Life Insurance

I should be writing thank you notes right now....but I'm not. I am going to tell you a story instead.

There is this couple [this couple shall remain anonymous for their safety, and this is not about Husband and I, promise!] who decided to get a life insurance policy.

In order to get a life insurance policy a physical is required of both individuals. The results of this physical determines the amount required to pay each month.

In preparation for this physical the couple was told to fast and also to drink a lot of water. The husband learned that the wife needed only gain three more pounds in order to greatly decrease the amount of money they would have to pay.

The nurse was sweet and wanted to help the wife to hit the weight limit and so she told the wife to "Go get some clothes on and don't wear those light flip flops wear some clogs or something."

The husband still concerned that the wife wasn't going to make the weight limit and noticing that she hadn't drunk the water she was supposed to he gave the wife a loving tap as she stepped on the scale, sneakily dropping the water bottle into the hood of the her jacket.

Surprisingly the wife made the weight limit and resulted in her being "super preferred."

The wife is happy because she is super preferred [which means she is REALLY healthy] and the husband is happy because his monthly payment is significantly less.

See a little cheating can make things so much better!

I mean cheating is bad and you shouldn't do it. Remember it is always better to let a stupid big insurance company take all your money just because you are 3lbs away from "their" standard.

Procrastination

This is what I feel like I do some days. Sad but SO true.

http://wimp.com/procrastinatemuch/

Sorry I couldn't figure out how to embed this so you will just have to make an extra click to go to the Web site. Enjoy!

Convenience

I am a woman of convenience. I am always looking for a way to make things easier or more convenient. Now I don’t want you to think I am lazy because if I had to do the hard way I would but if you don’t then why not use the genius inventions of others?

Husband and I received two gifts for our wedding that I absolutely LOVE!

First, the One Touch can opener. This little baby is the coolest thing I have ever seen! You place on the can. Press the button once and the thing moves around the can, opening it and then turning off on its own. GENIUS! I get excited every time I have a can I need opened. I can have a can being opened while I do other things. Love it!

Second, the Eureka Quick Up. This is my very best friend. Me and dust pans don’t get along and I am really not that fond of brooms either. This little baby is an answer to my prayers. It has the ability to vacuum on hard floors and carpet! So I can just vacuum up my kitchen floor switch it over to carpet, vacuum my kitchen rug and wallah I have a clean kitchen floor. No broom, no dust pan and no little line of dirt still remaining. It is a very beautiful thing!

Weekend Review

This review could be really long if I wanted it to be just because of the long weekend but I will just mention some of the highlights.

Friday:

· My birthday. Turned 22 on the 22. How cool is that? Husband was so sweet and presented me with a number of sweet thoughtful gifts throughout the day.

· Got to go home and see my wonderful family. Got sweet presents such as candy jar for my office desk and shampoo (I have two brothers who like to use mine so it was more like a replacement than a gift)

· Ate razzleberry pie with vanilla ice cream!

· Husband got me a PINK tennis racket! It is so cute! I am going to be an awesome tennis player...you just watch.

Saturday:

· Went b-day shopping with my mom! So fun plus I got some snazzy new work clothes.

· Recorded our "love story" with our videographer Nate Pickett. It was so much fun to do and we kind of felt like we were engaged again. So excited to see everything once it is done.

· Hung out with Husbands bros and their wives/dates. I enjoy being with Husbands family so much. They are so great and so much fun! We had a great time playing catch phrase.

Sunday:

· Church. Always a highlight.

· Played with Husbands nieces whom I adore and who taught me a cool new hand game in which my favorite part is "Kick your boyfriend out of town!"

· Made cookies

Monday:

· Visited the graves of loved ones.

· Shopping with Husband. Going to have him all decked out for the summer! P.S. Looked so good in his new T-shirt.

· BBQ with the family. My mom & dad throw a killer BBQ. I was stuffed to the brim! So yummy.

Those were the highlights of the weekend. I enjoyed the weekend so much and was so glad to have an extra day off. It was much needed and now I only have three more days to go before I get a weekend again! Yay! Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend as well.

Sneak preview...

This is a little teaser that my videographer sent to us and boy is it a teaser! I can't wait to see the whole video! Hope you enjoy!

