount of wit. My best moments are those when I beat Scott to the punch when it comes to puns and such. Better yet, when I come up with original witty material and can get an audible laugh out of Scott, I feel super duper smart. Here's the most recent moment of wit:

Scott: When we go to Bali, I'd like to invest in some Gamelan instruments
Scott's sister: What would that entail?
Scott: Oh, you know, several thousand dollars worth of traditional instruments

Scott's BIL: Oh, sure, great, no big deal
Me: I'm ok with that, so long as you make a bunch of money on a tour with a group called M Night Gamelan

Get it?!

Ok, so not my most witty moment. Not that creative but STILL it made Scott laugh. I'm still trying to impress him 2 years and 10 months later.

Family Home Cleavning

We live in a 742 square foot apartment. This is not a lot of space. It is, however, when you consider that my brother and sister-in-law (SIL) lived on a boat for several years...with two kids (whaaaa?!). I know, it's awesome. So, back to our 742 square feet. Having even 1 dish in the sink makes the kitchen look filthy so, Scott and I began having a weekly "family home cleaning". In the LDS church, it's common practice to gather your family for a weekly spiritual lesson and bonding session where there are games played and treats shared, maybe some songs sung (Grammar Nazi family, did I use that word correctly? Sing, sang, sung right??) Anyway, this event is usually called family home evening. Scott and I are really good at holding regular family home cleaning/evening otherwise known as "family home cleavning". I coined the term one night and the rest is history.

This is what happens when you neglect family home cleavning too many weeks in a row.

Off I go to take care of this mess.

Almost 4 months now...

It's been almost 4 months since I wrote last. Here's the deal, getting myself to the clubhouse where there was free wifi was just annoying. And now, we have the internet. I know, I know, in my last post I got all preachy about living with less. In the last 6 months we've learned how necessary the internet really is in today's world. Internet access is almost as necessary as having a car. I kid you not. Here is a short list of the times Scott and I wished we had internet access:
*When searching for the cheapest and closest dry cleaning business
*When writing a talk for church on Sunday based on a general conference talk
*To look up recipes (I use this one a LOT)
*To view bank account information/ evaluate the budget
*To catch up on television shows...ok, not necessary, but still...
*When finding out the local library's hours of operation
*Paying bills
*When you have symptoms of something and you're not sure what you have (Scott got Shingles in April and neither of us had ever seen Shingles before)
*To communicate with family overseas
*Making travel plans to see family overseas (I went so far as to bring my computer to Starbucks during my lunch break at work so I could look up pricing on airfare and Scott and I went to the library twice to purchase tickets)
*To watch the super bowl

Although this list is not all inclusive, I think you get the point.

So, I will update you on the last 4 months via pictures :)

Our neighbor's car was parked, motionless, for several weeks during the dead of winter. The result was this AWESOME drooping blanket of snow.

Scott and I discovered that roller skating is totally cool, not just on retro night (pictured above) but every night.

I began baking bread from natural yeast. My sis-in-law invited me to attend a class with her and it was AMAZING.  Scott grinds the wheat by hand, I make and knead the dough, and sometimes it turns out like a brick...like this one. After all, the natural yeast is a living, breathing (yes, breathing) organism. It grows, I feed it, it "eats" the wheat, more bubbles form and it expands and I bake with it. I am a domestic goddess.

My parental units came to visit. We went to Park City during the Sundance Film Festival. We didn't see any movies or celebrities. (My mother-in-law is also pictured here on the back right) Park City is a lovely place and the festival is an excellent time to people watch.

We didn't have cable or internet during the Super Bowl so we went to watch it at our apartment complex's exercise facility :) Desperate times call for desperate measures and the 49ers were playing.

We purchased a Kirby Vacuum in February and Dinah does not care for it. The first time I turned it on, she jumped on the couch and hid behind the cushions. So pathetic and so adorable.

Scott decided that it would be really fun to host a family party at our place for Chinese New Year. We managed to cram a decent portion of the Moore family into our 742 sq. foot apartment. Scott's nieces even made a dragon head and we had a parade outside.

Everyone made lanterns and wrote their hopes for the new year on them which is apparently a tradition. :)

I also happened to have some silk robes that I made all the ladies wear. Here Andrea is with hers and her two beautiful girls (the dragon head makers)

Here is an image of said dragon. They made this bad boy all by themselves....so creative.

For Valentine's Day, Scott made me breakfast in bed. Good man.

We went to Lava Hot Springs with Scott's family. Bonnie and Steve got us a weekend there at this cool old school house, turned church, turned community center, turned vacation rental. Audrey is pictured here drawing on the HUGE chalk board in the gymnasium.

How cool is this? And sitting in the hot springs in freezing cold weather was actually really refreshing. The hottest pool at the hot springs is well over 100 degrees F. Piping hot! I felt like we were stepping back in time to the days when public bath houses were super duper popular. Having spent some time in Bath England and admiring the engineering of the ancient Romans I was impressed that hot springs are still such an attraction today!

Baby Burke watching something through the window. Had to capture it.

I was lucky enough to spend some time with these lovely ladies at my dear friend Karlee Evan's birthday party. My mama put this quilt together for Karlee and her new baby. I'm wicked proud of her for getting back on that sewing machine. She is also a domestic goddess.

