Best of 2011.....

1. Best nickname: The churro.

Best Halloween costume: Polygamist.

Most painful decision: Wasatch Back Ragnar.

Best Tan Lines: Henry.

Best News: NBA Lockout Ends.

Best Purchases: Dog Hat for Rrrosa and Rollerblades to blade the streets.

Most Important Thing Learned: A bushel of crabs = 80

Best Piggyback: Mim and Kate

 Best Bumper Sticker: NYC

Best Handshake: Neighboring Stoops.

Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a bitchin' 2012!

Sincerely, Your ladies with no babies.

Look at you for ugly.....round 2

A couple years ago we did this post, and it was a real crowd pleaser. If you're lucky you might see a hideous version of yourself below. Ladies and gentlemen presenting........ LOOK AT YOU FOR UGLY!

 This guy clearly has issues. He is icing 

his neck, his wrist, and his left knee I believe.

 And that's a cheerio!

 It's a shame I have a boy face and SB looks handicapped.

And he's a doctor. SCARY!

Sorry Ma

And the best of all the pictures. Thanks Al for making all

my dreams come true with this photo.

Birds are terrifying!

Kids....

So my job is dealing with kids, right? Molding their minds, tolerating their weirdness, and tying their shoes is basically what my day consists of.  Part of that is picking up my little homies from the lunchroom and taking them back to the classroom. In the lunchroom, I always run in to some of my past students. It's a lot of hugging and how are yous blah blah blah. Well occasionally I run into Amanda. I taught her a few years ago and she's always been obsessed with my personal life. This is odd because most of my students think I live at the school. I have even been asked where my bed is. They don't even consider that I am a normal human being with a home and neighbors that walk in and out freely.

My run-ins with Amanda always sound like this: "Miss C., Miss C!" "Hi Amanda, how are you?" "I'm good. Miss C., are you married yet?" "No Amanda, I'm not married yet. Have a good day!" Just as I'm thinking, wow this Amanda is a freaking broken record, doesn't she know I live at the school????  Amanda decides to spice up our latest conversation with this little endearing comment, "Do you at least have a boyfriend?" And this was the face I made.

Grow up Amanda!

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

I now consider myself notorious for having pretty solid neighbors. Let me prove my point. Three years in Idaho Falls, my BFF Ronald Drake Williams lived just around the carner (corner). Becca's BFF Allyson Clare Zollinger lived right down the street. Do you even realize how awesome it is to call up your BFF to play and be over at their house playing in literally 60 seconds? Boy, was I an efficient kid. And boy, did Ronnie and I take our playing time seriously.


Example two: the sleepy little town (thanks Cori C.) of Farmington, Utah where I spent the majority of my childhood after moving away from the BIF (Big Idaho Falls). As a spunky little five-year-old feeling quite down about moving away from Ron-ski, I wasn't too psyched about F-town. Enter the Larsen family. I could be absolutely wrong about this fact, because experience tells me that five-year-old's don't have the clearest of memories, but I believe we bonded over conversations about some of our other neighbors and how they really weirded us out. I don't want to name any names, so let's just call them the Reece's and the Swoonover's. Holy, let's just say they were... whatever. Needless to say, it's nice having neighbors to borrow flour from or have Christmas movie nights in their sweet basement theater. Larsen's + Christensen's 4 Life.

Example c: Becca and I moved into a cute little town home in Sugarhouse. A few weeks later, we noticed some dudes moving in to the place across from us. I won't lie, initially we thought they were gay (not that there's anything wrong with that). Then we thought, they couldn't be church people (because no one else in our town home "complex" goes to church...). Long story short... they borrowed our wireless internet one night, we were talking at church on Sunday, I didn't recognize them, we finally put it together that we were neighbors because our wireless name is "Ratfinks" and Becca and I will find any way we can to mention how we won the BYU Flag Football Intramural Championship (Go Finks!). And so began a beautiful relationship with our neighbors across the hall. I'm fresh outta Diet Coke? I take three steps to my neighbors and I'm in business. I don't even have to put shoes on! Or a jacket! I don't have to get in my car. I could crawl there if I had to. I could also yell really loud if I didn't want to get off the couch. Sometimes, we both keep our doors open so it's like our places are one giant apartment! Our internet is slow? No problem, we got our neighbors. We're outta milk? No big deal. We need a refill but don't feel like going out in the cold? Who cares?! Chances of our neighbors heading to the Maverick around the corner are high and they always bring us back the goods. Candy? They've got a 5 lb bag of Cinnamon Bears (Min Min Bears as we like to call them). Good neighbors are soooo dang awesome. Our Christmas Tree needs watering? No problem, our neighbor Nick has assigned himself this important job this holiday season. Keith needs a partner to play Modern Warfare 3 on the Playstation? I'll step right in and help a guy out (or hurt, last time I had 0 kills and died 40 times...). The cherry on top? Jason is an ER doctor so if Becca trips and cracks her head open on Hugh's cage? No problemo, homeboy will suture you right up. You're probably thinking it couldn't get any better, right? Well, you're wrong! Nick is into every show we're into and has also opened our eyes to new shows!!! Now that's love.

