New Blog

I made a new blog. It is:

amazingwinsors.blogspot.com

It's not private. I will hopefully make it more exciting than it is right now, but as I have lots of homework, unpacking, cleaning, and work starting on Monday, it may not be for a while.

Holy Crap.

So much stuff everywhere.

So many things to buy.

So many thank you's to write.

So much stuff to unpack.

So not enough time.

Classes start tomorrow for me. Yikes.

Busyness

I've gotten a lot of comments about my last post. And it shouldn't bother me, but it does. Seth and I had a wonderful honeymoon, I wasn't blogging because I was bored or not having a good time, it took me ten minutes to write that while I was waiting for him to shower, we both wanted to go to church and we both enjoyed being able to take the Sacrament together and I don't care what anyone else thinks. And that's all I have to say about that.

Things have been crazy! Here was our schedule for the past week:

Wednesday: drive up to Provo, unpack, repack, drive up to Salt Lake City

Thursday: attend Erik's (best friend of Seths) sealing, luncheon, and reception, drive back to Provo, unpack, repack, get dropped off at the airport, fly all night long

Friday: arrive in Richmond, nap, help get house ready, get ourselves ready, Open House all night, drive to Buena Vista with Amanda/Stuart

Saturday: drive to Raleigh, set up for Open House, get ourselves ready, Open House all night, clean up, go home

Sunday: get up, go to church to hear Bryce (Seth's brother) speak, go home, be with family

Seth and I slept in this morning. We're tired. I'll have more detailed posts about everything later.

A Conversation

This occurred yesterday on the way home from church.

Seth: Someday I want to build our own house. . . .

Janette (oh so happily): Aw, yay

S: . . . out of legos.

J: what, NOOO!!!

S: (laughing hysterically to himself) Yes! It'll be awesome! And then, when you get mad at me and you push me, I can just go crashing right through the wall!

J: (moaning) Noooooo........

He just had to pause in the middle of that sentence and raise all my hopes and dreams, only to crush them a few seconds later.

We've been married 3 days.

There's no going back now.

3 More Days

Seth and I arrived here safely last night after an 11 hour drive. We left an hour and a half after we said we wanted to because of all the last minute cleaning and packing. I'm so glad it's over. Now I just have to worry about

David just came in and asked - no, demanded to be included in this blog entry and as he saw I was writing this he gave me a high five and started to do the wave with his shoulders.

I have an awesome brother.

Anyway, now I just have to worry about UN-packing everything when we get back. And finding a place to put it. Joy.

Every few hours Seth will lean over to me and say "Hey, guess what?" And then I say "what?" even though I know perfectly well what's coming. His response is always, "We're getting married!!!" He may be slightly excited, or he may just be making sure I don't forget about it.
I mean, I know I have a terrible memory, but come on. I can remember that I'm getting married on Friday, he doesn't need to remind me of it 5 or 6 times a day.
He's been doing this since Saturday.

These are the things we did today:
1. Met with our photographer
2. Got my haircut
3. Picked up our marriage license
4. Bought a new belt for Seth
5. Took a nap
6. Went to Costco

Also Seth has read almost all of my brother's entire collection of Captain Underpants books today. He said it was "intellectually stimulating."

Yeah. Right.

A House Update

Take a look at this.

This is the floor of our mud room.

Seth and I assumed these gold bars were screwed into the floor because of a bad carpeting job and didn't think much about it.

There are other weird things in our house. This one was not at the top of the list.

Until one day when our neighbor Steven kneeled down on the floor beside it and stuck his fingers underneath the bars to reveal....

... A SECRET UNDERGROUND LAIR!!!!!

Yeah. Creepy.

We de-creepified it by adding light bulbs and bug bombing the place. And now that the pipes are fixed and the water heater is turned on, I would like to leave the trap door shut and pretend like there's a bad carpeting job in the mudroom.

In other news, we are almost done with fixing things up in our house.

There were lots of holes to patch.

Seth used paint sticks from Lowe's to fix these holes. I wish I had before pictures, but be assured they were big dark holes. The one in the window sill you could see through to the outside.

I painted them white so they wouldn't look so obviously like a patch job.

And then we spent the next 10 hours cleaning our house.

