Every Day May 2017 (is this still a thing??)

So, I had a memory pop up on my Facebook feed today from a few years back. It was about a blog post I'd done and sadly I thought, "Man, I totally forgot I even had a blog!" So I went to the link and then started looking around at different things I'd posted throughout the years and it kind of inspired me to come back and start posting again! The last post I did was in June 2013! Almost 4 years ago! SO much has happened since then! But I'm not going to worry too much on catching up on everything we've done, but I'll spend one post updating on each of us (including our youngest, who arrived after my last blog post!) and continue from there!


Today I'll update on Bryce! Since 2014 he spent another year coaching basketball before calling it quits (more on that in a future post) and he's still the Language Arts Department Chair at his school. He's also had the exciting opportunity to teach a class called The History of Motion Pictures, which he loves! The first year there was only 1 section, because the schedule was already set when the former teacher of the class was reassigned to the district office and Bryce was approved to take over. Since then he's had 2 sections of the class the last two years with a real possibility of a 3rd section next school year! He's even had kids request that he start a "sequel" class that they could take after taking the first one! As much as he loves watching and talking about movies, his first love is Literature and he couldn't possibly give that up!



We've had a lot of adventures in these last 4 years, including TWO cross country drives to visit our family members! Mind you, this was with 3 small children! Both experiences were great and so much fun, but the most recent trip we learned that it's too much to do the "epic" road trip we'd done twice and we'd start alternating each summer (Texas one year and IL/WI another year!)

That's the basic catch up on Bryce! I'll be sure to write a post for each of our family members (including pictures) over the next week or so!

Every Day May 2013: Prenatal Liquid Vitamin product review

So, I think you all know that I work for Liquid Health.  I've been working there for 9 years now and over the years my duties have shifted.  These days I'm doing more marketing than anything else.  I write press releases and informational articles about our products.  It's been a fun change and I've enjoyed learning about keywords and search engine rankings and all that stuff.

ANYway, we recently released a new product.  It's a liquid prenatal vitamin.  I've decided that I'd try the product (no, I'm NOT pregnant!) and share my thoughts in the form of a product review.  I'm going to try taking the product in a variety of ways and give on opinion on which ways were best for me.  So I went into the office and picked up a couple of bottles and got started right away.

 

On the first day I came home with the product, opened the bottle and poured out 1 Tablespoon (one serving) into a glass.  It was room temperature, right out of the bottle.  My first thought "wow, that's orange!"  Then I took the product.  It was surprisingly sweet, but not too sweet.  There was a little bit of an after taste that wasn't great, but it really wasn't too bad.

On the second day I took the bottle out of the fridge and poured 1 serving into a glass.  This time it was cold and that really helped to curb the after taste.  Not sure why, but it was definitely better when the product was cold.

 

 

On the third day I mixed 1 cold serving with 1 cup of cold water.  This way isn't bad, but it's not great.  It definitely dilutes the taste of the product, but then you're still having to drink a whole glass of water.  The water doesn't taste bad with the prenatal vitamin mixed in it, but it's not so yummy that you can gulp it right down.  Hope this makes sense.  This is definitely a viable option for someone who doesn't love the taste of it straight, but for me I'd rather just take it plain every day at this point.

 

 

 

On the fourth day I mixed 1 cold serving with 1 cup of cold apple juice.  I have to say, so far this was my favorite way!  The flavors mixed together very well and I was able to drink it down quickly and easily.  It almost tasted like a juice blend drink, although there was a hint of a "medicine" taste, but it was very, very mild.  I maybe only noticed it because I'm so used to taking our products and am familiar with the taste.  Either way this is definitely a good option for people who don't love the taste of the product by itself.

 

On the fifth day I mixed 1 cold serving with 1 cup of smoothie.  Obviously I think this method would depend on the type of smoothie, but the one we had worked perfectly.  It was mostly strawberries, which are good for masking other flavors, so I didn't taste the vitamin at all.  I was able to drink it quickly without any hint of the aftertaste.  While this may not be an option every day, it's definitely a good option for people who are a little sensitive to the taste of this product.

