Birthday and Sundry!

On Tuesday Joe turned

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(30 exclamation marks)

Yep. 30. He so old.

I am ashamed to say that I didn't take any pictures of the things we did. Much of the day was pretty uneventful, so I'll use that as my excuse. He went to work in the morning, and as soon as he left I jumped up to work all day on his super duper present so that it would be a surprise. Want to see it? Want to??

Tah-dah! Okay, I know it doesn't look like much. This is one of those moments where I regret not having taken a before picture. But this is the interior of the "shanty," as we fondly call the garage/shed building in our back/side yard. And it was a devastating mess. The tools on the pegboard were in a giant, horrific pile on the workbench, mixed in with trash and spare wood and sawdust and other scraps. It was scary. So with the help of my lovely mother, I cleaned it all out, built a shelf for the workbench, installed the peg board and organized all the craziness into a delightful tool area. It took a loooong time but I think he likes it. I know I do. Such pride.
....sometimes, I just walk out there and gaze upon it.

Sigh. So beautiful.

When he came home from work my brother was here with those giant balloons. Together we walked him out to the shanty (which my brother had sneakily decorated with a GIGANTIC red bow moments before) and revealed the work area. Joe was duly impressed. Then the three of us left to dinner at Happy Sumo with his parents and mine (which was basically his birthday party, and which I documented not a whit) and the parents gave Joe their gifts. Mom's included some additions to my tool-y land present:

Joe loves pink.

Just kidding. It was the only color left. But...he also is okay with pink.

After dinner Spencer came back home with us to plaaayyy... THIS.

Which was Spencer's present to Joe. It's a Star Wars roll playing adventure! I probably shouldn't even show you this for fear of discovery. But there it is....WE ARE NERDS. Yes, even Joe. I'm sure this is a staggering revelation (ha...ha........) He loves Star Wars and we have already spent over 6 hours playing this game. We both love it. Good job, Spencer.

We spent the entire evening/night on his birth date playing that game until waaaayyy too late for a group of working folk, and that was that! We were going to have a celebration with friends but we might end up being too lazy (?? to have fun? Yeah...) I think he enjoyed himself that day and he is, of course, entirely unfazed by his unbelievable oldness.

In other more minor news, I have some updated pictures from around the house. Cause it's been SO LONG since the last ones. Mwahaha.

Here's my lovely office again. I guess I just like to show it off.

But I hid the cords under my desk (yay!) and we moved the ottoman from the living room in here (under the window) becauuuuuse....

New tables!

 My cousin Kate was selling her matching coffee and sofa tables that I have loved since I first saw them. I actually planned on staining/painting the last coffee table we had in here to mimic the style (though I ended up staining the top and painting the legs, rather than the other way around, because it was a lot easier). And I really liked our old table, but the color was slightly wrong, the table top was a bit small for our liking and it was sort of wiggly (though we could have fixed that. We just didn't.) So when she told me she was going to put hers up on KSL but was waiting to see if I wanted them first I was super excited. And I took them, obviously. And I love them.

We moved the rug out of there, which is a weird change. I didn't like it with the tables for some reason. I don't really like having just plain wood floors either, but it was bugging me so much to have the rug so I'll just have to deal with it...somehow. (dramatic voice)

The dogs approve. Or they don't care. I'm gonna go with the latter.

 The sofa table replaced the ottoman in front of the window. Sawyer's favorite sleepy spot is gone (although he still uses it in the office). The only sad part about this is that we no longer pull into the driveway and see his sickeningly adorable face resting on the windowsill, watching us.

It's getting to the point where we've changed things up in this room so much that I can't tell if we're making it better or worse. But I love the tables, and I love the floor, and everything else I also love. So I guess we're doing okay. :)

 And that's that in Gallowaylandia. Birthdays, shanties, nerd confessions and tables. I do so love our silly little life :)

Back to Business (Anniversary Part II)

Alright, back to our planned activities for our one year anniversary. In case you have forgotten or missed it, our list went like this:

Saturday (day before anniversary):

Morning: Stay at home. Build a garden fence. Plant a garden for the fence to protect. Hope the fence withstands giant dog and discourages small dog.  Done! Except for the hoping part. That's continuous. 

