Weekend FuN!!

Josh and I both have different favorite hobbies.  Mine is running and doing races, Josh's in golfing.  So this weekend we both got to enjoy both!

Josh was able to play in two golf tournaments this weekend.  One was Friday, and the other was Saturday.  He loves to golf!  Josh is not a morning person.  But he has no problem getting up at 4:45am if it includes golfing.  Friday he played in a tournament at Hill Air Force base and loved it!

On Saturday his tournament was at a golf course right by our house.  The "C" on the mountain is the same "C" you can see when you look out our front windows of our house.

On Saturday, I had to be up at 2am for my Utah Valley Half Marathon.  I had to be to the bus pick up by 4am, and had to drive an hour to get there.  They drove us up to the start of the race, and then we had to sit there in the dark and cold for an hour and a half.  Luckily they had these fires going about every so often that helped keep us warm.  They were so smokey though.  I smelled campfire the whole race and the whole drive home.

Shanon and Shane, did the 10K of the Utah Valley race, and then waited for me until I finished the half.  I knew I'd be slower at this race because of my hip injury's.  I finished 13.1 miles in 2:00:25!

 I've decided that running is really what keeps me sane.  While I'm running it's my time away from the demands and judgements of the world.

 Happy Weekend everyone!

I love SuMmEr!

Summer is my most favorite time of year!  I wish I lived somewhere where it was summer all year long!  

Our Saturday started out with me running an 8K race!  I love races!  I love having something to look forward to, and to push myself to be better.  This run was down Millcreek Canyon in Salt Lake.  It was perfect!  The weather was perfect.  Not hot, not cold, and no wind.  Josh was a trooper and went to this race with me.  I love it when he goes to races with me and is there waiting for me at the finish line.  I'm a lucky girl to have such a supportive husband!

After my race we came home and did some yard work.  That seems to be part of our routine every weekend lately.  Hopefully it will all be done soon so we have time to do other fun things.  After that we went to the drag races at Rocky Mountain Raceways.  We took Josh's dad with us because he loves going as much as we do.  We only got to watch the races for a bout two and a half hours before it started raining.  We had a blast!

Hogle Zoo 2015

Yesterday was Josh's works day at the zoo.  Since we thought it was a little weird for just the two of us to go to the zoo, we borrowed one of our niece's!  What a great reason to spend some time with her!  Jaida is Josh's brothers little girl.  She is 2 1/2 years old.  She is full of attitude, but is so nice and polite to everyone.  She came to our house on Friday night.  This is how the first night of our sleepover went. No I did not get much sleep!

She had to be right next to Josh or I the entire night.  We have a king size bed so there should be plenty of room for the three of us.  The second night we were much smarter and put blankets down on the floor and had her sleep there.  That was a much better arrangement.
The zoo was tons of fun!  Josh and I have gone to the zoo before by ourselves, but it wasn't as much fun as it was with Jaida.  Josh's work provided breakfast for everyone, and then we got to walk around and see the animals at the zoo.  Jaida got so excited to see all of the animals.  She wasn't a big fan of the dinosaurs.

Today should of been the day.

Today should have been the day. 

Today should have been the day that our lives were changed forever in a positive and exciting way.  Our future should of begun to include our new baby starting today.  We should have been looking forward to all of the new and exciting things that new parents get to enjoy. 

While we’ll never know why this happened to us, all we can try to keep telling ourselves is what is meant to be will be.  We believe that we have our own special guardian angel looking out for us in heaven.  We are unsure if another baby is in our future, but we will never forget the one that should have been.  I can't help but think how different our lives would be right now, if things had happened as we had planned and been preparing for.  

Birthdays, MRI, and a new job!

