Ode to Logan

Well, we haven't posted lately, but sadly, this is the best I can come up with right now. Because sometimes- especially lately, I wonder why out of all the places in the world, Josh and I have chosen to live in Logan. Don't get me wrong, I love Cache Valley, and right now, it's really the only place that I could think of as home, but the longer winter goes on, the more I wonder.



So Josh sent me this email awhile ago-it's similar to Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might Be a Redneck..." but this is
"You Might Live in Utah..."

If your local Dairy Queen is closed from September to May, you live in Utah. (It's true! the only one in Cache Valley is currently closed.)
If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don't work there, you might live in Utah.
If you've worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you live in Utah.
If you've had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed the wrong number, you live in Utah.
If "vacation" means going anywhere south of Salt Lake City for the weekend, you live in Utah. (Hello! Story of my life!)
If you measure distance in hours, you live in Utah. (I didn't know there was any other way to measure it.)
If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you live in Utah. (Hitting deer is a weekly occurrence in Josh's family!)
If you have switched from "heat" to "A/C" and back again in the same day, you live in Utah.
If you can drive 75 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching, you live in Utah.
If you design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit, you live in Utah.
If the speed limit on the highway is 75 mph--you're going 80, and everyone is still passing you, you live in Utah.
If driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow, you live in Utah.
If you know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction, you live in Utah.
If you find 10 degrees "a little chilly" you live in Utah.


And I've added a few of my own "Only in Logan..."
Only in Logan does your car door freeze shut to the point that you have to climb in through the window. (True story, happened to me last week, and it didn't unthaw until like noon.)
Only in Logan is a traffic jam caused by a tractor.
Only in Logan does it take an entire county's police force to issue one speeding ticket.
Only in Logan is an inversion so thick that I can't see 1 foot in front of my car caused by cow manure.
Only in Logan can your nose hairs freeze inside your nose in a matter of seconds.

I will be the first to admit that there are really good things about Logan and Cache Valley too. Sometimes it's just hard to think of them when it is 7 degrees outside, I'm late for work because I'm scraping inches of ice off my windshield, and I'm dreading driving 20 minutes in the FOG!

Snowboarding!

After weeks of begging, Josh finally took me snowboarding. We went snowboarding with Josh's brother Jared, and wife Amy on Saturday, and as always, I loved it. I'm not very good about taking pictures when we're snowboarding, so luckily, my bindings came unscrewed from my board (if you can call that lucky), so most of these pictures were taken while we were fixing them. Yea for snowboarding!

Newest nieces and nephews!

Josh's brother's dog Bella had puppies the Saturday before Christmas, and even though they will probably all be sold soon, we are loving them as much as possible now! How could you not love those faces, seriously? The pictures from left to right are 1) Bella and all her puppies, puppy "Josh", Marley and Me :), Josh and puppy "Josh", and Roxie. Can you tell she loves sleeping on her back?

Spoiled

Well, it's been awhile since we posted, so I have a lot to catch up on, but I'll try to keep it short. On the 13th of December, Josh and I went on a double date with my parents, my mom and I, and Josh and my Dad. My dad works for a printing company that does printing for the Jazz, and as one of their perks, his boss gets second row seats to the Jazz games, and they rotate them throughout the company. My dad has given everyone in my family a turn to go with him. I told Josh that while we were dating, and Josh has been paying his dues ever since. I'm sure he thought that I made the whole thing up so I could reel him in and snatch him before he could get away. So this month Josh finally got his turn. I sat with my mom on like the sixth to the last row, and Josh sat with my dad on the second row. One of the best things about sitting so close is that you get spoiled to the max. They give you a parking voucher right across the street from the Energy Solutions Arena, dinner before the game, and a snack during half time. They played the Orlando Magic and Josh got the opportunity of harrassing the players close enough that they can hear. He even got a shoulder shrug from JJ Reddick when he told him that they were never going to pass the ball to him. Here's a fuzzy picture right in the action of Paul Milsap running past.

Mehmet Okur shooting free throws.

A picture of Kyle Korver's backside. I can almost hear thousands of girls in Utah swooning!

And of course, my favorite, Paul Milsap shooting free throws. I took pictures as well from the top of the stadium, and maybe when I get them from my mom, I will add them. After the game, I said to Josh, "Was it everything you wanted and more?" Josh said, "No, I wanted them to win!" So, yeah, the Jazz don't lose very often on their homecourt, so of course the day that my dad and Josh are within feet of them, they lose. Well I guess you can't have it all.

Now, onto more recent events. Josh and I have been looking to buy a new car for awhile. Since we're living in Wellsville, and Josh works in Ogden, he has been commuting through Sardine Canyon everyday. Anyone who knows anything about Sardine Canyon knows that it can be a bugger during the winter. We decided that if he was going to be making that commute, we would get a new car that would be safe for him. We searched and searched and searched, and finally bought a new car on Saturday.