Afternoon: Recover from doing rare physical work (Recovered in hammock). Clean selves and try to look somewhat nice. 

Evening: Off to Park City! Overindulge at Ghidotti's, because it's delicious Italian food and that's what one does. Immediately walk next door to the theater. Commence watching Iron Man 3. Go home. 

Sunday (actual anniversary):

All day: Wing it. 

After we made our garden pretty, we recovered from our rare physical work, cleaned ourselves and tried to look somewhat nice for our fancy date. 

Check.

Then the evening festivities began. We hopped in the car and took off for Ghidotti's in Park City, and our timing was super impressive. We walked in those fancy double doors with minutes to spare. Then we proceeded to eat the most delicious food I've had in a long time. We started with an appetizer--because we were trying to be extra fancy, you know--and I decided to try their asparagus/pancetta thing (don't remember the name). OH MY GOSH. It was so ridiculously good. Best part of the entire meal (including dessert, which we also got! We're the fanciest!) We both had fish (Joe, the halibut, and I, the salmon ((of course. do you know me at all?))) (excessive use of parentheses), and for dessert, some tira misu. I thought I didn't like tira misu, but it turns out that a single serving tira misu in a plastic container is not the same as restaurant-quality, real, delicious tira misu. So, if you were under the same delusion, now you too are free to explore the wonders of desserts.

We finished dinner with over an hour to wait until our movie time. Whoops. So since we were both sporting some healthy food-babies at this point we decided to walk it off in the little plaza around us, which was quite nice except that everything was closed. Bummer. After 20 or so minutes of that we decided to just go to the theater, which as I mentioned was right next door to the restaurant so that took no time at all. They gave us our stubs and let us in, and the theater room we were supposed to go to was still finishing up a showing of Iron Man 3 from earlier. No! Spoilers! So I ran away while Joe listened to see how close it was to the end (he'd seen it a few weeks earlier). It was pretty close. Splendid. So we found a theater that was showing Star Trek and listened to the loud parts from outside the door like creepers. Joe tried to get me to go inside (that little rebel) but I was overcome with moral anxiety and refused, despite some deep conflicting feelings that told me to just do it. I really like Star Trek. Sigh.

After waiting for 40 minutes for the other Iron Man showing to end, and then another 10 minutes for the clean up dudes, we got prime seating and were able to watch the film, which was pretty excellent I must say.

Hooray successful date!

You may have noticed there are no pictures of any of this. Did it really happen? Oo, mystery. No, not a mystery. It did happen, I just forgot a camera and then decided it was too much effort to whip out the phone. Plus I was on a date, after all. And anyway, who wants to see pictures of the outside of a theater and us stuffing our faces? Nothing to see here.

I do have some really exciting pictures of our Sunday winging-it, though! First we went to Joe's cousin's son's baby blessing, and I got to meet his mom's side of the family which was quite fun. They're delightful folk. Then, as a surprise twist, I found out that my mom had saved some wedding cake from .... well from our wedding, of course, and still had it frozen for us if we wanted to do that inexplicable "eat a year-old piece of cake" tradition. So after we got home from visiting family we went over to pick that up and had a lovely time sitting around watching all our dogs frolic together.

We took a ridiculously long nap when we got home, followed by an "eclectic" dinner...which means we had leftovers. Are you thrilled by the details of our lives yet? Haha. I guess we'd used up all our fanciness the day before. We did have Martinelli's, though. A must for any fancy occasion.

It was around this time that we broke out....the cheesecake. Joe was extremely unexcited at this aspect of the anniversary, but he was a good sport and went along with it anyway, because I insisted on upholding this bizarre tradition. Cause we had a cake! Why not?!

"Joe! Look happy about it!"
Close enough.

The cake. Looked pretty decent for being frozen for a year. 

There wasn't really a way to make the slices look
appetizing. I'm sorry. 

We tried a tentative, simultaneous first bite. I watched Joe's face as he chewed, inspecting, searching, wondering. A mildly disgusted look crossed his face. My cake had been slathered in delicious raspberry sauce, so I couldn't taste the cheesecake itself. "Well?" I pressed. "Is it awful? Explain!"

