25th Birthday!

My birthday was on March 30th, it was a great day!  

My day started off with waking up to these decorations Scott put up for me while I was sleeping:)  I was very impressed - I love our tradition of decorating for birthdays. 

Some friends at work took me out for lunch.  I had delicious cupcakes, and other things that people brought in.  The work day went by really fast.

After work I went with Scott and my friend Maddie to see The Hunger Games.  I was excited to see it because I liked the books.  The movie did not disappoint at all!  It was really good - I was on the edge of my seat the whole time!

After the movie, Maddie came over with her husband Dan and we had birthday dessert.  We had my traditional Strawberry Shortcake - mmmmm :)  I can't remember a year where I did not have that for my birthday dessert.    

Scott spoiled me with the last season of Boy Meets World and a few other things.  I can now say that I own all of the seasons of Boy Meets World!

It was a fantastic birthday!  Here's to next year!

Scott's 26th Birthday Recap

Scott turned 26 on Sunday!   Here's a post to show what we did for his birthday.  Just a warning, the majority of it has to do with food - but that's what birthdays are all about right?  Thanks for everyone that reached out to Scott on his birthday (i.e. cards, gifts, texts, calls, facebook, skype, etc.) I know he felt very loved!

Here's what we did:

Anyone that know Scott, knows that he loves cinnamon rolls!  So of course his birthday calls for making a pan of cinnamon rolls.  I made them the night before so we could have them for breakfast.

Scott woke up to these decorations:)  We have started the tradition of decorating our apartment for birthdays.  Scott always raises the bar each year so I try to keep up.  I couldn't think of anything funny to do so I decided to decorate with the number 26.  There were 26 signs with the number 26 - original I know.  I couldn't think of anything to top the signs from last year.

Since it was Sunday we went to church and taught our primary class.  Then we came home and finished getting dinner ready. 

Scott is not the kind of person that knows exactly what he wants for his birthday dinner.  I always have the same things so it's not very hard to decide.  This year I decided what I was going to make since he didn't have an idea.  I decided to do "Cafe Rio" pork salads.  They turned out very good, but we both decided that it was a lot of work and if we lived in Utah again we would just go to Cafe Rio instead.

We got a text from my sister Amber saying that her kids wanted to "visit Scott on the computer."  So we skyped with her family after dinner.  It was very fun!  Her kids made us laugh and they were so cute telling Scott, "Happy Birthday."

Scott talked to his parents while I finished up getting his cake ready.

For dessert I decided to make Tres Leches - because Scott loves it.  There is a restaurant called Malecon by our apartment and one of the things we look forward to most when going there is the Tres Leches.  I decided to try Pioneer Woman's recipe and it was a hit!  It was very good, and easy to make.

I decided to take pictures instead of a video of Scott blowing out his candles because it was only me singing:)  I am not a good enough singer for that lol.  His cake looked like a ball of fire.  Yes we put 26 candles on the cake - though Scott thought I was crazy for putting them all on there.

Blowing out the candles

We didn't go out anywhere to celebrate his birthday until last night.  Scott took his BIG test (Step 1) yesterday so we decided to go out after to celebrate his birthday and finishing his test.  We went to Le Relais de Venise.  It's close to my work.  Scott's brother Erik introduced us to this restaurant when he and his family came to visit.  They serve steak and fries with a salad.  All you tell them to order is how you want your steak.  The sauce they put on the meat is so good mmmm... 

P.S. I am not very good at taking pictures with my phone, so I apologize...

Mid-Twenties Life Crisis at 24 (This is not an April Fool's joke)

Now that my birthday has happened this now feels stupid to even write about this but I'm going to anyways.  The day before my birthday I was having a major mid-twenties life crisis even though I was turning 24, not even 25.  It seems like this is happening every year lately. 

My thoughts: 

"I'm going to turn 24 I should be in the best shape of my life and happy with my body, but I'm not."

"Why don't I have a baby like everyone else?"

"When am I going to have a house?"

I started freaking out wondering what I have accomplished in my life and who I was.  Does anyone else do this?  I realized that some of these things I can't really have right now. 

Scott is going through medical school, and when he's done with that we'll move for residency.  This really isn't practical for wondering why I don't have a house right now.  First of all we are only in our 20's so I shouldn't even be thinking about a house until I'm 30. Secondly, we don't know when we will finally be settled and it's definitely not yet. 

I shouldn't be stressing about not having a baby because we aren't even trying to have one.  With our unstable life, and financial situation I shouldn't even be thinking about that right now.  It's just hard not to compare our "family status" to others my age and wonder when we will have that.  Right now is not the time, but I'm sure it's normal feeling this way, right?

