Brazil

So we took a little trip to Brazil. And it was the coolest thing we've ever done. 

THE FOOD

One of my favorite things from the trip was the food. Everything was AMAZING!! I tried everything and loved almost everything. 

This is from a market in the shopping district in Campinas. We bought some super yummy mangos there. 

We stopped for lunch after a ton of shopping and ate these bread and chicken and cheese things. They have a name in Portuguese, but all I remembered about it was that it was delicious! 

Brazilians love their cookies. They are all similar to Oreo's, but like 100 times better with 100 different flavors. Every night we would go to the grocery store and stock up on our cookies. We bought flocco cookies in the first city we stayed in, right as we were leaving to another part of Brazil. Floccos are like sprinkles on steriods, and I freakin loved those flocco cookies. Like the best cookie ever and maybe it was because we hadn't eaten anything all day, but I loved those flocco cookies.  And then it was like Brazil was torturing me because we could never find the flocco cookies again. And we searched and searched EVERY single grocery store we found and never found them. I miss flocco cookies. 

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Darn Nectarines!

WARNING: Some of the content may gross you out. I'm sorry in advance for being one of those people that post gross pictures. I gotta prove myself to my Dad and brothers that I am hardcore tough too.

 I had a mishap at work with a knife and a nectarine. I just wanted nectarine slices and I ended up with stitches. It's such a lame story I'm debating making up a lie about a knife fight or getting attacked by some ravenous animal.

The knife slipped when cutting the nectarine and I got this big gash. I may have even seen bone, or maybe it was me hallucinating from all the blood loss.

 This is the culprit!

The aftermath, 5 stitches. I was having a mini anxiety attack when Matt and I went to the instacare. Luckily the doctor could tell I was freaking out and treated me like he treats his child patients. It worked like a charm!

I'm just hoping scar looks cool!

Speedos, Neck Pillows and Sour Skittles

What do speedos, neck pillows and sour skittles have in common??  Those are just a few of the random items we've packed for our trip to BRAZIL!

Matt says the Brazilians loved sour skittles, but they don't have them there. He used to play "Don't eat Pete!" with all the kids, but they called it " Nao come Toni". We bought a bunch of candy that Matt didn't think they had in Brazil to take with us, we are going to try and bribe people to take us in for lunch.

Our flight is a 12 hour flight from Dallas to Brazil, in the middle of the night. So I am hoping to still be able to get my 8 hours of beauty sleep with a handy neck pillow!

As for the speedo Matt just wants to fit in while in Brazil. Since everyone wears speedos! Just kidding, a direct quote from Matt "There is no way I am going to wear a speedo, even if I am the only person at the ENTIRE beach not in a speedo."

 mmmmmm... love speedos!

Pergola

Last weekend we built a pergola! When I say "we" I mean Matt built it and I stood around and acted like I was helping, until I got bored and just went inside.

It all started with an idea. We have a grape vine in the backyard that needs a place to grow on. So Scotty gave us the idea of building a pergola to let the grapes grow on.

And when I get an idea planted in my head, I want it to happen now. But neither of us know the first thing about building a pergola.  And when Matt doesn't know how to build something he leaves it up to me to figure out. So that idea got canned until  I could convince Matt that he could figure it out on his own.

I knew we were meant to build a pergola when the first time I  looked on KSL at garage sales in Payson one of them was selling  pergola wood. It must have been my inner thrifty intuition! I probably inherited that from my G-ma Smith. She is awesome at finding sweet deals at yard sales!

So we bought the pergola wood, along with the screws and bolts and everything for a huge price tag of $7. Score!

 

And I can't write a post about the backyard without including a cute picture of Shaiya.  She loves to sit on us while we swing in the swing. She usually just ends up rooting around and rubbing her butt on us until we push her off.

Jumpin' June Jammers

Matt came up with the title, so blame him for it's awesomeness.

June has been an amazing start to the summer! We have already done so much and the summer isn't even half over!

We started off the summer with the Dirty Dash!  It was a very important event for Jen and I  because we were raising awareness about childhood obesity. JK, we just really like Fat Eric.

Whenever we thought the race was too tough and couldn't go on, we would just think of jolly ole Fat Eric and his spirit would keep us going.

The dirty dash was pretty much the best thing ever and I will definitely be doing it again!

The number one thing on our to do list was the backyard. We spent months working on it.