It's been an eventful week for us!  So I thought I'd better blog about it before I forget all about it because of how busy I'm about to be!
My birthday was last Tuesday.  The older I get, the more I really dislike birthdays.  I miss the days when birthdays meant lots of surprises and cake and ice cream!  I still remember when I was a kid, birthdays were so much fun because all the cousins would come over to celebrate!  Since Josh and I have been together, we try to do something extra fun around our birthdays.  Our birthdays are only two days apart, for those of you who don't know.  We usually go on vacation or something fun like that!  This year we couldn't really do anything because of moving and Josh's new job.  So instead of doing something super fun for my birthday, I decided to have an MRI!  
Since about August, I've had a lot of pain in both hips.  The most painful time is every night when I'm trying to sleep.  No matter how I try to sleep, I can't because my hips hurt so bad.  I've been wanting to see a doctor about it for a long time, but with living in Roosevelt, that made it extra difficult.  There's no Sports Medicine doctors in Roosevelt.  I had been to a really good doctor in West Jordan, before we moved.  She helped me so much when I had a knee surgery, and when I had a tear in my achilles.  So I knew I definitely wanted to go to her.  Part of the issue with being so far away when we were living in Roosevelt, is that any doctors appointment in Salt Lake, meant taking a whole day off of work.  It was a 5 hour round trip drive, plus the time spent at the doctors office.  I knew that in order to get anything figured out with my hips, I'd have to have an initial doctors appointment and probably have X-Rays done.  I felt like my hip issues were pretty serious, so after that I'd probably have to have an MRI scheduled, and then of course a follow up doctors appointment.  That's three days off work and the probably still wouldn't be fixed.  So when Josh and I decided to move back to Salt Lake, I called and made an appointment with the Sports Medicine doctor.  
Everything went just like I thought it would.  I met with the doctor and told her all about my pain.  I explained to her that no amount of ibuprofen or laying off on the running, seemed to help with the pain I was in all day every day.  So then next came X-Rays.  From the X-Rays should could see that my right hip did have some type of trauma to it.  So then of course the next step was an MRI.  This was scheduled for my birthday.  I wasn't going to complain because I knew that it needed to be done.  
I've had an MRI done one time before on my knee, but this MRI was something completely different.  Because of what the doctor thought was wrong with my hips, I had to have dye injected down into the joint of both sides of my hips.  Holy moly!  They did numb it before they did the injection, but it was still pretty painful.  Then after that I was stuck in the MRI machine for atleast an hour.  They had to get images of both hips which seemed to take forever!  I had the MRI follow up with the doctor the next day.  The doctor explained to be that I had a labral tear in both hips.  Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but atleast I finally had an answer!!  My doctor explained to me that the best way to "fix" this, was to have surgery to reattach the tear that is causing me the pain.  She said that I can also try cortisone shots, but they aren't a long term fix, and if they aren't injected right into the joint where the injury is, they can be ineffective.  So looks like another surgery is somewhere in the future, but not anytime soon.  The doctor said that I can keep running, but she would suggest that I don't do any activity like yoga that puts more pressure on the joints.  So I'll just keep running, and not being able to sleep at night!
Josh's birthday was last Thursday.  Josh absolutely loves his birthday!  I'm not exactly sure why, because I'm not that great magnificent wife that is creative and goes crazy on his birthday.  He was pretty bummed that we weren't able to go on a trip this year.  Luckily Josh has some really great co-works that surprised him at work!  That night we went to Josh's parents for dinner.  His parents always spoil us with their yummy cooking!

To top off the last week, I was offered a job at Overstock.com!! I am an Executive Assistant to one of the Senior Vice Presidents.  I am super excited about this job!  My first day is tomorrow.  I'm not too good with being the new person, but I'm hoping I pick up on things pretty quickly.  I've heard nothing but good things about this company and how well they treat their employees.  Today a pretty awesome gift basket was delivered to my house with a nice note welcoming me to the company.  

I didn't know this until I did some research on the company, but Overstock.com is based right here in Salt Lake.  I'm excited to be working for this company for hopefully a very long time!

Over the last 5 1/2 years that Josh and I have been together, we have never had the same work schedule.  We are used to hardly ever seeing each other, and very rarely having days off together.  This will be a whole new experience for us!  We will get to enjoy weekends and holidays together.  I'm so thankful that this has finally happened for us!  

Finally Feeling Settled!

