Hapy One Year of Marriage!

Today we are celebrating one whole year of married life! So weird to think we have been married for a whole year already.  We have been up at the husband's parents cabin since late Thursday night.  It's nice and quiet and we have nothing to do...perfect weekend.  Minus that part where I'm constantly nauseous...but the doc gave me some anti nausea meds on Thursday and it has allowed me to eat and even go off roading!
It's super nice up here in Heber/Overgaard right now.  If you care to know, Heber/Overgaard is just a few miles down the road from the turn off for Snowflake...about an hour outside of Payson.  There isn't much here but there are lots of lovely trees. Everyday has been mid 50s and its only down to about 34 at night. We were hoping for some snow to play in, but all the snow that was forecasted for this last week, hasn't even come....so oh well.
We spent almost all of Friday in our pajamas.  We made breakfast burritos and watch the Lord of the Rings to be prepared for the Hobbit later this month.  Later on we went to Casa Ramos, which is our favorite Mexican restaurant up here and afterward we wondered around the swap meet and the antique store.  We saw the cutest wooden reindeer and a gorgeous nativity sign at the antique store.  We're going to try duplicating them since they weren't overly complicated in any way.
Today we woke up before 930, made some breakfast, opened presents (that post to follow), and then hopped in the Jeep for some off roading.  I'm pretty sure we found the bumpiest trail known to man, and it made us both nauseous, but it was totally worth it!  After that we decided to visit the wood shop where they have the most amazing bear carvings, aliens, asu sun devils, eagles and so much more.  We even learned that they will make you anything custom.  Josh wants them to make him a Thor end table for the mancave.  Then we visited the Bison Ranch shops where we got some delicious homemade apple butter and jam.  And the husband got some hilarious signs for the man cave.  We ate lunch at the Red Onion where they apparantly double charged our card, that was cool beans.  And later on we are going to make steaks for dinner.  Those are only for special occasions, so we're pretty excited about that.  And we might even make some S'mores in the fire pit if Smokey the Bear deems that an okay activity today.  Since I royally suck at picture taking, I only have one from off roading today.......but the day is not over yet, so there is a chance I might add a few more!
Thanks for a wonderful first year of marriage husband!! Can't wait for the adventure that the next year will bring!

Annual Christmas Baking/Shopping

Every year on the Friday after Thanksgiving, we bake Christmas cookies, make fudge and other cutesy Christmas food to give to friends and neighbors.  Last year I ruined that tradition since we needed about 1000 sugar cookies made for the wedding that was 5 days away......oops. HA!

This year, we made Hot Cocoa Balls, Chocolate Sugar Cookies (NOT recommended, they are gross), and regular sugar cookies.  I'm hoping to do some chocolate dipped pretzels with cute Christmas sprinkles too, but we'll see if I get around to that.......

We baked most of the day, from noon to about 9pm.  I thrououghly enjoyed it, obviously, since I was the only one around still decorating the cookies by the time they were done.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we always take a shopping trip to get some Christmas shopping done.  The stores are generally empty on this day, because all the fools who were out for black friday are still sleeping.  And there are still some really great deals if you are willing to drive to a few stores.  There is nothing on the planet of earth that I need bad enough to wait in lines at midnight or to save $40 on....I think Black Friday is absolutely the dumbest thing on planet earth.  But whatever.  I officially wait until this day to break out any cheesy holiday tees.  I chose the Happy Who-lidays with Cindy Lou Who from the original Grinch by Dr. Seuss.  Hopefully I will find some more to add to my collection this year.

Our shopping trip was very much successful, I am waiting on 3 online orders and I want to pick up a 5 more small items when I have an evening off to get to the store and then we are completely DONE. YAY!  I've started wrapping gifts so there is something besides empty space under the tree.  I just love having the presents wrapped up and looking pretty well ahead of time!

Also, for the 2 people who read this......I'm trying to start a collection of Nativity themed ornaments.  They don't need to be overly expensive, I just want each one to be different.  If you are out doing Christmas shopping and happen upon some that look cute and aren't 15 dollars a piece, let me know please so I can travel to this establishment and buy them!

