It's A Snuggie!

What started out as a joke has taken on a life of its own. A little over a year ago, Chris was sitting on the couch with one of his brothers, Mark, and a good friend, Brett Dunham, when the commercial for the Snuggie came on. Mark, having a great sense of humor, being part sarcasm, part whimsical, and part love of the ridiculous, immediately said that he would love to have one of those blankets with sleeves. Chris didn’t think too much about it until a couple of months later when we were walking through the Bed Bath and Beyond and we saw a whole stack of them. I had never heard of them, but Chris quickly filled me in on the absurdity of the idea and he said that it would be funny to get one for the brother who had mentioned wanting one. Unfortunately (or not), Chris couldn’t remember which brother he had discussed them with, but he did have a brother with a birthday coming up who may or may not have been the one. Chris decided that we had to get a Snuggie for his birthday. It wasn’t the correct brother who received the first one, so we had to keep trying. So started the Snuggie giveaway. We got Snuggies for all of Chris’ family members, mostly for birthdays although we did try to mix it up and gave Chris’ mom hers for mother’s day. We even got one for Dunham, who was in on the joke from the beginning. Chris has a large family, so by the time we gave out the last one, there were no surprises, just a lot of laughing. We even found a dog Snuggie. Chris and I didn’t get one for each other, we just sat back and laughed as everyone else opened theirs. I’m not sure who decided that it would be funny to take photos in our Snuggies, but the suggestion was made and one day after our usual family dinner on Sunday, Chris and I were presented with our very own. This last Saturday, we went down to the school, all of us armed with our Snuggies and props and we had our photos take as a family, plus Dunham. If you’ve ever seen a Snuggie box, you will know that there are all kinds of people in their blankets in ridiculous poses, with a book or remote or standing up cheering and things like that to show the versatility of the Snuggie, so we tried to replay images from the box. It was quite the adventure and a great way to cap off the Snuggie experience. Now the only question is, what do we get everyone next year?

Finding The Good

I know people who are autumn people. They thrive in the cooler weather, the colors of the changing leaves and all that jazz. I am not one of those people. I love the hot weather, the long days, the relaxation of summer and always feel a little sad when we finally hit October and have to start wearing jackets and real shoes instead of short sleeves and flip flops. I hate daylight savings and how it’s dark when I leave work and also when I leave for work, and how everything starts to look dead or dying. And I absolutely hate, and I do mean hate, to be cold and autumn is the starting point of the cold weather. Fortunately there are some saving graces to this time of the year.
Football season is always fun. Chris is an avid University of Utah fan, as are all of our friends, and the longer I live in Utah, the bigger fan I become. We all get together to tailgate, which is a serious business. Chris’ highschool friends have a gathering before football season to decide what they’re going to eat at the tail gate and everyone who wants to participate in the cooking has to audition. They have to make their dish for this gathering and everyone votes on what is good enough to have at the tailgate. There are two criteria for judging, taste and presentation. Chris auditioned for the tailgates with a dip and he just barely squeaked in with taste because everyone thought that his presentation was terrible. So for the actual tailgate, he prettied up his dish and this is what came out.


Besides the tailgates, the games are a lot of fun. We sit in a section with Chris’ family, his crazy uncles and his parents and we eat peanut M&M’s and hot chocolate when it gets colder and cheer on the football team that has been really good since I started watching them.
The fall holidays are another reason why I don’t go into hiding when Fall comes around. Since we moved back from DC, we’ve been invited to the annual Aloween party hosted by Chris’ friends Al and Ashleigh. This year the theme was a murder mystery in a casino. Chris was a bookie and I was a cocktail waitress who was also a bit of a trollop. It was a lot of fun



I also love the start of school, especially now that I’m not attending. Working at the college has been a great experience. I love the whole higher education atmosphere and it’s definitely more interesting when classes are in session.
So overall, I suppose that the good outweighs the bad with autumn and that I’ll find enough to distract myself until summer comes back around.

