The Woolf Pack

An Award is Given

My really cool friend Nicole nominated me for an award. ME! Ok so it’s not like I wrote out a thank you speech or anything….so I’ll just get to it.  But for someone who has only won a crappy t-shirt from a radio station, this feels pretty good.  I was nominated for the “Arte Y Pico” award

“Arte Y Pico” means “peak of art” and here are the rules/guidelines for the award:
1. Choose five blogs you consider deserving of this award based on creativity, design, interesting material, and overall contribution to the blogger community, regardless of the language.
2. Post the name of the author and a link to his/her blog so everyone can view it.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given him/her the award.
4. The award-winner and the presenter should post the link of the “Arte Y Pico” blog so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5. Please post these rules.

So here they are, the next 5 winners of this award.  They are in no particular order and have all had a profound effect on my life.  Whether I’ve known them for 15 years or 15 minutes, I love them all the same.

1.  Angie –  Our friendship began fall of 1997 in Dorm 6 of Ricks College.  We sang together in Women’s Choir and have been good friends ever since.  Even though we’re thousands of miles apart, I can still hear her sweet voice and remember the good times we’ve had.  I love her posts about emotionally honesty reminding me it’s ok to cry (which i do a lot) but not losing focus on being happy and living a great life which she does so well!

2.  Greta – My sister in law of almost 11 years!!! She is the mother the 3 little kiddos that have made me the proudest auntie ever known.  Now that we are close (as in less than 5 min. from each other!) I look forward to our ’sister-ship’ growing.  Her blog is so funny with all the pictures of the kiddos and the musings of being a stay at home mom.  Someday, I hope to have fun posts like her!

3.  K to the J — We were BFF’s before we even knew each other existed.  She exhilarates life and it’s finer things (like Sonic’s limeade!).  Being that she is an English Teacher, reading her blog is like reading a series of hilarious short stories.  Keep bloggin’ girl, keep bloggin’.

4.  Kim — A new friend in my new ward, I stumbled upon her blog by blog stalking (yes, I am a blog stalker).  We haven’t gotten to hangout just yet…but I have a feeling we will be in the future.  One of my favorite things about her blog is the name of it “Hot Diggity Blog” it’s so fun and creative.  Something I hope to aspire to be someday!

5.  Tony – Last but not least, my brother.  We’ve known each other for about 29 years…and have liked each other for about 5 or 6.  It’s safe to say we even love each other now. :)  Tony is actually the reason why I have become a blogger, he’s been doing it for almost 6 years now.  His blog is not updated as much as it should be (ahem) but it’s random assortment of posts keeps me checking it everyday.

There’s a mouse!

So this past weekend we went with some really good friends Whitney & Howard and some new good friends Megan & Rob to Hocking Hills. We Stayed here and loved it! Of course thanks to my awesome foot, most of the fun I had was sitting down with my foot up, but fun nonetheless. What’s a weekend in a cabin w/o out a mouse? We were at the table making our tin foil dinners when I saw a furry mass scramble across the bedroom we were staying in (of course). It was a dang mouse! I have to say that Whitney was the only one brave enough to try and capture it. Megan and I screamed and ran/hobbled out onto the deck. 3 grown men, 2 plastic bags, and a large wooden stick later…it scurried away. I made James cover the hole (it was in our closet) and then use the blanket on the bed to put in between the closet doors. Not sure if that’s what kept the critter out, but thankfully we didn’t see him for the rest of the weekend.

It was a much needed weekend of playing games and laughing so hard tears ran down our tears. I did get to see Old Man’s Cave but, only from a camera. I sat on a picnic table and people watched which is a favorite past time of mine. We even got to relax in a hot tub and talk about life and memories. It was just good times. One of the best part’s was celebrating Whitney’s Birthday. Happy Birthday again Whit!

