Yesterday at dinner with Will’s family we all went around and said what we loved about big Willie since his birthday is today.
It truly warmed my heart seeing most of his families eyes well with tears as they spoke about Will and how he has impacted their life.
Everyone noted on the fact that he is kind, happy, hilarious, and most importantly such a great friend to anyone and everyone.
One of the things I love most about him is his genuine happiness.
If you think I am a happy person than you’ve never met Will.
He blows me out of the water in every category possible!!
I am grateful every single day that I am married to someone so much better than me. He teaches me the greatest life lessons every day of who I should strive to become and how I should respond to situations life throws my way.
A quick little story that I love about Will is how he received his name William West…..
5 weeks into his moms pregnancy, via an ultrasound, the doctors saw an enormous mass concealing him. Based on blood tests, the doctors discussed the possibility of a molar pregnancy and suggested abortion. His mom chose not to abort and at a healthy rate- the baby grew, the mass diminished and the blood tests improved.
During one of the doctors appointments, the doctor commented to his Mom and said,
“This baby has a real WILL to live,”
and that is how he received his name, Will.
His middle name is a miracle as well actually.
At 31 weeks, his mom Jeni was in Utah visiting family preparing to return home to North Carolina where they were living at the time (his Dad was going to Duke).
Jeni was bothered by some slight contractions and decided to go see a doctor. While she was there the doctors face turned pale and concluded that the baby was about to be delivered prematurely.
Baby Will was transverse breach and Jeni was fully dilated ready to go. Will arrived via emergency C-section shortly thereafter, unexpectedly born 7 weeks premature at the end of his moms family vacation out West.
On Sunday I made the cutest heart cookies to give to my primary kiddies since I was released after 2 and a half years.
I will miss those cute 4 years olds but I am so excited to be teaching Relief Society now! I am nervous because I will be teaching a group of very educated older women but I’m up for the challenge and think it will be great for me to get outside of my comfort zone.
The cookies really were pretty easy to make and bagged up quite nicely as well to gift (if cooled properly).
My co-workers also weren’t too mad when I took them in the next day to work for them to eat too ha!
The recipe is the same base Chocolate Chip recipe from Will’s mom–
In a mixer stir together:
2 cubes softened butter
2 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 tsp of vanilla, baking power, baking soda & salt.
Mix ingredients together then add 2 cups + 3/4 cup of flour.
Roll out on lined cookie sheet w/ parchment paper.
Bake at 350 for 14 minutes!
Then get a heart shaped cookie cutter and cut out your hearts once the cookie sheet has completely cooled.
My entire family (Isabelle especially) LOVE the outsides of the hearts more than the actual hearts haha! The crumbles are dang good I must admit.
Enjoy!
(ps sorry if you’ve seen my blog undergo some bugs lately i’ve been having serious issues over here!)
If you follow me on Snapchat, you’d see that on Sunday I had quite the baking bug.
I had a whole bunch of ripe bananas so I spent my entire afternoon baking up a storm! I made Avalanche Bars (which don’t require bananas but sounded delish haha), banana frosted cookies, and blender banana muffins (which I loved!).
My aunt Kristy always brings these cookies to family parties and I’ve been in love with them ever since I was a little girl. I’ve been making them quite a bit lately so when Will asked me to bake them because he was craving them I knew they were quite the big deal. He never craves desserts!
I’ve been having to refer to Kristy’s e-mail of the recipe when I bake them so I thought I might as well post it here for reference for me… and for you!
Here it is–
1 cup shortening (butter flavor)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 large ripe bananas mashed
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Mix all ingredients together. Chill for 1 hour.
Drop spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet.
Bake 8-10 minutes at 350,
Frosting
3 1/2 cups powered sugar
1/2 stick softened butter
3 teaspoons milk (I use evaporated milk)
1 teaspoon vanilla
I drove past a marquee in front of a High School the other day and was SHOCKED to see there was less than 50 days left of summer!
SLOOOOW DOOOOOWN!!!
It is going by so fast (do I start off every blog post by saying that?! haha) and I can’t believe it!
In a nutshell, this summer has really been filled with Will working on his medical school applications and me working. But here are some tid bits of other things we have been up to.
My cute sis-in-law and I have planned a couple of weddings lately which has been a BLAST. I love the chaotic, busyness surrounding events and LOVE watching all the planning come to life. I am also a big fan of weddings in general so it’s definitely a win-win to be apart of more of them.
My beautiful friend Tessa had a wedding in the woods a month or so ago. Her and Cole probably make the most attractive couple on earth… right?
I already have dibs on being their children’s agent.