Here Comes Your Father

This summer, I did some major traveling with my mom and two sisters. We did our annual Shakespeare festival trip, which was really fun. We saw Henry V, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, and a play named Private Lives. They were all excellent except the non Shakespeare play wasn't really my style. The plays are not the only reason why this is such a fun annual trip. We always eat at least one meal at the venue, which includes turkey legs (myself and my nephew are each holding one in the pictures. He is so cute!) and we spend the days shopping, walking around Ceder City, and just hangning out with the girls.





We also went to New Zealand to visit my moms family. My uncle had passed away and my mom asked if my sisters and I could go out to visit with her as moral support. How could I possibly say no? So we went, and it was wonderful. It was wonderful to see family members that I haven't seen since I was 10 years old. We got to meet my Grandmothers new husband Bob, who we all just adored! We had dinner with my aunt, uncle, Grandfather, Grandmother, Bob, two great aunts, and a great uncle. It was so fun to spend time with all of them. You don't really realize what you're missing until you are around all of them, so the visit was a little bitter sweet. How great it would be if they didn't live an 18 hour plane ride away!

Business Time

I am not an athletic person, I never have been, and that's okay. My skills come in different areas like, ignoring my husband while I read a book, and standing around awkardly trying not to embarrass myself in mixed company. However, I have been involved with a (quazi)sports team and was able to not only not hurt myself or anyone else, but I was able to do quite well. Our bowling team "Business Time" had a marvelous time this season. We bowled every Wednesday against 16 or 17 other teams. Our team came in third in points which was good, I thought. I also got prize money for having the highest handicap game of all the girls in the league. Chris had been waiting for years (law school) to rejoin the league and enjoyed every second of being back. We had team shirts with our names on them, team practices and team pictures, all of which Chris orchestrated. He talks of putting a big "C" on his shirt next year so that everyone will know that he's the capitan of our team. That's probably why he looks so intense in his picture. Thanks to Amber for putting together these awesome pictures, I feel almost professional.

The Worst Part Of Changing Wards

Chris and I are getting ready to move again. We decided to buy a home and we close very soon, so this Sunday will be our last Sunday in our ward. There are many many things that make moving from our ward a harrowing experience, having to meet new people, not having the sweet seats by the clock in sacrament meeting behind the cute babies, knowing that we're going to be asked to speak in our new ward etc. For me, though, the worst part about changing wards would have to be getting released from my calling as primary teacher (although that whole speaking thing is really bad. I'm more afraid of death than speaking in public. I hate when groups of people look at me.). I bawled the last time we moved and I had to leave my sunbeams. I doubt this time will be any different. I've been teaching the 5 and 6 year olds and they have been wonderful. The seven of them have kept me on my toes, even more so than the sunbeams from the Virgina ward. Believe it or not, but I've had more trouble keeping them in their seats and reverent than my sunbeams, and while that's usually a bad thing, I've loved every minute of it. They are the funniest things and we've had a really good time. For example, last week, my co teacher brought treats for the kids to enjoy at the end of class. One of the kids was chewing gum and he took it out of his mouth and put it on his nose, presumably to continue chewing it when he was done with his treat. It turned out that this was the really really sticky, messy kind of gum that isn't going to let go without a fight. The kid couldn't get it off his nose and the more he tried, the more it went everywhere. It was all over his face, on his hands, little bits of it ended up in his hair. We sent him to the bathroom to wash himself off before singing time, but apparently it didn't do as much good as we had hoped. While you couldn't see the gum by the time we went down to singing time, there was still some gum residue on his face and he kept pushing his lip up to touch his nose, where the gum residue would grab hold and hold his lip to his nose for a few seconds before the kid would push it up again. Neither I nor my co teacher were sitting next to him, so we couldn't stop him from doing this without attracting everyone's attention (which the kid would have loved. He's always trying to make the other kids laugh). I could hardly keep myself from laughing out loud. They are such a fun group of kids and I'm going to miss my calling horribly, especailly when I get a new calling in our new ward that is not going to be nearly as fun and may even be tortuous, like sunday school teacher.

