Gut, Research, Favorite, Sleeper...

Anyone who even slightly knows Ryan will agree he is a huge sports fan. As a regular ESPN and Cougarboard reader, he knows his stuff! Anyway, March Madness is probably one of his favorite times of the year. It's kind of like a holiday around here... that lasts two weeks.

Anyway, I just wanted to wish everyone in the family brackets good luck... because they'll need it! Just a reminder... I won the family bracket two years ago (when I wasn't even a member of the family), and then Ryan won last year. So we apparently know how to pick 'em, and I don't think that will be changing anytime soon!

Side story: I never filled out a bracket until my sophomore year of college. Not knowing a single thing about any team on there (including the fact that the little numbers on the side were their seed), I chose merely by which team colors I liked best. If there needed to be a tie-breaker, I chose according to mascots. Needless to say, my bracket kicked trash and I totally won by a long shot. Of course I didn't reveal my picking strategy until way later, so I could impress everyone with my awesome basketball knowledge. That strategy has worked well for me for many years running now. :)

In case any of you need some "picking strategy" ideas, I leave you with this lovely piece of inspiration:

**Update from Ryan (you know he's passionate about this subject when he makes an addition to the blog. Actually, I think this is his blogging debut):

Britt told her version of the NCAA Tournament brackets growing up, now here is my version…

Growing up I used to sit in front of the TV on selection Sunday and feverishly write down every team that came up on the screen. Why? Because there was not an internet at the time and I wanted to get a jump start on my picks (couldn’t wait for the morning paper). I would have my ruler out to get the brackets straight and I would even give each region a different color—I preferred the turquoise, light blue, blue, a darker pink, and purple color pencils the most because they were the colors on the ACC Tournament floor. Some years I would even do the shade from one color to another other within the same region—that was popular to do back in the day on basketball courts (i.e. Charlotte Hornets floor inside the arc). I even remember some years printing out a list of the team names and cutting and gluing them into their respective spots on the bracket, that way my bracket looked official. During the tournament wins were marked with circled teams and losses were crossed out. Man life was rough back then, full of so many time consuming tasks and responsibilities—as a kid the term “important” was obviously a very relative term. And what did all this bracket frenzy get for me? Not much. I don’t think I ever won a family bracket pool—until last year (2009). Now the tide has changed. Once you taste victory you never want to taste defeat again. So, I don’t want to discourage any family members but I DON’T PLAN ON LOSING EVER AGAIN! Sorry.

Color Me Mine

Guess what?! Ryan has a break from class for a whole entire month! Thirty whole days! The best part about this fact is that we can have normal weekends for four weeks! Friday night, Saturday morning, and Saturday night. No school. (Don't get me wrong, it's not that it's that bad when he does have school because I am certainly more productive than normal, but it's nice to have a normal Friday/Saturday). That's probably why I had so much fun this weekend.

Anyway, there is a Color Me Mine right around the corner from us (I love Draper... what isn't right around the corner from us?) and they were having a "date night special"... a.k.a. a typically expensive activity that is now way cheap{er}. Count us in! So we taped/stenciled/painted our little hearts out. Now we just have to wait until Thursday to reap the rewards! I'm only posting the final pictures if they turn out good. :)

Other reasons why this was a great weekend include, but are not limited to:

• Cafe Rio pork burritos (it's always a nice surprise to combine all of your punch cards and realize you have a FREEEE MEAL!)
• Sleeping in past 6:42 a.m.!!!
• Good, long runs on Saturday morning
• Having to go to Gateway to get my computer fixed (for free)...
• ...and then having to shop and find some great deals! Even better was having Ryan encourage me to buy said deals!
• Sunday morning meetings being pushed back an hour and a half

The Roof

For a wedding gift, Ryan and I were given a "night out on the town," with a generous gift card to the Roof Restaurant at Temple Square in Salt Lake. We redeemed it a few weeks ago on Saturday, February 19th. We decided that since we were going all the way up to SLC, we would take a trip to the temple beforehand. We sure lucked out with a beautiful sunset that night and gorgeous skies to look at from up on the top floor.

Let's be honest though, me and really nice buffets don't get along well. Actually, we get along great, but throw a scale in the mix after eating and it's bad news bears. Want to make yourself feel better about eating an extra cookie or two this last weekend? Well, let me help you out. I not only out-ate Ryan by probably an extra plateful of food, but my dessert plate was the real kicker: 5 (yes, FIVE) whole pieces of triple-layer cake, a piece of key lime pie, a bowl of berry mousse and a couple of pieces of fruit (probably covered in chocolate). It was sick, and while I loved every minute of it at the time, I hated having to run twice as long as normal the next week just to burn off dessert. Too bad I didn't take a picture of it. Despite feeling like I needed to be rolled out of the restaurant afterwards, it was fun to get a little dressed up and go out to a nice place!

California Sun

Last year over President's Day weekend we did a little road tripping to SoCal to visit Marc & Michelle and this year, when the idea came up to do it again, we couldn't resist! I was craving this trip for a month before we even went because I desperately needed some SUN in my life!!! And sun we got! Nice, warm, sunny, mid-70-degree weather.... yes, please!

We left Wednesday after work and drove to Prim, Nevada (or some P-named city) where we knew of a really super cheap hotel to crash at for the night. Unfortunately, the very slight rise in the current economy raised Whiskey Pete's prices from $15/night to $25/night... which still didn't stop us. I wish I had taken a picture of this place because it really couldn't decide what theme to go with: deserts and cowboys...... or castles? Anyway, a google image will have to do for now:

Thursday we were up early and on the road so we could swing by the orange groves for fresh California oranges and grapefruit! It was my first time ever seeing a real orange grove (well, besides the California Soarin' ride at California Adventures... does that count?) and I loved the thousands of trees filled with fresh fruit! Mmmm..... we ended up leaving with I think 7 bags of oranges and one bag of grapefruit. I promise, we shared. This alone could trump all of the reasons why I wouldn't want to live in California and force me to move there asap.

