All Dogs Go To Heaven?

This last week, I had a 3-day job as a receptionist at a local apartment complex. I've been doing lots of temporary jobs lately, and mainly what it comes down to is this: I have very few tasks to do at most of these jobs, and am left with hours upon hours of sitting there waiting for something to happen. So, early on in my temporary jobs job, I learned to find ways to occupy myself while working. Mostly, I read. Last week, I got much reading done!

On my third day there, however, I decided to do a little research. I've wanted a dog for the past few months, and so I thought, since I didn't have much else to do, I would get on the internet and do my research. I looked up pictures and temperaments, dogs good with children, dogs that don't shed, etc., etc., etc.

When I was in High School, I thought it would be so cool to have one of these:

This is a Great Dane. They're huge, which makes me wanting one slightly ironic. Pretty cool, though, don't you think?

Well, I've grown up since High School (at least I'd like to think so...), and I now have different taste. I looked up some lap dogs. They fit me more, right? Since they're tiny?

My parents have had these two dogs:

A Toy Poodle (it wasn't pink, though ... unfortunately. I think it adds something, don't you?), and,

... a Shi Tzuh (a cute little guy, but very annoying... and smelly).

Now, since Daniel's mission, he's thought that these dogs are pretty cool:

The Rottweiler.

They always freaked me out. I'm not sure I could go with one of these. I guess we'll see.

These are some of the dogs I've looked into. I think they're adorable. What do you think? Which one would you choose?

Pug & Maltese

New Guinea Singing Dog & Vizsla

An Irritating Infestation

Meet Bob:

Bob is a Fungus Gnat. A few weeks ago, Daniel and I became well acquainted with Bob and many, many of his relatives. Let me tell you about Bob's own. Fungus Gnats are little flies that live and reproduce in the soil. They're very small, so we originally thought that they were fruit flies. They look much like them.

Daniel and I have a small indoor tree, and within the last few months, we repotted our plant into some nice soil in a real ceramic pot. I think our tree was very happy to be in a new niche. But we soon found that the amount of "fruit flies" in our house had increased, rather quickly.

So, we created traps like this one:

It has orange juice concentrate (to seduce the little buggers) and vinegar (to kill the little buggers). But, the traps were not disposing of as many as we would like. Then Daniel began noticing that a lot of the flies congregated around our little tree. And the more he watched them, the more he saw that they were crawling around in the dirt. And there were LOTS of them!

After some more research, he learned the truth about these little pests. In an effort to rid our home (and plant) of them forever, Daniel removed our plant from it's pot and the "soiled" dirt, put all of the dirt in some cake pans and jelly-roll pans, placed these in the oven, and baked the dirt. Yes, he put dirt in the oven and baked it. The idea was to cook all of the larvae and the flies out of the dirt, so that we don't have anymore.

The funny thing was that I was making a curry, peanut stew at the time that Daniel was taking care of all this. As I'm making the food, I keep smelling the pot, and I notice it smells increasingly like dirt. I kept asking myself, "Man, did I just not wash the vegetables well enough? What did I accidentally toss into the pot? This smells like dirt!" It took me several minutes to realize that the dirt in the oven was causing the smell!


The venture was successful so far. We don't have flies buzzing around our faces or food anymore, which is a delight. We've put our tree in our spare bedroom (with the door closed, of course) and covered the pot with foil, so as to prevent flies reproducing once again in our plant.

What a funny adventure that was!!

Look At That Kisser!

As a belated gift for Valentine's Day, my mom (when she came to Utah for a weekend) brought us some little candy suckers with big red lips on the ends. They were quite delectable! And they were so funny, we had to take pictures!

Woo! Look at those full lips! So sexy!

One Big, Fat, Valentine's Kiss!!

A Colorful Family Night

Daniel and I are pretty serious about our Family Home Evenings. All talk, no play. We always have very serious gospel discussions that last for 2 hours on Monday evenings, and we rarely have treats or activities to go along with it. I mean, that's just the sort of couple we are. No laughing or fun in this house!

Well, no that's not true. Often, it's a short spiritual thought and a grand ole' activity. This particular night, however, I really wanted to color. I had recently bought some crayons (recently because I realized that we didn't have any, and, honestly, what household doesn't have crayons?), and I was so excited about all of the colors. So, for our activity, we found coloring pages on the internet, printed them off, and colored. It was delightful!

It just happened to be the 2nd anniversary of the night we got engaged, February 7th. Daniel colored me this adorable and fuzzy-looking teddy bear for that special occasion.

And as for myself, I just love Hercules!

Love ... Is a Beautiful Thing

Valentine's Day was a few weeks ago, but it was so fun, and Daniel did such cute things, I had to post it!

I woke up Valentine's morning, and I ran into this in the bathroom:


Daniel taped children's Shrek Valentines all over the house. The biggest display was in the bathroom. But he stuck them on the computer screen, by the kitchen sink, on the front door... He even left little surprises in my purse (conversation hearts and more valentines, stickers, etc. I think I ate all the conversation hearts the same day I found them. So much for cutting back on sweets). I still haven't cleaned them up yet. The bathroom mirror still looks like ↑ that. They're still strewn about the house.

We went to Applebee's for dinner, using a giftcard my parents gave Daniel for his birthday (thanks Mom and Dad, for our Valentine's Date!!). And, of course, we had to make sugar cookies. We kind of cheated, though, and bought cookie dough ready-made from the grocery store. Trust me, they were still delicious.

Daniel, decorating his Valentine's Day Cookies.

A Tribute to the Old Man Himself

Last weekend, Daniel and I took a short trip down to California so that we could attend my Grandpa Fernandez' funeral. He passed away peacefully January 24th. The funeral was wonderful. My Dad and his two sisters did the life sketch for Grandpa, and they told all sorts of fun stories. We'll all miss Grandpa, and it was sad to say good-bye, but the funeral was more of a joyful occasion.

Grandpa was so funny! He has a great sense of humor; he made such funny comments. He would always stick his finger in everyone's ear and call it a finger holder. He loved playing games with us and taking his family out for dinners. The last time Daniel and I visited Grandpa, we spent all day with him, and he took us out for lunch and dinner, and we played games in the time in between. It was always fun to hang out with him!

He also loved treats. It's been hard on him, these last few years; with his health problems, he hasn't been able to eat the things he loves. Ice Cream. Cookies. Lemony desserts. When my dad and Aunt Lynn went out to his apartment to start sorting through things, they found the freezer full of ice cream and the cupboards and drawers full of all kinds of cookies and sweets! How delightful!

Well, we are going to miss him. But we are all glad that he's in a better place, and I think he's probably happy to have moved on. We'll miss you, Grandpa!!

Got a job, headed to Burbank!

After a tiresome search I (Daniel) found a job. And it's actually a really good one. I will be going to work with an accounting firm called King, King, Alleman, and Jensen (KKAJ).

The firm is located in Burbank, CA which is really close to where Leslie was born and where some of her extended family still live. For those of you who aren't familiar with the area, it's just north of L.A..

We are really excited! I start during mid-August so we'll be headed down there about then.

It will be really nice to get away from the cold cold cold Utah weather. In fact this morning I was thinking about how nice the weather will be so I looked it up and the high for tomorrow in Burbank is supposed to be 74 degrees Fahrenheit! Doesn't that sound awesome. Burbank is also right by Hollywood, and the headquarters for Disney is there too.