I ain't cryin'.

Once upon a time, a girl participated in a neighbourhood yard sale. It nearly ended in tears - that is to say it didn't go well. You've probably guessed that that girl was me. The concept of a yard sale was pretty foreign to me, so when complete strangers sifted through, sniffed and stretched my belongings and offered me pennies for them, I took it personally. I suppose the key to hosting a yard sale is to have a thick skin. Mine's paper thin. While my things weren't "nice" or expensive by anyone's standard, I had attachments to them - probably because we were newly married and I had memories attached to them, which made for a miserable time. Honestly, people couldn't win with me. If they looked at something and passed it up, I was a little hurt that they didn't think it was good enough to take. If they made me an offer, I was insulted when it was too low - there were some pretty cutthroat, hardcore yard salers in attendance to break me in. Recipe for disaster.

Since then, if I've ever been in a position to make an offer on anything, I agonize that I'm going to come in too low. So I tend to pay whatever people ask on Craig's List or wherever, as long as it seems fair. Haggling ain't my thang - anyone want to come with me to buy a car in the coming weeks? 

So my experience has lead me to be a little gun shy when it comes to yard sales. But I bit the bullet and ventured out this weekend and I think I had a whole lotta luck between the two I came across.

 

Kids' picnic table (prior to cleaning it up): $5 - the best part about this for me is that it's already sunbleached and seen some action, so it won't break my heart when Teagan messes it up.

Leap Frog activity table (with batteries): $4

Spinning spice rack: $1

Flat Stanley book: 50c

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: 50c

Cars puzzle: 50c

Roxy shoes (never worn): $1

Bunco: $1

The courage to yard sale again: Priceless

Let's just say I wasn't crying this time around.

Like any rational, kind, unselfish couple.

We take our chocolate seriously. More specifically, our Canadian chocolate.
My parents brought us 24 Wunderbars the last time they visited. 24. They love us. Upon realizing earlier this week that we'd come down to our very last bar, we both gasped. Brandon said "Wow, I'm impressed they lasted this long. Your parents brought them in February...no wait, March...oh. April. Hmm." Not that impressive.
Brandon's eyes got wide as he quietly asked if I'd like to share it with him - as opposed to him eating it himself. A better wife might have politely declined. I did nothing of the sort.
Then, as if I hadn't known the man for more than 6 years, he offers me the first bite. I countered with a look that said "we've tried to 'share' food before. I know how this ends." So instead, we did what any rational, kind, unselfish couple would do. Brandon got out the measuring tape.

 

We measured. He cut. I chose. (If you're a Friends fan, you'll remember Chandler & Rachel sharing a cheesecake in much the same way.) I was sure to take into account and analyze the length, the meltage, the ratio of milk chocolate to gooey caramel to crunchy peanut butter before I made my decision. Brandon got the plate as a consolation (my piece was slightly bigger) and I found him absentmindedly enjoying every. last. bite. Or should I say 'lick'?

We can't visit Canada soon enough.

Y Not?

Since we only got to spend a short time on campus on Saturday, we headed back on Monday - apparently we're gluttons for punishment and enjoy being made to feel ancient. Some things remained the same from when we attended BYU.

The Wilk looked mostly the same - unfortunately some of our favourite Cougareat establishments were closed for summer or had a gigantic line so we I settled for Scoreboard Grill (Brandon never "settles" for a burger - it's always at the top of his list). We let Teagan wander around, spending time in the Terrace, where we remember watching the funeral services of Pope Jean Paul II in 2005 (on a smaller, bulkier TV I'm sure), eating with friends, chuckling at the medieval fighters and lining up for EFY Monday night dinners for weeks on end in 05 & 06. Aah, the memories.

The piano was still there. The caliber of musician allowed to play has declined significantly since our time.

A little yoga between classes can really reduce your stress level.

Despite what she thought the night previous, Teagan does need sleep, and caught a few winks while we poked around the ol' BYU Bookstore for some ridiculously overpriced church books and organ music.

