Nie Nie Day

I only know of the Nielson's situation through other blogs; and if you've blogged around today, then you've probably noticed that today was Nie Nie day. It's neat how something like the blogging world- meaning where most people have never met each other in person- can come unite for one cause.

Last week Christian and Stephanie Nielson were in a very serious plane crash. They are a young couple with four children under the age of six. They are in critical condition. Stephanie has third degree burns covering 80% of her body and Christian has third degree burns over 30% of his body. The recovery will be very long and very expensive.

The full story and updates about Stephanie and Christian here: http://blog.cjanerun.com/

Today, several websites were auctioning off items for their benefit. Go here to see the comprehensive list: http://www.designmom.com/ .

Women's Expo

I've been noticing this billboard on I-15 headed north. I've never been to this before so I'm not exactly sure what to expect, but it looks like fun (especially the sweet giveaways). Going on Septemember 5 & 6 at the McKay Events Center.

WANTED- Personal Assistant

Duties include being an all around amazing person which means you would be responsible for:

- Being my alarm clock Monday- Friday
- Doing my make-up every morning
- Doing my hair every morning
- Coordinating my daily wardrobe
- Manicuring my fingers and toes on a weekly basis
- Comming up with nutritious and delicious meals and then serving them to Brant and I on a daily basis (including packing lunches for us to take to work)
- Being my personal trainer at the gym 3x week
- Shopping (grocery, clothes, and other things on a as needed basis)
- Planning weekend outings and vacations
- Running various errands throughout the day (i.e. getting my car tested and registered)

Notice that there is no requirement for cleaning or laundry (I'm willing to do my own cleaning).

Spread the word- this position will go fast! and starts after we win the lottery...

Weekend Review

Friday Night: Brant bought tickets to the Orem Owlz game. It would have been fun to go if I hadn't of come home from work not feeling a hundred percent and slept through the rest of the evening :( We hope that maybe they will still let us use our tickets for another game.

Saturday morning and afternoon: LOTS of R&R from still not feeling a hundred percent from the day before. A trip to the grocery store to fill our reusable bags.

Saturday Night: An enjoyable trip to the dollar theather to watch Kung Fu Panda (WAY better & funnier than Wall-E).

Sunday: Church, flipping through the weekly ads/ cutting coupons, dinner with the Lulloff's, Perkins, & Jacksons, enjoying the summer night and socializing.

And the winners are...

Last week I decided that for my birthday I was going to pick two winners for a give away. Today at 11:27am MDT, the following winners were selected at complete randomness through an excel spreadsheet (FYI each person who left a comment received 1 entry regardless if they accidentally left two comments):

Kelly Sawyer- Sacramento, CA
Karly Bjarnson- Provo, UT

Kelly and Karly, you are now the proud owners of two stylish reusable grocery bags! I'll e-mail you the details. Thanks to all that entered, and remember to keep "going green"!

Another Year Older

UPM Shindig

Last night a few of us sister missionaries from the Utah Provo Mission (UPM) and who now all coincidently live here (or are visiting for the week) got together to chat, catch up, dip chocolate fondue, and just be silly. One of my favorite parts about serving in a visitor center was meeting sisters from around the globe- especially the Japanese!

They never cease to make me laugh...


Left to Right: Sugi (Osaka) S. Izaki (Tokyo) Kelly Sawyer (Sacramento) S. Makise (Osaka) Sorry we didn't get you in this photo Miriam (from Florida)!

Last Chance

to enter the free give away! winners will be announced tomorrow!

Braves Game Weekend

How nice it is to be able to go home to Georgia every once in awhile! After arriving in Georgia on Friday mid morning and lots of R&R, my mom cooked gyozas (a family fav) for dinner as my early birthday meal.

On Sat after sleeping in (and I mean way sleeping in) we made fantastic scones for breakfast.

Afterwards, we visited one of my favorite peeps from high school, Lacy. After a nice drive around town and looking at newly built neighborhoods we headed back home to get ready for......the Braves game :)

Is this not an amazing sight? First of all you've got the amazing jumo tran screen with between inning games and trivia and panning of the crowds (I've been on the jumbo tran once. It was seriously amazing.) And then you've got this beautiful skyline of Atlanta. I took this photo from where we were sitting (yep, we're all about those $6 cheap seats!)

