for sale, doodles, and loving the one you're with

last friday night neither of us felt like cooking, so we headed out to the pie to ingest a month's worth of carbs and fat. mmmmm.

side note: the first day i start my period, i am allowed to eat whatever i please, guilt free. a few days ago when i was eating a kit kat at my parents' house, my mom looked at me, surprised, because i don't usually eat that kind of junk at night, and travis, without looking up from his game of angry birds, said to her, "it's period day. she can eat whatever she wants." seriously, the man is a dream.

anyway, the period was still giving me an excuse to eat anything, so travis and i ordered a cheesy, meat loaded pizza. as we were sitting there, wolfing down goodness, we said:

c: this is taking years off of my life!
t: laughs, i know right!
c: so we have to eat the same amount of slices then!
t: wait! what slice are you on? stop!
c: you're on 4 and i'm on 2! you stop!
t: well i want to die first anyway.

like ten minutes later:

t: wait! how many have you had! stop!

and i really hoped someone at another table heard him and thought he was an overbearing, abusive husband fueling my eating disorder.

we just have a really good time all the time.

in other news, our house is officially on the market! (second one down) yesterday my uncle, our realtor, called me with news that three people had inquired about our house yesterday morning. oh and they wanted to come over in 2 hours! i ran around cleaning showers and hiding laundry piles. they were early, naturally, so i watched this cute little family with three kids walking though our home. it was a little strange, seeing this family walking through our house and thinking they could live here instead of us. i'm never very good at settling down anywhere. i always have this itch to be going somewhere else, learning something else, etc. so i'm very excited for our new adventure to get going.

i saved the best for last. obviously if you're my facebook friend, you know we bought a goldendoodle last week. travis had been looking at them online for months and there was a litter in sandy, so we went to look, just for fun. turned out travis fell in love with the breed and i fell in love with one of the puppies. they were extremely cheap and we talked them down even cheaper, so we decided to buy one! we named him charlie, (thank you brittany bezzant, hollar!) and he is great. :)

more from the redbrick house

we have decided to sell our house and move to daybreak,
so we've been working hard to finish everything.
and i found a rug for the front room :)

remember all the time i spent in the yard planting?
everything is starting to bloom!

no more giant, prickly bushes! no more random flower beds! (covered them in sod)

new windows and finished molding.

i bought frames from the DI for cheap and then used pictures
from my textbooks, magazines, paintings, and photos of our family to fill them.
cheapest craft ever.

another shot of the new windows. and some excellent fake flowers.

bah! i love this door so much!

i have had so much fun decorating this house,
but i never ever want to live in a fixer upper again.
there's always a mess to clean.
that being said, i really appreciate all the family
who spent hours helping us refinish floors, hang doors,
put up crown molding and base, paint, sheetrock,
tile, re-roof, and everything else.

if you know of someone who wants to
live in murray in a beautifully updated home,
please let me know. :)

sphincter upset

i want to start this off by saying something truly personal.

i have always been blessed with regularity, the kind that you flush. i'll just come out and say it: i am lucky enough to poop several times a day, never have constipation or intestinal cramping. i rarely get sick, and probably only suffer from diarrhea twice a year. that being said, yesterday as i stood in my kitchen, gulping down 8 ounces of miralax, because i hadn't had a bowel movement in three and a half days, i stood back and thought, "when did this become my life?"

let me back up a few days.

last friday, i was lucky enough to go to the women part's doctor (as it's named in my phone) to have an IUD put in. or rather, shoved in. as aforementioned, i had a pretty bad experience my first time to the gynecologist when i passed out and fell off of the exam table. so, needless to say, i was entirely freaked out. my dear mom took me, because travis was working, and she did her best to keep me calm, but really, nothing can soothe a girl whose legs are in the stirrups and a strange (but extremely handsome, but then i love prematurely grey hair) older man staring at her hoo-ha.

when i'm nervous, i talk a lot and it's not always appropriate. so about the time dr. barton began to "feel me up" i had to ask, "how's my vagina?" dr. barton glanced up and replied, "oh, it looks very good, very healthy." my reply. "oh good, that's what every girl loves to hear!"