Waffle Run 2009

My sweet little mother in-law loves running and she loves her family. This is what inspired her to create an annual 4th of July race called the Waffle Run. She started it last year. The Waffle Run is a 5K race followed by some delicious waffles with a lot of friends and family. Chris and I ran in it last year and had a good time even though it was quite hard. We hadn't been running for very long and the elevation difference from DC to Utah was hard to get over. This year, we've been running the course 3 or 4 times a week and we beat last years time by a minute and a half! It was great.

Eternal Marraige Again

This weekned, I was able to attend the wedding of one of my favorite people. Megan and I were friends at college and she is one of the most fabulous people I've ever met! Even though I was away for three years and we still live rather far apart, whenever we get together it's like we were just talking yesterday. Of course I was thrilled to be invited to the Temple ceremony. And after all that has been happening over the last month or so, it was very touching to see the beginning of a marriage, to reaffirm all that I had been feeling in regards to eternal marriage. Congrats Meg!

Eternal Families

On Sunday, my appreciation for eternal families grew more deeply than I ever imagined possible.

Law Day 5K

Today Chris and I ran the Law Day 5K. We've been running together for some time and ran together in the 1st annual Waffle Run, which my darling mother in law put together, but this was the first race that we have run with people other than family and friends. It was very official. There were a ton of people there, including Chris' uncle and cousins, members of Chris' firm, and a good friend who moved back to Salt Lake from DC about the same time as we did. They gave us numbers to wear, and some official looking timing chips to strap to our ankles to keep track of how fast we were able to finish the race. I would love to say that we destroyed the competition, but I'm not going to lie, we were pretty slow. I don't mind that we were slow, though. I didn't really start running until about a year and a half ago, so I was just glad that we didn't come in last. It was a little hard running the race, it started early in the morning, it rained on us the whole time, and there were quite a few hills. However, I feel good that we were able to do it without embarrassing ourselves. Below is a picture of us after the race. The hat I was wearing was one of Chris'. It was a little big, which I didn't think would be a problem, but as it rained on us, the heavier the hat got and it started to slip down over my eyes while we were running. I almost had to hold on to it as we were running the last stretch.

What Chris And I Do In Our Free Time

Silence has been golden in regards to the Caps for the last few months. My hockey team has been playing play-off hockey and my superstitions have kept me from writing about the team until they had won a series. Not that I really believe that any thing that I can do is going to have the least effect on how my team plays, but better safe than sorry, right? Anyway, the Caps have been facing off against the New York Rangers and had an eerily similar series against them as they had last year against the Flyers. They were down three games to one, and came back to force a game seven on home ice. Chris and I have been watching on the edge of our seats through the series, hoping that this season would end better than last season, wishing that we were there in the Verizon Center. Last night we watched a nail-biting game seven. As the game progressed from the first goal (the Rangers! Despair!) to a tied game (Hope!) and into the third period, Chris and I were on edge. The game remained tied until 4:59 left in the game when Sergei Fedorov scored. It was amazing. If it had been an 80’s movie, some cheesy song would have been playing, like “I Need a Hero” from Footloose (you know you love it). But instead, in manly hockey fashion, the team rushed Fedorov and fell on him dog-pile style while the crowd rose to their feet in unison, cheering the goal that would take the team to the second round. Chris and I cheered too, though from our couch, watching the game an hour later from our DVR. Alas, watching the game on a couch is not the same as watching from the arena, but we were happy to see the win and are looking forward to watching the Caps crush the Penguins to dust and humiliate their star Mr. X, especially on their home ice (fingers crossed).

Will Work For...