Who needs husbands when we've got neighbors.

Merry Christmas to us.

Magically,

Kate

Nick, Keith and Jason gettin' cozy in the front seat where Jason promptly said, "This just feels right."

Give me a break

I've lived within 27 different girls. 27. I've had 27 roommates. That's a lot. Too many sometimes. For any guy who thinks that sounds like a dream...THINK AGAIN! Don't get me wrong, I've had some killer roommates. Some of my best times in life have been with my roommates. ON THE OTHER HAND, some of my worst times have been with roommates. Picking roommates can be a risky thing. Moving in with random girls is even riskier. I've lived with bulimics, pathological liars, megaphones (no Angie, I'm not talking about you ;)), chronic belchers, and general weirdy weirdos, just to name a few.

For those of you who are still living without the one permanent roommate whom you have to love no matter how gross he can be at times, I thought I'd give you a few signs of a bad roommate. If you do one of these things this is my really nice way of saying STOP. Your current/future roommates will thank you/me. When I google searched "horrible roommate" (never search "bad roommate" BTW) this pic popped up. So here you have it, 8 signs of a bad roommate.

1. You pull a half used can of sweetened condensed milk out of the fridge and drink straight from the jagged metal lip - EVERYDAY

2. Your boyfriend sleepily walks up the stairs and gives me a fist bump at 6:30 am (while I'm in my towel) on his way out the door

3. You buy the Julia Child's cookbook and decide to make everything in it after you've just watched "Julie and Julia" for the first time. But in your attempt you leave all the half cooked food (because that cookbook is damn hard) on the counter/floor/sink/coffee table/bathroom counter for days, and days, and days, and days, and....

4. You leave your used barf bowl by your bed when you leave town for 2 weeks

5. You take a cookie/slice of bread/cinnamon roll/deliciously gooey brownie and don't recover them so they get crusty and no one else can eat one

6. You borrow my shirt (after I've told you not to) and then get seriously sweaty tacos while wearing it and sneak it back into my closet with a wretched BO cloud around it

7. Interrupt me working on something important to tell me every single detail of your conversation with your really weird co-worker

8. Jolt me out of my very deep sleep every time you slam the toilet seat down at 12am, 3am and 6am

Got any juicy ones to add??

xoxo, Ally Z

Running Pains

I ran the Ragnar last June. I don't even like to run. But I did it. After the Ragnar I went on a little running hiatus. It was glorious.

Now I'm reading the book Born to Run, to see if I could will myself to start running again. And not only that, I want to like running. I would kill to like running!

So I went for a run yesterday. A little jog around Sugarhouse Park. How did it go you may ask? Well... not that good. The cold air caused my asthma to act up so I was having coughing fits. (What am I, 80?) And after the run, I started getting this pain in my abdomen, like I pulled a muscle or something. How in the hail do you pull a muscle in your stomach while running?

Today, I'm sore. Real sore. And not the good kind of sore. I may have to reconsider running. How depressing.

I'm a ball sport kind of gal. Basketball. Football. Baseball. When I'm running for a purpose, then I enjoy it. But what the frick is the point of running just to run? I don't get it. Who wins? Nobody. Especially not my strained abdomen. If I'm going to kill myself running, I want to win!

Does anyone want to play a sport with me? Consistently? To get into shape? I'll do anything, excluding running.

Sorely Yours,

KFC

The Life of a (less than consistent) Blogger

In my opinion, we are pretty good bloggers. We are not however, pretty good consistent bloggers. I can admit that.

I’m always saying to Becca, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get so many followers that we started making money from our blog?” Her reply is always the same, “Yeah Kate, but we only have like 9 followers cause we don’t post consistently.”

I make no attempt to counter her argument because it is rock solid. We just don’t post enough. Even I, an avid blog reader and stalker, not only like, but expect regular posting.  

