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.