BB & B Friends & Family Day

It's that time of the year again... let the holiday shopping begin. If you have any shopping to do at Bed Bath & Beyond this year we are having a friends and family day where anyone can come and get 30% off your ENTIRE PURCHASE. It will be Sat. November 7th at 7:00 am. If you are interested shoot me an e-mail so I can make arrangements to give you my discount. It should be tons of fun and there will even be breakfast!

What a Week

First I just wanna say... if you haven't gotten a flu vaccine yet DO IT! I have had the flu all week long and it has been miserable to say the least. I think I came down with H1N1 although I never when to the doctor to get diagnosed. I was stuck on the couch for 3 days straight and my poor husband starved. I missed work and internship hours.

So this is my public health plug for the month. Sick people please stay home so you don't get other people sick. People who haven't gotten vaccinated for the flu yet, you really need to do it. This year's flu is killer. And employers don't be mean to your employees when they call and tell you they have the flu. The End.

Belated Horse Show Post

I have been meaning to update our poor little blog for a while now. Since school started our schedules have been pretty hectic so I am finally getting around to it. Plus I have recently started a blog for my internship, so by the time I have time for my own blog, I'm all blogged out!

Here are a few pictures from the last horse show we went to. It was a ton of fun and it was great to get to compete again.

Sorry the picture is blurry, it was Cory's first time photographing me jumping and the timing can be tricky.

I guess Handsome didn't want to take a picture :)

The show grounds were really nice!

 

Our friends Justin and Talia also came to see me ride!

Cory's whole family also came out to watch me ride. Since it was their first time at a horse show it was really fun to explain all of the rules and happenings of the horse show. We also took them to their first rodeo later that night.

Here is a picture of all of us minus amanda and alex.

Weekend Sweet Weekend

So Cory and I are really looking forward to this weekend because we are going to a horse show! On Friday we will be headed to South Jordan to spend a little time horsin around.

Since Cory doesn't have a good jumping horse to compete on he won't be riding with me, but it will still be fun to have him there to help me out. I haven't competed in over a year and I can't wait! Handsome has been doing great lately and I think we are both happier when we have something to work towards.

This picture was taken in Virginia during a jumping lesson.



So wish me luck and hopefully I'll have more pictures to post later!

The Need for Speed (in a VW Jetta 1.8L TDI)

So Ciara and I were driving home the other day, talking about fast cars when she says, "I'm surprised this one can do 160..." I respond with, "just because the speedometer goes up to 160 doesn't mean the car can actually go that fast." Then a brief silence fell over the car, and she says, "...this one can."

At first I thought she was just joking around, I didn't imagine the little 4-banger diesel surviving anything much above 100. However, I insisted that she tell me just how she knew that our "mellow" little Jetta could go so fast. To my surprise there was a story:

Not too long after purchasing her car, she was driving through some remote part of Wyoming and her mom was sleeping in the front seat. Since the drive is not exactly exhilarating (and since her nuclear-safety-engineer mother was safely asleep), she decided to see just what her new little car could do. She pushed the pedal to the floor and listened to that little 1.8 liter diesel engine kick to life. She didn't let off until that little orange needle had settled down at the far-right side of the speedometer...160 mph. Fearing that her mom might wake up (and soon thereafter die of a heart attack), she slowed back down to a normal, remote-Wyoming-road pace.

...I'm pretty sure that was the COOLEST story I've ever heard! Does anyone have something like a BMW M6 that we could borrow for a day? I wanna pretend to fall asleep in the front seat while she's driving and see what happens!

"Crick" or "Creek"

For Memorial Day weekend we got the chance to take a trip to good ole Challis, Idaho. Challis is a tiny town where my dad grew up on a cattle ranch and where I spent many summers riding horses, herding cows and swimming in creeks (also pronounced "crick"). We went down for my cousin's graduation where there was a whopping 36 graduates. It was the best graduation ceremony I have ever been to because it only lasted about an hour :)

While we were there we also got to see a lot of baby horses that were in the field behind my aunt's house. They were pretty far away so we attempted to get closer by bringing some carrots with us to see if the horses were interested. A family friend (who is not a horse person) decided she wanted to come with us, but instead of bringing some carrots, she thought the horses would respond better if she brought cheese. That was pretty funny because if you know anything about horses at all you would understand that horses DEFINITELY don't eat cheese!