So sorry.
I still have dreams about this dang cheese board from their wedding ^.
If you know me, you know CHEESE IS MY WEAKNESS.
The day I can go into the local store here and buy however much fancy cheese I want… that will be the day. Why does cheese have to be so expensive?! Ha.
Will and I kicked off our summer bucket list by going downtown and riding bikes!
SLC has the coolest bikes that you can rent for however long you want. We loved cruising around the city where we both raised. Always new things to find and see!
One of the hugest highlights of June was watching my best friend Karli marry the love of her life in the SLC temple.
I met Karli at BYU in 2010 and we instantly became inseparable.
We had the same major, every class together, always roomed with each other (in bunk beds haha), and never got sick of each other!
(well I still speak for myself on that one 😉
But her wedding day was absolutely flawless.
I also couldn’t be happier that all my college best friends were in the same place again!
This whole growing up and everyone moving away thing is hard.
Her and John even jumped in the pool during the reception!
Leave it to Karli to truly “take the plunge”.
You know you’re at your bff’s wedding when there’s this kind of banner.. 🙂
We celebrated both of my parents birthdays on Fathers Day.
Talk about a special day!
Another item on our bucket list was to go up to the Deer Valley Concert Series and watch one of their free outdoor concerts!
It was intitially going to be a double date with our friends Hilary and Jordan but when my family caught wind of the idea they decided to join.
Such a fun family/friend night!
Afterwards we went up the Montage in Deer Valley and roasted s’mores (another item on the summer bucket list!). They have the best spread of s’mores goods up there. Those are homemade cinnamon marshmallows above… HEAVEN!
Hope everyone’s summer is going GREAT so far! Soak it up.
just workin on my fitness….
(literally all I could think of for this title. Judge not. And if you don’t understand it no worries hahaha)ANYWAYS
I have been pretty apprehensive to post anything fitness related on here since I feel like I am NO expert on this topic AT ALL.
However I have received quite a bit of e-mails about the topic and since I just passed the NASM Group Personal Training test I feel as though I can maybe talk about this subject.. a little bit 🙂
SO here they are…
(once again.. these are all opinions)
1. Whatever it is, be active everyday.
Growing up my Dad ran 6 miles every single morning (and still does to this day!). I was raised with an awareness that exercise was important and my Dad explained he felt it was the absolute best way to start his day. He would always encourage (/force) us to go on bike rides alongside him on Saturday mornings, ski with him every Saturday in the winter, mow the lawn & do all yard work in the summer. He also encouraged us to pursue sports that allowed us to be active throughout the week. Although yard work doesn’t seem like an exercise it most DEFINITELY is. I grew up mowing the lawn at my parents or the neighbors, trimming the bushes in the backyard, weeding, gardening, pouring bark, shoveling the snow, as well as doing all household chores. Is it weird for me to say I honestly miss mowing my parents lawn? LOVED IT. Point is: be active whatever you do! Get up and move around for at least an hour every day.I try to be active everyday of the week (except for Sundays). On Sundays I LOVE my slow walks with Will in the evening but throughout the week I do more high intensity workouts. I will most likely go on a run, do intervals on the treadmill, attempt a workout I find online, go on a long walk, play tennis, complete a Nike Training club workout etc. It has now just become a habit of mine! I wake up, exercise, then start my day!
2. Cardio everyday won’t do a thing.
Something really hard for me to realize was that solely doing cardio wouldn’t ever change my body. I love getting my “steps” in on my fitness watch and assumed if my step count wasn’t high I wasn’t getting a great workout in. Well that’s FALSE! It was neat for me to learn that doing weight training exercise in the morning would help me continue to burn calories throughout my day compared to the instant/only calories I burn while I go for a run.
3. Find a workout buddy.
Find someone you live by and pick exercises you like to do together! Whether that’s going on a long walk after a work/school day, hiking, early morning gym sessions, at home workouts, tennis etc… trust me, exercising is easier with a +1!
4. Switch it up.
For almost a year straight I was running 4-6 miles everyday of the week (besides Sundays). While I never saw any drastic results in my body, my body felt tired and brittle due to such high impact exercise every single day. I also stopped menstruating completely! (TMI sorry). I felt unhealthy (oddly enough) and was worried my body wasn’t behaving the way it should. Now I switch it up everyday and feel a lot healthier! I will run one day, do yoga the next at Core Power, go to Dash fitness the next, run/walk at the High School Track the next and then maybe go to a class at Orange Theory or something similar. I never do the same workout twice in a week!
