I am a Princess....

You Are Pocahantas!

Free-spirited and wise. You have a strong passionate spirit that touches and changes all who know you. The wisdom and common sense that you have is really what guides you through life. Even so, you also have a very playful side that loves adventure and excitement.

Which Disney Princess Are You?

Amazing Dinner

So it's weird, growing up I hated cooking. I somehow always got my little sister to do it for me. You know the old trick. You put on your best puppy dog eyes and you say "but you make it so much better than I do." Even though it was usually something like chicken noodle soup or Raman Noodles it still got the job done. Karma must be a real thing because now Chris gives me the same look and says the exact same thing, and even though I invented this trick, it still works on me. lol. Anyway back to what I was saying. So since I've been married I actually enjoy cooking. I'd like to think I'm pretty decent...but it's just in my own mind and Chris doesn't dispute it.
So I'm always looking for good recipes and my mom kind of invented this one and it's become the new favorite in our house. I should have taken a picture to post on here...maybe next time. Anyway, it's really yummy, colorful and actually good for you. Oh and the best part it takes 15 minutes. It's kind of a throw together what you want recipe, but I thought I'd share it with you so you all can enjoy it to! I call it:
Mom's Chicken Tortellini ( I know, super creative)

What you need:
2 chicken breasts
1-2 cups spinach (de-stemmed)
1-2 Roma tomatoes
1-3 garlic cloves
1/4 cup red onion (cut up)
1 pkg Tri-colored Tortellini with Cheese (Macey's, frozen section)
1/3 cup Olive oil
1/4 Cup Mozzarella Cheese
Basil, Oregano, Salt and Pepper
Any vegetable you like (zucchini is really good in this)

Grill the chicken and when done cut into 1" cubes. While the chicken is cooking de-stem the spinach. Dice the tomatoes into small pieces. Chop the garlic up as small as you can, or use a garlic press. (I have one of those chopper things that I throw the garlic into. But if you use a chopper don't use it for the onions, trust me on this one.) Cook tortellini in boiling water. ( put a little salt and oil in the boiling water with the pasta, apparently it's an old Italian secret). Heat the olive oil in a large skillet until hot. Add the garlic and onion. Sautee for 2 minutes or until garlic is barely golden brown. By this time the chicken should be done. Drain tortellini. Add spinach, chicken, tortellini, mozzarella, salt, pepper, basil, oregano, tomatoes, and any other vegetables to the skillet. Cooke on low to medium heat until cheese is just starting to melt. Serve with fruit and whatever else you want. We like it with watermelon, a peach shake, and croissants.

So that's my yummy recipe. Try it. It's impressive. People will think you are an incredible chef. Really you can just throw whatever you want together. I don't like tomatoes very much so I don't add many, but I love onions and spinach so I load up on those. Oh and just so you know I usually chop up 3 garlic cloves, but I like it with a little more garlic flavor. My mom only puts one to two and uses a garlic press, but for me the flavor is a little dull. Try it and let me know what you think.

Power Yoga

I can't believe they snapped this of me when I told them not to! :) Ok, so I'm pretty sure I would snap in half and end up paralized in a hospital if I even attempted to attempt this one.
So one of my mission companions, Blanca, and I decided to take up power yoga. We go every Tuesday and Thursday for an hour and a half class. I love it! It's been five years since I took yoga, and I'm really rusty, but it feels so good to be stretching and moving in those ways. My favorite are the sun salutations and of course the relaxation/meditation part at the end. Not to be stereotypical but it's so...cleansing. It's something I definitely plan on doing for as long as I can.

Princess Fashion Show

Chris's little sister got a bunch of Princess stuff for her 6th birthday from her cousins. She was so excited to show us, I decided to turn it into a fashion show. We got a little carried away. Linley definitely pulls the look off the best...but Chris doesn't look too bad himself. lol.

I never knew that my tough guy had so much...pizzaazz...lol.

He loves it!!!

So there is our fashion show. Hope you enjoyed it!

One Year of Pics

So we finally loaded up our pics from the last year of our marriage. I thought it would be fun to post some of them.
Our first ginger bread house.

We spent our fourth of July at a wedding for our good friend Cory. This is a picture of her reception at the Huntsman Cancer Center. It was beautiful and over looked the fireworks at the U. Saturday mornings are spent with Chris playing soccer. I love watching him play.
Me Saturday morning after cleaning.
Chris and his brother playing soccer in Montana while we were camping.
It took us a total of 10 hours to get to our camping site in Montana. This is Chris's excited face.
A quick pic ofc us at Mary's graduation.
My sister and my mom. They grow up so fast!
Me and my beautiful sister. I can't believe she's 18, and done with school.