This collage pretty much summarizes the experience (actually not really. I was too distracted watching the game to take a lot of the pictures I wanted). Not that anyone besides me will really get a kick out of this (maybe my mom and brother) but notice the HUGE Chick-fil-A cow in the bottom left hand corner? Every time the tomahawk chop chant played over the stadium, the cow was doing the tomahawk chop with his right hoof. In the end the Braves won against San Fransisco- yay!

On Sunday, it was more sleeping in and then church at my mom's ward (the one I spent most of my time growing up in). Sunday night was home made lasagna and more Olympics.

And then early (and I mean early) Monday morning we were awake and to the airport by 5am EDT.

What a great weekend!

Weekend Wrap Up

We got back into Salt Lake around 9am this morning. After jetting home and showering, it was off to work for me. I've been going full throttle the entire day. Bummer news- Blogger is giving me errors when I try to upload pictures (plus its past my bedtime) so I'll post pics tomorrow from this weekend.

FREE GIVE AWAY

We're headed out in the AM for an early weekend; and since I love the idea of blog give aways, I'm gonna leave on this note: I love my new, stylish, reusable grocery bags and want to share them with you. At random, I'm going to give two lucky people two each of these fantastic bags (styles will vary).

How it works: Leave a comment (with your e-mail address) on this post to receive 1 entry. On Thursday, August 21 at 11:23am (my birthday) I will be picking two winners at random by entering names on an excel sheet and letting the program pick (if you live outside Utah Valley, I'll mail 'em to ya).

Your chances of winning are good- check back next Thursday to see who wins!

Emily Post

I'm excited to get this book that I ordered online today.

Tuesday Tip

I’m going to save party invitation/ decline etiquette tips until next week. For now, lets talk about accepting and giving compliments (advice compliments of HTLLAL).

It's funny that we sometimes find it easier to deal with an insult than to accept a compliment. Don't be bashful or embarrassed and don't negate the flattery be denying it or causing too much of a fuss. Next time someone pays you a compliment, just smile and say a genuine thank you.

And don't forget to add a dose of humilty- while accepting a compliment gracefully is appropriate, agreeing with it wholeheartedly is most certainly not.

The ability to give comments well is an art form- too many and you may seem insincere, so be careful to bestow them only when you really mean what you say.

Compliments Everyone Loves to Hear:

-Haven't you lost weight!

-I've really enjoyed talking to you.

-What in incredible cook you are!

-I'm so glad I've had the opportunity to meet you.

Weekend in Review

On Friday afternoon after work, we headed over to the ball fields to play another two games of softball- this time with on our ward's (I mean branch's) team. It was so great to have Brant in town on Friday and have him play too. On the drive home, we celebrated in the car when the clock turned 8:08pm (on 08.08.08) Afterwards we enjoyed watching the Bejing Opening Ceremonies. Did anyone else catch the number of Chinese couples who got liscenses to marry on 08.08.08? Something along the likes of 14,000....can anyone verify that for me? Talk about superstitious!

On a side note, I predict that Bob Costas will still be the main Olympic newscaster at least 20 years from now in the 2028 games and he'll definately have aged and have gray hair and I will be saying to my kids "you know, he was the newscaster for the Olympics back when I was growing up." I cant remember as far back as Barcelona for the '92 games, but I do remember the '96 games in Atlanta (the year I got to go!) and he was the main newscaster then. By the end of the two weeks of Olympic games, you can definately tell that he's ready for some sleep!

But I'm digressing.

On Sat morning, Laci and I headed over to Archivers for their free "Make and Take" day. We made two neat cards (yay again for being free) and looked around the store a bit. Card Club is this Tuesday and the theme is "Thank You". Until I get creative enough to come up with my own ideas, I'll just have to keep copying the ideas I see in their books and online (ha).

After going to the Mt. Timp temple, we drove over to Draper to meet Linsey and drop off her book that we thought would be a good idea to preorder (but after the book was released I wished I wouldn't have had that brillant idea- I could have bought it in the store for the same price I pre-ordered it for and have gotten it a week earlier. Ah, such is life...)

We then headed over for our weekly (or bi-weekly....or even more likely- monthly) grocery shopping trip. I was excited to get to use our new reusable and stylish grocery bags; but for some reason, Brant still had trouble accepting this new idea and opted insread to carry the bulky coupon box rather than the 4 bags into the grocery store (which I didn't mind of all- I think they are super stylish).