I want everyone to know that I consistently have the best of intentions. The truth is, we don’t lead real exciting lives. You know when you’re perusing blogs and think, “Man, this person leads the coolest life! They’re always doing something.”

I’m gonna be real with you people, my life is not that glamorous. In fact, it’s the antithesis of glamorous. Our lives (Me and Beck) pretty much consist of working, eating, and watching a lot of TV. Occasionally, we’ll go on a bad date or attend a church activity or go on a super sick vacation. But other than that, it’s pretty much what you’d expect from two single, Mormon, law-abiding gals.

So now that I’ve told you the truth about bloggers and how their lives aren’t as awesome as they look, I’ll share what we’ve been up to lately.

At the end of September, we went to New York with our lovely mother. This was Becca’s 4^th, my 2^nd and my mom’s 1^st (real) visit to NYC. Man, I really like it there. 

                                                        (life in a bike taxi, is wild!)

We saw lots of cool things.

Including my favorite part of NY. 

And a lot of weird things too. 

We saw Wicked. Awesome. And paid more for a bike taxi than I care to share. (worth it)

We walked a lot.

And ate lots of good food. 

We went to the MOMA (museum of modern art)

And the WTC Memorial

We had lunch with our newest little New Yorker, Cousin Jessie at the cutest little French café in Hell's Kitchen

Becca, Kate and Sharon… us 3 together… doesn’t get much better. Thanks for a great trip Mom!

Then I went to Shanae's cabin with some of my favorite pals. It was perfect. (best pic of the trip)

Then we went to the Pro Player Classic charity basketball game at SLCC and met some real cool dudes.

One being Mr. P. Millsap, seen here signing Becca's, "I'm a Millsap Man" hat. 

And, our girl Ruby just turned 5! Us, being her favorite Aunts took her out for a day on the town, including a visit to Target to pick out her present, a quick stop at Wendy’s (her choice), a visit to the pet store and then Puss in Boots in theaters. Becca and I may or may not have drifted off a few times during that last one. 

 

Oh. I’ve also been seeing a lot of these guys lately. I mean A LOT.

It’s been a good Fall. Real good.

Desperately Yours,

Kate

And the Winner?? Sarah Palin.....duh!!

The pearls, the glasses, the wig! I don't know if I've ever laughed so hard. This pet owner went above and beyond and deserves a Disney Cruise or something.

This stuff kills me......

For some reason animals dressed up or doing strange things kills me....

Sorry cat lovers! I could actually see Rrrosa doing this.

Delivery Dog. How humiliating.

For Santa.

The guy has fake hands and a bag, genius!

Drinking his cares away.

The do's and don'ts of dating....US

Alright ladies and gents, I'm not going to claim that I know everything about dating because that would be ridiculous, but I have been dating for 10 years now. That's right, 10 years! Here's what I know as a result of my decade in the dating world....
With Kate's input, of course (she refuses to be left out of anything).

Do:

1. Pay for our date, ALWAYS.

2. Bring me candy.

3. NOT ask me where we are eating.

4. Be a Jazz fan.

5. Shower beforehand. (you'd be surprised)

6. Quote Seinfeld.

7. Appreciate my sports knowledge.

8. Tell me how good I look, even if I don't look that good.

9. Take a hint, when I'm looking anywhere but your eyes on the doorstep.

10. Test me on Saved by the Bell Trivia. I'll whoop your arse.


Don't:

1. Bring flowers. What is this...prom? Don't bring flowers unless we've been dating for a while.

2. Insist on me sitting in the car while you sprint to open my door. It's noted, you're a gentleman, move on.

3. Order for me unless I ask you to, which I won't.

4. Talk politics. BORING, LAME, and will possibly lead to an argument.

5. Talk about how much you play video games with your friends. You being awesome at Halo or World of Warcraft makes me want to punch myself and Andre Kirilenko in the face.

6. Tell me how many chicks you've hooked up with, unless I ask, but I'm not going to ask.

7. Ask me how long it has been since I've kissed someone. I will lie and say this morning.

8. Tell me my butt looks good in my jeans when we just met 5 minutes ago. I will slap your mug and sprint all the way home.

9. Tell me how hard it's going to be for us to date living an hour apart, on the first date.

10. Pick me up at 6:00 pm and bring me home at 1:30 am, especially when I preface the date with, "I have to get up early." (perhaps I have to harvest my crop)

11. LET me beat you in sports, I don't need your pity.

12. Talk about yourself the whole time, and then tell me you're a great listener.

Post edit on Oct. 7:

As per Shanae's comment we forgot a crucial deal breaking don't.

