Jared and Julie

As many of you know, there is a new guy in my life now named Jared. We met through a mission companion of mine who lives in Cedar City (where Jared lives). We started with emails, progressed to phone calls, and now are talking on the phone nightly for several hours.

Last weekend we had the big meeting. I drove up to Cedar City and Jared had a wonderful weekend planned. It was SUU's homecoming, so a lot of the activities revolved around that. He cooked 4 wonderful meals and treated me like a queen while I was there. We had a great time.

Here are some picutres from our weekend. We went to the SUU football game. Jared made sure that I was properly attired in SUU gear. We also went hiking in Zion's National Park on the Kolob trail. It was absolutely beautiful. We are having a fun time getting to know each other and look forward to the weekends we have planned to spend together.

Painting!

I had a new roommate move in last weekend. In the room where she moved in, there were some Chinese characters on the wall that had been painted over. However, they had bled through the paint. This didn't look very good, so I decided to fix it before she moved in.

I talked with my co-workers and asked them how to get rid of it. They told me about Kilz and how to use that first and then paint over it. Well this was the first time I've really looked at the paint in my house. I realized the original paint was an off-white color. It is on all the ceilings and the walls of 3 of the bedrooms upstairs. All the walls downstairs and the walls in the bedroom my roommate moved into were all a darker brown color. There are a lot of paint cans in the garage. So I went out and did some investigating. I saw there was a large can of brownish colored paint. I ASSUMED it was the color of the browner shade of paint because why would there be original paint out there? Me being the brilliant one, took it to home depot (there was a home depot tag on the lid with the shade-smart thinking) and they mixed up a small can of matching paint.

The work began. It took 4 coats of the primer before the characters did not bleed through. I waited 24 hours and came back the next night to paint over the primer with my new can of paint. As I started, I realized after a few strokes that it was a little lighter than the paint on the walls. At that moment, it finally dawned on my that this was the color of the ORIGINAL paint. So......the characters are gone, but now my roommate got to move in to her room with a patch of light colored paint by the window. Unfortunately, there aren't any more BIG cans of paint in the garage. Just little cans that I really don't think match the walls. Anyone have suggestions on how to match the paint on the walls to a can of paint so I can retouch this patch, once again?

Mr. Berry Love

Chester loves to get groomed. Unfortunately, it is very expensive so it only happens about every 8-10 weeks or so (depends on how long I can put up with his long hair). 2 weeks ago it was time for his spa treatment. I call it a spa treatment because I drop him off and he is there for 5-6 hours. What are they doing to a dog for 5-6 hours? I have no idea. The service includes shampoo, cut, teeth brush, nails clipped, ears cleaned, and who knows what else. Well they let me pick the fragrence of the shampoo, so I decided on Berry Love.

When I went to pick up Chester, the groomer came over to talk to me about him. I was a little worried because I never know how he reacts. I just drop him off and pick him up 5 hours later. She said he was the BEST dog she had ever groomed. He sat there and loved to be shampooed and sat very nice while his nails were being clipped. He enjoyed his teeth brushing (probably because she had peanut butter flavored toothpaste). She also said he was one of the cutest dogs she has seen. Anyway, she told me she would be transferring stores but wants to continue to groom Chester. She offered me a 10% discount if I was willing to drive to the other location. As tempting as that was, it is too far away when this location is around the corner from my house.

All in all, Chester is a pri-madonna. This whole experience just proves that. What's not to love about such a well-behaved-for-the-groomer dog? Now only if he would learn to stop chewing on my furniture!