There is one thing on this list that I can control and do something about it right now and that is my weight and health.  When I was thinking about my struggle with weight I was sitting at work and I decided that this is probably something that I will struggle with for my whole life.  Right then and there I decided that since it will be a struggle I should figure it out now while I'm young how to manage it and change my lifestyle.  So after I had this thought I decided that I would turn again to Weight Watchers.  It seems like the only times in my life where I could get back to a good weight in college was when I went to the meetings with my mom in the summers.  So I went to Weight Watchers by my work at lunch and signed up.  It was very scary for me to do this alone.  I had tried just doing the online tracking stuff but it didn't work for me.  I need accountability, which is why going to the meetings works. 

I am all signed up and am embarrassed to be posting this on our blog.  So why am I posting about this very personal stuff?  I'm posting because this is going to be accountability too.  I'm hoping to be able to share my progress and feelings along the way to keep me going.  My goal is to make a lifestyle change.  I'm only a few days into it but I'm feeling motivated.  I know I don't have a lot of weight to lose but it's more for me to learn to drop the weight I need to and then maintain.  The thing I like about Weight Watchers is that you don't feel like you are depriving yourself.  If you want a treat you can have it, you just have to budget your points for it.  This is why it's something that works for me.  I can't be one of those people with a lot of restrictions.

I'm probably going to be blogging more about other goals I have set for myself.  I hope you don't mind but this is mostly for me, but I hope that others can benefit as I know that all of us struggle with something.  Here's to goals and improving ourselves!

24th Birthday!

Thanks for the birthday wishes yesterday!  It was a great day, other than the fact that I had to work:)  I felt very loved as I read messages on facebook, email, and our blog!  Here is a recap of the day: 

Scott woke me up by singing Happy Birthday and playing a song for me on a kazoo!  Then I opened the door to go out into the hallway and I saw all of this!  Scotty was so sweet to decorate the apartment for me.  It's our tradition, and he always finds ways to bring the birthday decorating up a notch. 

 Scott had to go to his Psych rotation and of course I had to go to work (I didn't want to waste a vacation day to be alone at home). I got to work and there were little cheesecakes from a friend at work on my desk.  Then my work friends took me to lunch.  The day got a little busy after lunch, but not too bad.  Then toward the end of the day an attorney of mine brought out cupcakes and got people to sing to me.   Then when I got home Scott ordered Indian food for us that tasted so good.  We opted to do my traditional "strawberry shortcake" this weekend.  I had way too many desserts on my birthday.  To end the night Scott even watched American Idol with me-see I told you he was super nice to me.  It was a great birthday! Secret:  he's always really nice to me I'm lucky.

Happy Birth Moment, Ash!!!!

Happy Birthday Ashley!!!! Thanks for all you do! Love you, Scotty

A Long Weekend Calls For a Long Blog Post:)

So I keep wanting Scott to make a blog post, but life as a medical student in rotations is very busy. I will just have to include a recap of his birthday for him. So here is a look at our holiday weekend, and sorry the blog post is really long!  I guess it makes up for me not blogging very well lately.

Friday, the day before Scott's birthday the weather was amazing, mid 60's! We decided to go out for Korean food down by Columbia's main campus. It was so nice, no coat was needed, I wore a sweater and flats (no boots necessary). It was the perfect night to go out, afterwards we walked around the campus.

So Scott and I have a tradition that on birthdays we decorate the apartment for the other person. This started right when we got married. These are homemade decorations which is fun and you can use creativity. Scott set the bar really high last year with a funny idea to make signs that had pictures of celebrities and a birthday wish from them to me. I decided to follow along with that idea and do that for Scott this year. So when Scott was sleeping Friday night I woke up and hung these up around the apartment. Most of these are people that Scott likes, but I threw in a wildcard because I couldn't resist.

On Saturday, it was Scott's 25th Birthday and Scott woke up to all of his signs. I was still asleep but I could hear him laughing so I went to see him find all of them. Scott opened up his present from me which was The Price is Right game for the Wii. We agreed to only do a small gift for our birthdays, like $25.00 or less. I found the game and I was like, oh perfect, it's on sale and everything. I was so excited to give it to him, he opened it up and we played it. Sad to say, it was not a fun game, it was a huge disappointment. I felt so bad because my only gift I had for him was a flop. I'm working on a replacement gift...