I am a firm believer in the saying, “work to live, not live to work”. I would never have believed that there would be aspects of my job that would make me more happy to be at work than to be sitting on my couch reading a good book. Last week, though, something happened that opened my eyes to the possibility that, no work is not always fun and there are definitely things that I would rather be doing, but there are times when there’s nowhere I’d rather been than at my job. That something was getting free chocolate! I was sitting at my desk when my coworker came in and told me that our bookstore was trying to give away some Godiva Chocolate! They had overstocked during the holidays and now they wanted to get it out of the store to make room for other things. So the other girl in the office and I took off to the book store to behold that miracle of free chocolate. There were two huge boxes filled with hot chocolate, chocolate covered raspberries and strawberries, truffles, chocolate drops, fancy gold wrapped chocolate boxes, chocolate domes, chocolate biscuits, and many other delectables that make the mouth water. The bookstore manager told us to take as much as we could carry because if they were not able to get rid of it, they would be throwing it away! I couldn’t bring myself to think of the monumental waste that would be, so I grabbed a bag and filled it to overflowing and hightailed it out of there before they changed their minds. So, for the last week or so, I have been sitting at my desk at work, snacking on some of the best chocolate ever, thanking my lucky stars that I have job that I enjoy going to.

9 Of Us

With a brother in New York, a sister in St. George, a brother on a mission in Baltimore, a sister in Washington DC (that’s me), a sister in Salt Lake, a brother in Elko, and two parents and a brother in Round Mountain, it's nearly impossible to get a whole family together. Recently, though, some moves have been made that made it possible for our family to get together for a few brief hours. Chris and I moved back to Salt Lake a little while ago and Jason just returned from his mission. My whole family was able to meet Jason at the airport as he returned. My siblings and I had been planning for a few months to surprise my mother by all showing up at the airport. It's been four years since we all were together. So Jared flew in from New York and the rest of us gathered in from our various locations. The results of months of planning are in the pictures below. Aren't we a good looking group?

A Taste Of The East Here In The West

Jeaneah and I were enjoying an afternoon out on the town recently when we happened to notice that we were in the neighborhood of the brand new Five Guys, the first I’ve seen here in the west. We decided to go in and grab a burger. Jeaneah, of course, thought the burger was great and finally saw what Chris and I had been talking about when we spoke of the burger joints where we liked to eat while we were living in DC. For me, it was like a trip back east. They had the articles from the Washington Post and the Washingtonian and other eastern Magazines up on the walls, and the shop was decorated as the shops back east had been. For a moment there, I was a little homesick for Washington DC. I felt like we could have finished up our burgers and walked to the next Caps game or walked to the new Nationals Park to watch a baseball game. I wanted to ride the metro in to see Chris, to go to another hockey game, to walk down the mall. Instead we walked out into the cold Salt Lake City February Day. Not that my new home city is bad, I just haven’t learned to love Salt Lake like I loved DC. But now, every time I need an eastern fix, I know where to go.

I've Got The Old Thing Down

I’ve seen my future, and it’s full of matinees and early bird specials. On Saturday, Chris and I went to a play at the Hale Theater. It was a very funny play, a British Farce and was well acted and well produced. While we were there, I couldn’t help but notice that the majority of the audience was over 50 years of age (probably over 60). This was not something that I had given any thought to when I had called in to reserve tickets for the six plays I would be seeing this year. But now, after thinking things over, I see that my actions have been extremely old lady-ish in this matter. I did ask for all matinees for my season tickets, thinking to leave my evenings free. Now while this made perfect young person sense at the time (I want to leave my evenings free for our Saturday Night dinner group), when we had discovered the age group of most of our fellow play goers, I couldn’t help but visualize myself in a Seinfeld episode, walking with his parents into a restaurant at 4:30 in the afternoon so that we can get the early bird special. Pretty soon, I’ll be happy that we reserved mostly matinee tickets to the plays, not because I want to be able to do other things at night, but because I want to be able to get home to bed. I’ll be that mean old lady who arrives 45 minutes late to the production with seats in the exact center of the row, expecting people to get up and out of my way because I need to sit down regardless of anyone around me (this happened to us on Saturday), telling all those youngsters that their music is too darn loud and that they should have more respect for their elders, and driving 35 miles per hour in a 50 mph zone (I shudder to think).

