Simple pleasures.

First let me tell you what is NOT a simple pleasure. Getting all ready to head to the mall (with LOTS of excitement) and then realizing you left your keys in your husbands car which is now across town. GOODY. Yes this just happened to me. So I've decided to sit down and write a much needed blog instead of doing laundry. Sounds PEACHY. :)

I feel SO BLESSED. Life may not always be like this but let me tell you, it's pretty dang rockin lately. Family, husband, work, friends, weather (today)--it's all just ROCKIN.

First simple pleasure. My sweet Margaret. Bobby and I teach the sunbeams on Sunday at church (well at least 5 of them). OH how I love it. Some Sundays are harder than others but we just adore these kids. Margaret is one of them and she is HILARIOUS. She is very smart, and she DEFINITELY doesn't like just anyone, at least not all the time. She is famous for her dirty look. This little girl is freshly 4 years old and OH how she can give you the stink eye! So funny. Here's another funny story. The other day she was saying the opening prayer before we started our lesson and she said "Please help us to be able to sell our house", I don't know why but this totally caught Bobby and I off guard and we laughed (just a little). She stopped, looked up at us... pondered for a second... and said "forget it". Oh my gosh it was so funny! We loved it. These kids are so fun. Josh isn't talking much yet, but he has THE cutest "okay". We like to say it like him when we're at home. Malena is as sweet as can be and ALWAYS has something to say. Alexa is my little red-head who gets SO excited SO EASILY and has the cutest laugh. And then there's little Jack and his rosy cheeks. Jack has big muscles and is ALWAYS being a helper.
Anyway, so this Sunday I was sitting behind Margarets family and I didn't get the stink eye ONCE! Instead she kept coming over to me handing me pictures. This one was my favorite:



Isn't that just tender? I love these sweet spirits. When I was watching her color I just kept thinking how great it would be to be that innocent again. To have so much curiosity and joy in simple things. All these kids are looking for is love, and I love loving them and teaching them about the Saviors love. We look forward to Sundays.

Another simple pleasure:



I get to see these kids in less than a week! Yup that's right. My mom and I are doing the long drive to Rexburg Idaho. Haven't been back there in QUITE some time! I'm pretty excited. We'll get lots of knitting done on the way while listening to some Daughtry and munching on celery (GOODY). I'm pretty stoked! Can't wait to see my favorite siblings and go meet Crystals FAVORITE TEACHER EEEEVVVVEEERRRR (that was just for you Crystal). Hopefully I can still get my work-out on and see my Missy pissy and maybe even Jess again! We're just going for a few days but BOY it's gonna be great! First time away from the husband. Let's hope he doesn't cry himself to sleep every night. ;) I'm sure he'll LOVE a break!

I have an AWESOME job. This seems so simple but let me tell you it's NOT. It makes life SO good. It makes it possible for me to go on little trips like this! I could not do this before. And guess what? I'm actually making more money than before! Isn't that GRAND? My clients rock, the girls I work with rock, and all around I feel FREEDOM! It's like when you first move away from home and you can do whatever the heck you want. Just like that. :)

So another simple pleasure.... a husband that COOKS! Bobby is an amazing cook. He basically cooks dinner every night.. I come home from work and it is ON the table. WOW am I a lucky girl! Remember the crazy Paleo diet I told you about? Well we've been doing it (or at least he has.. I've been sneaking naughty treats every once in a while). Anyway, it's gluten free, dairy free, soy free, pretty much everything free. And it really hasn't been too bad. Especially since Bobby likes to try new recipes all the time and it never gets boring. Get this. Valentines Day I came home to a 3 course meal. He made PF Chang style lettuce wraps for appetizers, salmon AMAZING asparagus w/ mushrooms and mock mashed potatoes (mashed cauliflower! SO GOOD!) for dinner, and for dessert HE MADE CREME BRULE!!! WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My jaw was dropped BASICALLY the whole time. Here is one of my favorites that he makes. Lettuce wrap TACOOOSSSS!!!! SO GOODDDD!:


(ps check out his Work-out/nutrition blog: bobulrich.net)

I love simple pleasures. Like Lost, knitting, a killer run, and Coconut bliss ice cream.



Check it out. It will rock your world.

XOXOXOXO

Bella Salon!

Some exciting news....... I MOVED TO A DIFFERENT SALON!!! HAAALLLLEEEELLLUUUUUUJJJAAHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Life is good let me tell you. So some of you know I had been working at Ensemble Salon for almost 3 years... and although I LOVE doing hair I, (and everyone else that worked there) really had a hard time. I won't go into detail.. but basically I was just so ready to leave. They were moving locations so I decided that at the same time I would go to a different salon.

My step sister Jonna has a sister-in-law named Da'Lynne that worked at Bella Salon, and had told me to get into contact with her. So I did. :) I met with the owner and that was that! I got hired! Now the difference between the salons is Ensemble was commission... and Bella is a leasing salon. Do you know how great this is? I am my own boss. No more dealing with cruddy bosses who never let me take any time off and never listened to me and 80% of the time didn't have color in stock. I don't have to deal with that BS ANYMORE!!! The transfer was pretty stressful. I had to get all my clients info and call everyone and send out postcards to everyone. But I did it, and last week was my first week at Bella! I love it. There's 13 stylists and everyone is super nice and all of my clients followed!