and so it began.

for those of you who haven't experienced an IUD, let me just say that it hurt. worse than anything else has ever hurt in my life. stabbing pain of my uterus being literally ripped. and there was blood and the doctor didn't want to go through with it because of how loud i was yelling. but there was no way i wasn't finishing after feeling all that pain, so he quickly shoved the thing up there, through my cervix and into my little, unstretched by pregnancy uterus. afterwards, i got sick, puked a ton, almost passed out a few times, and then had some very intense cramping. my sweet mom ran to the pharmacy to get me lortab, and that helped a lot.

the doctor had gotten to know me pretty well by then and said the best thing to comfort me. he came in to check on me after, and said, "it could be worse. at least you're not pregnant." i wanted to kiss him!

so apparently, my body really loves lortab. i had never had any drugs like that before, but once it kicked in, i was feeling gooooood. we went wedding dress shopping with my aunt and cousins and i was a little more inappropriate than usual, at one point yelling, "that dress really makes your boobs look so perky and luscious!" the woman working at the shop didn't really know how to handle it. my cousin also had strep throat, and they were trying to keep it on the DL, but i loudly asked her how she was feeling and mentioned that she had strep at least 4 times.

anyway, back to the miralax. so after all the trauma and pain, and then the intense cramping that followed me home, i was reluctant to, shall we say, push in any way down there. so i didn't poop for a day. then two. then by day three, i was freaking out. hence the miralax.

plus i got a terrible cold. pretty much my body is railing against me for the foreign device now living inside my (according to the doctor) textbook uterus. but i am proud to announce that an hour ago, i had a bowel movement, did the deed, dropped the duce, or travis's personal favorite, "took the cosbys to the pool."

anyway, the pain is a lot better and travis has taken excellent care of me. plus he gave me a cat for mother's day and decided he wanted one of his own, too. oh and, one last thing. the doctor told me i had the strongest pelvic floor muscles he had ever seen. i've been bursting with pride that the pilates and yoga have actually worked. :)

hope your sphincters and rectums are all in good health!

the dog un-whisperer

i'm supposed to be doing research for my last final due this thursday. instead i'm doing this, guiltily, so i'll try to keep it short.

basically this afternoon i felt like getting outside and doing some yard work. the rosebushes in the back had grown like 8 feet tall so i took the clippers to them. an hour later i had blood dripping down my legs and had killed 2 spiders, but the bushes are considerably smaller. i was looking around admiring my mad gardening skills, when i noticed travis's dog, roxy, looking forlornly at me from her pen in the back. please let me out she seemed to beg.

in case you don't know, roxy and i have a terrible relationship. i have cursed, hit, abused and hated on her just as much as she has been a huge sock eating, puking, pooping, babypuppy abusing shit to me. but because she is travis's dog, i have tried my best to make friends. and she looked so sad sitting there and the weather is so nice out, i thought, i'll put her on her leash and let her out for a bit.

something else you should know about roxy. when travis is around, she's an angel. when travis is gone, she runs away and i have to chase her. in the past, this has allowed the neighbors to see me at my finest, classiest moments, like when i run down the street in my sweats and scream curse words and also for my bishop to witness me choking her and beating her while yelling at him, "i hope this dog gets hit by a car!" and if you're thinking, oh sad, collette beats animals and is pretty much the cruelest person ever, let me just say that i love animals, but roxy, she is not of this earth.

so today, i had somehow forgotten all roxy put me through last winter and though i'd let her out. i prepared her leash and tied it to the tree in advance, i had figured out her chain collar, now all i had to do was get it around her neck before she ran away from me. it started well; i got the chain on her and was trying to tie her up, when she started jumping and the chain was slipping off her neck. i was sitting on her and she started panicking, probably thinking i was trying to hurt her, and she got really aggressive with me, i freaked out and she slipped out of her chain and was gone.

oh great.