Weekend Review

I realized that not a whole lot of blogging is going to happen for me on the weekend. There is just too much going on. Now of course there may be exceptions to this but for the most part I think that you won't hear much from me over the weekend. Hence my new installment of Weekend Review so that I can give a run down of the fabulous things that happened over the weekend.

Friday:

Consisted of not a whole lot. Husband and I attended the temple and then came home and chilled the rest of the evening. My little bro and his friend came and stayed with us which was fun. I enjoyed getting to see him and also getting to chat and catch up.

Saturday:

Began with pancakes and bacon [made on my brand new griddle]. The boys pounded the food [again with boys and the eating I haven't gotten my eye for how much they can eat just yet]. I cleaned, worked out [which I haven't done since the wedding, I know shame on me] and then Husband and I went to our very first married ward activity. This is where the exciting stuff comes in.

We get to the activity and everything is going wonderfully. We are meeting great people, eating yummy food, life was wonderful. We decided we wanted to throw the football a bit [a lovely gift from Jessie & Garan for my bridal shower. Husband LOVES that football].

Husband left the windows rolled down a bit so he thought he would just reach in through the window and unlock the car. Bad idea. Our car alarm starts going off [probably like 50 yards from where the rest of the ward was].

Husband hurries and opens the car door climbs in and starts up the car but the honking continues. He begins pressing the lock unlock button on the door. Still honking. I suggested using the key lave. So he begins digging through my purse to find the key lave [all the while the car is still honking and I am getting the feeling that people are getting annoyed]. We find the key lave, press unlock and...the car continues to honk.

We bought the car used and it didn't come with an owners manual. So we had no idea what we were going to do to get the stupid thing to stop! I was really starting to feel stupid and somewhat panicked as to what we were going to do. I jumped in the car and we began to drive away so that we wouldn't keep annoying people while we try and figure out how to get our car to stop freaking out. Just as we began to drive away the car stopped honking.

But the story doesn't end there. As soon as we were parked again and Husband opened the door the alarm began to go off. We felt so stupid! Here we were with our car alarm going off, everyone looking at us and we have no idea how to get it to turn off! We again began to drove away, all the while the car is still honking. We leave the parking lot and people on the streets are staring at us probably thinking that we just stole the car we were sitting in. We drove down the street a little ways with the car still honking. I was laughing so hard. Finally we pulled over and the car stopped honking.

We didn't move.
We took the key out of the ignition.
Pressed the unlock key on the key lave.
Opened the door and...nothing.

We had FINALLY fixed it. We realized that the whole time we were pressing unlock the keys were in the ignition. Apparently the car doesn't like that. So we learned a little more about our car on Saturday. It wants keys out of the ignition before it will stop.

The best part of this whole story was that for the activity you could tell funny stories about your engagement, wedding or first few weeks of marriage. We wrote on a piece of paper about our very first married ward activity and how our car alarm wouldn't go off and how we had to drive away with a honking car before we could figure out how to turn it off. Yeah and we totally won a prize for it!

The rest of the activity was a lot of fun. We whomped on the old married couples in the Celestial Marriage game [Thanks Brock and Rachel for giving us a practice go round on that one]. We almost won at the wheelbarrow race if I hadn't dropped Husbands legs [Whoops. I really am not that strong and Husband was so wiggly!]. Anywho we had a lot of fun at our first ward activity and met a lot of really great people.

We enjoyed the rest of the day doing more shopping at Target with gift cards [Boy am I going to be sad when those run out.] and then coming home and just chilling.

Sunday:

Was fantastic. Had a nice relaxing morning [Church doesn’t start till 1:20. This won’t last long because church goes to 8:00 in June. Talk about extreme change huh?]. Went to church. Met more cool people. Ate leftover cake. Met with Bishop. Came home and ate dinner [Tried a new method of cooking a specific chicken recipe which turned out really good] Made smoothies. Chatted with Colter and Laura [Our downstairs buddies] Went to bed. Stayed awake and talked for a good hour. Went to sleep.

We had a great weekend and because of that I had a Monday with a vengeance. I made it through though and we ended it with buying some Ikea furniture. I will write more on that later. This concludes my Weekend Review.

Don't worry the Weekend Review won't be this long every weekend. Maybe I will just pick one highlight for the weekend but for this week you get the WHOLE SHABANG! Hope everyone had a great weekend and we can all be happy because Monday is over. It is all downhill from here.

