Oscar and Fruitloops

We've been letting Oscar hang out with us in the kitchen and he has started to learn what different things mean. I've been letting him one piece of my cereal in the morning and he has really started to enjoy this. However, he has also started to think that just one bite is not enough. This morning when I was pouring my bowl of cereal he came running over to my bowl. Before I could even finish pouring the cereal in he had started eating it. He is quite the silly bird.

New Favorite Holiday

Well, it is official. April 15th has come and gone. Thank goodness!! I was glad to see it finally get here. Wahoozie!! Today is a paid holiday at our firm. It has very quickly become my new favorite holiday. We decided at work that it was even better than Christmas. With Christmas you know that tax season is just around the corner, but April 16th is the farthest you can get from April 15th. It's not that we don't all enjoy what we are doing and we don't love the clients and the taxes, it is just physically and mentally exhausting.

My neighbor made me the most awesome cookies ever.
It was hard to capture them in a picture, but these are my "IRS" cookies. They were both thoughtful and delicious. Thanks Traci and Brody!!! You guys are awesome.

Justin and I haven't been able to go out and celebrate yet because I had visits with the relief society yesterday and we fed the missionaries tonight, but we are looking forward to a long needed date tomorrow night. Justin has already gone on strike from the cleaning and the cooking. He still is willing to do the dishes every night (as he demonstrated tonight), but he says that he hopes that I remember how to clean the shower and do the laundry. To be honest, I haven't done laundry since the middle of December. Pretty crazy huh? I still believe that I have the most amazing husband ever!!!

Justin and I were able to get out one Sunday afternoon and take a little walk around Second Dam. As you can tell, it is still very much winter here. We had our annual April 15th snow storm yesterday.
We are looking forward to spending some time together and actually having Saturdays together. It is going to be awesome!!
I just want to thank Justin again for being so patient and understanding and helpful this tax season. He is the best husband ever!!!

One More Week To Go!!!

NEED I SAY MORE??!?!?!?!

My Conclusions

I've come to a few conclusions about some things in the past few weeks. First, my husband really is a good guy, but sometimes he tends to exaggerate as you all were able to see on his last blog. He is the best ever, and such a sweetheart and I really couldn't ask for it better. He is so good to me and supports me in every way!

My second conclusion is that if the mornings weren't so cold here in Cache Valley my horse wouldn't look frozen.
My third conclusion is that if I didn't work so much you would actually be able to tell that my other horse is really supposed to be white with a little brown not completely gray.
She usually stays pretty clean and when I have the time to spend with her she looks a lot better. The picture below shows how white she can really get.All I can say is two and a half weeks and counting! Happy Tax Season Everyone!!!

Brittany is Amazing!

Well as many of you know, or should know, it is tax season and has been for a little over two and a half months now. And as most of you know my lovely wife Brittany is a tax accountant at a local firm here in Logan. And since she would never brag for herself I get to do it for her, she has her Bachelors Degree from the University of Utah and she has her Master's Degree from USU in tax, any way I thought that that was pretty impressive myself.

Well you are probably wondering why I am writing this or what is up with the title. Well I truly think that Brittany is an Amazing person. Just to let you know what she does during all of this "tax season stuff". Well since the beginning of February she has been working 70 to 80 hour work weeks, that is a lot of hours to put into work in one week. I will bet that most people have never worked over a 50 to 60 hour work week in their lives and she does this for close to four months. I have worked two weeks of my life where I worked a 70 hour week and close to 8 of those hours were traveling. Not only does she work close to 14 hour days, but when she comes home she is always excited and happy to see me, and she keeps a way good attitude about the whole thing. In the summer I would work ten hour days and come home grouchy.

Oh and I have to mention numerous times when there is an activity in the ward or for relief society, instead of saying that she is tired from the 14 hour day she just worked she will go straight from work to the activity. So that puts her leaving the house at 5:30 in the morning leaving work around 7 to go to the activity and then not coming home til around 9 to finally settle down for the night. She already has done this twice this week alone, Wednesday night was Temple night (and after Temple night we always go to Charlie's for ice cream) so that put us home at like 9:45, and last night was the relief society dinner and then my basketball game, and then I was asked to help ref the next game, so that put us home pretty close to 11.