This is my favorite shot from the weekend:

{Click HERE to see the rest of the weekend’s shots}

Two left feet

Did you hear that the cool thing to do right now is injur the same foot as your spouse?  If not, then you’re just not cool…so yea, James and I are currently ‘nursing’ our LEFT feet back to normalcy. Last week I thought it would be fun to fall down some stairs at my house.  I waited almost a week to get it checked out due to the lack of insurance I have…but couldn’t take the pain anymore today! I have a fractured toe on my left foot and you can see how fashionable I am in the below photo.  Hopefully all will be well in a few weeks…until then….RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation).  James sprained his ankle a few weeks ago at my parents’ house.  He thought it would be fun to roll his ankle while getting out of my dad’s truck.  We are funny, huh?

Love is all you need

I love my family and they love me! (I think)  Here’s some pics to prove that all you really need is love.

Mom & Dad in love for 35 years (in December)

Tony & Greta in love for 11 years (in August)

Steph & James in love for 2 years (in November)*

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I Believe

So I was at Jimmy John’s tonight for dinner (I’m on a short work trip) and I came across this sign:

It had all these cool quotes about life and such.  I was very contemplative while I was eating my ‘turkey tom’ with my fav. alfalfa sprouts :)  Here’s a couple of the quotes that caught my fancy:

I believe when you are angry, you have a right to be angry, but you don’t have a right to be cruel

I believe that either you control your attitude or it controls you

I believe that we don’t have to change friends if we understand that friends change

I believe that it’s taking me a long time to become the person I want to be

I just found it online if you’d like to read all of them, click here

Midnight Musings

Do you ever just think every possible scenario about what your life could or should be? Welcome to the world I am currently living in. Now that I’ve been submersed in a ‘college’ town so to speak…my wheels have been turning about my own personal life. There are certain things I just can’t get out of my head. Should I go back to school? Should I? I became overwhelmed with emotions and thoughts swirling in my head. Poor James wasn’t feeling so hot, so we knelt down to pray (something we haven’t done together in a very long time.) And as I was praying, I just got this feeling in my heart that I need to pray HARD about some decisions in my life (of course tears followed). Lately I have just felt that I went to school for the wrong thing (Business); I have however been thankful for the experiences I have had thus far. I just feel that there is something else out there, but what the heck is it???

I got my associates in Behavioral Science (was going to do social work) - but then thought I was too emotional for the job (imagine that)…but I have lots of close friends with their MSWs, in the social work program now etc…Heck, I even applied to Columbia to get my MSW about 6 years ago…obviously didn’t get in, but I tried. I somehow keep reverting back to that possibility.

Then there’s HAIR. I love hair (not mine though). I love looking at styles, playing around with Hair. I remember when I was in HS I almost enrolled in the Vocational School but didn’t b/c then I couldn’t be in the marching band or wind ensemble (nerd!)…I’ve done my fair share of wedding dos and other fun things. Although my very first hair cutting experience was with my friend Dan at BYU it was right before Christmas Break and he asked me to cut his hair, I informed him that I was highly unqualified - but he insisted. As I was using his ‘home cutting system’ (similar to the flo-bee, lol) he looked in the mirror and said “What are you doing!!!” - I got mad at him b/c I warned him, and I stormed out his apt. saying “Merry Christmas!” Of course he came over and apologized but I’m not gonna lie, it was a baaad haircut. So then there comes the thought of hair school.

It’s all up in the air right now. Everything is temporary. I do have to say, I am enjoying my new job, it’s just still in the adjusting/can I really do this? phase. I am happy to report though that I will have a life again, I am quitting Target - Friday is my last day YAY!!!! Working 4 nights a week on top of my full time job was not working for me. I am not a super woman like some are. I like my free time and I like to be able to start a load of laundry before 11:30 p.m.!!!! Hopefully my posts will be before then too.

I just feel that I am not the business type. I am not the savviest person there is and I also have no desire to climb the corporate ladder. I get joy out of other’s happiness not shareholder values or stock options. I have no idea what the stock market is at right now and I can’t do everything there is to do in excel.