so i started chasing her down the street, where she was running circles around an ancient man doing yardwork. she stopped to take a HUGE green dump in the neighbor's yard, but was off again. i'm not as fast as she is, so i was hoping to corner her somewhere. instead, she veered right into another neighbor's, (and conveniently enough, ex boyfriend of mine) driveway. i heard the sounds of dogs fighting and then a woman screaming. i upped my pace to a sprint and found that roxy had run straight into their kitchen. (apparently their front door was open.) roxy was fighting/playing with their dog and the screams were coming from the pregnant wife, and who could blame her. roxy saw me coming and tried to escape capture by running for the stairs. at this point, i was done playing games. i took a running start, and then a magnificent leap through the air, landing right on top of her back and straddling her.

this was the tackle of all tackles. if i were a pro linebacker, this would have been replayed on espn repeatedly. i would have won an award. you get the idea.

i turn around to see my old flame and his pregnant wife staring at me and was brought back to the embarrassment of reality. roxy and i did the walk of shame home while i considered turning her into this.

the worst part of the whole thing: i almost didn't go after roxy and really considered telling travis she was abducted, while hoping she would get hit by a car. does rat poison work on dogs too? ...


go ahead, call peta on me.

horn tooting

ok so i submitted a piece to a feminist blog a few weeks ago, not really thinking it would ever run, but they posted it! on the front page! :) i'm probably more excited than i need to be, but i really hope this explains a little more of what feminism is and why it's so important. it's very personal and i hope it doesn't offend any of you. i meant it to be helpful to anyone who is struggling with these kinds of problems.

this is the link: http://thefbomb.org/2011/04/dear-feminism/

check out the rest of the site; it's really great! :)

my obsession with the doodle

i can't stop googling pictures of these:

GOLDEN DOODLES!

basketful of doodles!

oh noes! doodle mated with a snuffleupagus !

seriously? have you ever seen such hilarious/adorable animals?


this is where they come from ^


they are allergy friendly, light to non shedding, smart, pleasers, and


extremely expensive. :(

(like everything else i like.
seriously take me to the D.I. and i will accidentally
find the most expensive thing in there
and it will be the thing i want.)

but i am scheming ways to afford one.

this will come to pass. :)

the late night ramblings

disclaimer: this post is way too long and way too ridiculous. don't feel pressured to read.


Nostalgia is a seductive liar. ~George Wildman Ball
Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days. ~Doug Larson
Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect!
~Owens Lee Pomeroy
Everything can be killed except nostalgia for the kingdom, we carry it in the color of our eyes, in every love affair, in everything that deeply torments and unties and tricks.
-julio cortazar

I don't think nostalgia has to be negative.
-van morrison

I know what it's like to be in one place and dream of another. I also know what it's like to feel that nostalgia is a fairly useless thing because it is stasis.
-mira nair

in case it's unclear how i feel tonight, i feel homesick and nostalgic. it all started with my mumford and sons pandora station. you know how sometimes pandora or shuffle on the ipod seems to read your mood and keep playing those songs you love most? tonight as i was washing my face, pandora kept spitting out music i fell in love with when i lived in hawaii. band of horses, coldplay, and glen hansard.

when i lived there, it was like my all emotions were heightened. as i have mentioned before, that island helped me heal from many things that i struggled with. that music played an enormous role in the healing. sometimes i wish i could write those artists and thank them for writing the words i so needed to hear, but i'm sure they receive letters like that on a daily basis.

ever since i was a little girl, i have wanted to go back to "the before." the summer of 5th grade was especially great, and after it ended, i would daydream about those great days. i used to commit certain moments to memory and then go through all the moments over and over, so afraid i would forget the happiness. i guess i really struggle with letting go of good things.

so tonight i have been thinking about all the wonderful events in my life. i remember my first year of college, moving into an apartment filled with half naked gymnasts and football players, playing poker and dani california blasting from their stereo. those muscly girls hauled all my boxes of pots, pans, bedding, and even furniture up three flights of stairs and were welcoming, coarse language and all.

the first meal i cooked after moving out was spaghetti and meatballs, those terrible costco meatballs that you can literally warm up in the microwave. my roomates were impressed. and then i drove home that weekend, a mere four days later. i was speeding and got pulled over. totally pulled the "it's my first time away from home officer; i just miss my parents so much." line and didn't get a ticket. i was going at least 95.