Well I just wanted to post about my Wonderful wife and tell everyone just how amazing she is and what she has to put up with during tax season (although she would not call it putting up with). And the biggest thing that she has to put up with is ME, which would be hard for anyone to do I realize.

And Then There Were Three

Justin and I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about expanding, so we decided that the time was right. Justin's parents have been trying to talk us into it since we were married, so finally we decided we would. Here is the new addition: Oscar.
Justin's sister got Oscar, a cockatiel, eleven years ago but since then she got married and moved away and her husband doesn't want to have any pets so Oscar stayed in Leeds. Justin's parents kept telling us we should bring him home, but we aren't allowed to have any pets in our apartment. However, we figured it wouldn't hurt to call the manager and just see if maybe he would say it was okay, and he did. We were a little surprised.
Oscar likes Justin the best. When we let him out of his cage he always tries to stay closer to Justin. If Justin leaves the room he gets mad and tries to fly into the same room with him. He also likes to be scratched on top of his head and he will turn his head almost all the way around trying to get you to rub it.
Oscar can be pretty grouchy though. When it is late at night and Oscar is sleeping if we walk past his cage or turn on a light he gets all grouchy and starts yelling at us.
Oscar is pretty fun Hopefully he will stop being so terribly grouchy and a little more friendly once he gets used to us.

Trip to Vernal

Last weekend Justin and I went to Vernal to celebrate our nephew's birthday and to also be their for the blessing of our other nephew. It was fun to be able to get to spend time with the family and to see the new baby.
This cute little guy is our nephew, Levi. He was born at the end of December. Just in time to qualify for a tax deduction in 2008 and also the recovery rebate!! Good timing guys!
We also celebrated Trey's fifth birthday. We bought him a set of golf clubs because his dad claims that he is going to become the next Tiger Woods. We figured we better get in on some of it now.

This is Trey blowing out his candles on his birthday cake!!

Trey enjoyed opening his presents and having the attention on him. Happy birthday Trey!!
This is a picture of Justin's sister, Stacey, her husband, Brandon, and our two nephews, Trey and Levi.
Babies usually start screaming when Justin holds them, but Levi actually seemed to like him. I guess he is slowly getting the touch!
It was nice to have the whole family there because that doesn't happen very often.
We don't get family pictures very often, so I was making every one pose for us.
These guys are Justin's parents.
This is Justin's sister, Michelle, and her husband Clayton.
This is Trey. I wish that I had one third of his energy.
This is Justin's baby sister, Stephanie.
Justin and his Mom.
For some reason we didn't end up with a picture of Grandma Stirling, but she was there with us too. It is always fun to get to see her too. We had a fun trip to Vernal and are looking forward to the summer when we can see everyone again!

Justin's Airplane

This post is a little late because Justin has had this airplane for a few months, but I still wanted to post it. He bought it with some money that he got for graduation because I told him that he had to actually get something fun for himself because he never does. So, this is what he bought.
He went to the hobby store and practiced on the simulator and was constantly researching planes online. I didn't think that he was ever going to buy one, but sure enough. One day I came home from work and found him sitting in the living room putting it together.He went out and flew it one day while I was at work, but the first time I saw him fly it was over at my parents house. It was pretty funny because they have a border collie and as soon as Justin had the plane in the air she took off after it and chased it the whole time he flew it.
In the picture above, Justin was letting my dad fly the airplane. Needless to say, he wrecked it, but he had all the supplies to fix it also.
The plane has seen some hard times. Another time Justin flew it, Hollie started trying to "herd" the plane when Justin was trying to take off on the ground. The plane started moving and Hollie tried to bite the wing to get it to stop. It was pretty funny. However, Justin's crash was the best.
Justin decided to land the airplane on top of the roof at my parents house. My little sister had to go and rescue the plane. It was great!

Role Reversals

I am stealing the idea of my blog title from my brother's blog because it reminded me of how our life has been too. It seems as if Justin and I have switched roles these past few weeks. I go to work and he does everything else. That isn't an exaggeration either. I wake up, go to work, stay at work, stay at work a little longer, come home, go to bed. The next day is followed by the same mean cycle.