Then we made our way to the Creamery on Ninth East (CONE - clever, no? What's not clever is arriving at that realization your senior year) but not before stopping off at my dorm...s. (I moved around a lot.) For the first few months of my freshman year (I deferred until January) I lived in Heritage Halls. Not knowing anyone, I opted to be assigned to a dorm without any sort of preferences listed, since I'm fairly agreeable and easy to get along with - Brandon, zip your lips. I ended up living in the "older" ward with sophomores, juniors and seniors who still lived in the dorms. I ended up meeting some really neat people and it helped that they had some experience and could help me find my way around. While it was fun, I felt like I missed out on the "freshman" experience and moved in with some super cool friends I'd made in another building for the summer, so I had the best of both worlds, really. It felt more than a little weird to be standing outside the dorm pushing a stroller where I used to say goodnight (read: shake hands) to dates. Time warp indeed.

Remembering a picture I took with my oh-so-cute roommate Tamara, nearly 10 years ago (YIKES!) I couldn't resist the urge to take a few jumping photos.

Although, this time, I was smart enough not to jump OFF. I learned something in college.

We would have stopped by Brandon's dorm, but it no longer exists :( After watching a few too many movies lately, we think "they" may be trying to erase him. The line about building dorms that are more 'earthquake resistant' is just an elaborate cover. We sleep with one eye open these days.We managed to get one last photo of it before it was torn down in 06. I'll have to check with him, but one of the rooms you see dangling here may have been his.

But I digress. The really important issue here is The Creamery. Same as it ever was, complete with Graham Canyon ice cream. I can't begin to describe the deliciousness. I'll let the collage speak for itself.

After a quick walk around campus, seeing what's new and what's old like us, we picked up an Urban Cowboy from Gandolfo's (is it bad that our fondest memories of Provo revolve around food?) and hit the road. It was such a fun weekend, filled with memories old and new. I realized that the saying "you can't go back" is especially true when it comes to your alma mater. So much of what I remember and love about college is tied up in the people I knew and loved that are no longer there. It was fun to be in the place, but it made me miss the people a lot. Anyone else had a weird time warp experience like that lately? It reminded me that we're that much closer to being these guys we had fun following on the way:

Alma Mater All Nighter

How fitting that we'd have to pull an all nighter while visiting our college town. Except I'm not 21 anymore...I'm still catching up on our sleep.

Every time I ever joked that Teagan was "part sloth" came back to bite me our second night in Provo. It started off innocently enough, sticking pretty closely to the ol' routine. Thinking we were wiser than the night previous, we put her Pack 'n' Play out in the living area, so we could brush & flush without worrying. She went down easily enough, and all seemed well approaching 11:00.

 

After Brandon fell asleep I couldn't help but enjoy the free cable - the 10 English channels we have get old pretty quickly. But I would live to regret that last episode of Sister Wives. No sooner had I turned off the light and Teagan screamed. A blood-curdling scream that I couldn't ignore...especially not in a hotel. Thinking that perhaps she was disoriented or scared, waking up in a strange place I snatched her up and whisked her away to cuddle in bed with us, since it worked the night before. Oh, if I could send a message to June 10th Michelle to tell her not to waste the next two hours of her life on fruitless attempts to get June 10th Teagan to sleep. Instead, I would tell her not to bother dragging the Pack 'n' Play back into our room with us, or pulling her out of it to rock her back and forth and snuggle. I would tell her to cut to the chase and just set Teagan up with a Dora DVD. That's right, in one push of a button, I squandered my chances at Mother of the Year. It became evident to me that she was AWAKE and had no intention of going back to sleep. Had we been at home, I would have let her cry it out for a while, and I'm sure she would have given up and slept peacefully. But with the walls being so paper thin, and the rooms around us all occupied, I felt badly letting her cry in the wee hours of the morning.

I broke down and we set her back up in the living area with that previously mentioned 8 episode Dora DVD and, bless his heart, Brandon offered to sit out there with her so I could get some sleep. I woke up a couple of hours later and offered to switch with him so he could get some rest. Teagan was still WIDE awake - so weird! So I gave her a snack to munch on while I...hit the play button again! Boy, did I feel like a terrible mother. But I was exhausted, this was completely out of character for her that I saw it as the easiest way to keep her contained and entertained. I promptly nodded off, but woke up when she tapped me on the face and signed for food. So I gave her another graham cracker and collapsed until morning. As far as I know, she never slept. HOW? I have no idea. But my question of "How did she eat those graham crackers so fast" did get answered. She didn't. She pulverized them.
Sleepless night + crib full of cracker crumbs = an unhappy tomorrow. This was a lot easier in college.