I also had the wonderful opportunity of getting my hair dyed and touched up by my aunt. We had planned to do it the previous day so that I could pick up all the stuff. The only problem was that when the time came to actually dye it, I discovered that my aunt had been having a little too much fun and was a little tipsy if you know what I mean (my family on that side have been known to be some pretty furious party animals).

Even though she was tipsy, I decided to take a gamble and let her dye it anyway. Luckily I still have hair on my head and the dye job didn't turn out too bad either! I just might ask her to dye it again sometime... I'm curious to know how good of a job she would do if she was sober : )

Confessions of a Rehabilitated Trekkie

Last night we went to see the new Star Trek movie. I thought it was fun and worth seeing, but it definitely threw me back to my incredibly nerdy childhood.

...I once proudly considered myself a trekkie (granted I was about 11 years old). I used to get together with my best friends Tyler and David and we'd pretend to be various characters from Star Trek. We would choose a Star Trek series (e.g. the original series, "the Next Generation," etc.) and spend hours flying around in our Federation starship fighting off Klingons and Romulans...that is if we weren't playing as Klingons or Romulans...

We also used to go to the public library and check out all of the old Star Trek movies on VHS and watch them repeatedly. I would also check out as many "non-fiction" Star Trek books as possible so I could fill my little head with the dimensions and top speeds of star ships, defining attributes of various intergalactic races, how to sew your own command officer's uniform, etc.

When my mom would occasionally let me rent an Super Nintendo game, I would try to find the "Star Trek Starfleet Academy Starship Bridge Simulator" game. Also, I was ecstatic when my cousin Brian got a similar computer game for Christmas...we spent many hours cruising through the "final frontier" of space.

..We won't mention the action figures or the Star Trek badge that was frequently attached to my shirt.

Thankfully I'm well past all of that. Needless to say, I kept all of this a secret until I was already happily married and beyond the threat of having Ciara wanting it annulled.

Anyway, the new movie is lots of fun, but definitely gave me flashbacks of my dark past...Live Long and Prosper.

Credit Card Slayer

Well, this last weekend we went to the Dave Ramsey seminar at the E Center in West Valley. It was really good. My dad wants us all to learn how to manage finances well and stay out of debt; so, last Christmas he got us all Dave's book Total Money Makeover and gave us all tickets to his seminar (which took place last Saturday).

I liked it a lot, he explained a series of steps that we need to take to get out of debt (and avoid any more of it), have enough money for emergencies, start a college fund, and build wealth. It was all very practical advice and didn't involve any crazy financial antics. The whole idea is not to buy something if you don't have the money for it...quite a novel idea.

It was a pretty fantastic Christmas present. Ciara and I are taking the challenge and are going to get rid of all our debt. Even though there's not all that much of it, it's something we can do without.

Anyway, check out the Dave Ramsey website (http://www.daveramsey.com). He's got a lot of good stuff on there. Nothing crazy either; just good sound advice.

A Fork in the Eye

Finals are finally done... I'm kind of surprised I survived them really. My accounting test was this ridiculous ordeal that took me over 4 hours (they gave us 5 to take it). It was only 35 questions long and was worth 1/4 of our entire grade. I'm not sure whose idea that was, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather poke myself in the eye with a fork than take another test like that.

Anyway, they're finished now. School is done, so now I can get back to my regular fishing schedule. It's been WAY too long since I've been able to go. I've got a couple months left of my fishing license, and I plan on making up for all my lost fishing time during the semester.

Other exciting news: I'm still getting into the whole horse jumping thing. Now I can ride a whole course without falling off and getting a mouthful of dirt.

Aso, Ciara's birthday is this Tuesday so we had a little celebration at my parents' house tonight. It was a lot of fun.

...Anyway, I'm kinda out of it tonight so I'm going to wrap this one up. Have a good night everyone!

