Ivan Spudnik and Barby Q

So, I have to start off bragging a little bit. Ever been to Olive Garden for their soup, salad and breadsticks deal? We love it. Mike's favorite soup there is the Zuppa Tuscano. Last night I tried a recipe I had found online for Zuppa Tuscano, and it turned out great! Mike said it tasted just like Olive Gardens', which I take to be a huuuuge compliment because Olive Garden is a place of happiness.
Next is a belly shot. Taken today, I am 32 weeks. Almost there! And let me tell you, until I was picking a picture to put up of my belly, I had not realized how much weight I've gained in my face! So, ignore the face and focus on the belly!

Now the main reason for the post! Thursday night Mike and I went up to Kaysville because our friends Rachel and Craig were hosting a murder mystery dinner party thing. Mike was Ivan Spudnik, a Russian scientist, and his accent was the hit of the night. It was pretty bad.... I mean good, it was good! Haha, he practiced all day and got some tips from a friend that served his mission in Russia, so he actually did pretty well.

My character was a bombshell divorcee named Barby Q, but my costume wasn't nearly as entertaining as his, and like I mentioned before, I'm suddenly a lot more self conscious about putting pictures of me on the blog! The party was so fun though! I had never done one before, so it was a new experience and I was kind of nervous about it at first, but it was totally worth it. And no, neither of us was the murderer.

And now on to a question. I'm rather naive when it comes to all the blogging stuff, and I've been trying to figure something out. When I leave a comment on someones blog it makes the name all funny. It shows up as "Mike & Alicia" and I have no idea why. Ok, and the new and weirded thing is that I can't get it to show up how it looks when I leave a comment. Just imagine that after the and sign it has "amp;" For some reason this post keeps automatically taking that out, but it definitely shows up in the name on our comments. (Just to let you guys know, this is also why I don't leave a lot of comments, it always just looks weird) Anyone know how to fix it?

Work, work, work

So, here I am at work, being extremely bored because things got very messed up today and so I wasn't prepared to be where I am. This weekend is Homecoming at BYU, which you can probably imagine means a lot of work for Mike and me seeing that we're both working for BYU Traffic. As if Homecoming and all that it entails (Spectacular on two nights, a parade, run and game tomorrow) isn't bad enough, ESPN Game Day has also decided to come this weekend. Which means closing down parking lots and guarding lots and trucks all day/night today and tomorrow as well. So, basically there are a ton of posts that no one wants. So what do they do? They mess up our shift to cover things, and half our shift isn't here anyways.

The "flu" has been going around big time in the office, and so literally only four people on our shift came in today- keep in mind that both Mike and I came in, so that's half the people right there. Some of these people were signed up for posts tonight as well, so now there's no one to cover those. So, just to make this confusing, I'll explain a little of what happened to our shift. There are three traffic booths that get manned during our shift, then there are usually 4 people on patrol, including the FA (the person in charge of us). So, three of the people on patrol called in sick, and one was told that he had to work a Homecoming Spectacular post instead of working his normal shift. So basically we had the booth people and that was it. Mike and I came in seperately, and when I was walking in to the locker room another girl was coming in and said, "Oh, you're here! They had me close down 2V, so I figured you were sick, too!". At this point I was quite confused because no one had told me they were changing where I was supposed to be. After finally finding the person in charge, he told me that he was putting me in the booth that Mike was supposed to be in and putting Mike at a barricade for the ESPN thing. So right now, there are 3 people on evening shift officially, and one of them isn't even from our shift because they put two of us on special events posts.

To top it off, the guy in the other booth just radioed that he has to be somewhere at 6:15 (our shift ends at 7) so he wanted to know if he should try to find someone to take it or just close down the booths. The FA replied, "Well, there really isn't anyone to take it so we'll have to shut down I guess". So now I have a half hour break before my special event post, I guess. Now everyone that's here is just hoping that no one is going to call in sick tomorrow, because that would be terrible.

Anyways, I just thought I'd let everyone see a little bit of the inner workings of the traffic office at BYU. Crazy, isn't it?

Brown paper packages tied up with strings...

I love getting packages in the mail. It makes me feel so special, especially since they're never junk mail. Getting mail in general is nice, but of course the bulk of what I take out of my mailbox is always advertisements and things addressed to the previous tenants (even though we've been here for well over a year). But packages are exciting, especially when you aren't expecting them. Today I got two! One I was expecting, and was excited for, the other was a total surprise.
This first one was the one I was expecting. My awesome sister-in-law, Julie, is done having children, so she's been working at clearing out the basement of all the kid things they still had, including her maternity clothes! So, she sent me a whole box full of her old clothes, which means I'm pretty much set for life in the maternity department! They're actually going to send us their crib as well, when their youngest gets his big boy bed. This second picture is of a really cute diaper cake that three of my high school friends sent me completely out of the blue. By that I mean I had no idea that they were sending me anything, obviously it wasn't totally out of the blue since I am pregnant... The really awesome thing is that it goes to show that some friends don't disappear. One of the friends and I had a bit of a fight after high school and lost touch almost completely. The other two I still talk to occasionally, but not nearly as often as I'd like. The group of us were pretty tight in high school though, and it's nice to know they're still thinking about me, as I do them!

I've started to get the nesting fever a little bit, although not nearly as much as Alli, which is probably a good thing since I can't redo my apartment like she did her house whether I want to or not. I have however started trying to really create a nursery, and haven't gotten very far yet. But, one thing that I've been wanting forever and finally got is a set of curtains! They're cute AND useful since they'll block out more light when she sleeps during the day.
On Saturday Mike and I had a spontaneous date evening. He took me for a drive up the mountains to look at the pretty fall colors, and we saw deer!


After the drive we went to dinner and then played games at home. It was a very nice, much needed relaxing day after the crazy and emotional week we/I had. I think I'll wait to update about that until we know more about what's going on, though, which hopefully will be soon.

Halloween is coming!

So life here has been pretty busy lately. We just had three home football games in a row, and now that both Mike and I are working for BYU traffic, we get to work all home games! So, basically we got about an extra 25 hours for this paycheck, which is nice except that we haven't had a real weekend in about a month. We're looking forward to this coming weekend and being extra lazy.

Yesterday we brought out the Halloween decorations and went crazy. This last Christmas I really wanted more holiday decorations, and Mike's mom got us a ton! Our apartment feels very festive now, it's great! This is on the outside of our door:

And this is our table. I had the leaves from last year and got the bowl on Saturday night (yay for Priesthood session and having a long needed girls night!) on sale at the Quilted Bear. The really cute placemats were part of my Christmas present from Mom Bevans.

The big pumpkin and bat both light up and were also part of the present, and the little pumpkins were just random things I've gotten over the years.

These are our two front doors (the actual front door and the balcony door) We hadn't redecorated the balcony door since the fourth of July, so it was about time!

The great thing about having worked at the Quilted Bear for so long before getting married is that when I saw something really cute come in, I could get it with my employee discount, and so had a few cute decorations coming into the marriage.

Not to mention the Christmas bonus that bought this bakers rack and then some.

Also not pictured were a couple of cute candy corn dish towels that were also part of the present. Speaking of candy corn, have any of you tried the seasonal Hershey kisses for fall? They have a candy corn one, and a pumpkin spice one. They're so good! The pumpkin ones taste like pumpkin pie and are Mike's favorite (besides the Easter coconut ones) and the candy corn ones taste like white chocolatey candy corn. Anyways, we recommend them!