"I...I don't know..." he said, frowning slightly. He took another bite.

This time the reaction was more swift. A distorted grimace crossed his face as he chewed at the gooey morsel. A verdict had been reached. It was, in fact, pretty disgusting.

Joe did not like.

One last pic of the cake before it was
unceremoniously sent to an early
(or very delayed?...) grave.

It was the texture that did it. Gluey, thick, chewy. Shudder. I am fairly certain that there are things able to be successfully frozen long-term, and cheesecake is not one. But we did the tradition, and now can sit pretty knowing we didn't give up on that sad little ice-encrusted cheesecake.

And that, my friends, was our first anniversary. We've loved our first year together and are excited to have many, many more. We love being married! 

Annivers---wait, chicken? (or, Anniversary Part I)

This past weekend, Joe and I celebrated our very first wedding anniversary! Yay! Our celebratory plans were grand at first, but then we remembered we're newlyweds (or have we officially passed that description?!?) and have limited funds. The "Plans" were therefore pared down until they became the following:

Saturday (day before anniversary):

Morning: Stay at home. Build a garden fence. Plant a garden for the fence to protect. Hope the fence withstands giant dog and discourages small dog. 

Afternoon: Recover from doing rare physical work. Clean selves and try to look somewhat nice. 

Evening: Off to Park City! Overindulge at Ghidotti's, because it's delicious Italian food and that's what one does. Immediately walk next door to the theater. Commence watching Iron Man 3. Go home. 

Sunday (actual anniversary):

All day: Wing it. 

Our Plans actually worked out pretty well. We slept in gloriously late, and then got to work on the fence. About a month ago the greenhouse across the street, which has been neglected since before we moved in, got some new management and they started cleaning up the place. And then...then!...they started throwing out pallets. SO many pallets. So we sauntered over and asked the clean up guys if we could have some. We could (for $1 a piece, which I'm pretty sure they just made up on the spot so they could buy some cigarettes. That's not judgey, they told us they wanted some.) $10 and a trip across the street later, we had a stack of pallets in our backyard. 

Fast forward to this weekend. The pallet plot came into play! We saw this video on how to make reasonably cute picket fencing from pallets without having to pry them all apart. Then we realized we have no power saws and that would take forever, so we decided to just throw that whole plan out and use the entire pallet. Then we planted our little garden. It's no masterpiece, but we're mighty proud of our morning's work.

Quaint, isn't it?

It's definitely not the most beautiful fence,
but it has a certain..."rustic" charm. 

Our little garden! It's mostly peppers. Joe likes peppers. 

We also spent a lovely chunk of time lounging on our new hammock, enjoying the view of the fence/garden and watching our ridiculous dogs.

The Hammock, and Joe.Also featuring bright sunlight.

Here they are. 

Want to see what silly dogs do with a spraying hose? Ok! 

Magnus is my favorite, so slow and methodical. Especially pawing at it at the end. Also, forgive us our weird laughter. :)

One more view of our lovely garden. 

The crooked piece is our temporary door. We don't know what to do about a gate so we just keep that piece loose and prop it back against the fence to keep out the dogs. So far it works. 

Speaking of dogs and fences, here's a story. We went out yesterday to check on the garden and admire our handiwork. I was looking at my (sad, wilty) tomato plants when I spied a chicken by that purpley tree! I suppose I should explain that this wasn't really that surprising, as the mechanic behind us keeps chickens on his lot and we hear/see them all the time back there. I don't know how that chicken got into our yard but for a brief moment I saw that chicken and was just delighted to have him visiting our yard. And then I remembered we have dogs. 

Magnus and Sawyer didn't immediately notice the chicken, but when they did they were extremely excited. They'd been staring through the fence slits for weeks at their feathered "friends," in a way that seemed friendly but I now believe it was decidedly more ominous in nature. The two pups charged at the fence, but stopped when they couldn't get in (it works!). Then Sawyer realized that, wait a minute, he could get in, and the chicken FREAKED OUT. Chickens can be really squawky, guys. Not that I blame him. 160 pounds of puppy were chasing him down after all. Then the not-so-bright bird fled the relative safety of the garden. Sigh.