Giraffe Art

I wonder if this will work during finals:

Maybe it will if I draw a horse instead of a giraffe.

Pasta Recipe

Here is the recipe for the yummy pasta I made last week: (I got it from this blog, which gives much more detailed instructions)

Pioneer Woman’s Pasta Primavera

Ingredients:

Butter
Olive Oil
3 to 4 cloves garlic, minced
½ to 1 small onion, finely chopped
1 cup broccoli, cut into bite-sized florets and stem pieces
2 carrots, peeled and sliced on the bias
2 zucchini, sliced on the bias
1 yellow squash, sliced on the bias
½ red bell pepper, cut into strips
1 package white or brown button mushrooms, sliced
1 cup frozen peas

1 cup whipping (heavy) cream
1 cup half and half, plus a little more for thinning sauce
1 small wineglass of white wine
Low-sodium chicken broth as needed
6-8 fresh basil leaves
Grated Parmesan Cheese

Salt
Pepper
Penne pasta

Directions:

In a large skillet, melt 2 tablespoons butter with 2 tablespoons olive oil. Add onion and garlic and cook until translucent, about 2 minutes. Now begin sautéing the veggies in batches, cooking only 1 or 2 minutes (at most) each. To begin, add broccoli and carrots to onion & garlic. Cook only for a minute, then remove to separate plate. Add another tablespoon of butter to pan and add red pepper strips. Cook for one minute, then remove. Repeat with remaining veggies, being very careful not to overcook; veggies at this point should still be somewhat raw/crunchy. When all veggies have been removed and skillet is empty, pour ½ to 1 glass of dry white wine to pan. With whisk, begin to scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen all the nice, flavorful bits from the bottom.

Cooking over medium heat, add ½ cup low-sodium chicken broth, 1 tablespoon butter, 1
cup whipping cream, and 1 cup half and half. Add ½ cup grated Parmesan. Stir together and cook to thick, adding salt & pepper to taste. Taste sauce as you go; don’t oversalt, but don’t undersalt either! Chiffonade fresh basil leaves, and stir into sauce. Now add all the veggies, including frozen peas, at once. Stir gently to combine; if sauce seems to thick, add equal parts half & half and chicken broth to thin. Cook over low heat until warm, just a couple of minutes.
You don’t want soggy veggies! Taste & check seasoning; add more salt & pepper if needed. Dump in al dente penne pasta, stir to combine thoroughly, and pour onto a large platter. Garnish with more basil leaves, throw on some more Parmesan, and gobble it up!

Enjoy!

Pasta Envy

I made this tonight, and yes, it looked just like that...

...you can be jealous now.

Our "Spring Break"

So Cory and I decided to make our own spring break since BYU is too stingy to give us one. After much contemplation, Cory booked our hotel through hotwire. If you have never tried out hotwire I highly recommend it. Basically you pick what rating of hotel you want to stay at and you pay a discounted rate. However, the catch is that they don't tell you what hotel you will be staying at until after you pay. So we picked a four star hotel and ended up at the Hilton in Salt Lake. It ended up being really convenient since it is within walking distance of all the restaurants we were thinking about trying.

For dinner, we walked down the street to the Hotel Monaco where they have the restraunt Bambara. It was soooo good! Plus, we stayed at the Hotel Monaco after our wedding so it was fun to go back. After dinner, we just went back to our hotel room and rented a movie. It was so nice to just be able to forget about school and work and relax, even if it was only for one night. So thanks Cory for planning such a fun little getaway!

Sex & Drugs

Haha this post has nothing to do with sex or drugs (don't do drugs)! I just wanted to see how many people would look at it...but now that you're here you should look around, maybe click on the link to follow our blog.


Anyway, I've been continuing my adventures in horse jumping (and doing pretty well, if I say so myself). However, I fell off of a horse this past Saturday. I'd been trying to get a particular jump down, and was having a hard time with it. It was (supposedly) my final attempt, but something went wrong. After landing, I ended up in front of the saddle and hanging a little to the left. I tried to re-balance, but the horse gods had doomed me to fall. I accepted my fate and half lept, half fell off the horse. I must have had some good momentum considering how many times I bounced; in fact, I kind of rolled and bounced right back onto my feet...kind of.

