IT'S FRIDAY

This is how I feel today!

Did this week feel Way. Too. Long. for anyone else?

Maybe it had something to do with last week being my birthday (post pending)

and...

my husband treating me like a queen (but then he always does).

Back massages galore.

It was nice...very nice.

Or maybe it had something to do with the overwhelming things happening at work this week (seriously? I can only do so much).

Or perhaps the writing the talk I have to give Sunday?

Or maybe the fact that I haven't seen blue sky for 3 weeks straight (Dear Inversion, Please leave Soon. Sincerely, Heidi)

Well whatever it was this week is over and I am partying with the husband this weekend.

Good times all around

Sleeping in til 630am (sad I know)

Sitting in a hot tub or snowshoeing or swimming (maybe all?)

Eating lots of ice cream

watching movies

new BBQ place in town

cuddling

conversations about who we would rather be Bert or Ernie (BTW we both choose Ernie)

but mostly the good times will come from just being together.

See you in a few hours Clayton

get ready to party hard

HAPPY FRIDAY TO ALL!

Peace

ps. I'm going to dread seeing this post on Monday knowing that I have another 5 WORK DAYS until the weekend. blah.

POKE CHALLENGE

Poke.

Poke is raw fish that is cut into small pieces.

Once again we headed down to the Hawaiian Cultural Center in Midvale.

No homeless people this time.

We had to pay a small fee.

Totally worth it though.

So the HCC put on a Poke Challenge. Similar to the Iron Chef contest on TV. There were 5 or 6 different contestants. They were all given the same ingredients and then were allowed to bring in one "secret" ingredient. They had 1 hour to prepare. Then my favorite part...SAMPLE TIME. My personal favorite was contestant #2.

These guys were contestant #2. My personal fav.

ahhh...raw Ahi
Kami and Erik joined us and made us feel a little less "white". Oh how I long to feel the sun and be tan once again.

Good times. Good food. Good music. Good company.

Also...

Good thing the husband still has a valid Hawaii driver's license (thanks Jodie) so we could win a free meal at Mo'Bettah Steaks.

BEEHIVE CHEESE BARELY BUZZED CHEDDAR

All about food.
yes, yes we are.
All about trying new things.
yes, yes we are.
All about cheese.
Duh, I'm a dairyman's daughter.

This post is a plug for dairymen everywhere. If you didn't know they are on the endangered species list

They say that "Milk Does a Body Good."

I totally and whole hearted agree.

There is nothing I like more than a tall, cold glass of the white stuff.

- Makes my bones strong which helps me me run fast

- Helps my Kidney's keep free of the stones

- Gives me strong teeth to eat lots of sugary stuff with.

- Helps my immune system fight all the nastiness that goes around

- Hey Milk has even been proven to help fight obesity. So get off of your 1 banana-a-day-all-day diet and get yourself a glass of milk

oh yeah and did I mention that...

Now on to cheese.

Have I mentioned that WE. LOVE. CHEESE?

You can't call it a sandwich unless it has cheese. So when we saw that there was a cheese product in our 100 Top Utah Locavores list we were thrilled. Not wanting to drive to Uintah to visit the Beehive Cheese place, we opted for the close option...Harmons. The Locavore is actually Beehive Cheese's BARELY BUZZED CHEDDAR.

Let's just say a beautiful relationship was born this day.

MT. TIMP (can't spell it) TEMPLE

Since the Logan Temple is closed for practically the entire month of January we decided to take advantage of the closure and cross off another Temple on our "attend sessions in every Utah Temple" goal. This time we headed down south to this Temple.

Mt. Timp Temple

yes I'm too lazy to look up the spelling.

and yes spelling is hard.

WARD TALENT SHOW

Last year at the ward campout someone commented, "Wow McMurdie's you have been in the ward 4 years and this is the first ward campout we have seen you at." (Note: 4 years in a married student ward is a looooong time).

We love our ward, we do. If anything we are consistent
1. We go to church every week.
2. Park in the same spot. Now that the Roska's have moved on we have taken over the senior couple parking spot.
3. We fulfil our callings to the best of our ability (oh please pray for me and my RS lesson this week).
4. We sit in the same spot on the backrow bench each week (or we did until the Bishop challenged us to "get out" more)
5. We are usually absent from linger longer's and other non-Sunday church activities. Reason's being...
A) we go straight to our parents homes after Church to get our bellies fed.
B) even though we love our ward and the people in it we are anti-social and prefer hanging out together at home in our fat pants while stuffing our faces with chips and salsa and ice cream.
C) We are Lazy.