We got ready for the day and headed out the door. When we were getting ready to leave we were determining the outerwear that we needed. It was going to be colder than Friday by 20 degrees, but still didn't sound that bad. Too bad Friday couldn't have been his birthday... So we each put on a coat, and decided we didn't need a scarf or gloves. We were planning on going to lunch on the east side so we decided that on the way we were going to try to win lottery tickets for Wicked. I didn't want Scott to be disappointed if we didn't win since it was his birthday. We headed to the theater to put our names in and it was freezing cold! The wind was so strong and sooo cold! This was our 5th attempt to win cheap tickets for this show, so we weren't holding our breath. Waiting for the drawing it was still really cold! They waited longer to draw the names so we had to wait outside for a while. They drew the names and.... no we didn't win! I thought maybe we'd have a birthday miracle or something, but no.

We decided to walk into a store to warm up and figure out what we were going to do. We decided to head straight to where we were planning on going for lunch. We had to walk a bit longer, but luckily the wind had slowed down. We arrived at our location, Baluchi's. It's really good Indian food right by my work and for lunch everything is 50% off. We love going on Saturdays because it's super cheap for lunch and really good! We are also always the only people in the restaurant---weekends are their slow days because during the week it's filled with people working in the area. We ate our food and of course it did not disappoint. Mmmm I love Indian food. I'm getting hungry thinking about it--and it's only like a block from my work... While we were at lunch, we were talking about an alternative plan for the remainder of the day because it was just too cold to be out and about. The original plan was to go to Standburger to try their famous toasted marshmallow shakes, but because of the cold we were not wanting to eat something cold. We decided to head back home and I would make "Chocolate Lava Cake" for dessert.

On our way home we went down into the subway station, paid and walked through the turnstile only to find out that the "E" train was not running that weekend. We ended up having to take an alternate route that ended up taking a long time waiting for the trains.

On the way home because it had taken a while we were hungry and decided that a donut from the street cart sounded good. To try to be festive I decided to put candles in Scott's donut. I had bought birthday candles, but I could not find them. We decided to use a regular sized candle which was pretty funny. I sang and took these pictures of Scott:

We just chilled the rest of the day, played a few wii games, Scott was able to watch basketball games. I think Scott enjoyed taking his mind off of school for one day. I made the cakes and they turned out really well! I'll post the recipe another day, super easy.

Parts of the day were good, parts were not so good... I can't speak for Scott but it was good to just be able to spend a whole day together, we haven't had much time together lately so it was nice. We are happy now that Scott will be able to rent a car for us and being 25 sounds so much cooler than 24:)

Since we weren't able to do anything amazing for Scott's birthday because of not so pleasant NYC weather pleasant... we are going to do something when it warms up to make up for it. Here's to another year!

P.S. Thanks to everyone who sent their birthday wishes! Scott felt very loved on his birthday. We especially laughed really hard when we read the comments from my sister's kids.
Sunday, I found out it was my last week to teach the 12-13 year old youth sunday school class... I am sad about this. I have really loved teaching them since I don't get to teach for a profession, and I'm going to miss it. I learned so much teaching them.

Monday, I decided it was a day to catch up on the apartment since it was a holiday and I didn't have to work. It also helped that it snowed overnight so I knew it would be a staying indoors kind of day. I feel like I never have enough time to get it really clean. Since I always leave our bedroom for last I decided to start with that first. I worked a long time doing laundry and cleaning, but our apartment looks great! Well our bedroom, living room and kitchen. I still need to finish the extra room and bathroom. How do those of you with houses keep it all clean?  I can barely keep our 2 bedroom apartment in good shape!  It felt good to have a day to get a lot accomplished. We also played Michael Jackson - The Experience, on the Wii. So fun! Scott did a few songs with me, but he was mad I kept beating him!

It was a well needed long weekend!

It's a Special Day!

It is Scotty's 25th Birthday! 

It's a big birthday year...he can finally rent a car for us:)  Feel free to leave a message for the birthday boy!  We'll post later about the festivities...and a picture of the birthday boy. 

Happy Birthday Scott!

Happy Birthday To You! Happy Birthday To You! Happy Birthday Dear Scotty....Happy Birthday To You!

Scott is the big 24 today! Leave your birthday wishes for him!

A Birthday and an Anniversary!

Yesterday was my brother David's birthday! Happy Birthday Dave! We celebrated on Thursday with birthday cake....mmmmm. I hope you had a great birthday!

Scott and I also celebrated our 1 Year Anniversary! We went to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner because I really wanted to get some Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake-mmmmm. It's the best cheesecake ever! Scott got Brownie Sundae Cheesecake. Scott also got me some pretty flowers! They are really dark pink but the picture makes it look light.

After we got back for dinner we pulled out our topper of our wedding cake to taste. This is what our cake looked like on the day of our wedding:

1 year later:

Me and Scott eating our cake! I just had one bite, it was okay, but not too appetizing to me eating 1 year old cake. Scott ate the remaining of our piece of cake.

It was a great anniversary! I'm looking for the many many years we have to come!