It’s been FOREVER since I’ve posted anything because I wanted to include pics and my lil sis stole my camera cable…so I bought a new one, waited for it to ship here and here I am!

I’m going to start off with what we did over Valentines Day.  What an awesome weekend that we had!  We took off to Logan on Friday and I spent time with friends getting Natalie’s bridal shower ready.  It was so fun to see the girls that came to her party since I haven’t seen any of them in years!  We ate yummy food, listened to Natalie tell the story of her and Kevin, played the question game (which Natalie bombed), opened presents and hung out with the girls.  I’m hoping she had a fun time because it was so fun for me to throw the party.  Below are pictures posted of it.  I am so excited for her to get married!  By the way, my other best friend Ann got engaged that night!  Yay for marriage!

After her shower, a few of us went to see “He’s just not that into you”.  It was a pretty cool movie, however I love the book so much better!  The hard part about liking that movie is that I identified most with the married girl character who was getting cheated on and lied to by her husband…ugg.  I left that movie and came home, woke Chase up and made him promise never to do that to me.  But the rest of the girls seemed to enjoy it (probably because they all identify with Jennifer Anistion who it all works out happily ever after for).  Oh well, Angie bought my ticket so I can’t complain–FREE MOVIE!

Valentines Day was filled with errands.  Finally it got to be night time and we went to Hamiltons.  I absolutely love that place.  We had reservations for 6:15 and when I got there they were still seating their 5:30 reservations.  Luckily I know Justin pretty well (he was my wedding planner) so when he saw Chase & I waiting he quickly got us seated.  Our wait was literally 2 minutes.  It was awesome.  We had some amazing food and watched the beautiful snow fall through the big windows at Hamiltons while we were sitting by their HUGE fireplace.  It was so romantic.  After our dinner we drove all the way back to Pleasant Grove and that was our day!  It was such an awesome V-day…but my favorite still is last year when he proposed!

Anyway, since it’s been a while since then I will catch up on things of late.  We finally had a weekend where we didn’t have to pack up and drive somewhere and I got a lot of things done that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.  Chase went for his bike ride to prepare for his 100-mile race and I cleaned and got caught up on life.  This weekend we are heading down to St. George for Chase’s birthday (24!) and so he can do his century bike race.  I’m so excited for him to be able to ride again because I know how much he loves it.  The week after that is Natalie’s wedding and we are booked for the sealing, dinner AND reception….that will be a long but fun day.  And after that we are just looking forward to summer time!  Well sure, there are a lot of things we are doing between now and then, but I can’t help it–I am sick of wearing jackets!

Ok…jeez.  I hate getting tagged in this thing on facebook.  I delete myself off of anyone that ever tags me (no offense), but because of my increasingly painfully boring job I am doing it with the hope that it will take me 3 hours to complete and that I can go home right after I’m done.  Cross my fingers, right?

But I am changing it up and instead of doing it all about me, since this is OUR blog, I am going to rack my brain to think of 25 interesting things collectively about Chase and me.  I have a gut feeling I’ll run out of things to say after the 7th one.  Here goes…

1.  I have a habit of saying yes to thing even if I know I won’t do it/attend it/think about it/show up/call you back/etc… And then I back out right before this thing comes up.  I’m pretty sure this rubbed off of me from my friends in Logan.  I know it would be easier to just turn people down right when they ask, but it’s impossible for me to do.  So yes, I will be at your birthday party..(but really I already know that I have a family thing that night and so just to give me something to do tomorrow, I’ll call you then and turn you down).

2.  Chase physically can’t relax.  Sometimes he likes to fool me and make me think that he just loves to lay next to me in bed in silence and enjoy each other’s company, but really he is thinking of business ideas in his mind, calculating how much it will cost us to buy 3 houses before we’re 30, how often we need to have children if we want them out of the house by the time we’re 50, wondering where we should buy a vacation home if we want the greatest return on it, how much a year to put into our children’s wedding/college/car funds, etc…

3.  I am OCD.  More like a self-proclaimed OCD but still.  Everything in my house not only needs to be put away, but it needs to be put away the second that it is done being used.  Sometimes I just grab things absentmindedly and put them in places that I can’t remember.  So I fool people into thinking that my house is really organized and neat, but for some reason I can never find the thing I need at the time I need it.

4.  I am obsessed with turkey sandwiches.  The kind that just have bread, turkey and bread on them.  With exeption of lunches with husbands/coworkers/friends, I have had that exact turkey sandwich every day for lunch for the past 3 years.  Can’t get enough.  Mmmmm.

