"Sinny" Bears

Until this year I never had a chocolate covered cinnamon bear. My sister and Ty introduced them to me one cold night in March. I was pretty leery of the concoction…I am not a big on any of the ingredients. But I ventured out of my comfort zone and popped one in. And that’s when those interesting little candies got their name, “sinny bears.” I am pretty sure that I ate the entire bag leaving none for anyone else in the vehicle, they were amazing.

Well the point of this post is to complain a little. It turns out that no one in the state of Virginia has even heard of a chocolate covered cinnamon bear and they give me the stink eye whenever I express my love for them. Thankfully I have the best sister on earth to send me a box of them to fill my desire and to share them with the deprived people of the east coast.

I am introducing to the people in my office and I think they will be a hit and eventually spread across the state. At least I hope they do so I can buy them at the store instead of waiting for the postman to deliver them. Read more...

On a roll

After work and the gym I was driving home at 7 and I get a call from Tanner. He must of been on a high from his busy day because he was full of energy. He was like, "what do you want for dinner? Do you want to carve pumpkins? Do you want to go out for a drink? I'm in the mood to do house stuff, let's hang stuff up when you get here." And he wasn't asking me which one I wanted to do either, he wanted to do all of them. I love nights like this...just spending time together. Here are a few photos from our pumpkin carving experience.

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The last supper

Brooke and Gareth are off for more adventures. It has been so great having them here, we are really sad to see them leave. Although, their departure gave us a good excuse to go out for sushi with them last night...it was amazing! We ordered so many rolls that they had to bring it out on a ship.

Good luck you guys! Hope to see you soon.

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Batteries have a crappy life.

They work their whole lives and then they die.

Last night we went to Brentsville to go on a ghost hunt in an old haunted jail. I did not want to go at all but Tanner forced me to. We made the forty-five minute drive with Gareth and Brooke and as we got closer to Brentsville it got more and more scary. I'm not sure if it was because there were no lights in the town or if we were telling our own ghost stories in the car. Tanner was the only one of us who claimed to not believe in spirits. But I was scared s#*%less and we hadn't even arrived.

When we finally got there the spookiness only increased. There were some professional ghost hunters (John #1 & John #2) telling stories of how they got into ghost hunting and sharing experiences of investigations they been involved with. A story that stood out to me was when they first started investigating the courthouse and John #2 set down a camera, a spool of fishing string, and flashlight and walked downstairs. He went back to pick it up and couldn't find the spool...he searched all over for it and then gave up thinking he must have misplaced it. Later that night when they were getting ready to leave the lights were off and something hit John #2 in the chest and they heard plastic hit the ground. They turned the light on and saw the spool lying on the ground. We were in the courthouse...instant chills.

My creepy experience involved batteries. Before I left the house I put brand new batteries in my camera. I took a few photos in the haunted courthouse and started to video the ghost hunter when suddenly my camera stopped recording and the screen said batteries exhausted. Right after the videographer that was there said his batteries were dead and he had been charging them for two straight days. The ghost hunter, John #1 overheard us and says this is a pretty common occurrence. Freaky!

After being primed for the haunted jail it was time to go in. We all started to enter the building and I was trying with all my might to stay outside in the cold, non-haunted yard. But nope, that wasn't allowed the next thing I knew I was standing in pitch black nearly peeing my pants. Apparently this jail had two spirits...one named James Clark who was a prisoner in the jail and a slave girl named Agnus. They told us a few things about the spirits, James is an angry spirit that hates women and when you walk into the room where he resides you get a sense of heaviness and can instantly get a headache or become nauseous. Once when the ghost hunters were trying to interact with the spirits they told Agnus that she could leave, and James said "Get out. Get out of here!" and John #1 the ghost hunter had to shine his uvb flashlight on him to calm him down. And Tanner expects I'm going to walk in the room where this happened, hell no! Tanner and about five other people who are making a movie called "Ghosts Don't Exist," went upstairs to try to interact with the ghosts. Nothing happened but they are going to review the tapes to see if they can detect any voices with their high frequency machines.