I feel like the biggest burden has been lifted off my back and now I enjoy working again. YAY FOR HAPPY JOBSSSS!!!!

Winter Madness.

This past month has been SO fun and SO nuts! We had so much fun over the Holidays. Lot's of family and friend time and lots of Holiday cheer! The month of December was pretty crazy and was just go go go.
Near the beginning of the month we threw a little Christmas party/Missy's birthday party. I made lots of food and it was DELICIOUS. We ate and watched Home Alone and decorated sugar cookies. We had a ton of fun and maybe we'll even do it again next year!

(the food was intense)

(Kyle & Kerri--newly engaged cute couple!)



(don't you love my candles??)

(Alysha & Justin decorating cookies. The best sugar cookie decorators)

Then Christmas started getting closer and Crystal came home!! My mom waited till Crystal came home so we could decorate the tree and we had a good time since Bobby especially always makes things wild and entertaining.

(this is one of those moments where I don't know if I want to claim him...)

(love these two chicks.)


(I was feeling left out being the only one without 4-eyes, so Chuck let me borrow his)

(we also went to "Peacock Lane" which is a famous street that decks out on xmas lights every year.)
sisters :)

(and then the weater got all crazy on us and SNOWED! We loved it!)
(we walked to my parents house and there were cars stuck EVERYWHERE!)

Then Crystal and Kevin and the rents took off for Idaho and things settled back down a little bit.. and 2 weeks after christmas my birthday hit!!! woot woot! Good ol 23. I love my birthday. Who doesn't love a day all about them? I like to tell Bobby that it's actually my birthday WEEK so I get whatever I want all week. Ok lets be honest... I get what I want pretty much always. But ESPECIALLY on my birthday.

(looking a whole year older--don't look to close to see the wrinkles ps thanks Crystal for the earings! Love em!)

(we went cosmic bowling the Friday before with a bunch of friends and had a blast!)

(two of my favorite people. Whit and Holly)

(that's my GQ man)

(priceless)

And then the BEST birthday present of all was the next day when Bobby took me to leavenworth, Washington! OH MY GOSH GO THERE!!!! I was in heaven. It's a little German town up in the mountains and we had the most relaxing time imaginable. It was so nice to get away just the 2 of us and it was so beautiful and magical. We only spent one night there but it was so much fun and we want to go back.

(the trees were beautiful)

(this was funny. Pretzels everywhere. We love German food)

(don't you love it?!?)

(don't worry it didn't stick!)

(we went to a German restaraunt and had a shnitzel!!! SO DELICIOUS!)

(Delicious nutella cheesecake. YUM)

<3

Crossfit.

I know I have much more catching up to do other than writing about our new(ish) obsession. We love crossfit. If you have talked to me lately you know what that is. I'm sorry if you're sick of hearing about it--stop reading as of now. :) Never heard of it? go to http://www.crossfit.com/. It rocks our world.

Bobby and I have been working out 5-6 days a week pretty consitantly for the past mmmmm 2 years? It wasn't till last January that I really got down on my eating habits and lost the pounds. My typical work-out consisted of a lot of running and weight training. Which would be the "Body building"weight lifting style that most people do in the gym. You know... 15 reps of x amount of weight 3 times. Rest in between. All that good stuff. Now this was all fine and dandy until we got bored and stopped seeing as great of results. I hadn't really lost weight since the wedding and I found that annoying. Bobby's a weight loss machine but us girls I think have hit harder.

So anyway, our friends Wade and Bethany (who Bobby lived with before we got married) have been trying to get us to do crossfit for... mmm a long time. We finally started a few months ago and we have already seen drastic changes in our body. It's crazy that I'd been working on my arms for such a long time at the gym lifting weights but never saw many results.. only in 3 months my arms have gotten so much more toned, including my legs, back, abs, butt everything!

Here's what it is. Crossfit is a bunch of affiliations around the US. It's not like a 24 hour fitness or a Golds Gym. They're personally owned, different costs to sign up at different crossfits. Most are a warehouse type setting, and when you get there there is a work out of the day posted on the board. Everyone in the class starts at the same time, and before you start you do a long warm-up and then the coach goes over what you're doing, and often times you work on specific body parts before you do the work out of the day. A lot of things we do are things you would do in gymnastics.. using the rings and pull up bar to do gymnastic type moves. These things do an all over body strength training. The work out of the day normally consists of 2 to 5 excersizes either doing repeated 3-5 times. The nice thing is it's different every day and you never know what you're going to be doing until you get there. The best part is having the coach/trainer watching you during the work-out, correcting your form and motivating you to finish the work-out. All work-outs are timed, and your time is scored on the bored at the end and you keep personal track so the next time you do that work-out down the road you can keep score of your progress. Many of the things we do are some of the best all over body movements.. things like push-ups, pull-ups, squats, sit-ups.. and then as well as running, jump roping, box jumping, dead-lifts, front squats, etc. A couple examples of these work-outs would be something like:

100 pull-ups

100 push-ups

100 sit-ups

100 squats

or...

