Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Good News....

I got a new job! My last day at the Empire State Building will be on Friday. I have worked 4 weeks at that job and it was definitely an experience. I will be starting work on monday at...
It's a big kid job with a salary, benefits, vacation days, etc. I am super excited to start! It is a nice office on the east side. I'll keep you updated on my training and experience there.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Welcome to the Empire State Building...Where are you going today?....Can I see your ID?

These are the words I say at work about a billion times a day working at the Visitor Desk. For those of you who don't know I work in the Empire State Building. I haven't blogged about it yet as I am trying to catch up with blogging. I work at what's called the "Visitor Reception Desk." It is in the part of the building where the offices are and we check in the people coming for appointments. If a person wants to visit an office in the building the people in that office are supposed to put their name into the computer so we know they are approved to go. If they are registered in the system then we just print out the pass and they go up. If they aren't in the system then we have to call up to the office and ask them to approve the person to come up. If they do then we make a pass and send them up. If not, then we have to tell them they are not allowed to go up and send them away. If they give us problems then sometimes we have to involve security. Not too often, but if it gets out of hand. The job is very easy and you just do the same thing over and over. It is better than not having a job because now we have an income. It does get monotonous after a while though.

I had a dream...on the subway?!

On my way home from work yesterday I was super tired. I decided I would just, "rest my eyes." Of course that always results in falling asleep for me. I began to have a crazy dream that I don't remember now because it didn't make any sense. The only thing is hearing them announce, "This is 145th street..." That was the announcement that made me jump and run off the subway yesterday. 145th street is where I get off and transfer to another train either the A or the C. I was so close to missing my stop which scared me, the other thing is I woke up freaked out that someone could have taken my stuff without me knowing.

Moral of the story: I'm going to try to stay awake on the subway. Sometimes it is just so hard when it feels like your mother is rocking you to sleep...

I know I'm not the only one who has fallen asleep on the subway though:)

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

"You look like you are 14!"

I am so tired of hearing this! I know I am young and look even younger! I know that it is shocking to some that I am married! Why do you have to keep pointing it out to me? This is what I wonder to myself each and every day at work.

I have a few examples to share. My first day of work one of my coworkers called me "raggedy ann" because I looked so young with my curly red hair. I have gotten called young lady, kiddo, hon, sweetie, etc. by everyone I help. I used to pass for 12-13, but now I'm able to pass for 14-15 which is good news getting up there:)

A lot of people I meet notice that I'm married and feel very negatively about it and feel the need to point it out. I've had a lady tell me, "well I hope he's the right one!" All I said in response was, "he is!"

The most recent story is a guy that came in like last week. This is how the conversation went:

Mr. ?: What are you doing here?!
Ashley:Um... working
Mr. ?: You shouldn't be working in a place like this!
Ashley:Okay...
Mr. ?: Where are you from?
Ashley: Utah, near Salt Lake
Mr. ?: Utah? You never want to go back to Utah with all those Polygamists and Mormons!!!!
Ashley: Actually, polygamy is not practiced by the mormons anymore, and by the way I am mormon.
Mr. ?: (looking at my wedding ring) You look too young to be engaged to be married!
Ashley: Actually I have been married for 1 1/2 years and I am about to turn 23.
Mr. ?: You look like you are 14! You have made a big mistake!
Ashley: Here's your pass... have a great day sir! Goodbye.

People say that I will "love it when I'm older." But until then....I hate all the comments...

Here's to my 23rd birthday in March! Then people will be even more shocked when I tell them my real age:)

Harlem Costco Trip

Not too long ago a Costco was built in Harlem. This is the only Costco in Manhattan so everyone has been pretty psyched about it! We decided to make our trip out last Saturday. We left around 11:00 am with a giant suitcase in hand ready to ride the subway and bus. Why would we have a suitcase you may wonder... to bring back all of our groceries of course! It's what you've got to do in the city when you don't have a car, and taxi's are expensive. When we got to Costco it was amazing because I sort of felt like I was back in Utah again. We got the stuff we usually get at the grocery store but in bulk so we saved some money. To go home we stuck all of the stuff we bought into the suitcase. See picture below. It was super heavy! Scott weighed it when we got home and it weighed..................................115 pounds!
Good thing I have a strong hubby to carry the heavy things:)

The MoMA!