5.  Chase is smart.  I mean, really really smart.  But I’ll let you all in on something…even though he knows most everything, if you ask him something that he doesn’t know, he’ll just make up a nice, sophisticated lie and he lets people think it’s the truth.  I found this out one day at a sunday dinner at our friends house when Wilford said something about putting water in the microwave to boil.  Chase said, “no Wilford, water doesn’t boil in microwaves…”   WHAT?!?  And if I wouldn’t have been there to save the day, Wilford and Isaac would’ve walked away that day believing that water will never boil in the microwave.  Good one Chase…

6.  I am SUPER SHY.  People always told/tell me that their first impression of me is that I’m a stuck-up brat.  Maybe that is true and maybe not, but I like to think that they get this impression because of my unwillingness to talk.  I feel very uncomfortable around newish people (newish=people I haven’t known for longer than 5 years) and I get too nervous to really talk and participate in social gatherings when I don’t feel like I’m completely accepted.  So to everyone that ever thought I hated them or was rude, please just know that this is the reason why I didn’t talk to you…

7.  Chase is a trendsetter.  Somedays you might not believe it, but I promise, he is.  He always has things for over a year before they actually become popular…sanuks, kangol hats, the academy is, the matches, and more.

8.  I am afraid of a lot of things.  A few of these things are debilitating–mainly spiders, heights and bad weather.  I can’t move when I see a spider, even if it is on the other side of the room and it is a daddy longleg, I am paralyzed in the spot that I saw it until someone comes to kill it.  I can’t go on fun sunday drives with Chase in AF Canyon because I start to cry everytime we go around a curve that has a cliff near it.  No joke, I curl up on the floor of the passenger seat so that I can’t see what is coming and I bawl like a baby until it’s over.

9.  Chase is fearless and he thought that he was marrying someone fearless…see #10.

10.  I am an avid believer and practioner of the so-called “bait and switch”.  When Chase and I were dating, I acted like I was everything he could ever have wanted in a girl (i.e. fearless) and I always tried new things with him.  When we got married-switch!  Now I’m the girl who curls up on the floor of the passenger seat and cries just because we’re driving next to cliffs.

11.  Chase and I went skydiving while we were vacationing in Kauai, Hawaii this last month.  It took a few hours for the pilots and tandem jumpers to force me into the jumpsuit and strap the parachute on my back, but once they tied me to the tandem jumper and got me 10,000 feet in the air in a little rickety old plane it was pretty easy to get me to jump.  Heck, all he had to do was open the door and push me out.

12.  Currently Chase has something around 32 business ideas that he is working on, not including working at his actual place of employment!  Wow, that man is SO smart.

13.  I have lopsided nostrils.  Don’t talk to me about it, it is a touchy subject.

14.  Chase never eats.  I basically have to force feed him at night by making actual real dinners that he feels obligated to eat because of how much time it took me to make it.  He also doesn’t like anything sweet that isn’t fruity.  I had to say goodbye to my favorite treat of chocolate ice cream with brownies mashed in it a long time ago because I would end up eating the whole dish myself.  Thanks Chase.

15.  I ONLY like treats that are chocolaty and I hate fruity treats, so basically we are eachothers personal diets because we never make treats since neither of us like anything the other person likes.

16.  Chase can do anything athletic without training for it.  For example, he hasn’t ridden his bike since last summer and in two weeks he will be going to do a 100-mile century bike race in St. George.  He will probably not even break out in a sweat but everyone else on his team will barely make it to the finish line even though they’ve been training for months.  Same story with last year’s RAGNAR race…he ran like 2 times for only like 30 minutes and he ran his 8 mile legs at like a 6:30 pace.  He is an animal.

17.  I weigh the same right now as I did when I was 11.  No comment on the years between because of how terribly embarrasing it is, but let’s just say I had a little bit of baby fat that decided to stickaround for all of my teenage years.

18.  When Chase was on his mission, his companion and him baptized like a whole city themselves.  I can’t remember the exact number but I’m pretty sure it was around 500.  Ha jk, more like 30, but it was all at one time.  He was an incredible missionary.

19.  Even though I’m seriously shy and hate social gatherings, I absolutely LOVE to plan them.  Chase and I have dinner parties, movie parties, murder mystery parties, pumpkin carving parties and stuff all the time just because I love inviting people over, cooking for them and showing them a good time.  I leave all the talking and jokes up to Chase though.  Currently I am planning an adorable bridal shower for my childhood best friend, Natalie Winn.  It is going to be the party of the century, SERIOUSLY!

20.  If I didnt’ exist Chase would wash his jeans and sheets once a semester.  I can say this honestly because I witnessed it while we were engaged.  He would bring home his laundry basket every sunday to his mom, but I never once saw sheets or his jeans in there.  He has confirmed this disgusting fact and all I can say is thank goodness that he is married now and gets his laundry done weekly!

21.  I am always in need of change.  I change my hair color about every four months or so whether its from blonde to brown or brown to blonde or just adding highlights or lowlights…I just have to mix it up every once in a while.

22.  Chase can speak 5 languages.  However not all are fluent.  Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Spanish, English and some french things that I’ve taught him.  But from what I’ve heard, his Chinese is top-notch.

23.  I am always sick.  I know people make fun of me for this, but there is always something hurting in my body (honestly people!).  Whether it is a weird pain in my ribs or a micro crack in my collar bone, a lump on my forehead that always has headaches or the water in my knee, there is always something hurting.  I swear I’m gong to die in like 5 years or something.