Yes. I said 10 hours. TEN HOURS. And guess what? We didn't finish. Which is why we came back again today. And cleaned for 4 more hours.

And guess what? We haven't finished. We still have to clean the tub and the mudroom.

So I guess I will get off the computer and get back to work. My poor wrinkly hands...

Saturday, August 1.

Saturday we went kayaking down the Provo River. It was a couples fest - Seth and I, and his two roommates Jeff and Michael along with their girlfriends all went as a group.

I have to admit I was kind of apprehensive about the whole expedition. Kayaking and Janette do not go together. I could just imagine it - all five of my friends kayaking happily along, while I was a good distance away, floundering with my oar and stuck yet again in some overhanging tree.

Thankfully I was spared from this horrible image becoming real life, as we rented two 2-man kayaks and two 1-man kayaks. Seth and I took a 2-man, and I spent the majority of my time sitting in the front seat lazily trailing my fingers in the water while Seth did all the rowing and steering from the back seat.

I think I got the better end of the deal. Seth thinks he did. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Unfortunately, our friends are of the rambunctious sort and they spent most of their time splashing us with their oars and switching kayaks in the middle of the river, often falling out.

And unfortunately, we splashed back. Which is when Seth broke his oar.

In half.

And had to pay $50 for it.

Seriously.

The place we rented it from told him to contact the company and see if he could get a new one. If he did he could keep it. So it could work out. Apparently oars are much more expensive than $50. Which I think is perfectly ridiculous.

After the kayaking trip we went to Golden Corral and stuffed ourselves. And while the process was enjoyable, the aftermath was terrible. There were couples strewn over every couch in the living room, all breathing shallowly and trying to touch each other as little as possible in order to lessen the pain.

It was a great day.

Lazy

I'm sitting in Seth's living room. It's 12:45pm. We have church in 45 minutes. I am completely ready.

Seth just walked out here in his pajamas. He's just woken up. His hair is crazy. He's brushing his teeth.

I love him.

We leave for Arizona one week from tomorrow. We're not ready at all. We still have to:

1. Finish fixing things in our house

2. Clean our house

3. Pack our stuff

4. Move our stuff

5. Clean our old apartments

Oh wells. It'll work out.

Taken from deseretnews.com

Boy leads officers on a car chase

Published: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 1:07 a.m. MDT

PLAIN CITY, Weber County (AP) — Police here say a 7-year-old boy led officers on a car chase in an effort to avoid going to church.

Dispatchers received reports of a child driving recklessly on Sunday morning. Weber County Sheriff's Capt. Klint Anderson says one witness said the boy drove through a stop sign.

Anderson says two deputies caught up with the boy and tried unsuccessfully to stop the Dodge Intrepid in an area about 45 miles north of Salt Lake City. The car reached 40 mph before the boy stopped in a driveway and ran inside a home.

Anderson says when the boy's father later confronted him, the boy said he didn't want to go to church. The boy is too young to prosecute and no citations were issued, although police did urge the father to make his car keys less accessible to children.

Our House.

Today you get a lovely photo tour of the house Seth and I are renting for the next ten months.

It is pretty ghetto and therefore pretty cheap. But it's cute and little and quaint (code for "old and small") and we like it.

So here is a picture of the front of the house, which you actually cannot see from the street. It is behind a house in their backyard pretty much. There's a gravel lot and our house and a big barn and you can drive from our side of the street to the other side on a gravel driveway. I'd show you a picture but I do not have one.

The reason that you get a lovely shot of our backsides is that the person who was taking this wanted to get an "action shot" of us scraping paint off the windows. Riveting, isn't it?

The reason we are scraping paint off the windows is that while we do have new carpet, a new shower head, new tiling, and new paint, there's still a little bit more fixing up to do. We've also been re-caulking the windows as there are big gaps between the glass and the wood.

Like I said, ghetto.

This is our living room. I like our pink doors. If you didn't notice, we also have pink windows (on the outside) and a pink roof. Seth really loves it.

And here we have our ginormous space heater, designed to actually heat twice the amount of space in our house! I am lovin' this fact. I hate the cold.

Please also note the giant white patch on the wall. There was a hole. A hole in our wall. Seth thinks possibly from a wood burning stove or fireplace or something. He suggested just placing a picture over the hole in the wall. I vetoed this idea. Hence, the giant white patch.