(In the General Vicinity of) Where the Magic Happened

After hitting Temple Square, we stopped at Nielsen's Grove, a cute little park in Orem that made a cute little impression on The Richardses. Six years ago in April, I found myself at the end of a puzzle treasure hunt with a pretty big pay-off. This is where Brandon popped the question and I was smart enough to say yes. (For the full story, click HERE.) I did my best not to be jealous when he tried to hold another girl's hand while we were walking down memory lane.

We swung on swings and slid down slides. It would have been fun to visit the duck pond and hear Teagan say "wa wa" to the ducks, but aside from being fun, it would have been soaking wet. I've no doubt she would have waded right in, so we steered clear.

We couldn't get near the actual place where he proposed (under a canopy because it was raining) due to some sort of a family reunion going on, but I forced him to take a photo of us near it anyway. He practiced the self-shot and got pretty good at it.

Then I stepped in and ruined it. Here we are a stone's throw away from where Brandon asked me to marry him, although it could have been taken anywhere since I'm body blocking what should have been the focal point of the picture. Worth including anyway.

Where was our baby while we were reminiscing and thinking romantical thoughts, you ask? Naturally, she was toddling straight for the ONLY mud puddle for miles. Typical.

Several failed attempts at a self-shot of all three of us and the sign made us realize that it was an impossibility, so I sent in my much cuter understudy.

It's funny how being in a place that's associated with such a specific and special memory can send you right back in time to when you were fun and fancy-free...before you were fishing kids out of mud puddles. I think my biggest concern on that fateful day in April 2006 was which pink shirt to wear for Pink Shirt Friday (a time-honoured tradition Brandon started his freshman year of college). Times have changed indeed!

Teagan Takes Temple Square

Day 2 brings us to Sunday. In a stroke of genius, I thought that since we were planning on going to church, we could visit the ward of two of my college roommates so we'd get to see some familiar faces. And how very fortunate for us, Lindsey and her husband were speaking  in this particular meeting. The heavens were smiling upon us indeed. And Christina, bless her, hurried back from dropping her husband off at the airport to come and sit with us...and help me entertain Little T. So fun to see them, even for a short time, and laugh about simpler times.
Continuing on with my brilliant plan and perfect timing, we headed home to let Teagan take the nap she missed the day before. She had a better idea. Mess around in the Pack 'n' Play while we wait patiently for her never to fall asleep. We had places to go and people to see, so I let her win this particular battle, knowing full well I'd win the war. Exhibit A: fast asleep on the way up to Salt Lake.

Can you believe those lips?

After a failed attempt at lunch, or to phrase it more positively, a lovely jaunt around City Creek Center, we met up with another old roomie (circa '03) and her sweet little family. It's been a long time since I've seen Meghann, but we seem to be able to pick up where we left off every time I'm lucky enough to run into her. The only things that seem to change at all are our little girls - and heaven knows they change quickly enough.

We wandered about on the grounds for a while and I managed to capture a few sweet moments here and there, between Teagan running amok on temple grounds and trying to swim in the reflection pool.

 

 

 

 

My personal favourite.

I certainly do love to see the temple.

Gone With the Wind: The Richardses' Plans to Hike the Y.

Our impromptu roadtrip got off to a flying start. That sounds sarcastic, but it isn't...yet. I'll get there.