200 meter run

21 kettle bell swings

21 pull-ups

400 meter run

21 kettle bell swings

21 pull-ups

200 meter run

21 kettle bell swings

21 pull-ups

I've never done the same work-out twice. We've been doing crossfit 3 times a week and I've been running on my off days. I highly recommend people checking this out if they're tired of their same ol routine, need something new and EFFECTIVE, or are just looking to get into really good shape. People who did sports growing up love crossfit because it can be competitive and a lot of things we do are very sports oriented.

Ok I'm off my soap-box now, but check it out! We love it!!!

here's some pictures to see what it's all about

ohhhhhhh the Holidays.

Things have been crazy lately. Loving this holiday season. Our house is finally all decorated which is great. It finally feels like a home! Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. My sister came home for a week and we were able to go on our shopping trip that we always do within a few days before thanksgiving with my mom, brother and sister. We like to go downtown to Pioneer place (even though it doesn't have the largest amount of stores or best deals, it's got the best christmas spirit). We road the lightrail down (always), and spent a few hours shopping. We had a lot of fun minus the 10 hour walk downtown in the freezing cold to find the stupid Ducks store (which we NEVER found). I thought I was going to freeze to death. Ok it wasn't THAT bad but we were all pretty pooped after that. That night we all went and saw "A Christmas Carol" in 3D and that was pretty fun. Bobby had never seen A Christmas Carol before! Can you believe that? He really enjoyed it and the animation with 3D was pretty sweet.

We left the night before Thanksgiving to head up to Seattle and spend the rest of the holiday with Bobbys side of the family. We stayed at his Dad and step moms house and had Thanksgiving dinner with them. Bobby and I got to cut the turkey for our FIRST time ever and can I just say we did a pretty dang good job. Bobby just started attacking it until I got there and gave him some direction. Boys with electric knives... yikes. (PS excuse my terrible camera)

(Do you see the look on his face?)

(We ripped that bad boy to pieces. Got every last bit of meat we could find!)

Bobby's brother came over with his fiance Alli and daughter Brooke. Brooke is a doll. She's 2 and at the stage where she is INTO EVERYTHING. It's hard to keep track of her. Bobby's sister Coley also came over, as well as Bobby's step brothers. There was a good amount of people and it was REALLY great to spend a holiday with Bobby's Dad. That evening we went with his dad and sister to go see "The Blindside" = AMAZING. Had to keep my family tradition going of seeing a movie on Thanksgiving. Normally on Bobbys side-- Thanksgiving is spent at Bobby's Moms mom--but that wasn't the case this year. His dad and step mom are so sweet and kind and we loved spending a couple of days with them.

(Alli and cute Brookie)

(always into something)

(ohhh just a little car shot)

(Brotherly love)

We spent the day after Thanksgiving with Bobbys Mom (for Thanksgiving #2). All the siblings came to this Thanksgiving as well. This was quite an event (as ones with Bobby's mom always are). Their oven broke so instead of having dinner at 3:30 as planned we had it at 6! Nonetheless we had a really fun time hanging out. It's always wild and crazy over there, lots of pictures were taken (not with my terrible camera sadly) and let's just say the mashed potatoes were amazing. After dinner we drove home and rolled in around 10:30.

Last weekend we went to Seattle AGAIN due to a hair class I had to go to. We stayed at our good friends Sara & Jasons and it was so much fun. Sunday night I had to go to this big demo debut that the Art Director of Pureology was throwing, and then Monday there was a 3 hour class. It was a good time although we didn't learn a whole lot of new stuff. All in all it was a good weekend--though I'm getting sick of sitting in a car.

We had a good time getting our christmas tree the other day. The original plan was to go cut a tree down (afterall it IS our first christmas as a married couple)..... buuuttt we ended up at Fred Meyer getting our ghetto ugly tree of which Bobby named Gilbert I believe? His exact words were "But Kayleen if we don't pick him no one else will". So I gave in and got an ugly noble. It was fun. We enjoyed tying it on top of my car in which we roped it through our windows which made it not possible to get into our car.... we thought about crawling through the window.. but instead we just re-roped it. Don't hate--we're newbies. Sadly I didn't get pictures of this event.. but I did take pictures of our decorated place (which have been long over-due to put up... but here you go Cara).

(heres wall #1)

(We painted the walls ourself... don't look to closely haha ps you can see crooked gilbert)

(I've been wanting a clock like this for a LONG time. Thanks Khols)
(love our wedding pictures!)

(our wonderful Ikea bookshelf in which Bobby put together wrong. :) )

(Last but not least our cute kitchen!)

The next few weeks are going to be crazy. We have Christmas parties, last minute shopping, and a crazy work schedule! I'm so excited for Crystal to come home. I love love love this time of year!!!! Merry christmas everyone and Happy New year!!!