New Babies For My Siblings

It has been such an exciting month for my family. One of my brothers and his wife had their fifth child, and my little sister had her first. Jared has three little boys and now two little girls. Baby Alexandra was born on January 6th and she is adorable! It's such a shame that they live all the way across the country and we have moved back to Salt Lake where it's a lot harder to visit. Jared did send me some pictures of the new little tike. Jenn had her first baby, Boston on January 8th. Chris and I were able to drive down to St. George and visit him when he was just a couple of weeks old. He's such a good little boy. He doesn't really cry, he sort of squeeks if he's unhappy, which isn't often. I only heard his sad little squeeking once while we were visiting and it was so cute that I had to laugh. While we were there, Chris did hold the baby, which is sort of a feat in itself. I have never seen him hold any babies and it was so fun to see him hold Boston. Below are two pictures of baby Lexie, one with her brother Dominic, two pictures of Baby Boston, with his favorite aunt and uncle, and one of my little brother Jason who had his 21st birthday January 7th. I thought since they were all birthday children, I would include them all.

A Vacation From My Vacation

I was thrilled when I found out a few weeks before Christmas that the college was going to be closing for a couple of weeks and that I would be getting a nice long paid vacation. I was going to have very little to do but sit in my cozy little house and read for two blissful weeks. How silly it was for me to think that things would be so simple. There wasn’t one day when I was allowed to sit quietly and do nothing. Part of that is my own fault, I did invite my little brother to come and stay with me for a week. My list of activities included:
The annual Glauser Family Christmas Eve Party
Chris’ dear little grandpa has a party every Christmas Eve, which is quite involved. There is a dinner, a genuine Christmas pageant with family actors and costumes and singing, and a visit from a dirty little Santa who had a penchant for having married women kiss him on the cheek and slapping his wife on the behind. Chris cousins are a riot and I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time.
Christmas Day
Much of this day had been planned out by Chris’ sweet mother who loves an excuse to have all her family around her. We had brunch together and then went bowling before going home to open presents. We waited to open presents until one of Chris’ brothers got off work. Chris’ mom had gotten us all Utes Sugar Bowl tee-shirts to wear during the game. Every time one of us opened our shirt, there would be a chorus of Utah Man before someone else was allowed to open their next present. We all then went to see a movie before going home to bed.
Boxing Day
Okay, this is not an American holiday, for me, it’s just a nice way of saying the day after Christmas. My mother taught me the term (being from New Zealand, she knows all about Boxing Day). Anyway, the day after Christmas we went with some friends to the Red Iguana, which was featured on one of the Food Network shows that we like. It was excellent and then we went bowling once again (I know there seems to be a theme of bowling among my holiday activities what can I say).
The Week After Christmas
Now some of these days do run together. We, of course, went to church two of these days. Jordan came up with Jeaneah when she came back from visiting the family. We went to a couple of movies (yet another activity theme. I think I saw more movies over the break than I’ve seen in the past six months). We went out to eat several times, one of those times visiting Chris’ new office down town and taking him to lunch. His office is very nice with a great view, which is better than his previous office which was always freezing and had a great view of a brick wall. We watched the Sugar Bowl with a group of friends, of course wearing our Christmas Sugar Bowl shirts, and cheering the Utes on to a fantastic victory over a much too cocky team who thought that playing the Utes would be a cake walk. My dad came up to visit for a couple of days as well. We went out to eat with him a few times as well.
Before I knew it, it was Monday and I had to go back to work, and while the vacation was great, I’m glad to be back at work so that I can finally get some rest.