 

 

On the sixth day I mixed 1 cold serving with 1/2 cup of applesauce.  I ended up adding another 1/2 cup because it was not a good consistency.  Or at least not what I wanted to eat.  The flavor was okay.  I could definitely taste the "medicine" aftertaste more with the applesauce than the smoothie or juice, but it wasn't bad, just more noticable.  It took longer to eat the applesauce than to drink the juice or smoothie or just drink the product straight.

 

So I'm pleased to report I'm happy with the taste of this prenatal vitamin.  It wasn't unbearable any of the days (maybe that first day when it was warm was the hardest.)  And when you think about it, 1 Tablespoon can be easier to "choke down" than 2 (or more) big horse pills like some other prenatal vitamins on the market!  At the end of the week, I think I'm more likely to just pour the serving into a Tablespoon and drink it each morning, but it was really, really good in the apple juice and smoothie for people who don't love the flavor of the product.

Every Day May 2013: the joys of owning a house

So there was no blog post yesterday and you're not going to get much today... I was all excited to come home from our day at Preston and Ann's house to find a poem I'd written in college to post to the blog last night.  Then we got home and found water dripping from our kitchen ceiling... not exactly what I had in mind.  We called 3 plumbers right away.  One said he couldn't make it out to us until Wednesday, the other 2 didn't call us back... GREAT!  We had turned off the water and the dripping stopped so we went to bed and decided to deal with it today.

 

Today came and one of the original plumbers called us back and we scheduled for them to come out and give us an estimate at 10:30am.  Around 10:20am I got a phone call that they were running late and could come in the afternoon.  I tried two more plumbers with no luck.

 

I had some errands in the afternoon and got home around 5pm and had two messages from 2 different plumbers and also another friend a family friend who's a contractor.  I decided to ask him to come take a look for us since I knew he'd be honest with us.  He came by and gave us his opinion and suggestions and Bryce is now going to attempt to fix it (with the help of his dad) this weekend... yea!

 

Did I forget to mention our homeowners insurance deductible is $2000?  Hence the wanting to fix it on our own thing.

Every Day May 2013: The Bluths are Back!

The long wait has finally come to an end!  Today Season Four of the amazingly wonderful show Arrested Development was released on Netflix.  I'm actually surprised we've lasted this long before watching the first episode.  The entire season became available at 12:01am this morning and a little part of me wanted to stay awake for that moment and watch one episode right away!  But alas, I'm too old for that these days.

 

Anyway, we just watched the "first" episode and I'm excited to watch some more.  The reason I say "first" episode is that I've read you can watch these episodes in any order and it'll just change the order in which you learn certain aspects of the story.  The entire season covers the same span of time but just tells it from different points of view, which is kind of interesting.  The episode we watched (Flight of the Phoenix) was a Michael-centered episode.

 

I don't want to give away anything for fans who haven't watched yet, but I will say it did feel like the original seasons, maybe just lacking a little because we didn't see all the major characters.  There was not nearly enough Gob!  I'll be curious to hear what people think overall, I'm sure there are people who will have watched the entire season by tomorrow, so the reviews and opinions should start coming out soon.

 

How about you?  Are you fans of the show?  Have you watched any of Season Four yet?  What are your thoughts?

Every Day May 2013: Are we crazy?

So today Bryce took Breckin to our niece's birthday party.  Harper woke up with a goopy eye and I didn't feel comfortable taking her to a party, so I stayed home with her.  We hung out and watched movies, read books and took some pictures.  I also did dishes, laundry, vacuumed and did 2 hours of work while she was napping.  I was shocked at how much I was able to get done in just half a day since I only had one kid to take care of.

 

I love both my kids immensely, don't get me wrong, and maybe it's just because they are both at a bit of a "hard" age, but it is incredibly hard to get anything done on most days.  The fact that Breckin hasn't taken naps in a year adds to my inability to be productive on any given day.  So the fact that we've been talking about Baby Brimhall #3 makes me wonder: have we gone crazy???