5. Listen to your body
Far too often I get all ready to go exercise and realize my body is TIRED. Juggling quite a bit of different things in my life can wear out my body and I have learned to not push it. Bodies are fragile! If you feel lethargic, have exercised too much that week, or have hardly gotten any sleep, go take a nap! I find that resting is a lot more healthy than a workout if your body isn’t up for it at the time.
6. For runners: shoes are key.
If you are a runner/wanting to get into running I suggest you get a pair of GOOD running shoes. When I first got into running 5-6 years ago I went into my local running store and they actually filmed me running and told me how much I pronate etc. They told me the perfect shoe for me due to how I run was this shoe. Once you find your perfect running shoe running becomes easier! Promise.
7. Enjoy it!
A lot of people look at exercise as a burden or something of that nature but I honestly enjoy it. I love getting endorphins and finding different exercises I love. It’s a lot easier to do things you love so learn to LOVE it!
I’m thrilled that I finally found a way good workout that I absolutely LOVE and look forward to. It’s at Dash studios in SLC and the class is called Obsidian. It’s so hard to describe but basically it’s just a workout like NO OTHER. I leave every class already sore! I do NOT understand how that even happens haha. Go try it if you are in Utah!! I am considering getting certified in it I love it that much. You will never find a workout like it. Promise.
Also, I’m loving Core Power yoga! Your first week IS FREE. See details here.
8. 80/20
A sad reality is that no matter how much you exercise, if you don’t eat right you probably won’t lose too much weight. I am NO example of this so don’t take this advice from me but take it from the experts. Haha. I love food too much to be good at this dang it -__-
9. Love your body
More importantly than anything listed above, love your body. Our body is a gift to us and it’s so so so sad for me to see people absolutely hate it. For a while, I really wanted a body different from the one I had. I wanted this to be different and that to be different, I wanted her legs and this & that. After dabbling with a little disorder three years ago I have come to a realization that I will never look at my body like that ever again. It’s MY body. MINE. It’s different than yours. It’s different than everyone else’s… and that’s pretty dang neat. SO love it. Love every bit of it. Embrace it. It’s too big of a gift to hate it. We’re all different for a reason.
Anyways, those are rules I generally use. I’m sure it’s all information you’ve heard before.
I’m sure you are all doing just fine doin what you’re doin!Here are some of my favorite exercise picks from Nordstrom.
Last weekend I went to LA with one of my absolute best friends, Sarah!
We both work for Google Fiber so we were able to go out and work from the Venice Beach office and it was incredible! I have only ever actually been to LA for a couple hours so it was so great to actually be able to go and see the city.
I loved every bit of it!
Sarah did a dang good job at coming up with an itinerary prior to the trip so we could make sure we hit up all the places we wanted to see.
Maybe it all revolved around food.. maybe it didn’t.
Sarah’s sister Mary is going to law school out at USC so we stayed with her and she was just the besthost of all time!!
I mean she picked us up from the airport at 8am and our first stop was California Donuts. That’s true love right there.
I have always wanted to try California Donuts and I really did love them. My favorite was probably the Reese’s one.. that place sure does know how to make their donuts!
The Venice Beach Google Office was a big dream. I could go off on the food there for 30 minutes alone but I think you all would close your browsers faster than I could say “salad bar”.
I will, however, just tell you guys that the food was delish and I also loved how “beachy” they made the office. They had darling surf boards, murals etc. to make it feel like you were on the beach. I loved it.
Mary lives at a place she deemed as The Lawft
(because she’s going to Law School.. and it’s a loft.. get it? lol)
How sweet is she though with that welcome gift basket! She’s just the biggest gem.
Her place was RIGHT by the LA Temple so it was incredible to walk by/see it everyday.
On our first night we ate Mexican Food, saw all the pretty flowers, and walked around The Grove shopping center.
How pretty is that bougainvillea?!
And those sisters of course.
Run at Runyon Canyon
Obviously one of my absolute highlights of the trip was seeing all of the incredible murals & walls. I am just the biggest fan of ALL COLORFUL WALLS EVERYWHERE!
We even got to a point where Mary would be driving and say,
“Ooh! That’s a cool wall. Let’s go get a pic for Liv.”
Lol. What can I say? They all make my day!
One day walking around Venice Beach I found a store called Will Leather Goods. They handed out free chocolates so it is now my new favorite store of all time.
Another wall…
My bad.
While walking down an alley way behind a restaurant we saw this cute little space and wanted a picture in front of it. When I saw a blonde girl leaving the back of the restaurant I was literally ON THE VERGE of asking her to take our picture … then she turns around and it’s JESSICA SIMPSON.