After the orange groves, we moved on to L.A. The rest of the trip included (but was not limited to):

• Disneyland (Thank you again, Amy, for doing the Give-A-Day/Get-A-Disney-Day service for us!)
• The beach
• Santa Monica Pier
• In-N-Out (yes, we ate it like it didn't exist 2 minutes from our home in Utah now)
• BJ's Pizza
• Diddy Riese ice cream/cookie sandwiches
• Shopping at the Grove
• Kogi Tacos. This place is a traveling Korean taco stand and you have to look them up on twitter to see where they are that day. This was also on food network's "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" show. I must admit, the Korean short-rib taco lived up to the hype!
• Macaroni Grill (can you sense the theme? Yeah, FOOD!)
• Valentine's Day... Ryan and I spent a very romantic morning taking turns getting sick in the bathroom while the others went to church. Don't worry though, we got better as the day went on.
• Lot's of olympic watching at night.
• Lot's of playing with our cute nephews, Jackson and Bennett.

And, of course, the pictures to back it all up:

My first (and most likely last) time on the teacups (it helped that Ryan showed Jackson to turn the wheel in the opposite direction from what makes it turn like crazy!):

Besides my awkward "I-still-haven't-figured-out-how-to-smile-with-braces" look, I liked this pic. The one after this attempts to make up for said awkward look (as long as you don't zoom in).

This is the traveling Kogi taco van (in case you can't read the sign):

The waves attacked Ryan right after this pic. He should have taken his shoes off like me!

It was all Jackson's idea to pull up the hood, go jump on sleeping Ryan, and then run away as fast as he could so Ryan wouldn't know who did it:

The End.

A little bit of chicken fried

So we ate a super healthy, carb-free dinner tonight... minus the healthy part... and the carb-free part. But it was dang good! Ryan found a great recipe for fried chicken, which he even modified to make it better all on his own! Then I whipped up some other side dishes to go along with it, including homemade biscuits that Ryan requested at the last minute. Since I have never made biscuits before, I didn't have a biscuit cutter. So in honor of Valentine's Day and the Superbowl (even though we weren't honoring the Superbowl), our heart and football shaped cookie cutters became the biscuit cutters.

I love Ryan's awkwardly-fitting blue dog shirt. Seriously, we have made a lot of memories while wearing it! It makes an appearance every once in a while, usually while doing messy cooking things. The best part about this whole fried chicken ordeal was that we remembered we had a burner on our grill, so our apartment doesn't stink for a whole week like nasty fried food because we just do it outside!!!

If you look closely, you can tell it's a football. There's 3 ridges at the top-- definitely a football! Ryan didn't know that I was paying attention but I noticed he only ate the football biscuits, so to make it even I only ate heart ones.

Happy Birthday Mom!

It was my mom's birthday on February 3rd and the whole fam gathered for a little par-tay! I had to put this picture up because I thought it was funny. I think my dad and Ashlynn are in a race to steal my mom's birthday wish while she's not paying attention...

Haha.... Oh man, I love awkward pictures that catch people in a random moment. Kind of like this one that Ryan showed me the other day of coach Rose from the BYU/Utah game doing an extreme version of the Chicken Dance:

January in a nutshell

January is one of those months that I have always disliked because the holidays are done and I am so done with the snow and nasty weather. Also, I have always been in school and winter semester always seems to drag on. This January, however, was much different. First of all, there was hardly any snow for us here (there was freeeezing cold wind, but that's much easier to drive in than snow!), AND I didn't have school! The other great part was that Ryan didn't start class again until the 22nd, which meant that we had most weekends to do whatever we wanted!!! It was such a fun month, although, since a lot of it was just hanging out and relaxing there wasn't much to write about. But here are a few things we did do:

• Ryan was declared husband of the year only 2 days into the year when he suggested shopping at Park City, making a yummy dessert, and renting a chick flick that I've been dying to see (I won't even mention what movie it was because it would totally embarrass Ryan.... and maybe me, too. ha! But if the words "hoedown throwdown" sound familiar to you, then you know what I'm talking about).
• The next weekend, Ryan wanted to see Avatar, but since that is SO not my cup of tea, I {window} shopped at Gateway and then saw another shorter movie that ended up getting out at the same time as his. It was kind of weird seeing a movie by myself, yet I didn't mind and I'd even say it was a pretty fair compromise because we both got what we wanted!
• We also went to see BYU whoop Utah in basketball. Not only was it a great game, but BYU put on a pretty awesome pre-game show, too. Those Cougs know how it's done.
• I got a sewing lesson from my mom. This is how these work: we spend so much time picking out all the cute fabric and coming up with all sorts of ideas that by the time we get home to actually sew, I take 95 years to learn how to do it, so I end up just asking my mom to sew it for me and saying "I'll do it all by myself next time." Yeah, never happens. But I have a lot of project ideas up my sleeve, so maybe one of these days I will really learn...
• Ryan and I have been running a lot lately because we are training for another Ragnar Relay Race in southern California. We put together a family team and will run from Santa Barbara to Dana Point. Most of the run is right along the beach, so this will have much better scenery than our last one in the Las Vegas desert.
• Oh, and we kind of ate yummy banana splits for like the first half of the month (obviously I made no weight loss resolutions for 2010... not because I don't need them (I do), but because I'm all about setting realistic goals for now). So this pretty much sums up our January!