i remember my first love leaving on an LDS mission, and just knowing i couldn't live without him. i saved his all voicemails on my phone, and late at night when sleep wouldn't come, i would listen to them over and over, sobbing. that first love was so sweet, such teenage puppy love, staying out till 4 every morning to go train watching, talking about nothing, and listening to brand new or bayside's acoustic cd. after he left, i couldn't listen to music for a long time.

i remember every time i would come home for a weekend, my three brothers running to the door to hug me. they seemed to grow so much those three years i was gone. it meant the world to me, their excitement. thinking about it now makes me cry. i love those boys so much.

then of course there was the year i spent living in hawaii. that first house, three miles from school, and that purple beach cruiser i borrowed from the tongans sharing our duplex. the first time i met erika dick, i knew we would be friends. she talked a hundred miles an hour while she hung up her colorful clothes in the closet we shared. our toenails were painted the same orange and we laughed about that. she had tegan and sara playing in the background on her laptop.

i remember riding my beach cruiser to the grocery store, tamuras, and smelling fish and mildew. the big brown woman who taught me about pineapples as i was picking one. i remember hitchhiking for the first time, asking the man if he planned on raping me before i would get in his car. we always took our books to the beach and pretended to study. i still have scars on my knees from the mosquito bites i got while talking to travis on the phone outside. we didn't get phone service in the house. he used to stay up late and talk to me, while i paced the beach park across the street from the house. it was usually raining.

obviously i am homesick. it's late and the iron and wine isn't helping at all. i guess the point of all this rambling, is that sometimes i feel like i'm bursting with all these memories that make me who i am. and i look at travis and wonder if he ever feels that way and if i could ever know all the memories that make him, him. and if it even matters. but it seems like it does. do you know what i'm trying to say here? do you ever feel so full of memories and so homesick for those times that you can't stand it almost? not in a sad feeling way exactly, but a filled kind of way?

there's an ingrid michaelson song that goes,

they say that home is where the heart is

i guess i haven't found my home
and we keep driving round in circles
afraid to call this place our own.
and are we there yet?

i really like the way maya angelou put it and i will leave this ridiculous post at this:

You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right.

all the gross things you never needed to know

so lately i haven't been the best blogger evar. school has been sucking all motivation from my soul. oh but i love it so much! if i could just go to school for the rest of my life and not have to pay for it...

anyhow.

this is a small recap of life the past couple months.

• random jaw popping pain.

ok so when i started dieting, of course i had to have a replacement for my addiction to sweet food. i started chewing gum. like, a pack of gum in thirty minutes. in the back of my head it was like, "ok this is too good to be true... it's like candy without the calories! this will catch up to you." about a month ago, i woke up with this terrible pain in my ear. positive i had an ear infection, we went to the doctor that very same day. turns out, we paid instacare 40 bucks for the young, fiercely cocky doctor to tell me to stop chewing gum. apparently i have given myself arthritis and gotten my jaws all out of whack. somehow that hurts my ear. well i stopped chewing gum, but started chewing licorice and salt water taffy. so now, i have this terrible, jaw bone grinding, pop! anytime i swallow. this will not end well... ha!

maybe it's like this for you, but i swear i always have the most random sicknesses/physical problems! there was the terrible case of hives i had senior year, covering my entire body and face and head and they were literally the size of dinner plates. lasted one day.

then there was the time in my first year of college, we went hot tubbing. a few days later, i developed BOILS all over my body - boils filled with PUS and that took three months to go away. my roommates probably thought i had an std. some crazy bacteria. did anyone else who went hot tubbing that night get them? no way hosea.

then there's always the story about my first trip to the gyno. not sure it's really internet appropriate, but it involved the creepy old man, the scared 17 year old (me, lol this isn't that weird, you perv!) passing out and falling off the table, bumping my head. the doctor told me to stay put while he got some juice but i threw my pants back on and peaced out of there.

good grief i didn't mean for this post to turn into all the grossest things ever. back to the bullets?