So OUT WITH THE OLD! (I know many of you were scared that that is our new car.) For those who don't know, Josh had a 1988 Jeep Cherokee. It was a good car, and very reliable for being only three years younger than me. But it was starting to have more and more problems. The breaks were about to go out, the leaf springs made the car bounce like a pogo stick (only when you hit a bump when you were going really fast), and some other minor problems that come with the territory of 20 year old cars.

And IN WITH THE NEW! We haven't taken a picture of it, so this is the best I can do. It's a 2008 Jeep Liberty. We looked into getting a Tacoma, FJ Cruiser, and what seems like a million other cars. But we pretty much just upgraded to a new red jeep. But Josh's favorite thing about the car is that since we bought it from Karl Malone Toyota we got an basketball signed by Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams. Josh thought he was so smart to say that we wouldn't buy the car if we didn't get a ball. It's been a lot of fun so far, and I'm super excited to not feel like I'm taking my life in my hands everytime I get into a car.

So as you can see, we've been pretty spoiled this Christmas. Besides the material things that we've gotten this year, Josh and I had a great Christmas. We both love spending time with family so much, and the holidays are never long enough. This year, I enjoyed the Christmas season even more because this was the first Christmas that I've had at my job. I work for a nonprofit organization that works with family and kids. Since we have no money, we are always accepting donations. As I've gotten older, the Christmas season seems to be getting more and more commercialized and I was so excited this year to have a renewed faith in humanity. I was absolutely amazed at how generous people were with our center. We had some many donations coming everyday that we couldn't keep up on all of them. Anyway, I just wanted everyone to know that I now know that there are still very good people in the world, and people that are looking for ways to help other people.

This next video is one such donation that we received. I'm sorry that I am computer illiterate, and don't know how to rotate the picture, but I promise it worth watching. I need to set the scene though. I went into work on Christmas Eve, and one of the girls that I work with started screaming, "Kaleena is here!" And then I heard more coworkers screaming throughout the hall. I went into my office, and the girl that shares my office with me said, "Josh called and he said that your phone is dead, so he wants you to call him back." Sitting on my desk where my phone usually is was a teddy bear. We made a video to show the bear in action.



If you can't tell from the video, the bear is a phone, and his mouth moves and eyes blink when the person on the other end talks. It's just about the coolest thing I have ever seen, and even though I can't accept incoming calls, it has not left my desk. We found them on-line for anywhere between $100 and $250. Merry Christmas to all and Happy New Year!

My Love

Well Hope tagged me awhile ago, and I've been putting off doing it, but on Wednesday I severely messed up Josh's haircut, so I am starting my very long process of begging for his forgiveness. This tag is about how wonderful my husband is, so if any of you think you already know how wonderful he is, you don't have to read any further.

1. Where did you meet your husband? Josh and I had a Political Science class together my second year of school. Then we danced with each other once at the COOLEST club in Logan (Alright, it's the only club in Logan.) It all kind of started from there.

2. How long did you date before you got married? From the time that we had "our first date" (I still say we haven't been on a date yet, but whatever) to the time that we were married, it was a little over a year.

3. How long have you been married? 2 1/2 years

4. What does he do to surprise you? Most things that Josh does surprise me. He tries to embarrass me every chance he gets, like making random comments about me during priesthood and telling everyone at my work party that we are cousins. I guess it shouldn't really surprise me anymore. He randomly buys me books, and seasons of the Office online, and every once in awhile he cleans the whole house-that surprises me the most.

5. What is your favorite feature of his? His smile!

6.What is your favorite quality? He is a very genuinely nice person. He rarely says anything mean about anyone. He puts up with A LOT from me. He's really laid back, and I desperately need that, because I'm a little (okay A LOT) high strung. He's also a very hard worker, and he loves his family.

7. Does he have a nickname for you? Anything under the sun that you can think of that someone could possibly use as a nickname, Josh has called me. Including hun bun, sugar, babe, honey, love chop, and one of my least favorites, honey chicken. That's another way that he tries to embarrass me. I kind of deserve it though, I do call him muffin, and honey dew watermelon.

8. What is his favorite food? Pizza, pizza, pizza, and brownies. Josh can, and does sometimes, eat pizza everday and not get sick of it.

9. What is his favorite sport? I'm not sure. He loved track and wrestling in high school. He played football for about 8 years of his life, and he likes baseball. But my guess is Jazz basketball.

10. When and where did you first kiss? In my college apartment, very late at night. How romantic!

11. What is your favorite thing to do as a couple? I'm not really sure. I think maybe watching movies together. Even though, I'm not really a fan of watching movies, and I fall asleep in the first 10 minutes, I like cuddling with Josh.

12.Do you have children? Yes. (Let's see how well you know us.)

13. Does he have any hidden talents? He is good at everything!!!!! He plays the piano, and he played the saxophone when he was in Jr. High, he sings, he wins every game he ever plays. Even things that I think I'm pretty good at and he should be awful, he is good. It's pretty frustrating, because he has obvious talents and hidden talents. I didn't get either one.

