Baseball Cuff Bracelets

I just wanted to post about these cool baseball cuff bracelets that my friend Brandy made for the SVU baseball wives/girlfriends. Brandy is due to have a baby boy at the very beginning of March. These pictures are from her birthday party back in November. 
 
It's a horrible picture of me, but we had fun singing karaoke. I'm glad that I have made friends through baseball. And I love my bracelet! She got the idea from Pinterest, and you can too by clicking HERE.
 
But ours look more 'baseball' and have our men's last names on them. Even though the first game in Savannah was cancelled, I'm still excited for baseball to start in February! You can visit Brandy's blog by clicking HERE.
 

Birthday Week

The picture above is on our drive last Saturday to the DC Temple. The fog was super pretty.
 
I gave blood on Tuesday. It was my third time trying, and my second successful time. I gave in September of last year and tried in November, but had a really traumatic experience and had to wait awhile, and I'm glad it worked out. All this time I thought O positive was the universal blood type donor, but found out that day it was O negative. I don't feel as special now. We also got our refund checks from school. That definitely makes a girl happy. We went to Lee-hi's that night to get our blood sugar up again from giving blood.
 
^ These are our friends Josh and Rachel. They're both from North Carolina.
My birthday was on Wednesday! I'm officially 20. For awhile now I've been excited to get out of my teenage years, but now I feel kind of old. I kind of had a melt down on my birthday because it was such a busy day. Bear kept telling me to forget that it was my birthday, because we were going to celebrate on Saturday. But I love birthdays. So it was hard for me, but I got through the day and we went to Lee-hi's again that night :) My birthday was also my first day of tutoring. I tutor a few freshman football players. It's fun for me because I love history and it helps me review for my Western Civ II class at the same time.
 
Thursday was my second day of tutoring and I didn't feel as stupid. I went to a very good piano concert that was a student's senior recital that day too. After the concert and a meeting about being a music minor, it just reminded me why I'm not crazy enough to be a music major.
 
^ This is our silly kitty. I promise we're not animal abusers, but this just shows how he lets us do whatever. He's kind of a dog. And we love him. He doesn't play fetch yet, but he waits for us to come home, he wants to eat human food all day, and lets us totally handle him without freaking out. And we figured out he looks just like Tom from Tom and Jerry. Look it up. The're even gray and white in the same places.
 
On Friday, I got a duvet for a bed so that we don't have to fight over all my little blankets I've had since I was a little girl all night. And an iron too! Now I can quilt and iron Bear's dress shirts. On Friday night, we got invited to go to Roanoke by Andrew and Brandy, and we went to Red Lobster. It was my first time because I don't like seafood. So I ordered the shrimp linguine alfredo without shrimp haha. I loved the biscuits and I have to admit the coconut shrimp Bear got was pretty good. And then we went and watched Moneyball. Bear and Andrew loved it of course because they're on the SVU baseball team. But it had beena long week for me and I totally fell asleep during the movie. I've never done that during a movie at the movie theater before. I liked the concept though. It was a good date night!
 
We went to Roanoke again on Saturday because we had been planning it for while. Bear let me go on a shopping spree. We got Bear all new baseball gear too because he really needed it. And we planned to go to Wasabi's, my favorite Japanese restaurant, here was a carnival of some sort downtown and we couldn't really get to it. So we went to Red Robin's - another first for me. We got this fun onion ring tower hee hee. After we got home, I had a small birthday bbq on the Maury River with our friends. The water was the perfect temperature. And this is where I discovered that I don't like brats. I get to choose the meat next time.
 
^ I took this picture on our Sunday walk today. I've decided that I like green mountains way more than the Rockies. I love Virginia.

Here's to another crazy week!

It's Time for Dodger Baseball!

It was Mormon Night at Dodger Stadium so I went with the Fredrickson's. Bear had to work :(

I feel like such a baseball traitor because I like the Cubs and Giants. My first baseball game was at Wrigley Field, for my senior trip. You can read about it HERE. The Dodgers lost to the Cubs then. And they lost to the Nationals this time. Too bad they've gone bankrupt too.

But baseball is just fun to watch. It's very American. I have to admit I kept reading my book. Oops.

It makes me excited for SVU baseball to start again!

Bear said he couldn't look at me when I was wearing the shirt the Fredrickson's let me borrow.

I love this guy and I'm sad that he couldn't come with me. I've had a fun weekend. And we're finalizing our apartment. Things are coming together for school and I'm excited.

4th of July

So I made these 4th of July sugar cookies from Martha Stewart. I ran out of gel though and so I couldn't make all the cookies the same design. I know it's late for the 4th of July, but if you want, the recipe is in the post below this. You could do it for Halloween or Christmas or any color just for fun.