Don’t worry, I stopped my sentence before I made a complete fool of myself.
One of my favorite stops on the trip was visiting Manhattan Beach. For some reason I felt like the beach held a very “east coast” feeling.
Which is really odd because I’ve never even been to an East Coast Beach… so maybe I have zero idea what I’m talking about HAHA! But I loved the entire feeling of it.
Just a heads up that I am going to write a post soon ENTIRELY on the food we ate in LA.. which is both extremely embarrassing & absolutely salivating at the same time.
If you saw my Snapchat you saw that we literally ate at 6 different places each day.. ha! We love our food.
However, THIS ice cream needed to be documented ASAP. Hands down.. the BEST Ice Cream I’ve ever had. It was at Grand Central Market and I would be lying if I told you I haven’t dreamed about it since I’ve had it….
We’ve always wanted to visit the Beverly Hills hotel so we loved going and having (sharing) breakfast there one morning!
I felt like we were in year 1912 and I was lovin every second of it.
Everything is pink, striped, and plams around the entire hotel resort. Sarah’s heaven!
I loved my entire LA experience and wouldn’t of wanted to share with anyone else besides Sar. She is moving to Tennessee in 3 weeks and I can’t even talk about it without tearing up! She was the best travel buddy! Her husband is starting DO school this July and I am so excited for their adventure coming up.
After a couple of years of wanting to start our own race, this year we finally are!!
We are so excited it’s all coming to fruition.
Will and I, with the help of two of our friends, are putting together a Fun Run to help raise money to go towards the Utah Autism Foundation.
Will has 5 cousins who have been diagnosed with Autism so Autism has always hit home for us. The prevalence of Autism is increasingly going up so research is needed now more than ever.
SO!
If you are in Utah mark your calendars for May 29th.
It will be held at Sugarhouse Park in SLC starting at 5:30 p.m.
We are going to start the race at 6 p.m. and then project Big Hero 6 onto a big screen in the park. It is going to be so much fun and we would love to see you all there!
On the first day of our vacation, my Dad & Eliza and I went on a trail run in the jungle. We did it last time we were here and were planning on it being around 2-3 miles. WELLLLL while we were on the run my Dad decides to climb in an opening of a barbed wire fence and discovers a bike trail legit IN the jungle.
It was incredible to run in the thick of the all the trees but also scary because we HAD NO IDEA when the trail was going to end. You couldn’t hear the ocean or any cars but we kept on going because it had to end somewhere right? Right.. it did end. After 8 miles. And ending with us climbing another barbed wire fence onto the highway. And navigating our way home. And trying our hardest to avoid all the poisonous frogs hahaha.
HOWEVER, way before we got completely lost we found this neat abandoned hotel! Due to safety hazards they had to stop the build but the view is INCREDIBLE on what progress they had so far. Later in the week we took the rest of our family back up to see it.
This is the type of exercise Will likes. There either has to be a basketball involved or a killer view to make it all worth it 😉
^and this is how you’d find Bake the entire trip lol. GoPro’ing in his “adventure” hat.
One night we went to visit the Marriott Hotel in Costa Rica because we had dinner at a nearby restaurant. How about that architecture?! I love it.
On night I had quite the “yolo” exeperience. We all did a fire on the beach and my little brother Jensen REEEALLY wanted to go jump in the ocean. So Will told him he’d go with him and I sat there and was like “What the heck! I’ll go too!” So we ran out and jumped in the ocean in the complete dark in our clothes.
It was hilarious because we would just be standing there chatting and before we knew it a wave was about to crash right on us. You weren’t able to see the waves because you couldn’t differentiate the sky from the sea so you would just get THRASHED with zero warning hahaha. It’s hard to explain but it was so funny to us.
You should see pictures of my mom & Bella as toddlers. THEY ARE IDENTICAL.
I’m having Lu withdrawals.
My absolute favorite part of any family vacation is finding our church and attending the meetings wherever we are. It’s insane because at home we walk to church but in Costa Rica (as well as many places worldwide) you have drive quite the distance to get there! This church was an hour long taxi ride away from where we were staying but we still made the effort to all go together.
I love the meetings even though I can’t understand a lick of what they’re saying. The feeling is always the same!
And our last night all together was spent at a restaurant with an incredible view of the sunset on the ocean. I’m a sucker for those sunsets.
(my mom must’ve had her eye on something looking reaaaal good on the menu 😉
The trip came to an end all too fast!
This is how I found my dad saying bye to Lu when our taxi came. He loves his first grand baby with his whole heart!
Byeeeee Costa Rica. Crossing my fingers I make it back to you one day!!!