14. How old is he? 25. (26 in less than a month! He's such an old man!)

15. Who said I love you first? He did.... And then I did awhile later, and he was very mad at me.

16. What is his favorite music? Favorite favorite? I'm not sure. He likes kind of the pop rock stuff right now like Daughtry, and Nickleback. I think one of his favorites might be Jon Mellencamp

17. What do you admire most about him? Refer back to that one about qualities, I think that's the same question. I admire that he can deal with me day in and day out. Most people would find that quite a challenge!

18. What is his favorite color? Green. Not grass stain green or lime green, or forest green. Green green. He's very particular.

19. Will he read this? Eventually

20. People I tag. Anyone who wants to. No one ever listens to me when I tag them anyway!

Who needs TURKEY for Thanksgiving!!

The newest tradition that the Anderson family has is killing animals on Thanksgiving!! (much to Kaleena's dismay) let me explain, Two years ago on our first thanksgiving together, our original plan was to shoot my brothers' new guns. We had set up various targets to shoot. Surprisingly Kaleena is pretty dang good at shooting hand guns. She fell in love with my brother jake's 45. but what to our wandering eyes did appear was a deer waiting to be killed. ( we had a valid tag for the deer) Ever since that fateful day the Andersons have made not only eating animals but killing animals a tradition on Thanksgiving. So this year we went to a hunting club for pheasants! We ended up shooting 12 of them. This is a picture of the fam, including bella the dog, and the pheasants we shot
I think that kaleena looks good with a shot gun!!! Even though this was the only time we let her hold a gun. we'll have to wait and see two years from now, if we let her shoot one.
I shot this pheasant and my brother James' dog Bella went swimming and retrieved it for me.
This is my family loading their guns getting ready for the big day.

Special thanks to kaleena for being the designated photographer, and to my sister Cherilee for bringing her camera.

As promised

Well, we've lived in our new house for about three weeks, and finally I feel like we have it in some kind of order. So I'm posting pictures like I promised I would. This is the second bedroom which is the home office/gym/second TV room/craft room. That's what happens when you only have one extra room in your house, and as you can see all the boxes that we still haven't gotten out of our house are being stored in here.






















This is the other side of the front room, and the brand new LCD TV that we bought on Friday for Black Friday. Josh has been glued to it ever since.



This is part of the kitchen, with our table that we bought a couple weeks ago, that I LOVE! For those who don't know, we lived in a tiny, one bedroom apartment for the last two and a half years. It wasn't big enough to have a kitchen table, so with our new house, that was the thing I was the most excited about. Sadly, we haven't used it a ton yet, because I get home kind of late from work, and no matter how many kitchen tables we have, sometimes you just can't pry Josh from the TV.



I did these pictures out of order, of course! We put up our Christmas tree today, and I don't care what anyone says, I think our Christmas tree is the most beautiful in the world. I know some of you may think your's is, but that is where you are mistaken.

This is our bedroom, well, one side of our bedroom. I didn't take a picture of the other half, because it would like a giant white wall. The funny thing about this picture, is that you might notice that there is a beautiful quilt next to the bed. Yeah, my mom made that quilt for us when we got married, and I LOVE IT! However, before Josh and I got married, I had no idea what to get him for Christmas. (Some things don't change even after two years of marriage.) So I was thinking about the things that he likes to do... Eating, sleeping, watching and playing sports. He had everything that he needed to play or watch sports, and I couldn't really get him food, so I decided to get him a down comforter (to be used while sleeping :) My mom and I looked forever for a duvet cover that we liked, and had no success, so we decided to make him a cover. The fabric store that we went to had microfiber on sale. So we made the duvet off-white on one side, and blue on the other. The moral of the story is that even after two years Josh loves that blasted comforter cover, and I have to admit, it is very comfortable, but it is so ugly! And I can say that because I made it. But we have pillows, and a bed skirt, and everything to match the quilt that I love, but Josh just wants to use the comforter, so I've tried to make it look as good as possible, but there's only so much I can do.

Well there's the house. We are really liking it so far. Sometimes it's a pain to live in Wellsville because I'm used to being 1 minute from absolutely everything! But other than that everything is good.

A couple little quirks about our apartment...
-We live next to a farm, so we wake up to the sound (and sometimes smell) of cows.
-When we first moved in, there was a GIANT white bleach spot on the carpet right in front of the upstairs bathroom. So one of the first things Josh did when he moved in was try to dye it with dark brown dye. (He dyed the carpet in our last apartment and it looked really good, but that's because our old carpet was dark brown.) This carpet is a light, greyish, purple color. Josh was floored when the dye didn't fix the bleach stain. It looks better, but not good.
-We had our cable set up about a week ago, and when we set up our TV upstairs, through a series of events, we figured out that we can't watch several channels on the downstairs TV unless the upstairs TV is on that channel. How random!
-It's weird to have different rooms in our house. In our old apartment, I could see or hear Josh ALL THE TIME! So now, sometimes when I'm upstairs and he's downstairs, I have to yell, "Josh are you still there?"

But so far, so good!