As always I stress about money. There is no way right now that I can go back to school, or enroll in a cosmetology program. Or is there? I don’t know, we haven’t totally laid out the options. But I feel pressure to make enough money for us to live comfortably, I don’t want James to stress b/c his main focus is school, I get nervous that we won’t pay off our debt that we have - not that it’s huge but it’s still debt. Bottom line is that I stress over things that are entirely out of my hands. In the end I know things will work out. My faith has been replenished literally within minutes of tonight’s prayer (amazing how that works). I know the Lord has a plan for me that is unique and specific. The problem is I’m not exactly sure what he’s trying to tell me. So, to go back to school or not, that is the question.

I would think that if I was supposed to just keep doing what I’m doing I wouldn’t constantly think about other options (I mean literally all day everyday for probably the last year.) I know some of you who are reading this have heard me talk about this a trillion times. Don’t you think if I wasn’t supposed to follow another path, it wouldn’t keep me up at night?

Ok enough of a long boring post. If you made it down to this point, thanks!

Looking forward to…

Going to Utah in July for a wedding

Going to Hocking Hills in June w/ some friends

Finding more cool places in Columbus

Visiting the temple once a month with James

Turning 29 (this is going to be a good year!)

Paying off my car (2 more payments!)

Going to NYC in the fall (hopefully)

Seeing old friends

Losing weight

Starting a family (hopefully!)

Getting a road bike

Riding the roller coasters at Cedar Point & Kings Island

Visiting the Goodson’s and Martin’s in Cincy

Going to Indiana for a work trip

Buying a grill and having a cookout in our deck!

Two months and counting

We’ve been in C-bus now for two months, crazy isn’t it?? Here’s a quick run-down of what we’ve done so far in case you don’t care to scroll through my posts:

James:  basically finished his first quarter in school, got called as the 2nd Couns. in the YM pres, gave a talk on the holy ghost, met his home teaching companion, mowed our lawn with a ghetto lawn mower about 5x, learned the routes of COTA (bus system), bought steph her favorite flowers (tulips), took a job on campus at the Buck ID center, hugged steph about a trillion times, been an all around good guy and played lots of video games with his bro-in-law tony.

Steph:   got a part time job at Target, got a full time job doing marketing for a self storage company, went to a bridal shower, got in touch with some old friends, babysat her favorite kids (Ethan, Mason, Corinne), gave a talk on the holy ghost, got called as the ward bulletin specialist, fashion coordinator for her sis-in-law greta (aka went to the mall with her), got asked to be a bridesmaid, got hit on at work.

Where does the time go?

Do you know the answer to this?  I swear, one minute there is NOTHING going on, the next I look at my calendar and think, um, there goes the summer.  I am not busier than anyone else, but dang I came home tonight from work and thought to myself: Man, I left clothes in the dryer, crap there’s 3 full dirty laundry bins…THREE!!, I think there’s a bill on the counter that was due on the 23rd, we have no eggs, I have to pack for this weekend! I haven’t worked out in TWO weeks!!! The list can go on and on.  Meanwhile, I want to get together with our new friends, see my niece and nephews every possible second I can.  Catch up with some long lost friends who are also new to the area.

Part of me thinks, dude are my priorities so out of whack that I’m really bad at time management? I mean less be honest on any given day that is a yes…but as much as I am obsessive about cleanliness, organization and “everything has its place” sometimes I just have to turn the other way! For example, it is 12:27 right now I should be sleeping but here I am blogging - I have felt like there’s no exciting events happening…but tonight I needed to get my thoughts out so here will be a series of a few posts on various topics.

I guess I am self evaluating in this blog.  Realizing it’s ok that I’m not perfect (SO not perfect), being lazy is acceptable in certain situations (right?), beating myself up over the things I didn’t do/say isn’t going to change my situation.

So if you’re out there and I’ve said I want to get together, I really do!!! (Jackie!!!) I promise to get in touch with you very soon and know those weren’t empty words!

How not to format your pictures

Please excuse my formatting woes in the below post.  I have a new version of the blog software and my skillz arnt’ wut de uset 2 bee.