Anniversary, Marathon, and Memories...

So today is our one year Anniversary. I can't believe it has already been a year. It has been a good year though. I cannot imagine life without Mike. We get along so well and life is great with him. I couldn't ask for a better husband.

This morning I woke up around 4 am because Mike had a Marathon he ran this morning. Anyways I come stumbling out of the bedroom and looked up to see white roses sitting on the kitchen counter. I didn't expect it at all. I have the best husband. He also had bought chocolate and Carmel covered rice crispy treat for me. I LOVE rice crispy treats and White Roses. He knows me so well!

Anyways tonight we plan on going to the Desert Star for dinner and to see Snooty and the Beast. It should be fun. One tradition we wont be taking part in is eating the top layer of our wedding cake. Sadly it only lasted a couple days after we got back from our honeymoon last year. We figured in a year it would be so freezer burned and yucky that we wouldn't want to touch it with a ten foot pole. So we enjoyed it while it was still fresh, and it was good!

Mike ran the Prove River Marathon this morning. He ran it in 3:12:58. There were probably about 75 marathon runners and he came in 2nd place overall. I took my camera along but the batteries were dead so I didn't get any pictures. He did well though. I am very proud of him. Top of Utah Marathon is next weekend and then St George is two weeks after that. Crazy guy!

So I have been working on turning my 2008 blog entries into a book (stole that idea from Janae). Anyways I just recently put in the entries about the wedding and realized I never blogged about my honeymoon. I cant believe I never did! So anyways I am going to do a little post on it which I figure is fitting since today is our anniversary. Hopefully I can remember the order of all the places we stayed. I am frustrated because I know I wrote it down somewhere. I just cant remember where. Grrr!

The joy of shopping with other peoples money...

So Mike and I both wanted to get out of the house today but weren't sure what to do. Mike came up with the brilliant idea of using up the rest of our gift cards we got from Christmas and our Wedding last year. We went thru the house and gathered up all the old gift cards and called to get balances. Of course we had already used the bulk of the balance so most cards only had like $4. We didn't have a ton of money left on the cards but we didn't want them to go to waste. So off we went shopping.

First we went to Great Harvest. Mike gets coupons for free loaves of bread from a lot of races he runs. We stopped there and got a couple loaves. We had to pretend we were not together and each had to use a coupon because you are only suppose to use one coupon at a time. We also bought a loaf of Pumpkin Chocolate Chip bread because it was delicious and we felt bad using the coupons and not buying anything. So we ended up spending about $7 on the Pumpkin Bread.

Next we went to Bed Bath and Beyond. I had a gift card with $4.99 left. We ended up getting some drink mixes. I actually got confused and thought I have $8 so we bought a mudslide mix as well as Strawberry Daiquiri mix. When we paid we ended up not having as much on the gift card as I thought so Mike ended up spending $5 out of his own pocket.

Next we went to Old Navy. I had about $8 left on that card. They had some things on sale so Mike and I were able to each get a shirt for $5. So Mike ended up paying $2.50 out of his own pocket there.

After that we headed to Kirkhams. We actually still had $22 left on that gift card. I bought a "Life is Good" shirt since my old one got bleach on it. Mike bought a pair of running socks he really likes... and also some Powerbar Gel which he uses on his runs. I think he ended up spending $15 out of pocket there.

We then hit Walmart... but didn't use any gift cards there. We had to buy a birthday present for his niece Saleen. We are going to a birthday BBQ tomorrow. We also had to get some groceries we forgot to get before and some batteries. So that Walmart trip doesn't really count since we didn't use any gift cards. You don't need to know how much we spent there. We also hit Harbor Freight before walmart. Mike had to pick up some goggles and he also bought a fly zapper which was on sale. We didn't use any gift cards there either. Funny side note: we have had all these flies that got in the house buzzing around driving us nuts. Mike finally got his zapper and we can't find a single fly. He is so disappointed because he was excited to use it. He did manage to zap himself with it already. Poor guy.

After Walmart, we went to the Cheese Cake Factory. We had a $15.99 left on the gift card. We bought a six inch cheesecake (which is tiny). Mike only had to spend $0.44 of his own money there.

Then we grabbed lunch at Taco Bell and headed home. I think we did well. I think total Mike ended up spending $27 out of his own pocket at the places we had gift cards for. It was actually a ton of fun going and trying to find things for cheap so we could use the rest of our gift cards. It was a full day of shopping but it didn't cost us much at all.

This is a picture of all the stuff we bought with gift cards. I think we did well. Thanks to everyone who has given us gift cards for our Wedding or Christmas! We couldn't have done this shopping trip without you!

The New Washing Machine

Last weekend the Washing Machine died. We knew it was on the fritz so we weren't too surprised. Mike started a load of laundry and then we sat down to watch some Deadwood. Anyways it starts on the spin cycle and starts making a horrible sound! Mike runs in and messes around with it for a few minutes but to no avail.
Luckily Mike can get a good employee discount at R.C. Willey. He went in to work on Monday and ordered a Washing Machine to be transferred from their main warehouse. Tuesday he brought it home from work with him. He was anxious to get a new one since we had a wet load of laundry just sitting in the old washing machine. We didn't want the clothes to get too horribly mildewy.


We had to move the dryer and shelves into the kitchen in order to get the new washing machine in. This is a picture of how full and crazy my kitchen was.

This is the new washing machine.

I was anxious to see if it could handle my king sized comforter because I thought it was going to be bigger than the last washing machine. I am sad to say it didn't get all the soap out... but oh well. It is a lot faster than the old washing machine and it is sooooo quiet! We no longer have to push the washing machine back into place after the spin cycle... and the house no longer shakes. It is so delightful! Now we just need the dryer to kill over so we can get a new one of those too!