• gardening!

we went flower shopping (!) and now have the most beautiful yard ever. if you remember our racist neighbor and his snarkish comments about our yard, you'll understand why i have to beat his yard this year. his grass really is extremely green though.

• new windows and the new front door. pictures soon to come.

• i'm all set up to graduate next spring. now i am trying to decide what master's program is the best fit. and next fall i get to start volunteering at the rape recovery center. there is a light at the end of the academiatunnel.

• travis's new name for himself: housewife bodtcher. he also has a theme song which i will try to catch on tape for you. but i don't know how i would do it without him. he does so much around the house and takes such great care of me. i try not to write about how great he is every post, but being married and in school has been the easiest semester ever.

basically life around here is the same as always. constantly laughing and running around in socks seeing who can slide the furthest down the hardwood floored hallway.

travis weighs more and that is the ONLY reason he always wins.

good night!

spring break in st. george

for spring break, travis and i drove to st george
to stay with my grandparents.

it was a much needed vacation.

we hiked snow canyon.

yes. it was necessary for him to even take video of this beaut.

-we spent time with my family, played hand and foot with the senior citizens from my grandparents retirement community, went to the st. george temple, and ate so much food! we went to an art exhibit, had a romantic bike ride at sunset, and went house hunting for travis's dad.

-we also learned that the extremely thin walls at my grandparents' weren't a newlywed's best pal.

-we laughed nonstop for the whole week. if there is something travis and i have going for us, it's our ability to be silly with each other, tease each other, and find humor in everything. driving down, i saw this huge, black, flapping shape on the side of the freeway. i thought it was an enormous bird, and pointed, saying, "WOW!" really loud. then i looked at travis to see what he thought about it, and he had this look on his face, like i was crazy. turns out the dark shape was a garbage bag. travis looks over to see his wife freaking out over a trash bag on the side of the road.

the rest of the trip he would periodically screech, "ka kaw ka kaw!" (bird sounds.)

marriage = hilarious.

garden wombs

it's march. which means...

my garden is blooming!

i have been having dreams all winter that the flowers bloom and are as big as my head and a little alice in wonderland-esque. they aren't quite that big yet, but travis and i peek outside several times a day, checking to see what else has popped up.

also, yesterday i was getting dressed, put on a shirt i hadn't worn in a while, and it seemed a bit tight around the midsection. the scale says i'm not gaining weight, but the shirt disagrees. so of course i freaked out, thinking i had to be pregnant. i took a pregnancy test that is supposed to take three minutes to decide, and it declared my womb empty after about 2 seconds. poof! red minus sign before the pee even had a chance to cool. ...(sorry...)

so basically the garden outside is blooming while the garden in my uterus is pretty boring. :)

ehem.

blooming in the womb- alan schwartz

sunshine, winning, and fat wieners

so i had a good moment on sunday, involving sunshine, winning, and fat wieners.

ok, before you click the red X at the top right, let me explain. i bet you will laugh at least a little.

after church on sunday, travis and i decided we needed to go outside and play. we had a new game, some kind of horseshoes thing, that needed breaking in, plus it was a gorgeous sunny day. we picked up travis's family on the way and headed to the park a few blocks from our house. we got to the park and set up the game and tossed the football around for a bit, just enjoying the day and the playful banter from the family.

well this guy is out walking his dogs, right, these two dachshunds who look a lot like this:

just the average looking, healthy dachshund, yes?

well as they walk by and are clear across the park at the other end, i tell my brother in law, kellen, "you have to see these fat dachshunds who live in our neighborhood!" and i start telling him all about how their bellies hang to the ground and when travis and i drive by, we drive by 3 or 4 times just to keep looking and travis finally has to drag me away because the owner has waved 3 times now and is looking suspicious.

the fat ones look like this, i promise

so anyway, i am telling kellen all about the dogs and how unbelievably fat they are, when the guy walking his thin dogs clear across the park turns around and yells at me, "are you talking about my wieners?!"

how in the great hell did he hear me from all the way across the park??

i yell back, "no, no sir your wieners look fantastic! i was not talking about your wieners at all because they look fit and nice!"

and then i realize that travis's family and the entire park has just heard me yell at a complete stranger how great his wieners are.