I know, I know a lot of time and effort has been put into making these activities great. We are working on being better. Maybe an activity where we stuff our faces with food and hang out in our fat pants???


Anyway to show proof that we are working on our extra circular church activityness (sp?) may I present you with...

THE USU 57th WARD TALENT SHOW

I did not participate. Apparently counting my laps as I run around the gym does not count as a talent. Therefor, I leave all the talent performances up to my husband. Our ward is small. He did 3 talents.

TALENT #1 (aka stupid human trick)- biting the top off of a soda can (or in this case a V8 can). See demonstration below.

I know, right!?!

Oh how I love my man and his vampire-like teeth.

TALENT #2 - playing the bass

TALENT #3 - having sideburns that look like dead cats...or...impersonating a Beatle while rocking out on Rock Band. This was a Bishopric effort.

Clayton calls this his Uncle Jesse pose (yes all your 1990-ers who worshiped the hair and still have "Jesse and the Rippers" posters hanging on your walls...you know who you are).

Up next in the reactivation to Church Activities: THE SWEETHEART BALL. Only because FireHouse Pizza is catering. After food we are out. And that's how we roll.

FEED YOUR SPIRIT

"What does your Spirit crave?"

Clayton was asked this question a few days ago and later asked me the same question. He was told that your Spirit usually craves things that made you happy as a little kid.

CLAYTON'S CRAVES

1. Playing the Bass guitar.

2. Making cupcakes (eating them isn't half bad either). One day we will open a cupcake shop. Will you buy? 3. Laying on the beach. Wouldn't mind being by one now.

HEIDI'S CRAVES

1. Taking a bubble bath while reading a good book. Sorry pervs I don't have any pictures of me in the tub.2. Baking. I bake not cook. I love making cookies, brownies, muffins, biscuits, breads, etc.

3. Like Clayton I also crave laying on the beach. There is nothing like the feel of the sun on your body while listening to the waves roll in. Almost hypnotizing.
4. Eating ice cream. Doesn't matter if it is gelato, milkshakes, frozen yogurt, hard ice cream or soft, I love it all.

So now to you I ask..."What does YOUR Spirit crave?"

BIRTHweek CELEBRATION DAY # 7

We ended the week long BirthWEEK celebrations on Sunday with a dinner at Clayton's parents house.

As usual the food was muy excellante.

For dessert Shira made Clayton his favorite cake and Jessica made Clayton some eggnog cupcakes (also a fav)

Pretty sure I gained 5 lbs this weekend. So worth it though.

I hope you enjoyed BirthWEEK Claytonious! I hope it helped with some of the dread of going back to a full week of work after the holidays.

I LOVE YOU!!!

BIRTHweek CELEBRATION DAY #6

There is a website where we often order stuff, Dogfunk.com. They are based out of Salt Lake. They had a small retail store where you can look at clothes or get on their public computers at the store and order stuff right from their website. Once you order it from their website they pull up your order from the warehouse and you can try on and buy the clothes right there. Takes away all the hassle of returns and shipping. Saturday morning we went here and I let Clayton pick out something...of course I did too.

After that we headed to the Midvale Hawaiian Cultural Center where we learned to pound poi ...

... and play Kanane (Hawaiian Checkers), Kimo (Hawaiian Jacks), and Hu (like Tops with a Kukui nut).

I'm biting my tongue to concentrate. I wasn't very good.

Clayton was awesome at Hu

Me ... not so much. "Heidi haven't you ever spinned a top before." Nope. Don't let the "thumbs up" fool you. I really was awful.

We also shaved coconut.

This I was good at. Almost as good at shaving the coconut as I am eating coconut.

There were 4 different groups of people there:

1. Hawaiians

2. Haole's (white people )who have lived in Hawaii

3. Haole's who have never lived in Hawaii (except for dreams) and worship everything Hawaiian. ME. I was the only one in this group

4. Homeless people who came for the free food. There were a ton of this group.

After that we headed over to Midway and the Homestead Crater. The crater is a beehive shaped rock that has been hollowed out and filled with warm water...all naturally (I believe). You can check them out here. A lot of people come here to dive, but since we aren't dive certified yet we brought our snorkel gear. Sadly they make you wear these "oh so attractive" yellow vests. The following pictures are "cloudy" from the steam.