The last three weeks have really been a roller coaster, and not in a good way.  Besides the stress of moving and finding a new job, we had to add the stress of the renters that were in our house for the last eighteen months.  We really did not think that this would be a stress at all.  We had a property manager for our house for the last eighteen months.  Before we hired him, we had a meeting with him and went over our expectations of the people we wanted to be living in our home.  He assured us that they did background checks on potential tenants, and that they did do random walk throughs of the homes to make sure that things were being taken care of properly.  This made us feel like our home would be taken care of while we were away.  

I met with the property manager on a Monday to change the locks on the house and do a walk through.  At that same time, we had also scheduled Daisy Maids to come in and do a light cleaning of the house.  I am major OCD on cleaning, but I kind of have an issue with cleaning up other people's filth.  I can only handle cleaning up my own.  The property manager was late to our appointment, and Daisy Maids was waiting in the drive way.  The property manager called me and gave me the code to get into the lock box where a key to the house was at.  I got the key and let Daisy Maids in to start cleaning the house.  As soon I opened the door I was sick to my stomach.  There were holes in my once perfect walls.  The baseboards had a layer of dust on him like you wouldn't believe.  The carpet was just nasty.  I've lived in quite a few places since I moved away from home, and I always thought it was common sense to clean a place before you moved out.  Obviously whoever rented our house while we were away, did not have the same thinking I did.  It was obvious that nothing had been wiped down, vacuumed, or cleaned before they left.  Thank heavens I had already had the appointment set up for Daisy Maids.  Then I went upstairs where I saw the bathrooms that they were just starting to clean.  I think it's pretty safe to say that the toilets had never been cleaned in the last 18 months.  Probably the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.  

Daisy Maids did their cleaning for about two hours.  When the property manager showed up we began changing the locks.  I then saw that the outdoor lights on the house would not shut off using the light switches.  The property manager took the light cover off and found that the renters had rewired the lights so that they could not be turned on or off.  What the point of that is, I have no idea. As the property manager and I walked through out the house, I could not believe all of the holes in the walls.  These weren't just small nail holes.  These were huge holes and 5-6 right together in a row.  When we bought the house three years ago, we had never hung anything on the walls.  We had brand new carpet installed and the entire house painted right after we bought it.  The property manager kept telling me that everything to him seemed like "normal wear and tear".  He tried to convince me that the reason why I thought that things were so bad was because I had an emotional connection to the house.  I tried to see his side of it, but I was having a hard time.

Later on that same day Josh and I came back over to the house.  The house had been cleaned and still had a smell to it.  So we scheduled Stanley Steamer to come in the next day and clean all of the carpets.  On this same day we also found that there were several scratches in our stainless steel fridge.  These scratches don't come out.  We had also bought the appliances brand new when we bought the house.  As I washed down the walls, I kept noticing that there was a lot of dog hair everywhere.  One of the stipulations with having a pet in our home, is that the monthly rent would be increased to cover any damage the pet might do.  At no time did the renters let the property manager know that they had a pet.

Stanley Steamer came the next day and steamed the carpets.  We thought that everything should be good to go at this point.  Boy were we wrong!!  We moved all of our things into the house that following Saturday.  By Saturday night, I was noticing that as I would walk through the living room, I would smell an animal pee smell.  I kept trying to tell myself I was just imagining it.  Then I kept smelling it more and more often over the next couple of days.  It got so bad, that I wouldn't even go down into the living room.  It was so strong!  Because we had already had the carpets shampooed, we figured the only way to get rid of the smell was to replace the carpets.  At this point I had been contacting the property manager about what we were experiencing.  He talked to the renters, and the finally admitted to having a pet "occasionally".  I'm not quite sure what that even means.  We went and picked out carpet on that Wednesday.  We had to move all of the furniture out of the rooms to have every room empty for the new carpet to be laid.  This felt like moving all over again, minus the packing up boxes.  We moved as much as we could into the bathrooms, kitchen, and then what was left into the garage and basement.  On Thursday we began pulling the carpet up in the living room and the entry room.  Boy were we shocked!  There was pee stains everywhere on the back side of the carpet.  It was shocking!  I do have plenty of pictures of this as evidence!  The smell once we pulled the carpet up was even worse!  We did some research online and found that because it was so bad, we need to spray bleach on the entire base floor to kill the enzymes.  Then after that was dry, we had to roll on a coat of Kilz that would kill the order for good.  We found after pulling out all of the carpet in our entire house, that there was pee stains everywhere.  We still couldn't believe how someone could live like this.  They had to have known that their animal was not potty trained and was peeing all over the house.  All I can figure is that this wasn't there house so they didn't care.  Hopefully they learn to care when they get the $4000.00 bill for all of the damage they did to our home.  We really did not expect any of this to happen.  