Then back home for Olympics and to watch Michael Phelps win some more gold in swimming.

Sunday was excellent: church from 9-12pm, a Sunday nap, taco soup for dinner, reading under a tree at the park, and more Olympics.

And now gearing up for yet another week of work.

Uh- Mazing

Why am I in such a ridicously giddy mood you ask?

Because we just got done playing our first company co-ed softball game. With uh-mazing good weather no less. I must have seriously forgotten how fun it is to play- because if I had remembered, I would have found some way to keep playing after all these years (my last time playing in a organized game was when I was in the 8th grade- what was that? 12 years ago?). Even though our team was short a couple players and we had to play with only two infielders, we were able to hold our own and stayed ahead of Mrs. Backers Pastry Shop until the last inning. And the best part?

Getting to play another 8 games.

Made in Japan

Sugi- will you please leave a comment on here and verify this? And then the next time you visit home, will you bring me back one? I'd love to put one in our kitchen for decoration :)

A round watermelon can take up a lot of room in a refrigerater and the usually round fruit often sits awkwardly on refrigerator shelves. Smart Japanese Farmers have forced their watermelons to grow into a square shape by inserting the melons into square, tempered glass cases while the fruit is still growing on the vine.

The Art of Listening- A Tuesday Tip

In the book "How to win Friends and Influence People" Dale Carnegie talks about the art of listening and how important the skill is in social, business, family and other various situations. Listening is just as important a skill to develop as talking- most people are delighted to be able to chat about themselves or their recent exploits. Ask others about jobs, vacations, weekend plans, and favorite places to shop (the skill to master here is being able to ask these questions without being interrogative). Remember that the essence of great conversation is to be inclusive, so ask questions that anyone would feel happy answering. If you do run out of things to say, inject a little new life into your conversation by widening the group of people you are talking to.

Great Small-talk Subjects:

- Favorite places to vacation

- Human-interest stories from the newspapers

- Sports

- The latest must-see TV

- Weird and wonderful diet tips

- Classic bands

- The weekend weather

- Local neighborhoods and new shops that have opened

- The Twilight Series (haha)

A Ho-Hum Weekend

On Friday evening we headed over to Chris and Rebecca's to watch their 4 kids and was introduced to Deal or No Deal the home DVD version. Of course when your not playing for real you'll risk everything; I ended up with $5,000 in my case at the end and Brant ended up with $200,000 in his. But when Brant wins, I win right ;) Too bad it was play money. . .

Brant got in from a trip to San Franciso and back early Friday evening (he met up with me to watch the kids later) and as he was getting off the plane, he ran into some old friends that are living in DC now- how fun!

On Sat I headed up to the Salt Lake Farmers market (again!) with Linsey and picked up some more red raspberry jam and a tub of home made honey butter. On the way back I dropped by IKEA to pick up my reusable grocery bags (see earlier post- props to me for "going green").

On Sat evening the guys held an Elders Quorum activity of kickball (no girls allowed) so a few ladies from the branch got together and we went to dinner at Zupas and then a quick trip to feed the ducks (well, the kids feed the ducks, a couple of us just enjoyed the summer evening... didn't capture any pics on this one, though).

Now we're here Sunday evening and savoring the last moments of the weekend before heading to work for another week tomorrow.

I told you it was ho-hum. Not as nearly as exciting as last weekend's post when I almost got the chance to open the emergency door exit on the plane.

P.S. Nice blog, Pops. Now you just have to start adding posts to it.

P.P.S. Does anyone else have issues with the spacing on their blog posts? For some reason the spacing defaults back to single spacing when I publish the post.

Isn't this Fun?

It reminds me of a wedding reception I once went to where there was an absolutely stunning 3 square tiered cake that you would have never guessed that the inside was made of one giant rice crispy! (seriously, that cake was beautiful- I tried to model my own wedding cake after it, which turned out pretty enough, but I don't think that the baker had quite the same picture in mind as I did)... Find it here (the above pictured cake, not the wedding one).

A few photos

Since we were already giving Chris and Rebecca a night out by watching their kids, I found it a prime opportunity to whip out the D40 and finally start taking some pictures. The goal is that I'll become comfortable taking pictures by October to take their family pictures.

A few of the better photos from this evening. . .