We stopped at Burgers Supreme, an establishment responsible for one of Brandon's fondest memories of Provo...$2 cheeseburgers after 8:00 PM. After discussing in depth how much we miss fry sauce and consuming our weight in burgers and said fry sauce, we called to see if our hotel room was ready. No dice. I really wanted to get settled before we embarked on any adventures, so we opted to kill some time at Rock Canyon Park. So did hundreds of other people. So we stayed on the outskirts, apparently just close enough to the road that Teagan was more interested in running towards traffic than frolicking in the trees. After what felt like an eternity of picking her up, setting her down further from the road, only to chase her down again, we packed up and headed for the hotel, hoping and praying it was ready. Instead of dragging baby & baby daddy out of the car to run around the lobby (she doesn't walk anywhere these days) I opted to go in alone to check in. A quick process, right? Not if the lady in front of you takes a "How are you?" from the clerk to mean "Where do each of your children live, how old are they and what are all of their plans for the weekend?" Once 20 Questions was over, I managed to get us checked in and Brandon made 30 trips between the car and the room for all of our belongings.
A quick check of the weather, and we'd be on our way to hike the Y. One minor detail: gale force winds. There goes that plan. We just weren't meant to do that much exercise on vacation! Between the two of us, we've only hiked to the top 3 times. I was sure to take pictures the first time, as I was sure I'd never have the strength to do it again. And as I was on a pretty terrible date, I made sure that he wasn't in any of the photos...does that make me a horrible person? This was back in 2003, when we' just stopped sitting for oil paintings and were getting film developed. So my only only pictorial proof was already scrapbooked.

So instead of risking flying off the side of a mountain, we went a safer route and mosied on up to BYU Campus and wandered around, visiting some of the places we remembered best...meaning the library. We discussed how nerdy we were/are and that we're entirely too old to have a prayer of running into anyone we know. At that very moment, a young man walking down the stairs opposite us cocked his head to the side while looking at Brandon and Brandon did the same. Turns out it was one of Brandon's EFY participants from 2005. Impressive that he recognized him, since the last time they'd seen eachother was in 2006 when we looked like this:

He told Brandon that he'd had a real impact on his life, which was incredibly touching - if I ran into any of my girls these days and they even remembered my name, I'd feel lucky. He'd served a mission (we feel old) and it turns out it was in Brandon's home stake. I let them catch up a bit while I wrestled Teagan out of the HBLL, her muffled screams echoing off every surface of the building. It was so wonderfully unexpected to bump into someone Buddy recognized.

Teagan took the opportunity to fart in the general direction of the Harris Fine Arts Center (click the photo to enlarge it if you don't believe me), since it was socially unacceptable for me to do so. I was so relieved when Communications finally got a building of our own halfway through my education.

We ducked into the Pita Pit for a quick bit to eat and Teagan LOVED it. Did you know that avocado is included as a vegetable and doesn't cost extra? T is avocadobsessed, so it was perfect. After the requisite half hour :) we took a dip in the hotel pool. When I swim with her, it's usually in the daytime so it was fun to have Brandon there. He makes everything more fun - is that a dad thing?

We were lucky enough to land a suite with a bedroom and living space, separated by a door, so we set Teagan up in the bedroom and stuck as closely as we could to the bedtime routine. Being novices, we forgot that when we went to bed, we'd be brushing our teeth and flushing the toilet inches from where she was sleeping. She woke up. But, with a little snuggling in bed with us (I didn't mind at all - doesn't happen much these days) she drifted back off and slept through the rest of the night. Day 1 didn't go quite as planned, but we still had oodles of fun - probably just as much as if we'd climbed the side of a mountain AND our legs weren't sore.

"Find joy in the journey." - Pres. Thomas S. Monson

Homebody by nature, I define "spontaneous" as anything with less than 2 days' notice. You may disagree, but this was pretty out of the ordinary for us. We decided to do something with Brandon's 3 day weekend and head to Provo to ye olde stomping grounds. Do you remember those roadtrips you took with your family and half the fun was the drive? This was not one of those trips.