I quite literally bit the dust. The trainer called at me to get back on the horse and "actually do it right this time." I stumble back to my semi-faithful steed and climb back on. As I line up for the jump, I can feel the dirt pouring out of my ears and can still feel the sandy grit in my teeth. I can hardly see because my eyes are also full of dirt. Apparently being nearly blind and punch drunk was the ticket: I finally got the set of jumps right. The only bad thing though: I knew that there was more than just "dirt" in the dirt...manure tastes like it smells...

REAL Lemonade

Lemonade is probably my favorite thing to drink, but I really get sick of the over-sugared, frozen, concentrated junk they sell at the grocery store...it's really pretty nasty. I think it's much easier and cheaper to make make it yourself. Not to mention it tastes WAY better than anything you can buy in the store.

1 c. water
1 c. sugar
1 c. fresh lemon juice (usually takes 4 or 5 lemons)
3-4 c. of additional cold water

1. Boil 1 cup of water
2. Add 1 cup of sugar, and stir until completely dissolved (this just makes a simple syrup)
3. Stir in the lemon juice
4. Stir in another 3-4 cups of water (depending how how strong you like it)
5. Put it in the fridge until it's cold (or just pour it over ice if you want it now)

That's all there is to it. It's fantastic and super easy. Also, if you prefer pink lemonade, just add some juice from a fresh squeezed grapefruit.

Man + Purse = Murse

There are all kinds of really odd people on BYU campus. Today's encounter was particularly odd.

I was in the BYU library studying away and a guy sat down next to me at the table. First I noticed that he was sitting way too close for comfort, then I saw it: a medium sized leather bag that looked oddly like...a purse. I pretend to not notice him, just to see how odd this guy will turn out to be. He pulls out his planner and since he's sitting SO ridiculously close to me, I can't help reading his schedule for the upcoming week: "ballroom dance test...yada yada yada...Grey's Anatomy."

Seriously, what real man schedules time every week to watch Grey's Anatomy. There's a couple girls sitting on the opposite side of the table (the two girls didn't know each other), and one girl had a couple friends standing nearby that she was talking to...as if the guy wasn't weird enough, he starts introducing himself to each girl one by one and shaking their hands. The then places his planner back in his murse and walks away. Seriously, where do these people come from?

FRIED

The weather is nice outside there's only one more month in the semester and I'm fried. I do think that it is nice that BYU gets out of school earlier than the other colleges around. However, right now I would happily sacrifice that time for a nice week-long SPRING BREAK!

So in order to stay sane, Cory and I are going on a mini-vacation this weekend. Any great ideas on where to go or what to do?

Mmmmmmm.

So lately I have been feeling the need to learn how to be more domestic. Scary I know, but I thought for the benefit of my future posterity I would at least try. Besides, I'm not doing anything drastic like learning how to sew my own clothes or scrap booking for hours. No offense to those of you who participate in those activities. Instead Cory and I have been trying out a new recipe at least once a week. My favorite so far has been pumpkin chocolate chunk cookies with maple brown butter frosting.Ours were not quite that pretty but they still tasted amazing! I got the recipe from this fun new baking blog I found: http://bakerella.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html
By the way if any of you know other great places to get recipes let me know!

Hope everyone is doing well! Much love!

It's Official!!

I have finally put our wedding pictures up on Facebook.

A Little Update

So I figured I'd better post something before the semester got so busy that I forget that I even have a blog.

The semester is going pretty well so far. Cory is taking some French classes before he gets into his major and I'm trying to get as many credits done as I can so that I can be done taking classes by the end of summer.

Cory is taking a class called, The aesthetics of crime in French cinema, which has turned out to be kinda fun for both of us because on the weekends all we do is catch up on his homework by watching old French movies. (I don't mind at all!)

All of my health classes are going pretty well (so far). It is weird to think that this is my last real semester at BYU.

