Meet Olivia.

Well here she is. The real thing. I know what you're thinking, "That doesn't look at all like the other picture." Well you are correct, she is very different. You see what happened is, we called the lady who had our kitten last Friday. We were just calling to check up on our kitten and maybe figure out exactly what day we could come pick her up. The lady remembered us and that we had picked out the white one with black spots, but there was a little problem. That kitten had gotten really sick and died a couple weeks previous. But she did have another female kitten that we could come pick up anytime.

Since we were on our way to the Draper Temple open house, we decided to go pick her up later that night. Yay! So after we went through the temple we drove the rest of the way up to Salt Lake and picked her up!

Here's what we've learned about Olivia in her first week living with us.

-She is VERY socially dependent. She hates being alone. If we are here she's either playing with us, sleeping on us, or following us around the house. If she doesn't know where we are, she starts crying until she finds us, or we find her.

-She loves to explore. She found rips in the underlining fabric of our box springs, so she climbed inside. We were laying in bed and heard her crying and tried to find her but we didn't see her anywhere under the bed. When we saw the fabric sagging and moving we put two and two together. We had to take off the mattress and the box springs to get her out. That's when WE found those holes, and got a good laugh.

-She's not yet litter trained, but she's making progress. She also found a hole in the underlining fabric of our chaise lounge, and left us a couple "presents" in there. That did NOT make us laugh.

-She HATES her car carrier, and the vet. When I put her in the carrier she did okay until she realized she was trapped. The vet is only a mile away (if that), but she was determined to chew/bite/claw her way through the metal cage.

-She's tiny! Probably too tiny to be away from her mom. She's five weeks old and weighs less than a pound. (15 oz.) But knowing what happened to the first kitten we picked out, we're happy to have her here.

-Just like all cats, she loves playing with a laser pointer. It's fun for us too!

Here's a video of her playing with all her toys. (Mute it, so you don't have to hear my annoying voice.)

The New Addition to Our Family

Isn't she the cutest thing you've ever seen??? This isn't actually HER, but this is what she will look like. She was just born last week and just barely opened her eyes, so we can't take her home until the end of March. But just ask Jeff... I'm SO excited!

Here's the story...

Jeff and I had both been thinking about what to get each other for Valentine's Day for weeks. And neither of us had come up with anything very good. Friday night (the night before Valentine's Day) we had this conversation:

Me: So... have you gotten me something for Valentine's Day yet?

Jeff: ...uh, no. Have you gotten me something yet?

Me: No. What should we do?

Jeff: I don't know...

So since we were both stumped, that's where it ended.

Later on, I was telling Jeff about the puppies I had seen a lady selling on my way home from work. Jeff asked, "Do you think she's still there?" By this time it was after 8:00. Doubtful. We were discussing what we wanted to do that night and he said, "We could go look at the kitties at PetsMart." (This is something we do for a free, short date sometimes. I love cats.) I said something like, "Like just looking, or to get one?" He said, "Either." So when we both realized that we both wanted a pet, we started looking. PetsMart only had cats. If I'm going to get one, I want it to be a kitten. We drove up to PetCo in Orem, right before closing time, just to find out that they don't have cats there. So we came home and searched online. We found a few options, but it was late so we decided to pursue it in the morning.

So all day during Valentine's day we were driving around trying to find our Valentine's Day present for each other. We drove to two different shelters, looked and called several people we found online and came up with nothing. No one had a kitten younger than six months. To me, that's not really a kitten. We came home a little discouraged. But then, I looked again online. I found a lady on craigslist (love that place!) whose cat just had 7 kittens! So we couldn't get one right away, but we could have her reserve one for us. After several times trying to get a hold of her we finally did. She said we could come to her house and pick one out. So our actual Valentine's Day consisted of:

-Looking for a kitten

-Getting take-out from Macaroni Grill (the best way to do Valentine's Day, so you don't have to wait) and eating it on our fancy china at home

-Going shopping for kitten stuff at PetsMart and Walmart

It may not sound very romantic, but it was fun. I don't need romance all the time.

So Sunday we went up to Salt Lake, picked out a little girl kitten that looks like this one, except TINY, and now we are just waiting to bring her home!