Last Friday night we decided to go to the MoMa aka the Museum of Modern Art. It's free on Fridays so we went for free. Let me just say that I love art! It brought back so many memories of AP Art History in high school which I loved. Here are a few pics of my fav's and also some of the art that you look at and think, "yeah I can do that." If you come to New York be sure to go to the Art museums. They are truly amazing!

One of my favorites: "White on White" I hope to recreate this one someday:) I just think it's so funny that Malevich painted this and it became famous. It's white paint on a white canvas.
Jackson Pollack

Scott standing next to the skinniest little painting I have ever seen. The red strip is the whole piece of art. Everything else in the picture is the wall.
Picasso!
Andy Warhol of course!
We still want to go back to try to see the Tim Burton exhibit. It was sold out when we went.
A little Mondrian

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Cheese Fondue

A few of my friends recently have asked for my cheese fondue recipe so I thought I'd share it with everyone! Ignore all of the unhealthy ingredients that are in this recipe, that's what makes it so good!
Three Cheese Fondue
½ c. onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic
1 ½ cup heavy whipping cream
12 oz. cream cheese
1 ½ cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
¾ cup gouda cheese
1 teaspoon nutmeg

Sauté the chopped onion and garlic until tender. Put all ingredients into fondue pot and heat on low to medium heat. Stir until smooth and serve with breads, chopped vegetables etc.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Our Christmas Letter

My intention was to post our Christmas letter on our blog so that everyone could see it and we could save on some postage. Of course I never did post it around Christmas Time so here it is! Enjoy!

A New Year! A New Resolution to Blog!

Our blog not been updated in like a month and a half. Several people have commented to me that I need to start blogging again. Sometimes I have so much to write that I just am too overwhelmed to write at all. I'm going to do some catch up posts and some recent posts. So excuse the random order....

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Christmas Decorations!

I was so excited to decorate for Christmas this year! It's something that's exciting and different and that's just what I needed. We didn't bring our Christmas tree with us to NYC because of the storage space needed and I didn't think it would be a big deal without a tree. I decided we needed some sort of a Christmas tree. I bought a little 2 ft tree at Target and that will be our tree for the next 4 years. I really like it, and the best part is it comes in a little tiny box that will be easy to store. Here are some pictures of the rest of our decorations so far. There isn't much because I thought that I had packed more than I did. I forgot to pack our stockings so we don't have those...
This is the nativity that Scott brought back for me when he went to Africa. It's really cool, it's one of my favorite decorations we have.

I had this idea of wrapping some of our frames on the wall like presents. I like it, hopefully it's not too weird

Catch up!

I'm going to play blog catch up since it's been a while. Sometimes the problem isn't that there isn't anything going on but too much going on that it gets overwhelming to blog about. This post is going to be a little this and that to catch everyone up.

Most recently... it was Thanksgiving! Most of Scott's family came into town so we got to hang out with them.

We went to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. It was really fun! We got there super early so we were on the front row! Here are some pictures:
Dora The Explorer

Buzz Lightyear
Smurf

Santa! He was very excited to see us!
We also went to the Statue of Liberty
and... Ellis Island
We went to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and saw the Rockette's
Looked at decorated windows

Got our pictures taken with the Macy's Santa

Rode the subway a lot

Central Park of course! We saw the Belvadere Castle there---it was cool!

View of NYC from the castle
We did a lot of fun things over the Thanksgiving Break and also made our first Thanksgiving dinner.... it was a lot of work! I appreciate Thanksgiving Feasts a lot more now. It was a tiring time, but we are recovered now.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Mandoo, Knicks Game, and a Lung Transplant...makes for an exciting night!