I still haven't gotten around to ordering our wedding pictures... yes, I know, we have been married for a year now and we still don't have them. I am using the excuse that there are just too many good ones to choose from. But, when I do order them, I will post some of them if anyone is still interested.

School is going good. Life is great. Save a horse, ride a cowboy.

Homemade HDTV

I felt like a real man the other day. We purchased one of those new digital converter boxes for our TV, but unfortunately the antenna in our apartment wouldn't pick up any digital signal (since it's a VHF antenna and pretty much all digital stuff comes in over UHF).

I went to good ol' Wally World to buy an indoor antenna that would work (more or less a plastic-coated, "cool-looking" set of rabbit ears). No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get any kind of signal...very annoying. I even tried (to no avail) standing outside and holding it in the air and/or touching it to various metal objects around the house.

I didn't want to buy a more expensive antenna or anything, so I decided to try building one! So, after collecting some supplies I created my new antenna (aka the "Redneck Antenna" or the "Man-tenna").

It works great! I can pick up way more channels than I could with that plastic piece of junk I bought. Plus it cost me almost nothing to build!

My next project is going to make 3 or 4 of them and wire them all together to make a massive array of Man-tennas in an attempt to get even more channels and better signal. I'll keep you posted.

Wanted: French Drug Dealer

Ciara's horse has a little bit of osteoarthritis in one of his feet, and was being treated with a miracle drug (called Tildren) when he was still in Boise. The drug was actually correcting the problem, and allowing regrowth of new, healthy bone tissue. The problem is that Tildren is not approved in the United States (making it very difficult to come by...especially in Utah for some reason). We've been on a quest in the past month or two to find some. We've tried to find connections through old friends, vets in Utah and Idaho, and even random veterinary college professors accross the country...all to little avail. A few days ago I had a little "Cory, you're an idiot" moment, and thought "hey...why not just call the manufacturer of the drug (Ceva Santé Animale). They'll know how to get it here...plus, you speak French if you need it." I then discovered they had a new office in the US, so I gave them a call (which led to a giant chain reaction).

The operator transferred me to Karen, who referred me to Dr. Creech. Dr. Creech sent my inquiry on to Monsieur Bartholomy, "Ceva Regional Director of North America." M. Bartholomy told me to get in touch with they're favorite distributer in the UK. John the Brittish distributer was more than happy to send us a bunch of the stuff (as long as we paid him a healthy sum and had a letter from the FDA saying it was ok). John gave me the phone number of the guy at the FDA in charge of all of that. FDA Michael said to he'd fax the needed forms to the vet, and as soon as he got the forms back he'd send the letter. Now the vet just has to fill out the forms, and we just have to shimmy back up our little chain to get the stuff shipped.

It was quite an adventure getting all of this figured out...maybe I should be a detective.

FInals, "Pre" Holidays, and "Real" Holidays (whoopee!)

Hello everyone, it's been awhile since I've written anything on here. Things got a little crazy between the end of the semester, the holidays, and the beginning of a new semester. We're back though!

Finals went really well. My programming final only took me like 5 hours to do but was a success. I (being the moron I am) did two finals for one of my classes. The professor gave us a choice between two projects for our final exam, but for some reason I thought I had to do both of them...needless to say, I spent a lot of time on it for nothing. That made me feel kinda dumb (but hopefully helped my grade)!

The holidays were nice. We went to Idaho Falls for Christmas with Ciara's family, so we celebrated pre-Christmas with my family a few days earlier.

We've begun a nice tradition of double (or triple) holidays with the Reschke gang. We celebrate Christmas in July, pre-Thanksgiving, and pre-Christmas (plus all of the real ones too). Each version is exactly like the real thing, just on the wrong date. I think we just love holidays to excess and decided to celebrate our favorites two or three times a year.

The real holidays were lots of fun too. It snowed like crazy in Idaho Falls, and we almost died a few times on the way home. Ciara is a crazy driver and scares me to death! Ok, not really. She's a great snow storm navigator; there are a lot of idiots on the road though (and snow seems to be a good catalyst for idiocy).

Anyway, everything is going well. We're getting back in the groove of things, and life is great!