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.

Oh.

Seth always says that I talk to my mom on the phone a lot. I always vehemently deny this.

So. Just now my mom called me to tell me a funny story and find out when I would be arriving in Arizona on Thursday, as Seth and I are driving down for the weekend.
Seth walks in from putting his laundry in the washer and asks who I'm talking to. I respond, "my mom."
He nods, walks over to the TV, and turns on the Nintendo so he can play some Mario.

I guess maybe I do talk to her a lot...

A Useful Fellow

Seth likes to fix things - he gets immense pleasure from it. He told me he was first attracted to me because I had the word "tools" in my last name. (I gave him a hearty eye roll at this.)

So the left brake light on my car has been broken for quite a few months now. It's been broken before, we had it fixed last year. They told me it might be from a leak as there was water in the tail light. I said ok and promptly forgot about it.
Fast forward to a month or two ago when Seth inspected the back tail light after noticing it didn't work. . It had almost completely filled with water. It was at this point that he became very excited at the prospects of fixing it. (He also suggested several times that instead of fixing it we could buy a goldfish and have it live in my tail light. I said no.)
It took us a few weeks to get back to fixing it (and by us I mean Seth, since my solution would be to take it to Jiffy Lube and have them repair it for lots of money). He unscrewed the tail light, dumped out the water, found that three of the four bulbs had broken, and the water leakage came from a broken latch.
So he fixed the broken latch, cleaned out the inside, went to the store and bought some new light bulbs, and then replaced them.

It was unsuccessful. None of the lights were working now. Seth got more excited. More fixing to do! He opened it up to inspect the wires. They were completely rusted, some to the point of just breaking off. The electricity couldn't flow through it very well. Even better, because now he could use his power tools. He soldered (yes I actually do know what that is) the pieces back together and rewired it.

And it worked. My lights work now. We were both very happy - me because my car got fixed, Seth because he was successful at fixing it.

And that is why I'm dating him.

Dreams Destroyed

I've always thought I was a very graceful and dignified person.

Then I started hanging out with Joseph, who notices absolutely everything.
Every time I spill things, trip, or have my drink dribble out of my mouth, he points it out with a laugh and a disapproving shake of his head.

His favorite story is when I was eating a piece of pineapple in front of him. I was trying to be fancy and I didn't want to shove the whole thing in my mouth because that would be undignified. So I decided to just take a bite out of it.
Bad Idea. Pineapple is not very conducive to nice little bites. The juice immediately started flowing down my chin and onto the table. Meanwhile I was still trying to gnaw a delicate little bite off the pineapple while Joseph was laughing in my face. In defeat I had to shove the whole thing into my mouth and then try my best to clean up the pineapple juice. All my dreams of being a proper, graceful woman were destroyed. Joseph will now sometimes refer to me as "Pineapple Juice Face." In addition to his habitual laughter in my direction, he is also uncreative.

I told him I was writing about this story and he started to list off all his favorite moments of when I had issues eating my food.
I didn't realize there were so many.

Happy Day

Tonight I got this e-mail.

Dear Janette:
Congratulations! You have successfully passed all areas of the Written
Exam of Interpreter Certification.

And then I became very giddy.

I am so AWESOME!

Truly Converted.

I did it. I got him.

I got Seth to eat cottage cheese and chips and now he is in love. He's addicted. It's his new favorite thing.


Not that there was any doubt he would like it. I mean, he eats practically anything. Still, I feel rather victorious for being the one to have introduced this to him.

So now we can eat happily cottage cheese and chips together!
It was meant to be.