The countdown to anniversary is on!  Just 4 more days til I get a quiet weekend away!  Hopefully the Husband's present will get here in the mail before then and hopefully I'll have some inspiration for the poem to go with that just doesn't seem to be coming to me...

To squash a rumor

Well, the happy of thanksgiving is over.  Apparently after I left to head to my inlaws, my cousins had an argument about how PREGNANT i must be........REALLY COOL GUYS.  SO MATURE OF YOU.  Thankfully, my Grandmother has some class and said, "If she was pregnant enough to be showing, I would have known long before you.  And since I don't, I say she is not, so you can drop it."

So for anyone who was wondering if the 20 pounds I've gained since marriage is baby weight, it is NOT.

For anyone wondering if my distended bloated belly is baby growth, it is NOT.  If it was, believe me, I would have already told you.

I would not have wandered around pregnant enough to be showing without actually telling someone.

Idiots.

I'm 22

I turned 22 yesterday.......Doesn't really feel very exciting gotta tell ya!  I went to work for a half day and then spent the rest of my afternoon cleaning my Mom's house for Thanksgiving and baking rolls for like 17 hours...not really but I was up til 2am doing that....

The hubs bought me a winter jacket that counted as my anniversary present!  It's super nice, and it will be perfect for super cold and snowy weather.  I do not have any great winter coats.......I live in the desert, so this is a special treat.

He also got me a bunch of gift cards to go on dates and things at Hobby Lobby and Home Depot.  He loves me a lot.  He cutely painted, worte, drew, crafted, on the outside of each gift card.  He painted the envelope of the one for Home Depot, because he bought it so I could buy the paint I wanted.  He drew my name in chilies on the envelope for a date night to Chili's.  He's super cute!

He also took me out to dinner to Macayo's.  It is definitely one of my favorite Mexican restaurants, mostly because the Baja sauce is AMAZING.  Seriously, it is so good on everything.  I love that man.

I am anxiously awaiting our anniversary getaway.  I have ordered his gift, I'm just waiting for the pieces to come in.  I'm crossing my fingers they make it before we leave.  Can't wait to tell you about it when we get back.  I also have almost ALL of the Christmas shopping done.  I decorated the house for Christmas on the 17th.  I'm a little excited.  That, and I declared war on the crap month that it has been in November.

Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving.  Ours was the same as always, just in a smaller number this year.  We only had 29 instead of like the normal 50.  We will hopefully do some annual cookie baking tomorrow and the rest of our Christmas shopping Saturday.  I'll keep you posted......hopefully.