Last weekend I celebrated my birthday in the best fashion possible…
With good food, friends, and treats!
The birthday celebrations truly started Thursday night when my work and I went to a cooking class at the Salt Lake Culinary Institute.
It was my first official cooking class and I absolutely loved every second of it!
I would definitely go to more cooking classes if they weren’t so dang expensive haha. I seriously had so much fun learning how to make homemade pasta, what ingredients to put in delicious sauces, and learning how to cut vegetables the right way.
Who knew cutting an onion could be done so easily?!
On Friday morning, I woke up around 6:30 am and went into the kitchen to find Will making me peach waffles for my birthday breakfast!
I am usually always the one waking up first since he stays up so much later than me typing essays so I thought it was so thoughtful of him to wake up early to do that for me.
We babysat the cutest family all weekend so Will watched the kids in the morning and let me go on walk with Sarah & Karli.
We have a walk we LOVE to do that is straight uphill for 2 miles and then back down for 2 miles. Just chatting the whole way up and down!
And I must say, I LOVED having Sarah back in town for my birthday!
After our walk, I went to Rich’s bagels with Sarah (two breakfasts are fine on your birthday, right?), went to the park with Castine, ate Dunford choocolate donuts, and I had a pretty cute visitor in the afternoon 🙂
My birthday evening was spent eating sushi, going to get yummy ice cream sandwiches, and hanging out with my family and friends.
When I was taking this picture of my ice cream sandwich cute Castine came up next to me and said,
“Well, WAIT! I want to be in it too!”
Oh man I just love her so much.
To top off the weekend, I spent Saturday morning running my favorite trail run up Milcreek canyon.
I go park my car at the top of the canyon and jog 8 miles home on the mountain bench.
It’s all fun and games until I have to beg someone to drive me back up to get my car later on in the day ha!
Also on Saturday-
Castine kept on saying she wanted to go visit her friends….
I said “Where are your friends?” and she replied “Scheels!”
Confused, we drove her out to Scheels and she took our hands and dragged us straight over to the fishes in the aquarium and said “SEE! THESE ARE MY FRIENDS!”
Cute thing.
Fish are friends not food, duh.
(little does that know that her dinner the night before was fish -__-)
We also took her on the ferris wheel at Scheels and it was probably one of the more frightening things I have ever done.
Nothing like stopping at the top and not wanting to move a muscle in fear of dying!
All in all is a was a great weekend with this fella by my side.
Does anyone else have this issue where you literally CAN’T sit down and do absolutely nothing?
I could NOT lay on the couch and watch Netflix episodes without doing something to keep me busy for the LIFE OF ME! Might be a sickness haha.. but I have been a busy body my entire life!
Since I’ve started Parenthood on Netflix I lately love to prop my laptop up on the counter and bake while I plow through some episodes.
On Monday afternoon I found a cookie recipe on Pinterest and wanted to try it out since I had to bring a dessert to my families BBQ for Memorial Day.
The cookies turned out GREAT so I had to share the recipe because they really were such a success!
If I find a good recipe I find it my public duty to share it haha.
The recipe made A LOT of mini cookies so I took the leftovers that we didn’t eat into work the next day and they were devoured in less than 30 minutes!
The recipe is from Cooking Classy and mine totally didn’t turn out nearly as cute as hers did… but they tasted DELISH. All that matters right?! 😉
Recipe:
Ingredients
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp cornstarch
1/4 + 1/8 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips, plus more for topping if desired
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl whisk together flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt for 20 seconds, set aside.
Place butter in a microwave safe bowl, heat in microwave on HIGH power until butter has melted halfway. Remove and whisk until fully melted. Pour butter into the bowl of an electric stand mixer. Add brown sugar and granulated sugar, fit mixer with paddle attachment and blend mixture on medium speed until well combined. Mix in egg and vanilla extract. With mixer set on low speed, slowly add in dry ingredients and mix until combined. Stir in chocolate chips.
Scoop dough out a slightly heaping 1/2 tsp at a time and drop onto plates (wax paper, whatever). Shape each into a ball, then if desired press 3 – 4 more chocolate chips into top (totally optional, mostly for looks…and more chocolate). Align on two Silpat or parchment paper lined baking sheets, spacing 1-inch apart. Bake in preheated oven about 5 – 6 minutes (they should still fill soft and slightly under-baked, they will continue to cook slightly once removed from oven so carefully not to over-bake). Remove from oven and cool on baking sheet several minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Store in an airtight container.
ENJOY!
I loved them.
(p.s. what are some of your favorite Cooking blogs? I love finding new ones with good recipes!!)