For Halloween Chris and I had a contest to see who could make the best pumpkin. It turned out to be a tie.

Here's us in Las Vegas out side the Bellagio, waiting for the water show.
Us in Disneyland. We went in October and it was perfect!!!
Here's what our room looked like when we got back from our honeymoon.
Us trying to navigate our way through Seattle.

So there you go! My goal is to take a lot more pictures this year.

Good CD!

So I rarely buy cds, and when I do it's because it has three or more songs on it that I LOVE, not just like, but LOVE. You know, the kind that are so wonderful that you could listen to them over and over and over again, and still not be tired of them (even though everybody else is). So my latest discovery is

Little Voice by Sara Bareilles. I LOVE this CD! I think I've listened to it 50 times in the last week. I know Love Song gets over played on the radio, but it's still a good song. I've added some of my favorites from her cd to the very end of my playlist. One of my current favorites is Love on the Rocks, Oh, and Gravity, oh and Fairytale, oh and...well just listen to some of them. They're really easy to listen to. But please, don't take my opinion, check them out for yourselves.

Also I've got a lot of pics to post on here, but I can't find the cord to put them on my computer. Hopefully I will get that done soon, especially because I'm completely out of space on my camera, and I want pics to go along with my descriptions of our camping trip and other fun stuff we've done in the last couple weeks.

But yeah, this cd...totally worth the money.

Got Tagged

Emily tagged me, so here goes . . .
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People that are tagged write a blog post about their own 8 random things and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post tag 8 people and include their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment on their blog to tell them they've been tagged, and to comment back and read your blog for the whole story.
1. I'm a stair counter. I can't walk up or down a set of stairs without counting them. It's something I've done since I was little. You'll probably rarely see me taking stairs two at a time...it throws off my count.
2. The sound that drives me nuts almost more than anything in the world is the sound of metal hitting teeth. When I'm eating with people and they bite down on the silver ware I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin. So if I have the option I'll pick plastic over metal. A few weeks ago we were at Chris's family's house for dinner, and afterwards we were all just sitting around the table talking and laughing. His dad picked up his fork and used it to pick something out of the back of his teeth. I couldn't handle it. I had to turn my head away and just try to handle it. Chris knew why I was cringing so he started laughing. He told his dad how much it bothered me and thankfully his dad stopped but everybody thought it was hilarious. If you want to get under my skin, bite down on your fork at dinner.
3. You know when you call somewhere and you have to press one for english, two for spanish? It's a pet peeve when people complain about having to press one for english. Are you really that lazy? Like it's takes a lot of effort to press one for english. English is not even the official language of the U.S. infact there is no official language. I hope that it become spanish, then let's here them complain about it.
4. So I have only discovered this since I've been Married. If I don't get enough time with my husband I get really grouchy. I mean really grouchy. And the funny thing is I usually end up taking it out on him. Luckily since he is so sweet and wonderful, he'll grab my hand and say "let's go for a walk" or he'll suggest something else where we can just spend some time together. Then once we have been able to escape the distractions and chores of the world for even 30 minutes and just get to enjoy each other's company I'm happy again.
5. I get really mean when I'm working on math, and I don't get it. In fact Chris refuses to help me with it anymore because I become so mean. I guess I yelled at him the first couple times so he learned his lesson. Nobody believed him until one night some friends were over here doing homework and I had Chris helped me and with in the first 5 minutes I snapped at him. His friends just looked at each other and said "whoa, he was right."
6. If I could do anything in the world, I would be a photographer. It's been a dream of mine for years, but I've never really had the opportunity to start. My goal is to get all the equipment and take a few classes in the next two years, and just start it as a hobby. Who knows what will happen.
7. At night I have to sleep with one leg outside of the covers. To regulate body temperature.
8. I can't say no to people. I always feel so guilty. Like for example when I go to the store and they ask me if I want to donate to...whatever...I can't say no. I will almost always give at least a dollar. If I say no, I feel like I'm a terrible person.
One more random fact. I love power. I love to be in charge in some situations, and in others I hate it. Most of the time, I just like to have all the power! lol.

So there are 8 random facts about me. I did this instead of studying for my math test. But I needed a little break. I've been studying for it for two days now...and still it's not clicking. Oh well. It will probably be the one test that it dropped. lol.

I tag Amber, Melissa, Laura, Sharly, Tiffany, Natalie, Natalie, Nicole, and Cory.

Who's going to win...