While I am at work Justin proceeds to the following: makes the bed, laundry, dishes, clean the bathrooms, mop the floor, graduate school, homework, dusting, fold the laundry, puts the laundry away (which he needs to work on a little bit seeing how I ended up wearing his church socks to work today because he put them in the wrong drawer. Yes, you might be asking how I didn't notice, but it was like way early give me break - anyway back to what Justin does), clean the bathtub and the stupid glass doors on the shower, makes himself dinner. Pretty much, Justin is a stay-at-home-dad without any kids.

Pretty much he is amazing! It makes things so much easier to know that I don't have to come home and worry about getting the cleaning done and such. However, the majority of the cleaning is from messes that he is creating because I am never home to make the mess, so it's not like he is really cleaning up after me. Just kidding. He is awesome. I have given him strict instructions that he isn't allowed to dry any of my work clothes, so when I come home on his "laundry days," my clothes are hung all over the bedroom drying - even the ones that could have been dried - I think he is just covering his basis.

So pretty much in a nutshell, my husband is the best husband ever and the best "stay-at-home-dad without any kids" ever!!!From his expression in the picture, I would have to say that he completely agrees with me too!

A Little Late

I know I am a little late on posting this, but I have wanted to and just haven't found the time for awhile. Justin and I had a really fun New Year's Eve. Our friends from West Valley came up and we played games all night. It has been tradition since forever that our parents play games in one room and the kids play in another room.
Here are the old folks playing games upstairs at my parents house. Jay and Joan are on the left and my parents are on the right. Jay and Joan are really more like family than anything else. They are always there when you need help with something or if you just want to have fun.
Our party downstairs was a little more fun. Justin is rocking out on the drums (even though you can't see them in the picture) and Jillian and I are jamming on the guitars.
Mike was pretty good at the guitar, and JaNae was awesome at the vocals.
You can see our other friend, Scott, in the background. He came up from Utah County to hang out with us. I think one day he will learn that Cache Valley is really where all the cool people all. We had a fun New Years. We just hung out, played games, and ate snacks. What else could you ask for?

Ice Fishing

Justin and I went ice fishing the other day with my family. It was pretty cold and the fish were not biting, but we still tried to have some fun with it. My little sister and Justin decided to make more holes when they were bored.

Then they decided to go and make snow angels.

Justin's snow angel was very pretty. He is debating dropping out of graduate school and making it his new career.
Jillian had a different technique and tends to make fatter angels.

Dad decided he didn't like sitting in his chair and opted to take a nap in the tube.
Mom just made sure that Dad put the correct bait onto her fishing pole, even though he refused to put the "red eggs" on.
I just diligently fished the entire time.
Jillian was the only one that caught a fish.

Christmas in Leeds

This year for Christmas, Justin and I went to Leeds for Christmas. We left during a snow storm, and let's just say, both Justin and I are grateful for ditches. We were able to spend just a little less than a week with his family and it was a lot of fun.
We started the week off by giving their dog, Sandy, a bath. She doesn't really like to get bathed but she enjoyed being brushed afterward.Our brother-in-law got a new puppy for Christmas so it was a lot of fun playing with the puppy. She was pretty cute, and it only made me want a little puppy even more.
We also spent some time playing Rock Band on the Wii with Justin's family. Justin is the star on the microphone. He is just a singing machine!We all just took turns rocking out on different instruments. In this picture, Michelle is on the drums and Stephanie is on the guitar.Justin's friend Scott came over one of the days and showed us how the drums are really supposed to be played. He claimed he didn't have any rhythm, but he blew us all away.
We tried talking Justin's mom and Dad into playing, but they were content watching. We were able to get them both to play the drums, but they weren't interested in singing or playing on the guitar.
Grandma Stirling came over and had Christmas dinner with us. She also made us Christmas breakfast. It was really good to be able to get to visit with her so much.Clayton and Michelle also came over for Christmas dinner. We were excited to get to see them multiple times in our trip.
Here Justin is with Michelle and Stephanie. The only thing missing this Christmas was Stacey, Brandon, and Trey who couldn't make it because of the new baby!
This picture doesn't really show it justice, but we even had a white Christmas in Leeds!
Justin did all of the driving on this trip because I hate driving in the snow and he enjoys it. I gladly gave him the opportunity to drive in the snow. On the way home Sardine Canyon had restrictions for four wheel drive vehicles only, so we decided to stay at my sister's house. I think Nathan was excited to see us.
We had a great Christmas this year and enjoyed spending the time with Justin's family.