Here is our bedroom. It is very very tiny. Apparently it actually can fit a King size bed. But only if you don't want any walkway between the sides of the bed and the wall.

Here is our teeny tiny little closet. We tested a hanger in there. The door will close if we angle the hangers as far as they will go.

We're getting some dressers. Plural.

And through that door is our bathroom! It's also very tiny.

That stain will be gone soon, when I clean. The whole house is pretty dirty right now. No one's allowed over to see the true extent of the filthiness until I have thoroughly cleaned everything.

I suddenly started questioning why I'm putting pictures of my filthy house on my blog. I suppose so you can use it as a reference when I put up some "after" pictures.

Here is the kitchen. (That is the front door you see). Please note the tiniest little oven I have ever seen in my life. I hope my pans fit in there.

This room is actually nice and big despite what it may look like in the picture. The cupboards, however, are very tiny, in keeping with the rest of the house.

And here is a little mudroom/backroom/entryway place/random little room in the corner so that the house is a square. Yay more storage space.

The other angle. That is the circuit breaker. Yes, the plate is gone so you can see all the wires behind it.

It's ghetto.

And here is a view of our backyard! Beautiful, isn't it? I'm so excited to look out the kitchen window at this every single day. Please note the sarcasm. That shed thing in the back has chickens. We have chickens in our backyard.

One of the guys living in the other house is supposed to clean up all the debris. We'll see if it happens...

You'd think this would be a smaller post since we have such a tiny house. Huh.

B-Money

Today B-Money came into Cold Stone.

B-Money is a local Provo celebrity. He's a struggling rap artist trying to make it in the heart of Happy Valley. I've been hearing about him since my freshman year and had yet to meet him.

Until today.

He came into the store with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, which contained merchandise of his that he was trying to sell. They were T-Shirts. Awesome T-Shirts.

On the front were pictures of dollar bills arranged randomly and then on top were big black words " DON'T BE HATIN' "

On the back was a nice long rap lyric. I don't remember it except for the end part, " That's how my homies and honies roll."

He came in and said, "Hello. This is my awesome T-Shirt that I designed. Would you like to buy one?"

I am kicking myself for not getting one on the spot.

Instead I politely declined and he nodded and left.

Watch a video of his famous Provo Rap here.

P. F. Chang's

After Seth and I went to the zoo I took him out to dinner at P.F. Chang's.

Seth had never been there, which I considered a travesty.

He tried (in vain) to eat with his chopsticks but it was unsuccessful. I'd had enough experience to know to not even try. I could get more food a lot easier using a fork.

We stuffed ourselves and still had leftovers. It was a great meal.

Happy Birthday Seth

I've been neglecting my poor little blog, as well as my devoted readers. I plan to make amends by posting about multiple things this week.

First, Seth's birthday. He turned 24 last Wednesday, July 1. And although he is older than me in age, he is certainly not more mature than me.

Case in point? In true little boy fashion, he wanted to go to the zoo for the day.

So we packed a picnic and drove out to Salt Lake and spent a glorious day at the zoo.

And I must say, we packed quite the picnic. Sub sandwiches, doritos, grapes, and strawberry shortcakes for dessert.

My favorite animals were the giraffes.

So this picture is really a combination of two of my favorite things, giraffes and sign language.

Seth did not have a favorite animal. I asked him and he listed off half the animals we saw. So we're going with no favorite.

And here is a picture of Seth going crazy at the child-sized lion water fountain. He was quite thirsty. This may have had to do with the fact that we decided to spend the hottest part of the day walking around in the sun. Maybe.

We've decided that the downside of being a couple is that most of our pictures are of one or the other, but never together. So we made someone take this for us.

This is the complete opposite of how I felt that day. Good face though, huh?

This was cool because we got to touch the turtle. I like turtles. So does Seth.

We planned well, as we finished everything just a few minutes before they closed. And to top it all off, Seth got to do this:

He was very giddy about it.

We both had a great time at the zoo.

The End.

(Don't worry, we did more. I'll post about it later.)

I just told Seth he had problems (due to not being able to sit on a couch correctly and getting in my way of typing) and then he muttered under his breath, "just one problem..."