Our dogs took off in earnest after that poor, dim animal. They were going to EAT that chicken! In seconds they had trapped him against a fallen branch as I watched, hopeless and horrified and certain we were about to witness fowl murder. Miraculously the chicken escaped, unscathed except for a few lost feathers (one of which hung from Magnus's mouth as a nice, horrifying touch). That's about when Joe and I realized our backyard was going to become a crime scene if we didn't do something. So I caught Sawyer (50 lbs) while Joe literally tackled Magnus (110 lbs) and had to lie on top of him to keep him from lunging after the chicken. We muscled the beasties inside...and the chicken disappeared. It was a bit mysterious, really. I was relieved that he was out of our dogs' reach, and not a little disappointed that our pups turned out to be violent, chasey, chicken-craving carnivores. Darn.

A few hours later I was placing my most recent project in our kitchen window (post to come!) when Joe said "the chicken! the chicken!" Sure enough, there he was, sauntering around our frontish/side yard. We ran outside and for a good thirty minutes we chased that ridiculous animal through our yard, our neighbor's yard, in and out of bushes, and finally he sneakily "hid" himself in a small flowery plant. He was plainly visible, but obviously thought he had been very clever and would never be found, because he didn't budge when I stood over him and picked him up. Silly chicken. We released him back over the fence to his home.

And that was our adventure with the chicken. 

Well, this is much longer than I expected. I think I'll post about our actual anniversary celebrations another time so you don't have to read too many words all at once. How exhausting that would be! Til next time :)

Roosting

Guess what! 

Thrilling desert scene

I did it! We have pictures, cap'n! 

Back in my singles' ward days, my ward was really fun and adventurous and would take those who were willing down to southern Utah to a lovely little hike called Robber's Roost. Supposedly these canyons served as a hideout for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, hence the name. Historical! I went twice with those delightful people, and the second time was with Joe right at the blossoming of our relationship (cue "aww"ing). So when our friend Missy said that there was a group going down again and asked if we wanted to join, we jumped--nay, leaped!--on that bandwagon. We invited my bro Spencer to come and anxiously awaited the glorious weekend. 

When the time came, we met everyone at the local church (one of them, haha) and started off on the arduous drive to our camp. Sometime during the trip we lost Missy, who was following us so as not to get...lost. Then followed an hour or so of clipped and fuzzy phone calls and waiting on the side of the road for her to appear behind us again. I was trying to take an artistic picture of the (waste)land where we tarried (shown in the first picture, above), and somehow captured Joe in what I can only assume was a moment of declaration:

After 2 1/2 hours of driving and a half hour of sitting
and waiting, the timing here was pretty dang hilarious.

Fortunately for everyone, Missy and co. found us and we did eventually make it to our site. 

This is it. 

There was a nice, creepy (illegal) sign dangling from one corner that read "NO CAMPING" in a handwritten font that is best described as "horror movie." Much of the campfire conversation revolved around the fact that we were probably going to be picked off one by one because we weren't very bright and went off alone, just like in [fill in the blank with any horror movie, ever]. 

With that, it's time I interrupt with a romantic flashback. When Joe and I first came to Robber's Roost, he surprised me on our first night down there with a "picnic" of sorts under the stars. We hiked up a nearby mountain/hill to a blob of rock...

...where he set up a fuzzy blanket and two bottles of Martinelli's. We had just settled in for an adorable, cuddly eve of stargazing when our friend Mike decided to join us. This decidedly lowered the "romance" factor, but luckily we like Mike and actually didn't mind him being there. He is a funny guy and to be fair we're not that romantic anyway. 

At one point Mike went off to help another girl get up the mountain in the dark. Joe looked around, said something like, "Well, now that he's gone..." and he KISSED me! It was our first kiss, or as Joe would say, "our last first kiss." Aww. Moments later Mike and our friend Megan came back and we all had a jolly time drinking sparkly cider from the bottle and laughing and telling stories. 