Scott and I scored free tickets to go to a home and garden show in Salt Lake. I was mocking these folks for buying a HUGE telescope style flag pole (see that huge thing that man is carrying? Well, thanks to the telescoping feature it's going to be like...twice as tall as that once he places it in his yard somewhere). Well, after I took this photo I realized the irony of me mocking this patriotic couple when I realized the condition of my side view mirror. It's been that way since about July of 2011. Yikes.

I had a law convention to attend in St. George for work. My MIL just so happened to be down there that weekend also for her spring break (she teaches college English classes) and we stayed with her dear friend Hilda (who also loves and represents Melaleuca). We had a grand time.

Random random random. Who sells this kind of inventory in one store?!

Mama came to visit for 10 days during her spring break. She thought it might be too long but we loved it.

She had a blast on my bike ;)

We all went rollerskating to celebrate my cousin's bday. His wife made an awesome baseball themed cake pop cake. yummers.

Scott locked his keys in the car like 3 times in two weeks so I purchased him this little retractable key chain holder and made him clip it on his pants :)

We hit up The Living Planet Aquarium with my Mama, FIL, MIL, and nieces. It was actually pretty awesome.

My mother is such a lovely person. So beautiful. So fun. So kind. Love you mama!

Scott and I were driving up to Logan for Easter dinner and saw this trike on the back of this car. SO funny to me.

Lens flare :) Scott LOVES swingsets and he loves his nieces even more.

We adventured down to Price where Scott's sister and BIL live now. It's one of those tiny tiny Utah towns but contrary to popular belief, there is actually tons to do there. Small towns are growing on me.

We celebrated Scott's and Rob's birthdays together. Lexi made an AMAZING rainbow colored cake in the shape of a giant cupcake and it was kind of awesome.

Scott and I took his nieces Kate and Kenna to the Japanese festival. There were some cool things there. Lots of people dressed up as anime characters and it was SO crowded. The best thing at the festival? This kid's hair do.

As you can see, I have become a bread master. Look at that beauty. Too bad I forgot the salt in this loaf. I learned the secret to making it rise more: kneading for longer and putting WAY more muscle into it.

Scott thought this would be really funny.

I made tamales from scratch for Cinco De Mayo. We had dinner with my cousin Scott and his family. These bad boys were super tasty!

Dinah loves her bed, finally. We've had that thing since she was just a tiny tiny pup and she never laid in it before. Guess she likes it now.

I told my SIL I wouldn't post this picture to Facebook and I'm keeping my promise. I couldn't resist posting it here. We went down to Sigurd Utah (another tiny town) where Scott's Grandpa lives. He turned 85 this year and we had a big family party for him. Before the party we headed out for some "bunny bopping" don't worry, I didn't kill any bunnies.

Kenna laying down in the flowers cuz I told her to.

At Scott's uncles house they have the most awesome backyard playground complete with tire horse swing.

You might not be able to see this but scott is with two of his nieces and all three of them are wearing Mexican hats. Scotts is itty bitty :) silly.

Scott spoiled me and got me this beautiful leather bag for Mother's Day/ for work cuz my current one is falling apart. This is a Saddleback Leather Company brand bag and their slogan is "Your kids will fight over it when you're dead". These things have a 100 year guarantee.

Remember how last post we were still getting all situated and moving things in and minimizing? Well, we've made some progress. Old books sold back, electronics sold off, and feelin good.

Some people think that just because you live in an apartment you can't grow a garden. Those people are wrong. We got creative with containers cuz it was way cheaper and let's face it, it was way more fun!

The herbs aren't doing amazingly BUT, everything else is doing smashingly and we're rather happy about it.


That's about it for the recent past. Life is really quite wonderful.

It's 16 degrees outside...and I like it.

It has been over a month since my last post but let me explain:

We moved.

There. Doesn't that explain it? Well, in addition to moving Scott and I have decided to disconnect our home from TV and the internet for a little while.  The reasons for this are two fold:

1: to save money and
2: to, as my brother would say, "cut the fat" out of our lives.

We've been doing a LOT of that. As I briefly mentioned in a previous post, we want to minimize.  Scott and I are definitely making great strides in that department.  We donate to Deseret Industries pretty much weekly these days and it feels fantastic to get rid of all the excess stuff we're not using.  I'm also becoming familiar with KSL classifieds and posting some of our lightly used stuff to see if we can make some money off of all that.  The most coveted item so far appears to be the Magic Bullet.  Why on Earth do people love those things so much? Whatever...we got $35 bucks off that bad boy! (Sorry if you're reading this and you purchased that for us for our wedding...we received 3 of them as gifts...hot item apparently)

I'm running into this theme of minimalism everywhere I look.  I dropped by a book store in downtown Salt Lake after work one day and was completely drawn to a book called The 4 Hour Work Week. The guy who wrote it puts little quotes at the top of every section and the one I'm loving right now is this:

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone"

I interpret that to mean that literally, man needs to let THINGS alone.  It's not about spending less.  It's about having less/ consuming less and producing more.  It feels good to surround myself with the things that matter most.

That's my quick blurb for now.

Here's a picture of what our apartment used to look like before we began the process of minimalization:

 Here's the after....

 We're still aching to get rid of Scott's old cd player...it's really awesome if you want it...just too big for us

The Rents are in town this weekend.  A few of those things are their suitcases ;) yay one bedroom apartments.  Mama and Dad, thanks for being willing to rough it and sleeping in our living room!

xoxo