Definitely not worth paying all the money to snorkel in, but it was an adventure and the water was somewhat warm (90-96 degrees is what they say) and it was beautiful. Personally I could have used it to be a little warmer.

Hole at the top.

Us trying not to freeze. Getting out was M-I-S-E-R-A-B-L-E!

View of the crater from the road.

We saw these ice sculptures from the road and wanted to go take a peak but A) my hair was wet, B) it cost $2 a person (we saw the same stuff from the road for $Free.99), C) we had to hurry back to Kami's to get ready for a reception.

Our friend Candace got married. I always wanted her or Nicole (other friend in pic below) to marry my brothers...sadly my brothers move too slow and Candace is now off the market and Nicole has a boyfriend. Sigh. PS I am not prego in this picture.

After the reception we met up for a late dinner with Kami and Erik at The Pie. Another food bucket list place. The magazine says that you have to try a Zappi (like a calzone). Holy frick those things are HUGE! We got The Wise Guy zappi. A+++++++. Awesome. It had cream cheese, mozzarella cheese, artichoke hearts, spinach leaves, tomatoes and more stuff I can't remember. We also got a Thai Pizza. Also really good.

We both gave The Pie 8.5.

Busy, fun day!

BIRTHweek CELEBRATIONS DAY 5

I was going to do the rest of the BirthWEEK celebrations in one post, but then I realized that I had a gazillion pictures to post and I didn't want anyone to pee their pants because they couldn't pull themselves away from the post long enough to take a bathroom break so I am dividing it into 3 posts so that you can hit the pot (the toilet not the drug), run to the fridge, walk the dog, pick your nose, etc. That was a looong sentence and I'm sure that it isn't grammatically correct. Don't judge. English was not my best subject.

Here we go...

After work on Friday we packed our bags and headed to the big city (SLC) and to the Paul's Bed and Breakfast (aka Kami and Erik's house). We decided to celebrate Clayton's birthday with a non-cereal meal by eating at one of our Food Bucket List places, The Bayou.

Clayton got a wild hair and decided to order an appetizer...Alligator Cheesecake. Real Alligator. Don't let the Cheesecake part fool you...it wasn't sweet. It was alright. Nothing to dip into your life savings for.

As usual we both ordered something and split it. I got the Blackened Salmon Sandwich Clayton got the recommended the Po'boy, with catfish. Both were nothing to complain about, but nothing special in my book. Clayton will most likely disagree. I give the restaurant a 6-6.5. Clayton gives it a 7-7.5. After dinner we ran some errands and headed back to Kami and Erik's and went to bed (at 9:30...it was the weekend so we stayed up 1 hour later). I know, I know we are wild and crazy.

BIRTHweek CELEBRATION DAY # 4

Day 4's surprise turned out really well.

It started with a scavenger hunt for Clayton in the morning. You know the game...one clue leads to the next and so forth. Well at the end of the clues there was a box with a bow. Inside the box was this with instructions to take one pill at 4pm.

Clayton was so confused...it was awesome. About 445 I got off of work and we got in the car and I told him to drive in a certain direction. We ended up at the Logan Airport! His first reaction was "No Way!".

I work with a girl, Kizna who is learning to fly through USU. She has to get so many flight hours in and offered to take us flying around the valley for FREE (my favorite word) with her and her instructor, Tyson.

She took us up right over my family's farm in Trenton. By the way, the round circle thing in the lower, right corner is full of poop.

Sunset on Trenton Hill. Tyson said something about let's go over little mountain. Don't worry I corrected him promptly and let him know that it is Trenton Hill.

They next took us over Tremonton.

It was getting dark by this time, but this is Tremont Street where Clayton's parents live. If you look closely their house is the one with the circular drive.

After some G-Force adventures (Zero G's and negative G's that didn't do any favors for my head, but were cool nonetheless) we flew over Logan.

Our pilots, Tyson and Kizna

If I could give Kizna a raise I would. This was awesome. Seriously...so cool (except for the headache...stupid motion sickness and stupid pills that don't work).

HAPPY BirthWEEK DAY #5 CLAYTON!!!

After 3 post yesterday and 4 today I am all caught up...for a day or so.