We had tickets to the Knicks vs. Jazz game Monday Night at Madison Square Garden. We decided on our way to the game that we should try out a Korean restaurant called Mandoo. Mandoo is the Korean version of potstickers, or Gyoza. Here's the sign, you can't see it very well.The front of the restaurant. It was a small little place but nicer than what I was expecting.Here's Scott eating a side dish of turnips while waiting for our mandoo. We ordered the pork and vegetable Mandoo--it was really good!
We ordered Bulgogi Bi Bim Bop for our main course. I think that's what it was called or something like that--Scott would know but he's not here to correct me right now :) It's rice with a bunch of vegetables a little meat, some egg, and some red pepper sauce. It came to our table sizzling and our server mixed it all up for us. He asked how spicy we wanted it, Scott said medium so it wouldn't be too hot for me but it still was pretty spicy, but good!
Then... off to the Knicks game! When we got to the game we had to keep going up all these escalators because our seats were at the very top. I thought we were going to be so high up but we really weren't. It's not like the delta center (ESA now) where it's pretty steep, it's just wider. So we actually had better seats than we thought---yay for cheap seats that you can still see from! We were excited to see the Jazz play! (no we didn't go to see the Knicks)
A picture of us in our seats

Right before the game

Scott with his binoculars---it was cool to look through them it was like you were sitting right on the court:)
A Canadian Flag was hanging right by the US Flag. I took a picture for my brother Cam on his mission in Canada--it made me think of him:) Yay Canada!On the way to the game I told Scott, I hope we see someone famous at the game... and we did! During a break in the game. The theme song to The Office started playing and there was a picture on the big screen of Kevin from the office and then it changed to a video of him in his seat at the game! I was excited! We looked through the binoculars until we found him. Sure enough we found him--and I took a picture from our seats. See it below, he's the guy with the bald head. We didn't get to meet him because he was seated in the special section and we weren't but I still think it was pretty cool!
So about the game---The Jazz were ahead by a good lead the whole time until the last quarter. At the end it was tied up and stressful... but... the Jazz ended up winning by 2 points! Yay! Good ending!

After the game we wanted to get out as fast as we could to avoid the crowds. As soon as the game ended we opened the door to the stairwell and ran down the stairs instead of taking the escalators. We got out so fast! A piece of advice--the stairs are quicker, most people won't use them. We got to the subway stop and we hear beeping coming from Scott's pocket.

Side Story: Scott's been holding a pager that the medical students rotate through carrying. It's a transplant pager so if a transplant needs to happen at the hospital whoever has the pager will get paged and get to go watch the transplant.

Back to the story....

Scott pulls out the pager and it's going off. We have to stop before going through the Subway gates for him to call the hospital. He talked to them and found out he needed to be at the hospital in an hour and he'd be watching a lung transplant. We rushed home, he changed into scrubs and he left to go. This was about 11:00 pm so I went to bed. At 6:00 am I get a call from Scott asking me to open the door. Needless to say, Scott didn't get much sleep last night:) I'll have him write all about it when he has some time.

Yeah...last night was a crazy night!

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Productive Day So Far!

When you don't have a real schedule it's hard to stay focused and be productive....it's very easy to put things off. But, today is an exception! I got up showered, did the laundry, made a new recipe and put it in the oven for lunch (I made dinner for lunch since Scott will be home for lunch and not dinner), and it's only 12:00:) I feel proud that I got going right off this morning---usually it takes me a while to get going. I should keep this pace and get more stuff done!

Monday, November 2, 2009

Crockpot Steak Over Potatoes

This is a really good and easy recipe! The ingredients seem sort of strange but just try it!

Crockpot Steak Over Potatoes

Ingredients:
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 cup apple juice
1 pouch Lipton onion soup mix
1 tsp. celery seed
1 pkg. stew meat

Cook on high for 2 hours, low for 1 hour. Serve over mashed potatoes.

Bad at Blogging

Our life is mostly the same everyday now....at least mine. I think of things to blog about but have been bad at doing it. I feel like my life is very boring and so I haven't been blogging much. I'm going to start anew and start blogging again. I guess it really hasn't been that long, just a week or two but I feel like since I'm behind it's hard to start going again. I'm going to blog about previous things that have happened to catch up! Stay tuned...