17 minutes was too little, 19 minutes was a little too much for mine. Be careful.

And I made my mom's green tomato salsa which I absolutely love. There's a Mexican grocery store nearby with super super cheap produce so it wasn't that expensive to make. So I used green tomatillos instead of unripe tomatoes but it worked out fine. And because I wasn't canning it, I cut the recipe in half. Make sure you have a huge pot, because it does boil down, but all the cut up vegetables take up a lot of room. I wish I had read the comments on the recipe at the bottom of the page...or asked my mom for more advice. Because you definitely need to cut the salt in half (or quarter it if you're halving the recipe), and not as much vinegar. So it was way too salty for me. I added sugar which helped a little, but it was too salty for some people. Lots of people said it was fine. But I wasn't satisfied. Oh well. I know for next time. Don't make my mistake. If you want the recipe, click HERE.

Bear started the day off with playing baseball with Andrew. It was the first time he got to play ball since nationals, in the middle of May. He did have to work half the day, but did get 2 sales. I didn't think anyone would be interested on the 4th. Life is full of surprises.

We went to a BBQ at a ward member's house. They have an adopted little girl and boy and they reminded me a lot of my own family. Two white blonde kids close in age and two firecracker brown kids :) We finished the day off with city fireworks. At the end of the day, my body was exhausted but I couldn't turn my brain off and had to talk poor Bear's ear off. I hope you all had a good holiday with friends, family, and food. Sometimes bbq's and lots of food don't feel like celebrating a holiday to me. I need to come up with my own traditions for my future family (no I'm not hinting anything).

Oh, and it was our one month anniversary. Just saying ♥

Baseball Day

My TOMS are here. And I feel like a princess because they're sparkly.

^ (Me and Laura Sowell's feet)

I went to a baseball game yesterday. It was very nice weather and it was really nice to sit on the grass.
Our boys won of course. 18-6. 3 home-runs in the first inning and one of them was a grand slam. They're at 27 wins, 5 losses. I'm sad that I can't go watch them at nationals.

I'm so proud of them, especially #9. And we got to go to Chipotle afterwards. I was quite happy.

I love all the baseball wives/girlfriends. We're becoming good friends. I'm glad that Bear is passionate about something. I love going to the games. Baseball is actually fun to watch for me. And I got my ride home all set up. Even though I'm running on no sleep, I'm happy. Being engaged can be frustrating, but so happy at the same time. He's good to me. I love life. I love him.

Baseball Shirts

These are the shirts that Jena ordered for the girls! They were dang expensive, but SO worth it because they're so cute!

I love the glitter. And the last name on the back ♥

I love him

I don't want to bore you with blogging about Bear all the time, but I am engaged after all and I feel like he definitely deserves a post to himself.

If he says he's going to be there at a certain time, he is. If he says he's going to do it, he will. If he has a responsibility, he does it. If I ask him to do something, he's already on it. Poor guy, I am kind of high maintenance. He does have his limits, but he does work really hard for me and he's really selfless. And he has gotten me out of quite a few scrapes.

One of these scrapes started with me and Rachel going to Burger King for lunch. I had to go to class right after and then noticed I didn't have my phone with me. I used Haylea's phone to call Bear and he took me back to Burger King. I was afraid that I had thrown my phone away with my tray. I figured that since it had only been a couple of hours it would still be in the trash. But no. They have a health code rule to take the garbage out every hour. So we had to go check the dumpster. Well the dumpster was 10 feet high. And it was raining. And we weren't even 100% sure the phone was in the dumpster. But Bear got down into the rainy garbage for me. AND my phone was on silent to help things out. We did find it though! And the rain hadn't gotten to it and there was hardly anything in that garbage bag so it didn't get and food or drink on it. It was a happy little miracle. Because I couldn't afford buying a new phone right that second. He made me quite happy that day.

Just like he does everyday. Our senses of humor are a little bit different, and so we misunderstand each other sometimes and can get out feelings hurt easily. But we still laugh a lot. I love him.

And we're going to southern California for the summer after we get married! Bear's going to sell door-to-door pest control stuff. Our cellphone, $500 of housing a month and $150 of gas money a month are all paid for us. So it's a good opportunity to save up some money. We don't know where we're living in the fall, but our plans are to come back to SVU at the end of August. This is exciting for me because I didn't want to get stuck in BV while Bear was at work all day all summer with nothing to do. One of Bear's teammates Andrew - the one that told him about the job - will be going there this summer with his wife Brandi too so I will know at least one person. And there should be lots of church members down there too. And now I'll be able to say that I've lived on the West Coast, Midwest, East Coast, and the Rocky Mountain area. All 4 time zones. I'm quite excited.