It's been almost three weeks now since this nightmare began.  We now have a house full of brand new carpet that doesn't smell like pee.  Thank heavens!  One of the questions our property manager asked us is that if we go to court, can we testify that we have never had an animal in our house.  For those of you that really know me, you know that I'm not much of an animal person.  The closest thing we have had to a pet, is a Beta fish, and last I checked, they don't pee everywhere.  So through this experience we have a learned a couple of things.  First thing is never rent your home out to someone, unless there's no chance of ever living there again.  Second thing is that we must be some pretty good renters!  We have always cleaned the apartment/house were were leaving, the best we could before we left.

This was the first weekend that we could truly enjoy Josh having weekends off.  It has been so nice, and feels like a new life for both of us.  I'm used to being alone on the weekends and having to find things to do myself.  Yesterday we went to the movies, and then just relaxed.  If it hadn't been such crappy weather, I'm sure we would of been doing more yard work, but hopefully that can happen next weekend!

More changes to our ever changing life....

More changes are happening in our life.  It seems as though there's never a dull moment.  I hope after all of these upcoming huge changes, our life settles down for awhile.
After living in Roosevelt, Utah for the last year and a half, we have decided that this is just not the place for us.  We primarily moved here because of Josh's new job.  Josh's friend owns a hotel and restaurant here in Roosevelt.  We moved here so that Josh could be the general manager of both.  After a year and a half of a very poor work life balance, and many other issues, we have decided to move back to our home in Magna.  Josh and I were maybe seeing each other a total of 10-12 hours a week.  Between our two work schedules, we just never saw each other.  This was extremely hard on myself because we don't know anyone here, and all of our friends and family are two and a half hours away in Salt Lake.  There's many details to the reasons why we came to the decision to move, but I'll leave those to your imagination!  
Our official moving date is April 11.  Josh is actually starting a new job in Salt Lake, starting on March 30!  We are beyond excited for this new career opportunity he has been given.  He's finally going to have a professional job that is Monday thru Friday!  He is going to be working as a recruiter for companies looking to hire employees in technology.  This is a whole new world to Josh, but he is already so excited to start this new journey.  We've already bought him a whole new wardrobe and a book to help him get started!  
I just put in my two week notice at work on Friday.  In my whole adult life, I have had to put in two week notice for the third time now.  It doesn't get any easier each time.  I always dread the day I have to do it, and don't get any sleep the night before.  Thankfully my boss was understanding and can see why staying in Roosevelt just isn't an option for us.  So my last day is on April 3.  I'm not quite sure where my next job adventure will be as of right now.  Between getting everything packed up here in Roosevelt, all of the moving details, and being two and a half hours away from any potential interview, I have decided to wait till we get moved to even start looking.
One thing that we are both so excited about is moving back into our home that we own in Magna!  We have had an awesome property management company looking after it while we have been in Roosevelt.  We have had some awesome tenants there the entire time we have been here.  It will be so nice to be back in our home with lots more space!  We're already looking forward to doing yard work when we get back.  
We can't wait to be more involved with our family and friends once we get all settled!  It's been extremely difficult being in Roosevelt all by ourselves.  Even though our move to Roosevelt didn't work out, we both have no regrets that we did it.  Moving is hard.  Starting new jobs is hard.  Being away from family and friends is hard.  But if we would of never given it a chance, we would always wonder what it would of been like.  Life is about living and learning, and we both have definitely learned from this experience!