Tanner was a skeptic, not me I believed everything they were saying. They wouldn't go through so much trouble to make it all up. What a way to spend a Saturday night. It was interesting to do it once but I'm pretty sure I would ever do it again.

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Rare as Hen's Teeth

Well it's time to say goodbye...it's exciting yet sad at the same time. Today is our last day at our EY training and it's crazy but we've formed some amazing friendships in the span of a week.

We bonded over a lot of things such as working through an entire corporate tax return together. We were all soooo drained...we decided to reward ourselves by getting out of the Q-Center and going out to dinner at an awesome little restaurant named Urban Grille. We had lots of great lunch conversations and fun times at the etiquette dinner, outlet mall, and margaritaville. But the one thing that we just can't seem to get over started on day one. Someone (we'll call her Betty) hated us for no reason whatsoever. She warned people about us. She didn't like our answers even if they were better than others, or she would give credit to someone else for it. She always had a smile, but she had fire behind her eyes. She gave us blank stares in the halls and she was out to get us. We had a hard time thinking of an uncommon commonality but we definitely found one.

The good part was our grandma was there to save us with encouragement and life lessons like a "bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," and sayings like "rare as hen's teeth," "don't judge a book by it's cover," and "we's done here." She could always make us laugh and she was such a sweet and sincere lady. The best part about her sayings was trying to explain them to each other. Dimitri asked "what's a hens?" and I was like "What?!? You don't know what a hen is!" I went on to explain it and we ended up laughing so hard because of the confusion. He knows what a hen is...he just didn't understand what we were saying. It was great.


We have had lots of unforgettable moments during the week and having each other around made the unbearable hours staring at each other in the classroom bearable.

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Chicago...well not quite.

EY does not fall short on training...we do A LOT of it. I have not stopped learning since October 1st. We have the opportunity (and/or obligation) to go to a Tax 101 training in St. Charles, Illinois this week. We were all very excited to come out to training but we didn't really know what to expect. Here's what was in store for us...

Dorm rooms with twin size beds and barely enough room to roll in your suitcase, lots of high calorie delicious food, rough tp, training from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Skype.com to check out the homestead, ping-pong practice, meeting people from all over the U.S., awkward silences, jogging outside in 50 degree weather, and the most unforgettable part is getting lost in the maze of the Q-Center.

It's been a great experience so far but I honestly cannot wait to go home, three days to go! Tanner has been painting our house since I left and I cannot wait to get home to see it (and him and the pups). Read more...

slowly coming together

We've been in our new place for two weeks now...and the progress is really slow. Especially now that I've started working. I am a terrible blogger these days but I wanted to post a few fun photos from when we moved in and I will add some progress pics soon (we are painting this weekend and finally hanging things on the wall) It still doesn't feel like home, but I think it will soon.

This is how long we have been away from Utah. It's crazy how time flies.
I couldn't find the silverware for about four days...here I am using a mini-wooden surfboard as a pseudo-spoon for my oatmeal. Eating dinner on the floor next to our broken down dining table. Tanner throwing boxes over the balcony.
Unpacking was almost worse than packing.....
Tanner was really proud of all of his hardwork putting up this ceiling fan. Much to his demise the light didn't work...but the fan did. One out of two ain't bad.We are such posers. Our first wall-hanging...how special.
cute pups.
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S-A-H-W gone Career Woman

So the very first thing the speaker said on our first day of work..."this is the first day of the rest of your life." A little dark after my six months of doing whatever the heck I wanted since tax season ended. It's definitely been a transition from full-time student to stay-at-home-wife to 60 hour a week work-aholic. Lots of changes. But change is good, it keeps it interesting. I think working at EY is going to be a great experience. Wish me luck! Read more...