My Curse

I've come to the conclusion that I'm cursed. I'll need to give you a little background before you can really understand the magnitude of this cursing. A few years back I had a friend that LOVED Red Robin and would beg us to go any chance he got. The only problem was; there was NOTHING that I liked there, I'd tried about everything on the menu. Then one day I found it! The Honey Mustard Chicken Sandwich, it was love at first bite!!!! After that day I was the one begging to go to Red Robin any chance I got. I spent about 4 years enjoying my Honey Mustard Chicken Sandwich, loving every last tasty second of it, that was until they did the unthinkable! RED ROBIN PULLED IT OFF THE MENU AND STOPPED MAKING IT! I was devastated and I think I've only been back 1 or 2 times since (1 0r 2 very untasty times.) So, here starts the curse, yep just starts. A few month ago Devon and I went to Chili's and I was looking forward to my Caribbean Chicken Salad. It's a perfect salad, not to heavy, but filling none the less. But guess what, yep Chili's discontinued it and took it off their menu. Then, just last month we went to Outback. While Devon looks forward to the steak, I look forward to their Blue Cheese Crumble Salad. It is one of the tastiest salads I've ever had. But, they got rid of it! Luckily they still serve the Aussie Cheese Fried or Devon and I would have to find a new favorite restaurant. Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, I went to Wendy's Thursday night. They discontinued the only fast food salad that I love, The Southwest Salad. You couldn't beat the taste and size for only $4.99.

Some have concluded that I just have bad taste in food and like the food items that no one else likes. But I can't fathom that being the reason, each of these items I've just described are a little taste of heaven and I can't imagine anyone not falling in love with just one bite. I've lost a lot of loves over the past year, but as long as Dominicos is still serving pizza, The Lotus Garden still has cheese won-tons and Mimi's Cafe is still bringing me their french onion soup, life will go on!

2009 Year In Review

When I look back at 2009 there is no way I'm going to be able to say it was an uneventful year! Devon and I decided this was a year of change, some for the wonderful and some for the not my type of change kinda thing. So, here we go, hold on, I'm gonna take you for a ride through our crazy year.

January

The year started out with a bang!

On January 29th Devon proposed to me! It wasn't supposed to be a surprise, since we'd been talking about if for a few months prior and even had the ring picked out. However, Devon was pretty sneaky. The night after we'd picked out the ring he told me it would take 5-10 business day to get it. So, I thought I'd be waiting a week or so. The next evening he called and said he was coming over. I hurried, got showered and in my jammies before he came (had I known what was coming I would have dressed a little more appropriately and not had wet hair). He told he'd received something funny at work and wanted to show me. He pulled over his computer and started the most romantic slide show. It was pictures of our past year together with captions on each one. The last caption read, "Now there's just one more thing..." He knelt down and asked me to marry him, shaky hands and all! Of course I said yes!

February

I was going to take advantage of the long President's day weekend to go down to Long Beach and visit my family. I'd just gotten engaged and had to show off the ring and my dad was in a long term care facility, not doing so good. I had a great weekend. I got to spend a lot of time with my family, especially my dad. On Monday I was getting ready to go see my dad one last time before I left when we got the call. He'd passed away during the night. This was the not my type of change kinda thing, but in spite of losing my dad I have a lot to be grateful for.

First of all, I got to be there. When my dad's health started declining one of my biggest worries was that I wasn't going to know when things were bad enough for me to go home. But I guess I didn't need to know, Heavenly Father would get me there, one way or the other. Secondly, Dr. Laura says that when someone dies we shouldn't say, "sorry to hear about your loss." Instead we should say, "I'm glad that you'll miss them," because that when death is really sad, when we're not going to miss the person. Luckily I had an amazing dad that I miss horribly every day! Thirdly, something else Dr. Laura says (she's my new obsession this year, but that's another blog post.) The one way that people live on forever is that they have qualities that we adopt that get passed down through the generations. My dad had so many qualities that I want to emulate. Our kids aren't going to know their Papa here on this earth, but they are going to know who he was because of the qualities of his that I posses and hopefully will pass on to them. And last, but not least, I have the knowledge that families are forever, what more could I be grateful for?

March

The week after we got home from the funeral I got a call from Devon that he'd lost his job, two days later I lost mine. What a way to start off life together, unemployed! The saddest thing about losing my job was that I LOVED it!! I loved what I did, I loved the company and I loved the people that I worked with.

They weren't just co-worked they were my friends, my substitute family. When I moved here I had no one, but these guys became like brothers and dads to me. They checked my tires, helped me move, would come over and fix things at my home, tease me to keep me humble, they let me into their homes, their families. Even though I don't work there any more, I will always be grateful for my years with Fieldstone.

May

Okay, May is where things started to look up! On May 30th I married the love of my forever, Devon, in the Newport Beach, Ca Temple.

Though the road to the temple was rough, knowing that no matter what Devon is mine forever, made it all worth it!!

June

For a few days Devon and I got to rest from job hunting, wedding planning and just about everything else, to spend a great honeymoon in Lake Tahoe.

Just after we returned home from Tahoe, Devon was offered a job that has turned out to be quite the blessing in our lives.

July

July ended four months of job hunting for me, as I was finally offered a job with the Social Security Administration.

While it's a hard job, I'm finding out that it is well worth it, causing me to learn things I never thought I could and grow in ways I wouldn't have imagined.

After July things slowed down, thank goodness! We've been able to really enjoy our first year of marriage. We've taken a few trips to Cali, gone to and watched a few hundred sporting events (including my first ever BYU vs UTAH football game), taken a few trips to southern Utah and had a two new nieces born into the family. This truly has been the year of change!