The SVU baseball team is 25-4 right now. I'm so proud of them. Bear is doing a good job. He does better when I can go watch him play at a home games though haha! Who knew I would marry a baseball player? I love him.

Hey, Chicago, what do you say...

...The Cubs are gonna win today!

My busy summer has started. The first 3 days after graduation, Tashi and all her friends were still in school. So I stayed home helping my parents with house and yard work all day while they worked. Grandma and Grandpa S. were here too, so we helped them load up a moving truck full of stuff. They were working hard! I got a letter from my cousin Stephen too! He's on a mission in Japan. I can't wait for him to come home in September!

Anyways, I was feeling a little trapped at home. I wanted to get out. Our senior trip was on the 27th, but I felt like I wasn't going to have very much fun because Amber and Amanda decided not to go. But I ended up having a great time! I had never been to Chicago before.

(^ right out side Union Station ^)
Only about half of our class went. We met at the school at 5:30, rode the school bus 45 minutes to the Am track station, rode the Am track for 4 hours, walked 6 blocks down the grimy part of Chicago past Sears Tower, and rode the subway to Wrigley Field. I got to talk to Kerr Daddy on the Am track, which was a good start to my trip.

(^ walking down the 6 blocks to the Redline ^)
One kid had to wear a Cardinals jersey just to be a rebel. We told him he was going to get beat up in Chicago, but he actually got a lot of compliments on the street, and a school bus full of kids driving by booed our cubs jerseys. You never know.

Tokyo still beats Chicago, though. By a long shot. Still, I missed the big city. I felt like I was in my element. Our teachers told us not to make eye contact with anyone because the crime rate had gone up recently. Haha. People were freaking out about the sewage smells, people being mean, all the stop lights, the crowds of people, the stale air and all the people touching them on the subway...I was enjoying it! I'm not saying I want to live in Chicago, but you know. Everyone wanted germ ex the whole time. I told one teacher that it wasn't bothering me, because I grew up in a big city, and she said "well, if you don't know any better..." Any better? Hey now. I guess you guys don't know any better than the manure smell and racism from your little town. Wow people need to get out more.

(^ at the subway station ^)
Because travel time took so long, we only had time for the Cubs game. I had never seen a professional sport live before. And I'm not really in baseball, but I actually had a lot of fun. It was against the Dodgers, and the Cubs won 1-0. Sounds like a hockey game, right? Haha It was still 0-0 at the end of the 7th inning. So it was really boring up until that point. Nothing was going anywhere. Then all of the sudden, Mike Fontenot made it to third base, and Tyler Colvin drove him in. The Dodgers just kept striking out after that. So the Cubs won! Go, Cubs, Go played, and we all wanted to sing along, but our teachers rushed us to the subway again. Two boys got conned into giving $3 each to a man they thought was homeless. The teachers told us not to make eye contact. But they had to be nice because everyone in the country is nice, right? Hee hee

( ^ sitting by Kerr Daddy at Wrigley Field ^)
It was beautiful weather, but we were sitting in the shade and it is called the Windy City, so we were a bit cold while we were watching. Everything was so overpriced in Wrigley Field, it was insane! I did buy a really cute vintage looking Cubs v-neck. It was the cheapest thing (and the cutest) so I lucked out. And I promise I wasn't wearing my sunglasses the whole time. Just every time they snapped a picture haha. So now I admit I am a Cubs fan. And I'm really glad I went. Next time I want to walk Lake Shore Drive and go to the shopping area though. And definitely see a musical or some other show.

( ^ ♪Go, Cubs, Go! Go, Cubs, Go! ♪ ^)
We almost missed our Am track train home. It was really scary. This lady working at the station gave us the wrong directions. So we ended up in a really crowded place that was really crazy. They wouldn't let us through because we didn't have tickets. We tried to explain that our teachers were already on the train with our tickets...but you know airport and train station workers. They treat you like crap. We were calling our teachers and they weren't doing anything either. You could hear all the panic in our voices. I almost started crying. Because a new train probably wouldn't come til the next morning and we would have to buy our own tickets, find a place to stay for the night...it was horrible. But finally we found out we had the wrong directions and started running for the train. The same lady who gave us wrong directions stopped us and asked us where we were going because we were running. We told her, and she said we were late and holding up the rest of the train. Ya, no thanks to you, lady. But we were fine and I got to sit next to and talk to Brooke the ride home.

Listen to Go, Cubs, Go! It's catchy!