All About Ryan

I kind of need to catch up on the cool things that have been happening with Ryan lately!

He now owns a llama. I think he might love it more than a human baby. We are keeping it up at my sister's house and Ryan wants to go up almost every night to take the llama's on a walk. We bought it so he can take it backpacking (they are great pack animals) so he needs to get it conditioned before summer comes.


I will admit that I think they are quite adorable:)

He played in a dodgeball tournament a couple weekends ago. It was so much fun! Just a bunch of guys throwing rubber balls at each other for hours. He was pretty darn sore the next day too! The members of his team were: Himself, Ben Pugh, Dane Young, Andy Stubbs, and Jed __________. They didn't do too shabby. However, they did not make it to the Championship round either. Nice solid effort boys!


Ryan just chillin (actually...probably just got out! ha!)


The team races to get to the balls first!

His new company, Briggs Construction, is doing pretty good. We aren't raking in the dough (in fact....I don't think he has pulled a paycheck yet.) and I'm not quitting my job anytime soon! Although, I would like to get to the point that I was doing much more hair (hint, hint!) But things have been as good as we could hope for. Lots of prayers and faith seem to keep bringing in the jobs and with the oilfield doing a bit better lately we are optimistic that they will be busy this summer. Keep your fingers crossed! I'm just so excited that he and his brother Andy finally decided to take the plunge and start their own company! I think in the long run it is going to be a great way for them to support their families and in the short run it will teach us to be thrifty (something that both Ryan and I have always struggled with)! So if you hear of anyone needing a little work done....either construction or hair....send them our way!

All-Backed Up

My house is always just a bit messy. I'm not really a "clean as you go" type of girl. I usually like to go into overdrive and do it all at once. I get into a cleaning mood and with the right music, and can literally clean for 3-4 hours. This makes my heart happy:)

So on Wednesday I was having a quick run through on the cleaning madness. I get off work at 5 pm and my visiting teachers were coming over at 5:30 pm. I needed to clean my house and FAST! Otherwise, these poor sweet ladies whom I don't really know (I've been in the Primary since Ryan and I got married) would think I was the most horrible housekeeper in the Beehive State! So I'm doing my best impression of the squirrel from "Over the Hedge" and running around like a mad man trying to get floors vacuumed, shoes picked up, lovesac fluffed, etc., etc.. I come to the dishes and of course, our sink is completely full. So I'm rinsing little bits of food off and stuffing them in the dishwasher. Pretty soon, I realize that as I am rinsing the dishes, the nasty, dirty water is not going down the drain. This is normal. It just means that I have rinsed enough that our disposal needs run. So I flip the switch. The water (and food particles) start coming up the other sink!! It really isn't draining! I decided to salvage the situation, light a candle and hope that the ladies couldn't see the dirty water in my sink.

I called Ryan later and he told me to leave it until he got home on Thursday night. There was no chance that I was going to let that happen! He said best guess was that it was clogged down in the p-trap and that it just needed taken off and cleaned out.

So now I feel I must talk about my plumbing skills:



And that is about it. Impressive resume eh? I thought you'd like that!

So I got all situated with my little bucket underneath the pipe and ready to untwist the p-trap. Once I got it off, the water really started it flow. It was disguisting! And I had one moment of panic when I really thought that it was going to overfill my bucket and go all over the floor! I just about died as I scrambled for something to catch everything with. Luckily, it stopped just short of the top.

And yes, the p-trap was very clogged. I had made browned hamburger for tacos and had drained the grease down the drain (not my brightest moment!) and it was just this little hardened mass closing off the tube.

I also struggled a bit with putting it back onto the pipes. It was a bit variable as to where it could hook on, so that was confusing. However, alls well that ends well. And I didn't even have too much of a mess! Ha ha!

So do you guys have any plumbing stories/disasters? Please share them!

Rachel's Awesome Post Idea

So Rachel Morgan did this post just last night and I liked it so much (and it got me thinking about old crushes) that I just had to steal her idea! So Rachel-here is all the credit (BIG SMILEY FACE!)

In kindergarten my older sister convinced me that if I liked a boy, I had to "ask him out." I didn't quite know what it meant, but Katie was so smart and always had all these boys calling her, so I figured she totally knew what she was talking about. So there I sat on the orange carpet right before reading time asking Nathan Brown if he would go out with me (I still don't know where we were going! ha ha!) and bless him if he didn't tell me that he couldn't in kindergarten, but we could when we were sixteen. We were just friends at the time, but by golly if he didn't stick to his word and take me out a few times! Awesome friend:)

Landon Eldredge was my hearts desire for the remainder of elementary school until Jerome Hutchison came along in 4th grade. They were the only 2 boys in all those years that even came close to being as tall/taller then me and hence, they were crushworthy material.

I had a tendancy to develop crushes on the tall guys in class (and if they were normal. I wasn't liking the kid that ate his boogers in 7th grade just cuz he was tall!) so you can pretty much figure all of my crushes from that point on. Let me put it this way-if you were ever eye level or higher to me, I probably liked you at one point or another between 6th-12th grade! Ha ha! But don't worry....there were a few shorter ones too! (Drew Gilley you sly dog! ha ha!)

Speaking of tall....tallest guy I ever had a crush on was 6'9" and played for the BYU Volleyball team. He was in my missionary prep institute class and was quite dreamy. Since I was thinking about crushes I decided to see if I could even remember his name. I couldn't. But his jersey number was 13 (I remember because this is my favorite number) and I think he is still playing cuz he left to go on his mission right after our class.

Crush that changed my life was obviously my husband! When he showed up in Roosevelt with all of his rippling muscles, tan skin, and super good looks, I just about died. What a HOTTY!! I even use to call him "Hot Stuff Stubbs" cuz it was the only appropriate title for all those good looks:) I kinda thought that he was a bad boy cuz he has these little indents in his ear lobes that look like he had his ears pierced at one time (he didn't. They are just natural.) and he just had a bit of a swagger. Ya ladies know what I'm talking about. The Swag.
So after talking to him after a ward activity one night, I realized that he was a really good guy. Never drank, never smoked, served his mission, probably never said a curse word before he met me (I corrupted him...:( we are talking super good here.
And he married me! After more than a year of dating and another year of marriage, I still feel like the luckiest girl in the world! Oh how I love it when a plan comes together! (NAME THAT MOVIE!!!)

30 Day Challenge-Whatever Tickles Your Fancy

So....I had two things that I was thinking about this morning.

1-I have lost my debit card. I have searched my purse twice, my car once, all of my jeans, jackets and coat pockets and still I have found nothing. Ryan has searched his truck, my car and his wallet and still no luck. It is quite distressing. I shall be cancelling it this afternoon. If someone has it-you better get your purchases in before then!

2-Back in high school everyone got caught up with this idea that if you didn't ask someone to a school dance, you must be boycotting. Once accused of boycotting, there could be no redemption. Making sense thus far? Good. So here is my experience with boycotting:

It just so happened that for 2 years during my high school experience I had an out of town horse competition over a girls choice dance. Ergo, I did not ask someone to the dance as I would not be there myself. Because of this, I was labeled as a girl that boycotted the dances. Do you know what happens to girls that boycott dances? It becomes guy code that said girl must not be asked to future dances. This didn't last all year, but both years that I went to my out of town horse competition, I then got to sit home for the next couple boys' choice dances because I was being punished. I remember that these were very sad, lonely nights.

Jerks. I hope that it made them feel better to hurt my feelings for something that I didn't do.

And I'm glad I got that off my chest. I don't know why I was thinking about it this morning, but I was:)

And I'm glad that I married Ryan:) I'm such a lucky girl!