We're still looking for good girl cat names. Here are our ideas so far:

-Emmy

-Ellie

-Koa

-Olivia

Any suggestions? Anything better? We need some ideas! Leave us a comment and let us know!

25 Random Facts

I did this on Facebook, but I thought maybe I could post it here too. Is that cheating? I don't care. It's my blog, and I'll do what I want to.


25 Random Facts About Me

1. I spend my free time looking on craigs list for a new apartment. I am very tired of the one we're in now, and I can't wait to move. Too bad it's 6 months until our lease is up!

2. I can't focus if my house isn't clean, and that's a really annoying trait when you don't have a dishwasher.

3. We have a washer and dryer in our place, which is nice, but the washer's in the bathroom and the dryer's in the shed out back. (What?! Who designed this place?!)

4. I've been married for over a year already... can you believe that?!
5. I share a brain with my BFF, Nichelle.

6. I can quote any line from any episode of FRIENDS. Try me, I dare you.

7. I teach first grade and love it!

8. This is my 3rd year as a teacher. And I NEVER want to go back to being a first year teacher. (SO HARD)

9. My first year I taught 2nd grade in Heber.

10. I made the drive up Provo canyon over 200 times during the massive construction project, but not once since it's been done.

11. I've been in 3 car accidents in my life, once on my way up to Heber, once on our wedding day, and once just a few days ago. (This is not counting the time that Jeff hit the neighbor's mailbox.)

12. I would LOVE to live in New Zealand again some day.

13. I went bungy jumping twice when I lived in NZ. And for those of you that know me, you know that is SO not like me.


14. I also went Zorbing when I was there. SO FUN!



15. Brown is my favorite color. Is that weird?

16. My favorite Christmas present was my Cricut that Jeff gave me. I find any excuse to use it.

17. We bought Rock Band for our 1 year anniversary, and I think I'm awesome at it.

18. I love the band "The Fray" more than anyone else I know.

19. The sound that your car makes when your blinker is on (that clicking sound), has been going non-stop in my car since October. I haven't had the time to deal with it.

20. I love reading all my friend's blogs, and hope that someday I will be a good blogger too.


21. I hate all winged creatures, or anything that can fly at your face. (birds, butterflies, mosqitos, bats, etc.)

22. I am slightly OCD. I have to have the movies in alphabetical order, my white board markers at school in 4 groups of 3 and organized by color, etc. I don't know why, but it has to be that way.

23. I LOVE reading children's picture books. I go to the library about once a month and pick out about 20 books to read to my class. It's so fun. My favorite book right now is, "If You Give a Cat a Cupcake." It is so cute and so funny. The first time I read it I laughed so hard I was in tears.


24. I love cooking when I have the time to do it. Which, most days I don't, but I still cook.

25. If I had all the free time in the world, I would use it scrapbooking. Too bad I hardly ever have free time.

The Beginning

Yep, that's right. We jumped on the blogging bandwagon. Well, actually, I (Laura) jumped on the bandwagon. I don't think Jeff really cares about blogging, but I think it will be fun. I love reading about what's going on in everyone's lives. I guess it's time that I give you a peak into our lives.

I am teaching first grade right now. It's my 3rd year teaching. (WOW!) I really love first grade. The kids are super cute and they make so much progress over the year. It's really exciting to go to work everyday. Other than that, I am keeping myself busy with scrapbooking. Especially since I got a new cricut machine for Christmas!! It's a ton of fun. I am also working as the Camp Leader for our ward and a substitute primary teacher.

Jeff is working hard on his degree in Business, with an emphasis in entrepreneurism. He will finish in June. Yea! He's also working 20 hours a week with Novell in their credit department as an intern. But most excitingly, he is working with a start-up company making a new software system for the google phones that just came out. He's working with a professor and some others on this company and is really excited that he has the chance to actually do what he wants to do for a living. Right now they are doing all the research and creating of the software. Once they release it (in April), we will know if it is going to be a full time opportunity or not. We'll see... it's kind of exciting!

Right now we are living in Provo. It's a great place to be, but we are a little antsy to move out of our apartment. When our lease is up in July, we'll see where we end up. It could be somewhere in Utah, it could be California, we don't know. Stay tuned and we'll keep you updated!