Yeah, he thought that was a pretty good line. Until I reacted violently.

Compliment that was.

I've been waiting for something non-weddingy to blog about. I have at last come upon it.

Today at work some guy told me "the force seems very strong with you."

I didn't quite know how to respond so I just smiled and nodded in a "oh yeah, I get that all the time" sort of way.

I told Seth about it and he says the appropriate respond would have been, "NERD!"

This is the first time anyone has told me this. I think I'm more proud of it than I should be.

Rings

After two or three days of ring shopping and many snooty salespeople, we finally found the rings we wanted at a local family store called Losee Jewelers. The couple who own the place are retiring and everything was 50% off.

Yeah, seriously. Score!

Here is my engagement ring.

And here is my wedding band with it. I know a lot of girls are just getting one ring with no additional wedding band but I was aching for that extra band. Good thing we found one I liked that was inexpensive. . .

And here is Seth's ring.

Yes, we took these pictures under the stove light. It was the only place with good enough lighting.

Color Me Mine

As promised, here are our pictures from Color Me Mine.

My mother made fun of me a lot when I told her that Seth and I were going here for my birthday. Little does she know that Seth is not a typical male and he thoroughly enjoyed painting his cup. I am so lucky!

We also painted a little broken piece of ceramic. I'm going to put a magnet on the back. Our first refrigerator magnet! How precious.

Seth painted his cup castle style, with a stained glass window. It looks so cool.

This is my plate, in honor of my birthday.

I paint my name on everything because I love my name, it is the best name ever.

Oops.

I believe I already wrote a post about how clumsy and ungraceful I am.

This post is just going to back that one up.

That's cottage cheese all over Seth's floor.

I sort of accidentally dropped the carton and it exploded when it hit the ground.

It was a very sad event because of the loss of both my cottage cheese, and my pride.

Seth found it amusing.

It happened last night.

I went on my first date with Seth on May 30, 2008. I know because I wrote about it in my journal. I thought you might find what I wrote amusing so I copied some out for you. 

"Tonight I went on a date with Seth Winsor, from the ward. I really enjoyed myself. I was rather surprised Seth asked me, I haven't really hung out with him ever. Just had the hi, how are you surface conversations. But I found he is really easy to talk to. . . . 

We went to go see Laugh Out Loud, an improv group at BYU. I'd heard they were not very good so I went with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. And then we went to the Creamery and then we came back to Campus Plaza and watched a movie. And he was sitting so close to me! It was making me uncomfortable, I kept trying to make it so we weren't touching without him realizing it, but I think he did and I felt really dumb. It just seems weird to me, I was sitting there thinking, what if Seth and I were dating, then it would be normal to sit so close. 

And then I was like ew, no. Seth and I are only friends. I've never thought of him as anything more, it just seems weird to me. "

I made the mistake of telling Seth about what I wrote. He likes to bring it up quite often. First, how I dreaded our horrible date because I thought Laugh Out Loud wouldn't be good, and second, how I thought he was disgusting because I wrote "ew" when I thought about dating him. 

But I guess he won me over in the end because we started dating on August 12, 2008. 

"I went on a walk with Seth tonight. ah! We held hands. It was sweaty. And we talked. About us. And I feel weird now. So I guess we decided we are dating. This is weird. We were both just like 'so...what's going on? I don't know. I've never done this before. I guess we are dating now? I guess. I kind of like you, yeah, I kind of like you too, etc, etc.' Honestly, I have no idea how we even got to this point and didn't continue on in our cluelessness."

*singsongy voice* Awkward...

But almost one year exactly from our first date, on my birthday, we decided we wanted to get married. 

And almost exactly one year from when we first started dating "officially," we're getting married. It will be on August 14 in the Mesa Arizona Temple. And we are super excited and super happy and I am probably going to be really annoying and stressed for the next couple of months but I cannot wait to be married to Seth. And you  know what the best part is?

I get to start a couples blog. 

Happy Birthday to Amanda and Me

My birthday was on Thursday. It was a great day, mostly because of Seth. He:

1. Made me breakfast

2. Gave me a rose

3. Filled my car with balloons

4. Took me out to Tucano's

5. Went to Color-Me-Mine with me

6. Gave me a sunflower

7. Spent all day with me
8. Bought me chips and cottage cheese

We also took a little nap after Tucano's because we'd stuffed ourselves so much that the only energy we could expend was on digestion. So awesome.