When life decides to take a crap on you

I was hoping that I would have many happy things to update about here in the month of November........but this month decided to just take a crap on all of us in the Zahn-Hall family.  My sister moved out on her 18th birthday, in the middle of the day, completely unexpectedly, with no warning.  I work with my parents, so I see them every single day.  I will let you guess where she moved.  It's been really hard and heartbreaking, especially to see my parents a complete wreck like they are.  My dad crashed his new car that he bought 3 months prior.....they deemed it totaled.  Business is slower than we would hope for, and we all know what kind of stress that brings.  And to top all of it off, I have had massive nausea for 3 weeks.  Don't get excited, it's not THAT kind of nausea.  The smell of food makes my stomach turn......like it did 3 years ago.......i get like 4 bites into my dinner and it acts like it wants to come back up.......like it did 3 years ago.......I've lost 7 pounds in the last 3 weeks, but my belly is increasingly bloated.  Anyone else having Mono flashbacks yet?  I am more than not pleased.  I can't believe that I could possibly have to endure that again.  Definitely not cool.  I cannot 100% guarantee that this is exactly what's happening.....but I lived through it once so I'm pretty sure.  A blood test will definitely confirm both non functioning liver and an active mono virus floating around............and yippee I get to do that soon.  I am actually really excited about getting that started.  If you have never heard of Dr. Greg Allen at Deseret Aesthetics, you are missing out on a really cool Doc, and a really great thing for your body.  They have a really great natural hormone therapy program.  Everyone is lacking in hormones and other vitamin crap your body needs, but it's hard to get it in the foods we eat etc.  His pills, creams, etc are all natural so I'm game for that.  I was seeing a naturopath last year and it helped some, but never very much.  We also never did a hormone test, her first concern was to make sure I didn't end up with that nasty acid rash again with all the stress leading up to the wedding.  I didn't have one so yay there, but my body is just completely destroyed from mono.  I've had endometriosis since I started being a female......so cool beans, but Mono made it SIGNIFICANTLY worse.  I can sit still in my chair, or lay in bed, and my cramps are so intense I can black out without moving.  It's a serious talent.  My hair, my nails, my skin, my metabolism, my energy, my everything has pretty much 100% sucked since Mono.  I hate it, but I've just learned to live with it.  My hormones are most definitely whack, I've had issues with cysts on and off this year and the worsened endometriosis is also a clue.  The cysts and endometriosis by themselves would make it hard enough to have kids when we can finally afford to do so.......I would have been pregnant ages ago, but even if we were in a position to afford it, it could take months or even years of trying.  I was more than disappointed to learn THAT. lemme just tell ya.  Seriously bummed.  I've been trying to come to terms with that and deal with it, but it just bums me out, so I'm not really dealing with  it.  It is the goal with the new hormone program that we could reverse the effects of endometriosis and eventually eliminate it completely.  With the right amount of hormones, etc., my body would function properly and there would be no endometriosis problem because there would be no hormone problem.  This would also help reduce some risk of miscarriage once I could actually get pregnant.  Hopefully it really will work.  I would be super even more bummed if it took years to get pregnant.  I can't wait for the day that we can finally be at the point where we can really say it's time.  Financially, I think we won't be....which sucks, but it is what it is.  I get really tired of people telling me that we should wait for years and spend time as a couple.  That's not what WE want, and WE are the bosses, we just can't afford to be the bosses of that right now.  Oh well, all in due time I guess.

Don't piss me off andddd How in the heck can jeans be so ridiculously different sizes??

If you don't want to hear the rantings of a lunatic, I would skip down about 5 or 6 paragraphs to the part where I tell the story of how being married makes you fat.........it's not a whole lot more exciting, but it isnt' so full of yelling........
Okay so at this current moment my blood is BOILING and I have to vent somewhere or I WILL EXPLODE.  I promise I have been spending the last few days gathering pictures for another update post.  But this first cause its consuming my brain.  Now, just to clarify, I am not trying to be a vindictive jerk, I apologize in advance for any foul language I don't catch before I post this, there is an ounce of truth in everything, but most of this is coming from a place of high blood pressure and surpressed pissed off-ness.  In fact, if you want to skip this, I will in no way be offended.  I will probably look back on this one day and think it was just straight up stupid.  But in THIS moment, I do not feel bad......SO.
NOTHING in this world makes my blood boil more than someone telling me how to live MY, in case you read that wrong that was M.Y. as in Alycia Zahn's PERSONAL life........okay so that ANDDDD someone who has been talking about how I should be living my life to someone else behind my back and then fronting that it's all fine and dandy and then the other someone else letting it slip that it is not and telling me in a not so discreet way that that's how EVERYONE thinks I should be living MYYYYYYYYY life. Everyone should be SO glad that I do not have great arm muscles, that two fingers on my right punching hand are swollen and can't be made into a fist since I jacked them up at work.........VERY glad.
SINCEEEEEE we are on the subject of my ranting...........EVERYONE needs to stop telling me when they think I should have children.  Your opinions are unwanted and unneccesary.  If I wanted to know what you thought the timeline of my life should be, I WOULD HAVE ASKED YOU.  I do not give you unneccessary or unwarranted advice/how you should live your life timelines.  Quite frankly, I do not give a rat's behind how you live your life, that's YOUR problem, not mine.  If you need help or advice, I will gladly give my best answer from my own experiences......
This goes against everything I am trying to be right now.  I am trying to be more patient, more humble, more calm, less blood-pressure-through-the-roof-pissed-off about things, but THIS particular subject puts knots in my stomach and makes me blow steam out my ears.  It takes all of my strength and every ounce of will power I have ever had EVER to NOT yell at people or punch someone in the face, and it's always at the times in which I cannot do these things that the subject is brought up.  So i have to smile, and come up with the sweetest sing songy BSSS answer. UGH. My head still feels like its going to explode, but I'm a little better.