So that's the history of that rock. Unsolicited, but given nonetheless.

Since our 1 year anniversary is like, tomorrow (it's not really tomorrow), we decided to relive that moment. We got Martinelli's and the same fuzzy blanket, and Spencer joined us as our honorary Mike! It was quite fun, despite some stubborn clouds covering the stars. Still, we got to watch distant lightning storms and some stars poked out through some clear spots, and we still got to chat and drink from the bottle like ruffians, which is what matters, obviously. 

Alright, back to the hike. Since there's not much to say when talking about a hike (then we climbed rocks, and in front of us were more rocks!) this part will probably be mostly just pictures of how awesome it looks down there.

Joe and Missy staring at... bottles of toothpaste?
I dunno what they're doing. Spencer is raring to go.  

The first drop. Remember how Spencer is giant-tall? That should help give some
sense of the length of this drop. Also, I love this picture. Spence looks profesh.

During the hike. I love how twisty the rock looks. I seem to remember Joe
saying something about it being very bright....

Honestly. We might be hiking on Mars.

More (cool) rocks. 

Handsome Joe in the canyon. 

And moi. 

There was one part where the normal path had been blocked by falling rock or something and we had to improvise. I wish I had taken a picture of Joe trying to climb back up on the return trip cause it was super sketchy, but I was too busy worrying about him falling off the cliff. Darn.

Anyway, that was our trip! Really fun, worth the drive. We saw a baby rattlesnake (which we steered well clear of, promise) and a sad little bat that probably died (sigh). We conquered rocks and drops, we ate granola bars and apples, and we almost got blown away by a rain/wind storm in the night. All in all a very successful camping excursion. Five stars. Would do again.

Ah, Technology

Joe, Spencer and I went down to Robber's Roost in southern Utah this weekend. It was awesome and you want to hear all about it. Even more so, you want to see the really super great pictures I took. I would love to show them to you! But it looks like my phone (which is what I used to take the pictures, having forgotten my camera...again) is determined to be uncooperative and not yield up its juicy pictures to my computer. But never fear, soon I will have this little device conquered and I'm sure an unbeatably wonderful post will ensue. Until then I'm afraid you'll just have to wait in suspense. And in the meantime, I give you this:

We went on an adventure! {source}

20 Questions About My Man

So I spent the last hour or so redesigning my blog, and now it's so pretty that I want to post something a bit more...bloggy...than my last post. But I'm sadly lacking in creativity right now so it's going to be a bunch of pre-made questions about my husband, followed by my witty, delightful answers to them. You'll laugh, you'll cry. You'll wish you hadn't wasted the ten minutes. You'll wonder if you've ever spent ten minutes in a more fulfilling way (answer: NO. You have not.)

Plus I lurv my mister and want to talk about him, and so I shall. Right now. Ready? Here it is.

1. Full Name: Joseph Robert Galloway

2. How long have you been married? A year! (Okay, not quite, but it is a year in 2 weeks so I'm rounding up.)

3. How long did you date? If you include the engagement...which is kind of like dating (??) 9 months. Sans engagement, 6 months.

4. Who said 'I love you' first? Definitely him. And I didn't say it back. Bwahaha.

5. Who is taller? Joe. Barely. Haha. I hope you're all imagining the exasperated face he'd be giving me right now if he knew I was writing this. And just so you know, he is several inches taller. Like, at least 3. I'm just teasing him via this blog that he doesn't read. Such is my deviousness.

6. Who sings better? Joe would say I do. I guess I would say that too, but he always insists he can't sing at all and he can! Don't believe the lies! He has a lovely bass rumble.

7. Who is smarter? Again, Joe would insist that's me. However, I disagree on this one entirely. He is mathy, knows a ton of random (mostly useless, admittedly) trivia, and has them street smarts too. I can...read? Yeah. He's got me beat.

8. Who does the laundry? Joe does it, because he knows I hate it. Although I (usually) hang it/fold it/put it away, because he hates that part. It works out quite nicely, I must say.