13. Wear jewelry.  A watch is the only accessorizing you may do. Trust me, you will thank me later. Or maybe you won't, but you should. Rings, bracelets, necklaces; NO, NO, No!

Let's get real, this guy could do whatever he wanted and he could still have me.

Favorite Things Friday

1. REDNECKS - These folks supply endelss entertainment and fun. Some people may think rednecks are tired of getting made fun of. Nah. They love that they are so intriguing to the rest of us "normal" people.

2. BED - I love my bed. Not much more can be said. I don't want to get out of it in the morning, I think about napping in it all day at work, and I can't wait to get in it at night. Sometimes I get in bed at like 8:30pm, prop my laptop up on my stomach and watch netflix shows till I can't lift my eyelids anymore. Nothing beats it.

3.  FALL WEATHER - I love fall clothes. Fall weather is perfect because you can wear cute stuff without having to cover it up with winter coats, and at night you can layer with cute cardis and light jackets. (I sound like such a girly girl) Of course with fall weather comes fall colors which everyone loves.

4. FALL TV - I get so excited for my shows to come back on. Namely Parenthood. If you haven't seen this show - WATCH IT NOW! From season 1 episode 1. You won't regret it. For some reason this show floods me with emotion. I feel like I'm a part of the Braverman family when I watch. I laugh, I cry, I yell. It's wonferful! Other goodies include Modern Family, Grey's Anatomy and Vampire Diaries (don't judge me).

5. FLAG FOOTBALL - I actually suck at sports. I have no athletic bone in my body. Everytime I go onto the field I'm putting myself at great risk of making a complete fool of myself and/or injuring myself. Even still, I love playing flag football. Mostly  I just love winning and I happen to have played with really good teams the last couple of years and this year. Hoping for another t-shirt this year! Go Sorority!

6. HEYTEL - If you have a smart phone and you don't have this app GO GET IT! It's free and totally worth it. It's like a walky talky. Who doesn't love walky talkies?

7. CHEST HAIR - Calm down, I'm not talking about a sweater chest. But I'm not talking about 14 year old boy chest hair either. I dig a man. Obviously not a requirement, but definitely a plus.  

Great things that happen in downtown Salt Lake City

I work downtown. So everyday I get to meander my little mini down the streets of the Salty City. It's a real pretty place to live. I like it. The mountains are awesome. It's a perfect temperature outside right now. Not much to complain about.

Here are some of the things I've seen lately. Sadly, I only have one picture to prove my findings, but once you see the picture below, I guarantee you'll believe the rest of it.

Let's start with the regulars:

African American lady on the corner of State Street and 4th South, let's call her Lady Stamina. She stands out there every day, and yells absolute nonsense to no one in particular. She waves her arms and points in the air and looks to the sky. She may be out of her ever-loving mind, but I gotta give the gal credit, she's out there all freakin day yelling her little heart out. Get em girl. You just do whatever it is you're doing out there.

Then there's the guy on Main Street who I can always count on sleeping atop a cement flower box with his arm over his face looking like he's had another rough night. I call him Hangover Joe. I kinda like the guy, he's so loyal to that flower box.

Yesterday, I saw a guy on 4th South and 3rd West (John Stockton Drive) where this homeless dude looked like he was about to cross the street, but was swaying so badly that he looked like he was going to fall over in the middle of the road. I then noticed he was missing his shoe which was a few feet in front of him, but he looked like a toddler trying to take his very first steps. The poor guy. The whole time I was sitting at the stoplight, he just couldn't get a hold of himself. As I pulled away and looked in my rear view mirror he was finally upon his shoe, now the big feat was to slip it on. Now THAT my friends can be tough for anybody, even if you're not cracked out. On a side note, Cracker Jack (that's what I'm calling him) had a smile on his face the whole time. Good for him for keeping a positive attitude through it all.

And then, one fateful day last week, I came upon it... I don't think I've ever been so happy at 7:45 in the AM; I'm not much of a morning person. I could describe what I saw, but I was lucky enough to snap a picture.

Behold...

Best part, if you look closely, you'll see a pillow for the dog to sit on. How nice. Comfort first. Heaven forbid this dog get some exercise or use its four legs. I'm not being sarcastic here, people!! This is the most genius thing I've ever seen. And even more genius, the dog STAYS in the little "trailer," if you will. A cat would NEVER do that.

Thanks Salt City, you've been really good to me lately.