Lisa ♥ Eric

Lisa & Eric - the newlyweds!! What a good-looking couple!

I got back Sunday night from a very quick trip to Salt Lake City for Lisa's wedding. She made such a beautiful bride! George and I were lucky enough to go on Lisa and Eric's first date (it was a set-up)...ice-skating! We knew it was meant to be :) Not really, but we're so happy that we got to know Eric even though we've been living far away. I've known Lisa since my Alaska days in 1997! We went to rival high schools, but attended the same church branch. She is such an amazing girl and I'm so happy we've stayed friends throughout the years. I can always count on her for a good adventure. In fact get this, she ran 12 miles the day before her wedding! She's probably the only bride that's ever done that! She's training for a marathon in May. Such motivation! It was so much fun to see Lisa's family as well, we have been 'family friends' since many of our siblings have coinciding ages.

We were also roommates during my one short semester at BYU-Idaho. That was such a FUN semester. It was great to catch up with our other roomies at the wedding...Emily and Melissa! These girls know how to make me laugh!

Sara and I had fun sneaking in to Lisa and Eric's hotel room to decorate!

Beside the fun wedding festivities I also got to catch up with Sara and her family. As always it's SO wonderful to spend time with her and Joe and to admire their beautiful children. I even got to watch one of Kyson's basketball games. It was hilarious to watch 8-year-olds play the game. They are awesome! There was some major D, lay-ups, and shots. I was impressed! They were all so fast and strong! We also went swimming/hot-tubbing every spare minute! About a week before the trip, Kaden started calling me every day to give me the countdown. "Liz 3 more days until I get to see you in the hot tub..." Way to work over the auntie with your cuteness :)

I got to party with Shena on Saturday - our tradition is sushi and hot fudge peanut butter milkshakes from Stan's. Mmm :)

I also got to visit Aly! I always forget to take pictures when I'm having so much fun. Aly snapped one of Ben distracting his mama from nap-time. I'm surprised he doesn't get away with more with that cute smile of his!

It was a GREAT weekend. I'm SO happy for Lisa and Eric. I can personally say marriage is the best. I've loved every minute of it! Oh yes, I forgot to mention, the mountains. The beautiful snow-capped mountains. They were so lovely to gaze upon this weekend. I miss them. And I miss all the amazing people that live out west. Hopefully George and I will start making our way back home sometime in the near future!

Project UG

When my George leaves me...or I leave him...which has happened way too often over the past year, I start on a new project to try and pass the time. While driving through a neighborhood in Orlando we saw two dressers on the side of the road needing a home. They were free and made out of real wood so we threw them in the back of the car. For Christmas George gave me a beautiful print of the Manti Temple in a distressed black frame. So I decided to try and copy the frame-look and try it out on the dresser.

The guy at Ace was beyond helpful...to the point of annoyance. He really wanted to help me get the right sand paper and paint and I really just wanted to look around on my own and and figure stuff out. I did a rough-over sanding job and then got a little too spray paint happy and had to sand off the excess paint. Luckily George was back in time to help me sand off my mistake and also give me a lesson on proper spray painting. I should have done more graffiti growing up...who knew there was such vital technique to painting with a can! I shuffled the dresser and drawers back and forth between our porch and the driveway to try to keep them out of the rain. And finally today I got around to doing the final bit of sanding. I'm pretty sure this would make a carpenter cringe, but you've gotta start somewhere!

It's going in the kitchen. The lack of counter space is killing me and I hate lugging these out of the cupboards every time I want to use them. Yay for free fixer-up-ers!

Really SUGAR??!

I don't know what happened, but on Sunday night a sugar switch must have flipped on because I've eaten more sugar in the past 5 days than I have this entire year. I've been doing so good...just 4 lbs. from my goal weight. And then I ate a Valentine cookie on Sunday. And then I ate another one. And maybe one more. And these are BIG V-day cookies...bigger than the palm of my hand with yummy cinnamon candy icing.

Then on Monday it was a lady's birthday at work so I had to have a piece of turtle cheesecake. And then that night was my friend, Morgiana's birthday and she made home-made angel food cake with a delightful berry mix to put on top. It was wonderful.

Then on Tuesday a drug rep at work brought in a box of dark chocolate covered nut clusters from Caffe' Chocolat just up the street. They were amazing. I've purposely avoided that store because I knew I would love it. I resisted the home-made chocolate cake that Vic, the nurse practitioner, brought in for us....go self control, haha.

Let's see Wednesday...a patient that loves us brought us donuts...I had a chocolate covered glazed donut. Oh yes and another drug rep brought more dark chocolates. I had a few. And then BEFORE dinner George and I went on a walk and ate chocolate ice cream cones. It was fun and cold.

And today is Thursday. I still love sugar. I must find that sugar switch and turn it back off. I'm out of control. I had the last valentine cookie. And only one dark chocolate at work :) Oh and chocolate milk for lunch.

Anyway I think I'm done with the sugar for a little bit, even though my body is telling me I want more. I wouldn't want to become diabetic and I know it's probably not the best time to say good-bye to sugar right before Valentine's Day, but oh well, sometimes you have to moderate at inconvenient times. I will get to you goal weight!

Space Shuttle Endeavour - Night Launch!

Liz & George smiling at 4 am excited to see a shuttle launch into space :)

On Sunday at 4:39 a.m. we got up with thousands of other people to watch a night shuttle launch. Titusville was SO busy with tons of traffic and people everywhere. We walked about a mile from our house to see the launch. We could have watched it out our front door, but I had to see it take off from the pad. It got cancelled due to a low cloud ceiling, BOO. All the poor people that had driven into town got stuck in terrible traffic for the drive back and didn't even get to see the shuttle go up. It was taking cars 2 hours to get to the interstate, which normally takes 10 minutes. It was rescheduled for the next day, and fortunately everything went smoothly on Monday morning. At 4:14 am EST the Space Shuttle Endeavour lit up the sky bright as day...it was awesome! It was likely the last night shuttle launch ever, and the first launch I got to see! My video is a little too long to post on blogger (1 min 41 sec) but I posted it on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. It's pretty cool because it shows how light it actually got. It was spectacular! You can visit NASA's website for more information on this mission. The space shuttle docked at the international space station early Wednesday morning, not too shabby of a distance for less than two days of travel. I'm cool and just learned you can embed YouTube videos so let's see if this works:

Community Garden

George and I spent 4 hours last Saturday morning volunteering at a community garden. Gardening in Florida is different than what we're used to. We pulled up to what looked like a lawn and started tearing it apart to find "soil" (really just sand) underneath. Unfortunately the whole project was quite disorganized. Probably about 60 or 70 people showed up ready to work. The goal was to prepare and plant 1/2 acre. Instead after 4 hours of work there is a half-tilled, kind-of hoed, torn up lawn. Ah well. George and I worked our little section and that part is ready to plant. I'm curious to see what ends up happening with it. Supposedly the boy scouts will maintain it (when and if it gets planted) and also the foster home that is near the garden will work on it and get the produce from it. I think community gardening is a fabulous concept. I found out about this volunteer opportunity through Disney's Give a Day Get a Day Program. It was neat because my oldest sister, Abbie, has been working on a non-profit educational farm up in Alaska, called Calypso Farm. It sounds like a wonderful operation and she has been telling me about these community gardens so I wanted to find a local one. Hopefully the 'garden' we worked on actually becomes a producing community garden! I think it's cool that Disney is promoting service. They have eligible service projects across the country if you're interested in getting free tickets to Disney. Plus you can stay at our house in FL if you come to Disney World!!