Actually, the way there was quite enjoyable, except for the fact that Teagan didn't sleep a wink of any of the 6 hours. Turns out 6 hours in a car with a conscious 19 month old is difficult when you don't have an iPad/Phone/Touch. Of course, I anticipated this, so raided the dollar store and the library for fun new things for her to play with and watch. (I apologize to anyone who looked for anything Dora-related at the Windmill Library the weekend of June 9th - I was scouring the aisles like a mad woman.) I even managed to snag a special 8 episode DVD instead of the usual 4 to maximize the possibilities...and the room in the car. I wanted to use movies on the laptop as a last resort (mostly because battery life was a concern) and I'm a little bit proud to admit that we didn't use it on either car ride! My resolve wavered several times, but we held strong and Teagan made it - just like the good ol' days before we had all these handy-dandy devices and we hung toilet paper out the window or dragged army men behind the car.
Teagan read her new colouring book like it was the morning paper, experimented with sensory deprivation by closing her eyes to reach and eat and when I asked her to wipe her face, covered her eyes with the wipe making it look as though we had taken a baby hostage. It's worth noting that I stocked up on Goldfish, veggie straws, applesauce, fruit snacks and other such age-appropriate snacks. She preferred her dad's bag of BLT Lay's. I didn't raise no fool.

Our saving grace was a stop in Cedar City (about 1/2 way) for gas. We remembered driving through with friends a while back and we stopped at a school down the street from the gas station to let their little boy run around. (I say "we" but I mean "Brandon". I can't remember what we had for dinner yesterday.) We stretched our legs, filled our bellies and renewed our patience. Nothing like putting in it PARK halfway through a roadtrip! Yes, she looked like a tiny homeless person with unkempt hair and dirty pajamas, but it made for fun photos.

After a couple of days of swimming, shopping, wandering, eating, visiting and reminiscing (not to mention 4 hours of sleep the previous night...a post all its own) Teagan did manage to sleep in 10 minute stretches on the way home.

When she wasn't asleep, she was screaming. 10 minutes of sleep, 5 minutes of screaming alternated for 3 hours became a little tedious. I struggled to find joy in this journey. Until...

We passed the Wienermobile. Brandon says he can die happy. Unfortunately, in my frenzied attempt at capturing the magic, I cut off the license plate. "OH I WISH". Brilliant. And just to be sure, I stuck my head (and expensive camera) out the window at 65 miles an hour. In hindsight, not the best idea I've had, but boy was I glad I did it. 

After stopping at the same park on the way back, Teagan was a little bit nicer. It helped that we'd picked up little finger puppets at Ikea. Those kept her entertained for a few minutes. I must give Teagan a little credit - the last time we spent more than an hour in the car she was 2 months old. So I can't say I blame her for being a little upset that she had to sit so long. I can, however, blame her for not sleeping the night before. Bet you can't wait to hear about the rest of our trip! It really wasn't as bad as I'm making it out to be. It was fun to be uninterrupted together as a family. Brandon and I played some classic roadtrip games and it really was nice to just be together, even if one of us was screaming.

So, am I a little proud we made it without the assist of technology? Yes.
Would I do it again? Ask me later - I'm busy researching smartphones.

 

We definitely found joy in the journey...we just had to look really hard.

Puh-puh-puh Patio

By Las Vegas standards, we have a decent sized backyard. It was one of the things that sold us on the house. Most houses on our street are significantly longer, but we were happy to make up the space in the back. It was a huge bonus that the whole thing was paved. When the house was built, the concrete stopped at the wavy line you see in the photo with rocks the rest of the way, but the previous owners shelled out some major cash and paved the whole thing. They even left us a bonus slab of concrete that I don't see us being able to move in this lifetime. Awesome.

We hadn't done anything to the back of the house since we moved in, but with a good chunk of it almost always in the shade of the bigger houses on either side of us, we had the perfect place for a patio set. We looked for a long time, and couldn't find anything in our meager price range. We finally came upon a cute, little set at Lowe's and Brandon gallantly put plans for his Man Grill on hold in order to us to obtain the set. 

Brandon had the day after Father's Day "off", so we eased Brandon back into the daily grind by having him assemble it. Yep, I roped me a good one.

 

We had leftovers for lunch on the new patio set and snapped a photo moments before Teagan stood up and nearly fell off, and ended up eating inside with her securely in her high chair instead. But who has to know?

I think Teagan likes it. At least it's a good place to practice planking.

And singing "Part of Your World".

 

Looking forward to a time when being outside won't feel like being in an oven and we can enjoy it a little more.