9. Who pays the bills? Joe, ugh. I'd hate it. But I try to pay attention so I at least know what's going on.

10. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? If this refers to when you're lying in it, I do. We actually started out the other way around and liked it, but for some reason when we moved to our new house it felt really cramped, so we tried switching. Randomly, it felt a million times roomier, so it stuck. Plus I have the outlet for my lamp, useful during late night readings :)

11. Who mows the lawn? We have one of those! We've mowed it once, and by we, I mean Joe. He's a manly man who mows.

12. Who cooks dinner? Waaahhllll (10th Doctor, anyone?), I'd have to admit that when cooking happens it's probably Joe. And it's also probably chicken. We like chicken. BUT if you read my last excuse for a post, then you'll have read that I'm trying to jump in on that responsibility and cook once in a while. In case you are dying to know, my goal is to cook a meal I've never tried at least twice a week. Like, from a recipe or something. I know, it's a lofty goal, but I think with some good determination I can pull it off.

13. Who drives? Joe. He loves his zippy little Subaru. Although I guess I drive him to the train and back, but I feel like that doesn't really count because if he could somehow pull off a superman maneuver to leap out of the driver's seat and run to the station while I gracefully slid over to replace him, as all the while the car continued on at speed and did NOT stall, he probably would drive then too.

14. Who is more stubborn? Uhh, probably me if it came down to it. In frequency, I mean. Although we're both pretty easy going about almost anything, so the stubborn-fighting-stubborn thing never really happens. But I would venture a guess that if we were to get into a stubbornness match over something he really wanted/didn't want to do, he would probably win. He'd have to have a really strong opinion about it to overcome my super-powered-puppy-eye counterattack.

15. Who kissed who first? He did. See "I love you" question above. I am a relationship wuss.

16. Who asked who out first? AH! I rescind my answer to the earlier question, because in this ONE circumstance I was the initiator! I asked him out first, though he will forever say that I just beat him to it by this much, since supposedly he was going to ask me out that weekend or something. Sure, sure.

17. Who proposed? Well, Joe did. That would be really weird and out of character for me to do it. See "I love you" and "First kiss" questions for further clarification.

18. Who has more siblings? He does. Three sisters and a brother (he's the youngest), and I have but one younger brother.

19. Who wears the pants? We both wear pants. What a silly question.

I'm kidding. "The Pants" are, I feel, equally shared, depending on what's going on.

20. What is your favorite thing about your spouse? Probably his hilariousness. He is so silly and apparently has this goal to make me laugh every day. As far as I know, this record has not been broken since I've known him, which, just so you know, is about 2 years now. That's pretty impressive! One of my favorite things that he does that I won't explain in detail (because you'll think it's dumb...promise) is this stupid little song he sings. I used to think it was annoying more than cute, but then he sang it so often in this weird high pitched soft voice that it started making me smile, and now it's one of the top things he can do to improve my mood, no matter how determined I am to be a capital G Grump. 

I also have to add that my other equally favorite thing about him is how nice he is. I always expected him to be silly, but I wasn't aware of how wonderfully kind he would be to me, and to other people. That sounds weird, like I thought he was mean. I didn't, it's just that he just keeps getting nicer! He does things all the time just because he can, and because he wants to do stuff for everyone else. It surprises me all the time (though it shouldn't anymore) how often he just does nice things for no reason. Yes, yes I like him. 

Ok, it's over! You can resume your normal activities. By the way, I took this from my friend Rebekah's blog (http://stevenandrebekah.blogspot.com) iff'n ya wanna go check hers out. She is a funny laday.  

And I love my Joe. 

And that is all. 

Something kinda cool happened

So, I feel like I should probably mention that I got engaged last month...! I planned on waiting to make a post about it until I could bang out something amazing, complete with pictures of the beach where he proposed, the ring with which he proposed, the ring which was the real ring, our engagement pictures, and all kinds of plans that we had already figured out because we're just that on top of things.

That wasn't happening, and it turns out there's a lot of random things to plan and we haven't gotten around to most of them yet. BUT. These facts remain: I am engaged to Joe Galloway! We are awesome. He is superb and I love him. Our wedding day is May 26th, and everyone who ever reads this should be there.

{And here's our favorite engagement picture, just for good measure :) }