24. Chase grew up on the ski slopes of Sundance and was an incredible little ski racer.  I’m not sure of the names or titles, but I know that he was pretty close to being on the olympic youth team.  He still knocks my socks off when I’ve gone skiing with him (side note:  I am learning to ski this year) and makes me insanely jealous with how fast he gets down the hill, especially when I’m doing such a wide pizza that my skis literally stop.  Someday I’ll be able to keep up with the Brammers on the slopes, but today is not that day.

25.  Chase and I met in June of 2007, dated for two months and Chase took off to China for a semester abroad for 4 months, we talked almost daily, he came back early and surprised me on New Year’s Eve (aw!), we kept dating, got engaged on Valentines Day of 2008 and were happily married on May 3 of that year.  We’ve had such a fun first year of marriage and are constantly surprised when we hear people say that the first year is the hardest because it has been so AMAZING for us.  We are coming up on our year mark and couldn’t be happier!

Hope you enjoyed all this nonsense about us!

Wow, SO much has happened in the past few weeks that it will be hard to remember it all!

So after Chase’s schedule lightened up we started a work out program to fill our time at night.  It’s called P90X and it was killer hard.  The first disc we did was called something like, “plyometrics” and after about 30 minutes Chase called it quits.  I only lasted like 5 minutes after him and went back to my comfort exersize (the treadmill).  Ha!  We are definitely not good at flying our bodies through the air like that.  So needless to say, that video hasn’t gone back into the DVD player since. 

The couple weeks before Hawaii, we were working extra hours to make up for the time we would be gone, so we didn’t really have all that much free time.  The night before our flight we took Baxter and all of his gear to Grandma Jeanne’s house.  We had dinner with Chase’s parents and then came home to do an overhaul packing.  Thursday we loaded the car, hit the airport and finally arrived in Lihue, Kauai.  Wow it was so beautiful to step off the plane and see the green land and the rainbow in the sky (because it rains in the evening all the time).  We got to our condo which was so nice and then our adventures started….

The days consisted mostly of waking up, going for a run in the warm humid sweat-producing air, going for walks by the beach in the early morning sun, spending a few hours laying out in the Hawaiian sun and spending the evenings going to explore the cities of Kauai and eating scrumptious food.  However there were some really fun things that we did.  A few of my favorites were:

-The first morning we were there, Chase and I walked along the Marriot Beach and we cuddled and took a nap in the early morning sun on the beach.  Everytime I tried to get out of his cuddle, Chase would pull me back in tighter and mutter “noo, noo, come back” in his sleep.  It was reallly cute.  He does the cutest things when he is asleep sometimes jeez.

-One night Chase and I ventured into the drizzling (not so much) rain and walked to the beach in the dark.  I was terrified of the ocean at night…don’t ask me why, so he found us a couple of chairs up higher on the beach and we laid there and looked at the prettiness of it all.  Then we walked about a mile to some shops and had some dessert and smoothies and walked home.  There is nothing better than a two mile walk with my honey where we can just talk and spend time together.  That was definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

-SKYDIVING.  On Tuesday morning, Chase and I woke up early and drove to the Sand Beach to skydive.  Naturally, I wasn’t planning on going, but because Chase wanted me to SO bad I told him I would think about it.  So we drove out there and the guys were so difficult to talk to.  Once they heard me say I wasn’t going, they would say “yes you are”.  They wouldn’t take no for an hour.  So he tricked me into signing the release form that says I could DIE and they wouldn’t be sued by telling me that I could sign it and still not go.  Stupidly I signed the thing and the next thing I knew I had a jumpsuit on and I was getting into a little dinky plane.  But it was TOTALLY WORTH IT!  I can’t even describe the feeling of jumping out of the plane and floating there for a minute before the chute opened.  It was incredible.  I can’t wait to save up and go again!  I will have to post my video once I figure out how to!

-I am taking up too much space so I am going to lump the rest together into one bullet point…  church in Kauai was awesome.  I love the natives there and how funny and laid back they are.  The guy that gave his talk definitely shouldn’t have closed in the Jesus’ name because his talk was just a bunch of funny jokes and I can’t think of one thing spiritual he said.  But that is what made it the best!  Also, the grand canyon, Waimea Canyon was beautiful and so was Hanalei Bay.  There was just too many awesome things that I can’t even think of them all!

-One last one:  MALASADAS.  They are kind of like doughnuts but they are made differently in Hawaii and I love them.  It’s a good thing my family is made up of boys who eat those things like pigs or else I would’ve gained 20 pounds just off of those!

So overall our trip was fantastic!  But we loved coming home to our puppy who we missed like crazy.  We’ve decided that next time he is coming with!  And now it’s just back to reality–school and work.  I am looking forward to the next few months since it is filled with fun wedding festivites of my favorite friends.  I get to throw my best friend Natalie a shower in a couple weeks, then celebrate Valentines Day with Chase, have a few more weddings and before we know it we will have been married a whole year.  Wow, time flies!  But life is soooo good that I can’t complain.  We are very happy and hope that the year keeps going as well as it already has been for us!