Phone Blunder

With the responsibilities I have been given at work I hardly ever talk to editors/reporters on the phone. If I do talk to them it is because I am calling them, I have a script, they know I am pitching them so they just let me give my shspill and then say “no.” That is the extent of my editor interaction.

Today something quite out of the ordinary happened. An editor called ME. [I also want to note that my phone never rings either so it scared the crap out of me when it did]

The editor calling explained that she was having some email problems and was confused as to what article I was pitching her [I had sent her two different ones on request from two different people].

We chatted briefly, got things cleared up and she ended the conversation by telling me that she was planning to post one of the articles for the next day.

This is how the conversation went:

Editor: Tomorrow I will be posting “[Enter really long and boring article headline here]” article will be posted.

Me: Great! I am so grateful…[ahh did I just say grateful!?] ummm I mean glad that you were able to find the article useful. I will let you know on the other article soon.

Editor: Ok, thanks.

Me: Bye [wishing I could take back the last 30 seconds of my life and try again]

***End of most embarrassing phone call ever***

Yes people, I told an editor I was grateful that she was using an article. I mean in all honesty I was grateful because no one had shown any interest in that particular article but I didn’t want to tell her that!

I made it sound like it was a freaking miracle that she was willing to publish our article and that I was full of gratitude for her kindness in allowing our article to be posted. Baaah! I felt like an idiot but at least it has made for a good story and we know I am a GRATEFUL person!

Some thoughts about marriage...

It will be three weeks tomorrow that I have been married to my dear sweet husband. [Can you believe how fast time flies!?] In these wonderfully fantastic three weeks I have noticed a few things.

1. Cereal doesn't last long. After two breakfasts with the two of us eating cereal we are just about out. [I am pretty much ok with this because then I am completely justified in buying more cereal!]

2. Boys eat more than girls do...actually boys eat A LOT more than girls do. [I know I know surprising that I am just learning this but seriously I don't know where it all goes!]

3. Your laundry doubles when you get married. [Duh]. That means that there are more clothes, which means more loads, which mean more money, which means more to haul [clear across the parking lot in my case, can you tell I am venting a bit on this one?] and more to fold. Whew! Makes me tired just thinking about it.

Now all of those may seem negative but I really am just stating some facts. These things don't bother me [ok so the pain in the butt laundry does a little but whoever liked laundry anyway?] but just so you don't think that I am not a fan of marriage because I TOTALLY am I am going to share some of the wonderful things about marriage.

1. You get to go to bed with your sweetheart. No goodbyes. [Cuddling with your hubby in bed is probably one of the greatest things EVER!]

2. You have someone to eat every meal with. [I love looking across the table and seeing Husbands smiling face.]

3. You can get ready for bed together. [So loving learning how to interpret what Husbands saying when his mouth is full of toothpaste.]

4. You can have late night pillow talks. [These are my favorite, mixed in with a little b-ball shooting on our mini hoop...I know...cool right?]

Well obviously the list could go on and on but I will spare you. Just know marriage is wonderful and I am a HUGE fan!

Not my fault…

In preparation for the big wedding day I desired to be seen in my wedding dress and not blend in with my wedding dress. In order to achieve this goal I purchased a one month tanning pass [I know, I know I am going to get cancer but you only get married once, at least that is what I’m planning on.]

Once I got back from the honeymoon I still had some time left to use my pass and if something is already paid for then you take advantage of it! I went tanning. I went 15 minutes [this is huge for my albino body and believe me it took much building up to in order to get to this point] and came out looking a bit more tan. Very nice. This is how tanning is supposed to work [although most times it does not work this way for me].

Monday rolls around, a couple days before the pass expires and again I go tanning. I go 15 minutes. I come out and I am BURNT to a crispy.

What the heck? What happened in a few days from being able to handle 15 minutes to having 15 minutes burn me?

In talking with my wise mother I was able to discover the cause of my freak [which turns out may not have been so random after all] burn was because I was put in a different tanning bed. Yep that was all that needed to happen in order for my body to get roasted over being toasted.

Needless to say the Aloe Vera and I are the bestest of friends right now. Let’s hope I can nurse the burn into a lovely looking tan.

I'M BACK!!!

I can't even begin to express how good it feels to be back to blogging again. It is like coming home after a REALLY long vacation. It just feels nice.