This is a picture of our backyard right after we moved in. Gross is an understatement.

It took us about 2 months to get our backyard looking decent. The reason it took us so long is because we had to till, trench, dig, put in sprinkler system, then sod. We also planted a garden that may already be half dead.  It was exhausting, but definitely paid off! 

 Shaiya and Matt just hangin' out! 

Then we headed off to California for a week with the Kirk Klan.

The first night we stayed in Reno with Matt's sister Alissa. It was awesome! We went and hung out at the marina across the street from her apartment. Matt and Ashton just kept trying to show each other up all night. Brit and Alissa had to give the long boards a try too.

After we spent some time at the marina we went to the hot tub. We were having a grand time until I spotted this gross, green, diarrhea bird poop on Matt's back, that's when the party started! I couldn't stop laughing for the life of me.  The best part was that Matt had no idea a bird used him as it's personal toilet. It was in a part on his back that he couldn't reach and we all thought it was too funny and too gross to help him out. I was given the bad wife of the year award when I wouldn't help out my poor husband. Eventually Matt's dad took pity on him and gave him some leaves to wipe off with. 

The next day we headed off to the beach house in Santa Cruz, CA! Here are the rest of the happenings while in California.

We spent the day at Hearst Castle. It was amazing! That Hearst guy was a champ and knew how to live in style!

The drive to Hearst Castle from Santa Cruz was about 3 hours, but it was along the coast. We had some amazing views! This is us at Julia Pfeiffer Burns park, it was absolutely gorgeous!

We went on a killer 15 mile bike ride all around San Francisco, we even crossed the bridge. It was so cool! Matt and I are biking pros and whizzed past all the dumb tourists that were walking their bikes up the hill. Then the dumb tourists had the last laugh when my bike tire popped.

We cruised around in style with our new cool sunglasses.  We tried to take a picture in the store, but the Asian lady yelled at us.

We enjoyed fried twinkies on the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz. The man selling the fried twinkies assured me that it wouldn't give me a heart attack. 

Oh yeah baby! 

We went boogie boarding and skim boarding! I sucked at it, but Matt was super good and spent hours and hours riding those waves!

We saw tons of seal lions and elephant seals and we are even more in love with them than we were before. 

We spent an evening at the Mystery Spot. Look it up, its cool. I am totally a believer. 

We also went to the redwood forest. It was amazing! Those are some tall trees!!

We couldn't go to San Francisco and not go back to Ghriardelli Square. We may have gone into several different entrances so we could get multiple samples of the free chocolate. We also enjoyed the best sundae of my life!

The trip wasn't all just fun and games! I was determined to at least run every morning. And I did and ended up running 20 miles that week! I saw some amazing views while on my morning runs! 

 But my feet were not so happy about running every day! My shoes got messed up from the dirty dash and I was too dumb to replace them. I got some pretty mean blisters!

The last night in California we got some family photos taken! They turned out great!

On the way home our car broke down and we had to get it towed to the nearest auto repair shop, which was in Applegate, CA. It took 3 extra days and $900 to get us home!

But we got to hang out in Reno with Alissa! We all went to the Reno rodeo and the carnival. It was a blast! 

Well that's our summer so far! Hopefully July will be a little less busy! In August we're going to Brazil, we are super stoked!

Birfday

My birthday was a few weeks ago and I TOTALLY forgot to blog about it and brag about all the cool stuff I got and about how amazing my husband is!

In all seriousness, both those things are true. Matt spoiled me with tonz of really cool stuff, and he is super amazing.

We  officially started a bike gang, Matt scored a sweet bike for me off KSL. Currently our bike gang includes me, Matt, and Shaiya actin like a fool and trying to run in front of our bikes.

This is just a visual of what our bike gang could someday become! Matt will wear that cell phone on his belt like his is boss.

Matt planned a treasure hunt word scrabbled for me with a present at each clue. One of the presents included these

OOOH yeah, POOOOOOP bags! I am assuming they are for Shaiya, but Matt didn't specify.

He also got me a Kindle, and I think immediatley regreted it. I love to read. And I love being lazy and buying books online. So the Kindle is the perfect combination! Matt says I ignore him when I'm reading, well Matt you should have thought about that before you bought me an endless supply of really good books at my finger tips. But when I'm ignoring him, aka reading, I never forget to thank him for the best birthday present ever. He usually responds with a scoul.