Chris and I made a bet to see who's going to lose the most weight by September 1st. If he wins he gets to buy a new cologne that he wants. If I win he does laundry, housework and dinner for two weeks. Needless to say we're both pretty determined to win. I'm definitely looking forward to kicking back for two weeks and doing absolutely nothing.

A Ditzy Moment...

Due to a Ditzy moment I had on Saturday I now have a new embarressing moment. Now I'm sure you are all gasping and thinking to yourself "Rachel have a distzy moment? Impossible!!!" But I assuring you, my friends, that although I may seem verly nearly perfect, I do have some flaws.

So on Saturday I decided to go running at the gym. So I grabbed my ipod and a magazine. I use the magazine to cover the amount of time I've been running (it always messes with my head). Miraculously, it wasn't very busy that day so I have my pick of just about any machine. I think divine inspiration led me to the last row of treadmills. Behind me are only 5 or 6 people on other machines. So I start my run. I'm trottin' along listening to Wicked. (I always get so into wicked. I love that music.) Well apparently I got a little too into it. I guess I was moving my hands to much, and my left arm caught the wire to my head phones. My ipod went crashing to the floor of the treadmill, and my automatic response? If you didn't guess, I'll enlighten you. I STOPPED RUNNING and BENT OVER to catch it before I stepped on it. Somehow, it never crossed my mind that I'm on a treadmill, and even if you stop...the treadmill doesn't. With in a fraction of a second I realized that it was either me or the ipod, so I let the ipod fly off the back of the treadmill. I tried to save my dignity, and stand up...but the problem is it's really hard to just begin running again once you're down...So there I am at the gym, holding on for dear life, both hands on the bars attempting to regain my footing and failing miserably. My arms aren't even close to clong enough to reaching the speed control (darn my genetics). (And it wasn't until today that I found out that there is an emergency stop button for such an occasion). So it was inevitable. I knew there was absolutely no way around it. I was going to be shot of the treadmill. I figured I may as well try to save some face so I dropped to my knees and let it throw me off. Luckily, my ipod wasn't hurt...and other than a severe blow to my pride...I wasn't either.

I didn't bother looking around to see if anybody had noticed. I knew they were laughing probably just as hard as I was, if not harder. I'm sure it was a sight to see. After sitting there laughing at myself for a moment, I jumped up, grabbed my ipod, pressed pause on my machine, got back on and commenced my run.

It's interesting that just a week earlier I saw a commercial on tv where a guy gets thrown off a treadmill and I thought to myself "You must be a pretty big idiot to get thrown off a treadmill." So I guess it's karma. What goes around comes around. Now I know it's really not that difficult to get thrown off a treadmill, especially if you stop running without stopping the treadmill. Can you believe I got an A in physics? I think the most important lesson I learned is to not use my ipod to hold my magazine down. It's too dangerous.

Got Tagged...

10 years ago: I was 14 and in 8th grade at Elkridge Middle school in South Jordan. I was living in Riverton, and thought Junior High was about the crappiest thing in the whole wide world. I was busy with Gymnastics, and friends...and if I remember correctly had my first boy call me. I was tying up the phone for at least 3 hours a day talking to him and his friends. Radny Petry. Favorite band Mariah Carey or Ace of Base

5 Years Ago: May 30th 2003...19 years old and probably at Chris's Graduation. I had just finished my first semester of college which included Latin Ballroom and Yoga classes. Smart I know. But see, that was my plan. Get all of the fun classes out of the way right in the beginning so that for the rest of my college experience I would only have stressful and boring classes left...pretty smart huh? Favorite band...Life house or John Mayer.

5 Months ago: I had just finished my first semester back at college in four years. Planning on going into English. I got a 3.8, my first since my sophomore year of Highschool. lol. I realized that I hated English and wanted nothing to do with it, so I began looking into the Nursing program. Had a wonderful 1st Christmas with my husband, and was still enjoying the cold weather. Favorite band: KT Tungstall, Jack Johnson, and Feist.

5 Things on my To Do List:
1) Finish this semester with A's.
2) Keep my sanity
3) Get my whimpy self to the gym
4) Fold the laundry
5) Homework

5 Things I would do if I was a billionaire:
1) Quit my job, and just finish school
2) Take photgraphy lessons
3) Get a nice house
4) Pay off both of our parents houses
5) Travel the World
5 1/2) Take my husband to a red sox game...or maybe just buy them for christmas.

5 Places I have lived:
1)Cedar Hills, UT
2) Boca Raton, FL
3) Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii
4) El Paso, TX
5) Tucson, AZ