So obviously life has been crazy busy the last couple of months...I don't even remember the last time I posted. This post is going to be a quick (ok maybe not so quick so if you don't want to read a novel stop reading now) update on the last two weeks of my life (they have been BIG ones!)

First of all I am now Mrs. Leavitt! Ummmm I love the sound of that. I was married to the love of my life on April 24th at 12:20 in the Salt Lake Temple and it couldn't have been more perfect. I was surrounded by loved ones, in a holy place and being married the way I have always dreamed of doing it. One of the highlights of the day was the fact that now husband and I got to sit in the Celestial room for awhile (seemed like forever to us. I mean come on we were getting married and we were a BIT anxious!) but it was so nice to sit in that beautiful sacred room and just think, ponder and quietly talk with one another. It was a very special moment indeed.

All week I was freaking out and worrying about getting rained on. I just prayed that it would hold off for two hours while we took pictures after the ceremony. And guess what!? It did! It was really windy when we first came out but after everyone left and it was just Husband and I the wind died down and we were able to get some great shots and no rain!

One of my next favorite moments was when our photographer and videographer left and Husband & I were walking back to the temple to change it hit me...I was married! I turned to Husband and said "We're married!" LOL! It was the first time we had a chance to really think about the fact that we were now husband and wife. We left Salt Lake and headed to Bountiful for the reception. We stopped at Subway in Bountiful to grab a bite to eat. Husband got us free drinks because he told the girl that we had just gotten married. I thought that was so cute!

We arrived at the reception center, got ready and began taking pictures. I really enjoyed taking pictures with all the people I love so much. We had a really good time. Everything turned out beautifully! The flower arrangements (done by my most talented cousin) were gorgeous, the cake looked beautiful and with some pictures here and there I thought everything turned out so nice!

Six thirty hit and we were in line and we didn't leave that line until 9:00. We had a solid line for 2 1/2 hours! It was crazy and wonderful to see so many people I love and care about. I was overwhelmed by the support Husband and I received. Not going to lie though I was SO done by the end. Whew! We cut the cake, threw the bouquet (twice) and then the dancing began. I had the dance with my dad that I have dreamed of since I was a little girl. It was very special and I will always remember it. Then I got to dance with my sweetheart, my husband. That was another special moment I will NEVER forget! Dad and I swung danced a little (yes, totally did it in the dress and did pretty dang good if I do say so myself) and then collapsed on the floor and ate cake.

Once I had enough energy to get up Husband and I went and changed and made our grand exit! The family had a tunnel of sparklers ready for us as we ran to our car (in the rain) only to find it Saran wrapped about a gazillion times with HEAVY DUTY Saran wrap! We stood in the rain and ripped and pulled (while everyone laughed at us) and finally got the car unwrapped only to find that our car was jacked up! I was laughing so hard. Husband's brothers got it back down for us and we were able to FINALLY get in our car and make our not so quick getaway.

We honeymooned in St. George. It was fabulous!

We slept one night at Uncle's house. That was interesting.

Moved into our new apt. That resulted in lots of crap everywhere and a very late night.

Next day got everything put away. That felt very good.

On the one week anniversary we opened gifts from the wedding. It was like Christmas and probably the best Christmas we will EVER have. People were so good to us.

Moved the rest of our gifts down to Provo. So nice to know we were done MOVING! Enjoyed dinner with the parents as well.

Attended our first Sunday in a married ward. To state the obvious there were a lot of couples.

How is that for two weeks. Needless to say I am really enjoying finally being settled and getting into a routine. Oh how I love my routine and have missed it so.

I have big plans to be a much better blogger in the future and I think that I can live up to that now.

Below is a sampling of wedding pics. If you really want to waste a lot of time you can go see all the pictures at www.swensenphotography.com. Under proofing find my name and then enter my email address which is marisa_garrett@yahoo.com. I would recommend going to the end to see the reception pictures to get to see Husbands and I's adorable families.

Hope you enjoy!

Husband and his ADORABLE niece

Me and my sweet brother. I really love him so!

I absolutely LOVE this picture of my dad and I. Captures our relationship perfectly.

How beautiful are the cherry blossoms surrounding the temple!?

Love this! This photo captured how I felt. I was very contemplative on

the promises I had just made in that very sacred temple.

Husbands wonderful family, whom I am proud to call my own now!

I love this picture. This is where we stood and greeted people.

Aren't those windows awesome!