the intense and sappy love post

no matter how many times it happens, i am still amazed at how with the right attitude, we can take something terrible and make it into something great. our neighbor committed suicide almost two weeks ago. this was someone who travis always looked up to, as he was a firefighter for salt lake city. it was a painful, terrible thing for travis (and everyone else of course) to go through, especially because when travis was young his foster brother committed suicide. but in all this pain and sadness, God presents us with possibilities for growth and for good. because of this travis and i have grown closer and trusted each other with so much more. i honestly keep thinking, "how can i ever get any happier and feel closer to this man?" and then the next day comes and i literally can't believe how happy we are.

it's been amazing to be married and to trust each other on this level i never knew existed. tonight when i left the fire station and was waving goodbye to travis, i got tears in my eyes because i was sad to leave him. good grief, he'll be home in a day, but the thought of my best friend being separated from me for even a day was enough to make me cry. ha! i never thought this would happen to me. :)

when you're close enough to someone to marry them, you think you have some small idea of what loving them feels like. i had no idea it would ever feel like this, and i can only imagine how intense it will be in even another year. a tangible measure of this growth is in the story of our little bed. when we first got married, sharing a full sized bed was only a little short of torture. neither of us slept well and we were constantly fighting for space and covers. now, we smash together and have the best sleep of our lives. when we stayed at anniversary inn, the queen sized bed was way too big and we were happy to get back to our full. i wish i could express the joy and fulfillment i find in being married to travis, but words are pretty limited.

i just never knew i had the capacity to love someone so much and accept that kind of love in return.

ok, ok this is getting wayyy to serious. :) love you and hope you have a great night!

and if any of you think you need to make some remark about "just wait until you have kids" please keep it to yourself. im enjoying the time i have to be just with my husband :)

this old house (kitchen edition)

welcome to our home!
(new back door and molding)

amazing ksl classified finds

above is the afore mentioned fine china
and thanks to the many people
who give us their old things
like this beautiful hutch

BEFORE

i know you can't tell from the picture
but this kitchen was FILTHY!
we scraped the grease from the cabinets
and had to use oven cleaner to clean the walls.
pretty sad that the boydells, the previous owners
lived in this mess.

AFTER

we lucked out with the laminate floors in here
and the big windows. like the red chairs?
took forEVER! and travis's garage has
red paint all over. oops.
the curtains are vintage from my
grandmother's basement. :) my mom sewed the black part.

new countertop, sink, stove top, and backsplash.
my handihusband intalled everything!
with the help of his family of course.
but i was very proud that he figured out
the sink and countertop without much help at all.

BEFORE

AFTER

can't wait for the new windows :)

this old house

BEFORE

whenever anyone asks me what has been
going on lately? i tell them this:

lucky for us, underneath the green shag carpet
was a beautiful surprise: hardwood floors
that had never seen the light of day.
so travis and our brother-in-law josh
and of course randy, the best father-in-law ever
refinished them :)

i try to keep up with all the construction helping, but
let's face it, the guys don't let me do much.
so i did most of the cleaning, painting, and decorating!
this lovely find came straight from D.I. for $20

that map above my beautiful baldwin hamilton
was originally wrapping paper from a wedding gift.
the loveseat and coffee table came from an estate sale.
(along with a butt ton of free fine china from japan!)
i am planning to get a rug, maybe something that
looks like a persian rug? red perhaps?
and the paint color appears blue in these
pictures, but is really more of a green.

mostly old clutter i have had, plus that crown from ross.
it always confuses men who come over
(ha not that i have "men" over! that didn't sound right.
men = family, friends, home teachers, etc.)
but when women see it, they're like oh i love that.
kind of like how most guys who are over are like,
"that couch looks pretty old." but the gals love it.

can you believe people lived with this carpet? ^

i much prefer this. :)

this room's improvements were:

6 can lights
refinished floors
patching the many holes in the wall
new primer
fresh new paint
new (ish) furniture and such
new baseboards and crown molding
and soon a new front door!

buying a fixer upper has been soooooooooooo much work
but it is starting to pay off.