But the best present of the night was when Matt FINALLY agreed to go to spin class with me. It was like my dream come true! Except my momma hogged Matt and sat inbetween us so she could chit chat with Matt all night.

It was pretty much the best Bday ever! My huzband is super amazing!

Family Room Reveal!

Matt and I have been working very hard for the past few weeks on our family room. We started out by getting a new couch.. that didn't fit in our basement. It's a giant sectional. But Matt and I are determined people and we made it fit. And we may have made a giant hole in the wall and chopped the couch in half to do so. But we did it. 

Here is a picture of our house before we moved in. The picture doesn't do justice on how bad the carpet was. I am pretty sure we got high off of illegal substances when we ripped out the carpet in that room. 

And here is the family room after we moved in. We painted the walls and got new carpet. Poppa K did his magic on the fire place area and laid some amazing tile. But as for decor, we were very lacking. Notice our beautiful DI couches, with no legs.

The room was just so boring. We debated over a bunch of different ideas, and we had many project fails until we finally came up with a winner!

We ended up doing some more wainscotting/board and batten. Since we had a ton left over from our kitchen it went up super quick. Whoever built this house did not know anything about sanding down dry wall seams. So we designed the board and batten to hit right at the seam so you can't see it anymore. Instead of fixing it, we just cover it up. That's how we roll. 

We framed some of Grandpa J's art work that my parents gave us for Christmas. It looks so good in the room and happened to fit perfectly in our $4 DI frame!

I made some framed hearts. Matt says they are too girly. Well too bad, because I like them.

Our coolest find was this light fixture thing. Our neighbor died (I didn't even know anyone lived in the house) and her family was having an estate sale (come to find out that she didn't actually die, she went to a nursing home. Matt got chatty with the family and got the real story, meanwhile I am spreading rumors that she died). Anyway, so we checked out the sale and there wasn't really anything cool. Then we stumbled upon this gem. There wasn't a price tag so I asked the guy if it was for sale and how much it was. He didn't know so he had to ask. Meanwhile I said very loudly " I wouldn't pay more than $10 for that thing. It's definitely not worth more than $10!" He fell into my trap and we got it for $10! We threw on some spray paint and hung that bad boy up! The best part is that it plugs into the wall, so no tricky electrical work required.

 It was another exhausting weekend, but we had so much fun making our family room feel more like a family room.

Spring Break? More like Spring Busy!

We've been bizy beavers as usual around here!  A few weeks ago, when the weather was starting to turn good, Matt came home and told me he was going to paint the shed that weekend. He was all geared up to get painting, then it snowed. But snow doesn't stop him, nothing stops him once he's put him mind to it! 

Here is the before of the shed in the corner. It also doubles as Shaiya's pent house.

 And here is the after of the shed. He even re-roofed the entire thing! Matt literally did everything while I was at work, I didn't lift a finger on this project.  I don't call him my Boy Toy for nothing!

In other news, Matt turned the big 24! We had quite the celebration! I love love love to spoil Matt. I knew I wanted to buy him a bike for his birthday, and so did he. He just kept telling me how much he wanted a bike for his birthday. But I also couldn't help my self from buying him a few other things, I think I may be addicted to buying things for Matt. 

Here he is with all his presents. Yes, I bought him a steam mop. Yes, I want him to do all the mopping. And yes, he loved it. I also got him a remote control helicopter. He was giddy with excitement about it. He broke it  2 days later. But it lasted 2 days longer than I thought it would.

His dinner request was steak. He only wanted steak. So steak it was! He couldn't stop talking about how much he loves steak. 

He also got his weight in candy, from me and from my family. He loves candy! The candy was gone in less than a week.

Last week was Matt's spring break, it wasn't really a break for him since we spent the majority of the week trying to fit a couch in our basement. But we did get away to St. George and Vegas for a few days. 

The first night we got to hang out with S&J and G-baby. 

It's weird that neither Scott or Jen have blue eyes... and Matt's eye's look just like Gracie's. So weird....

We played some killer frisbee at a park for a while.

Then we went on a sweet bike ride.

We hung out with this guy for a while in Vegas. He was a hoot!

  We got poured on while we made the 2.5 mile speed walk back to our hotel.

Even though the weather wasn't the best, we still had a lot of fun!

 I'll be finishing up our family room this weekend (hopefully)  and Matt has huge plans for the backyard (I'm hoping none of them involve me helping out). We'll post pics once we're all done!