 

I'm "getting up there" in age (I'll be 33 this year) and we'd like to have at least 1, probably 2 (and if you ask Bryce, possibly 3) more kids, so I don't want to put it off too much longer because, of course, the risks start going up as you get older.  It's also nice to have kids close in age, although maybe not when they are both in the "terrible twos" stage, which can last from 18 months - 3+ years old!  But with Breckin's birthday so late, he still has two FULL school years at home before he starts kinder, which means that unless we waited another year to have a baby, I'll have at least 1 year at home with 3 kids!  It just sounds stressful and incredibly hectic to me... but I guess at the end of the day I need to remember that, it may be hard for a few years while they are really young, but it will get more manageable with time... right?? :)  Someone please back me up here... please?

Every Day May 2013: Old People at Concerts

So last night Bryce and I went to see The Presidents of the United States of America in concert (from here on out I'll refer to them as POTUSA to save my poor fingers haha!)  This was the second time we've seen them in concert and I can say with very little hesitation that they put on the best concert I've been too!  They might have a little competition from Ok Go!  This is not to say that either of these are my favorite bands, but I just had such an enjoyable time at their concerts!

 

Anyway, we weren't really sure what to expect as we drove to the concert.  It was at a venue we've never been too before (The Observatory in Santa Ana) and, well, POTUSA is kind of a random band, so you never know who's going to go to their concert.  I mean, look at us!

 

Anyway, the venue was nice.  Not too big.  Mostly standing with a few tables and then some reserved seating if you made dinner reservations.  The opening band was TERRIBLE!  I think they were called Original Summers?  We had a hard time understanding them.  Maybe they didn't articulate well.  Maybe the sound mixing was bad.  When they first started, Bryce and I looked at each other and I said "well she has a different voice."  After the first song we both decided it wasn't "different" it was "bad" and she did way too much vocalizing.

 

1 hour and 40 minutes after the official start time, POTUSA took the stage!  They are on tour right now to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their first album.  I bet it's pretty exciting to still be able to play in front of a few hundred screaming fans 20 years later!  They played a few songs (including Tiki God and Some Postman, a couple of my favorites) before playing their entire first album all the way through, in order!  That was kind of fun!  During the encore they played Froggy and then a new song (yes, they are working on NEW songs!) called Finger Puppet and then they closed with Video Killed the Radiostar.

 

Now, I'll talk briefly about the crowd of people who attended this concert.  We were probably in the middle of the age range.  There were some pretty old people there and then some extremely young people... young enough that I actually thought "were you even ALIVE when their first album came out??"  For the most part people just danced and sang along and were all in all pretty fun, but lucky us, we ended up next to these two totally stupid couples.  The girls were danging out of control while the guys were hurling empty beer bottles and cups of ice into the crowd on the levels below us.  The first time they did that I seriously thought "what are we? 16? and we're out without our parents for the first time?"  So ridiculous.

 

On our other side was another interesting couple.  They were probably 10-15 years older than us and she wore a dress that was too tight and too short for any ocassion, let alone a concert you intend to dance around at.  He had loooooong black, curly hair and wore a long black trench coat.  She kept screaming throughout the concert, which is common concert behavior.  However, her scream wasn't the usual "whooooooo!" it was like "AAAAHHHHHHHH!"  I mean, she seriously sounded like she was being attacked everytime she screamed!  And she'd do it at these really quiet points in the show.  And she'd scream over and over.  It was kind of uncomfortable.

 

Anyway, aside from our less than desirable neighbors, the concert was tons of fun and I'd go see them again in a heartbeat!

Every Day May 2013: Clearing the clutter update

So I thought it was appropriate after my initial clearing the clutter post to share a follow up.  It's been two weeks since I cleared out the majority of the kids toys and I've noticed a few things since then.

First, they have hardly even noticed the toys are gone and they haven't even asked about anything that's in the box in the garage.

Second, cleaning up at the end of the day is WAY easier!  What used to take me 30-45 minutes at the end of the day now takes less than 10 minutes!

Third, we are reading more books each day since one whole cubby is now filled with books instead of toys.

So all in all, I feel like the "experiment" has been successful, maybe even a little surprising, but now I'm debating what to do with the huge box of toys in the garage!  I also need to decide where my clearing the clutter focus needs to be turned next... I'm thinking my office/desk area!