Someone also put a Happy Birthday sign up on the door and I've yet to figure out who it is.

Joseph knows and he adamantly refuses to tell me and it is driving me absolutely insane.

I am a very nosy person. I like knowing everything.

I also got a parking ticket! I should have put a little sign on my car. "Today is my birthday. If you would like to give me a parking ticket next week I will gladly accept my responsibilities. If you do it today I will hate you forever. Sincerely, Janette." It's only $10 if I pay it within a certain amount of time so I guess it's not too bad.

Happy Birthday to Amanda too. This is the second year we haven't been together on our birthday. It's still not as good without her, but I suppose Seth did make up for it.

We pick up our creations from Color Me Mine on Monday. I will post pictures of how fantastically creative and awesome they are.

Seth and Janette's Trip to Arizona!

This is a longer post than I intended it to be.
Don't worry though, the majority of it is pictures. I figured they would be a lot more interesting than a long rambling post about everything we did this weekend.
Let's begin.

We left about 9am Thursday morning and arrived in Arizona around 7:30 to much jubilation and glee. My family sent us to El Rico's, an extremely delicious family-run Mexican restaurant down the street from my house. It was a requirement that we eat there before the weekend was up.

David and I showed him the cows in our backyard. Not so exciting to me, but Seth liked it. He wanted to know if it was my job to slaughter them and get the meat for dinner.
I said no.

Thursday was also Katie and David's last day of school so I got to see them all Friday as well. I abused David a lot this weekend. He told me he would never trade me in for a brother. I think I am quite violent enough for him.
David also roped Seth and I into playing video games with him frequently. I think it may have had to do with the fact that he was bothering us 24/7.

Friday we helped my mother clean out her classroom and then went out to dinner at Logan's Roadhouse. We planned on going swimming but as it was muggy and overcast (it was actually raining when we arrived on Thursday! - Seth was shocked) we decided not to.

For some reason Seth was fascinated by the fact that people just threw their peanut shells on the floor, and that it was acceptable. He wanted to be sneaky and get photographic proof. So, this is not actually a picture of me, but a picture of the floor.

While we were there my brother David made us both read his new book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Hilarious book. There is a part in there that says "Shel Silverstein looks more like a burglar or a pirate than a guy who should be writing books for kids." and Seth thought it was SOO funny he made me take a picture of him with it. Yeah... I know, I know. He's weird.

I woke him up Saturday and I took a picture of it for my own amusement.
We went bowling with my brother David but unfortunately forgot the camera. David won thanks to 2 strikes in a row on his last turn. I, of course, beat Seth. I was almost afraid we were going to have a repeat of the last time we went bowling and Seth would come out of nowhere and beat the pants off of me, but thankfully my pride was spared. By at least 20 points.

My family had a barbecue Saturday night. It was an "everyone meet Seth party", disguised as my Birthday party. I love this picture even though both of us look ridiculous. He's very fond of taking pictures of this sort. (the ridiculous kind)

That is my sister Katie being weird. Yeah, Seth fit right in with my family.

I tried to get David to take a picture of us after church in our nice clothes but apparently I picked the worst photographer ever as absolutely none of them turned out. I do like this one though because it looks like the force of Seth's shot is blowing my hair back.

So Seth was fascinated by the cacti. We have tons more pictures of them that he took. We drove out towards the mountains so we could take some pictures like this. Very silly.

We also went and looked at the Mesa temple because Seth had never been there before. There are about 40 shots of this particular one, as the woman who we asked to take it couldn't figure out if the camera was taking it or not. Oh wells. Lots to choose from!

Monday we planned to leave at 10am and we headed out the door around 11:30. This was due to several things, of which me, Seth and my sister Katie are to blame. I really wasn't complaining though. I was not in a hurry to leave my home.
On our way out of town we stopped by In-N-Out. Seth had never been there, thus it was a necessity that we stop here and eat. We both thoroughly enjoyed our food.

He had to take a few more shots of the cacti as we were leaving. Seriously, he loves them.

We got back to Provo on Monday around midnight.

And that was our trip.