Since this post is on the negativity train at the moment, can I just say that we had to get dressed up today and I did not fit in ONE, not one, single pair of dress pants, nor skirts, nor any of my dresses.  I wanted to sit down on the floor and cry myself into a puddle and then just fall over and die in my bed.  We don't own a scale in this house, but I'm pretty sure I've gained almost 25 pounds in the last year.  and 25 pounds doesn't seem like a whole lot, and people always tell me how i look "skinny".......but let's be real.  I am not.  I have not bought new clothes since my sophmore/junior year of high school.  At that point I was at my peak weight (117), and then senior year I lost 20 pounds due to sickness.......no need for new clothes there, and since then I've been gainging weight back, so again, no new clothes needed.  Saturday, I ripped my very last pair of jeans. Which means I HAD to face the reality that i was ACTUALLY too fat for my size 3's.....sad day.  Now, some of this is large in part due to the fact that when I turned twenty my hips magically decided to expand horizontally as if it would one day be necessary to birth an elephant and not a small human, but ya know, whatev.  The pants were tight, but they still FIT until I gained an extra twenty pounds....blah.  So last night the hubs and i went and bought some new jeans. I went to womens first, and got some 4's, because i haven't shopped for jeans in 5 years and 3's don't fit, so I figured 4's would.....logical right? i thought. since juniors was right next door, i also picked up some 5's to try on, thinking they might also be the perfect size.......well let me just tell you, after trying on 7 thousand pairs.......the 4's were straight up 7 of me in one pair of pants, like no joke, I would have had to weight like50 pounds more to keep them from falling off, no joke.  I could fit another 3 legs and my arms in those things.......as for the 5's......I ended up in 7's to get them on, but i wore a pair today and after about 6 hours they were like the saggy baggy elephant bottom......ugh I cannot win.  Guess it's time to jillian michael's it up in this house, eat salad  all day err day...and whatever other wacky worky outy things i should be doing. I am going to be serious about this, even though I haven't been the last 6 months, cause i just can't stand it any more.  I DO NOT like shopping and I DO NOT want to have to go buy all new clothes because I'm too big of a fatso to fit in my skinny clothes.  I refuse to buy anything larger than medium until I am a pregnant whale.......hopefully I can keep up with that promise.  Here goes....

MIA

Welllllll........here i am again. let's just pretend it hasn't been 100 years, shall we? it would make me feel like i don't have to apologize.....and it would mean I can deny the fact that i have royally sucked at documenting life the last year......oh well.  A brief recap i guess?
We bought a new car in March, built a new patio in May, took a trip to California in May, new car was in a wreck in July, took a trip to California again the end of September and here we are now in October..... when I saw it that way it certainly seems less busy.... But it has been everything but that around here.  We have been working between  50 and 60 hours consistently, each and every week.  We usually work on Saturdays and a good 3 or 4 nights in the week.  Sunday is usually our only day off, and quite frankly, by the time I am done with all of the chores and laundry and all the other crap I never got to in the week, I don't have much time to blog, nor do i have the energy!  That and I clearly suck at documenting any life through photography.......we took two vacations and I have like 6 pictures to show for it......eesh.  Since I discovered Instagram, I have been much better about taking pictures, but it's usually nothing of great importance or value, and it usually does not contain me or the husband.......so failllll once again.  Oh well.  To follow up this post, I'm going to add a few of the pictures I've taken just so that they are somewhere......