Good times...

Just so you don't think that Garrett and I spend all our time working and studying, here are some pictures of the things we've been up to lately.


Easter was a lot of fun. We took Lanna to an Easter egg hunt at our aunt's care center. Lanna loved getting her face painted and gathering Easter eggs, but I had to practically force her to stand in front of the Easter bunny while I snapped a picture. The best part about Easter is that the Easter bunny still leaves us goodies at my mom's house, so every Easter we eat breakfast at Mom's house. We also chow down on chocolate and lots of deviled eggs from the hardboiled eggs we color the night before. Yum!


Every so often, Lanna and I have been having a girls' night out at Kangaroo Zoo. It's especially fun when Lanna can bring a friend. You can see how rosy her cheeks get after just a few minutes. She likes to see how fast she can tackle the obstacle course and go down the slides.


Today I just made some yummy bruschetta with fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, fresh tomatoes and fresh roasted garlic bread. We've been eating more fresh herbs since I got my Rachael Ray Furi Froggy. This is definitely one of my new favorite things. Tonight for dinner we'll be having salmon with fresh dill. I love it!

Even though we do spend most of our time studying or working, we love hanging out with Lanna, celebrating holidays with family and being creative with dinner. That's what makes our free time fun.

It's Official!

Last year around this time, I announced my plans to spend the summer in Costa Rica. This summer is not nearly as exotic, but it's official! This year I'll be spending the summer in... drum roll please... Florence, Arizona! There will be no monkeys, no rainforest and probably no rain.

When my mom mentioned to my great-aunt and uncle that I may be spending the summer in Florence, they said, "Oh, by the prison!" That is correct, Florence is by the prison, but is also by the detention center. As many of you know, I have been doing a lot of work in immigration over the past year, and this summer will be my baptism by fire interning at the Florence Project. Here is an excerpt from their website explaining what they do:

The Florence Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal service organization providing free legal services to men, women, and unaccompanied children detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of the Department of Homeland Security in Arizona. Although the government assists indigent criminal defendants and civil litigants through public defenders and legal aid attorneys, it does not provide attorneys for people in immigration removal proceedings. As a result, an estimated 90 percent of the detained people go unrepresented due to poverty. The Florence Project strives to address this inequity both locally and nationally through direct service, partnerships with the community, and advocacy and outreach efforts.

I'm really excited for this opportunity to use my Spanish and gain great legal experience in a field that I find fascinating. I'll be down there for 10 weeks all together, however I will be returning home for a couple weekends to visit family. Now I'll have to spend my time in between studying and working at my current internship shopping for some scorching desert-heat work appropriate apparel. Wish me luck!

Birthday Adventures

This month I turned the ripe old age of 25, and it was great! I actually feel really lucky because it feels like my birthday has practically lasted all month. It started with our fun dinner out with my grandma at the Cheesecake Factory and ended this last Sunday with a family celebration at my grandparents' house.

On the actual day, Garrett took me out to dinner at Red Lobster. I LOVE seafood! Every time I've been to an aquarium, there are just certain critters that I would really love to eat. I don't know if those giant lobsters they have at the aquarium actually taste good, but they make my mouth water. And Red Lobster was perfect to satisfy my sea-tooth. Plus they have the best biscuits. I think Garrett kept getting more so we could take some home with us. I had lobster and crab and shrimp, and it was really wonderful!

Also that weekend, we went out to dinner with my dad at Japanese Tepanyaki. It was also really great. I ordered the (surprise!) salmon. The chef was so entertaining. I was really glad that we went because there used to be a Japanese Tepanyaki in Bountiful that we loved to go to, but it burned down a few years ago. This restaurant was just as fun, and it was especially fun to go with Lanna now that she's old enough to enjoy it.

I also had great family parties with my family and Garrett's family. It was so much fun, and everyone was so thoughtful. Now I'm excited to use my birthday money on my first set of golf clubs! Mom and I took a class last fall, and we're excited to hit the links this summer.

Thanks everybody for your great birthday wishes!

Dinner Out

I know I've been somewhat remiss in my blogging over the last month, but fortunately February wasn't particularly eventful. The one big holiday I forgot to blog about was Valentine's, which involved mostly hanging out at home and watching movies.* This month, however, should be much more eventful because there are so many family birthdays in it (including mine!). In fact, the birthday festivities have already begun.

In case you didn't already know, my grandma and I share a birthday, and this year we are both having kind of big ones. I am turning 25 and my grandma is turning 80. I always love getting together with my grandma to celebrate, so Garrett and I decided to take my grandma out to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner last Saturday. Heather, Lanna and my mom all came with us, and we had so much fun.

First of all, I had no idea how crowded it would be! Garrett and I got to the restaurant an hour before we planned on eating dinner so we could put our name in, and the hostess said the wait would be 60-80 minutes! Fortunately Mom, Heather, Lanna and Grandma all arrived right when they called us, so Garrett and I were the only ones who had to wait very long. And the wait was definitely worth it! The menu was ridiculously long because there were so many choices. I had the Bang Bang Chicken and loved it, but the portions were really large leaving plenty of leftovers for each of us.

Then we had dessert. It was wonderful. I had the best key lime cheesecake, and when they brought out our plates, mine and Grandma's had "Happy Birthday Sarah!" and "Happy Birthday Doris!" written on them in chocolate syrup. The servers sang to us, we blew out our candles, and each ate our fabulous desserts. Then we all had to roll out of the restaurant. We were stuffed! But it was so much fun, and I had such a great time celebrating with my grandma. I think we just might have to make it a tradition. Yum!

*I don't mean to make it sound like Valentine's was boring. Garrett and I have been so busy this last month that we really needed to spend a day hanging out at home, and it was really great. We ordered Cafe Rio and cuddled on the couch while watching romantic movies like Die Hard 4. Pretty sweet, huh?

New Hobbies And The Woe They Bring

I have a somewhat compulsive habit of starting new projects and trying new hobbies every couple of months or so. While this practice has been pretty enjoyable for the most part (minus the frustration of figuring out these new projects), it has the downside of leading to even more projects. My little projects provide a nice break from reading, even if they are pretty slow-going since they are strictly post-studying projects. Currently, I have taken up knitting, but toting my yarn around in a plastic bag just doesn't look good or provide much storage. So my new project to accommodate my knitting is this cute knitting bag. It's an Amy Butler pattern that I made out of my favorite Michael Miller fabric. Isn't it lovely?


It turned out great, but it was more work than I was expecting. At least it will provide a nice temporary home for my knitting projects. Here's a sweater and a hat I made:


Next I'm going to knit some reusable pads for my Swiffer (a truly indispensable cleaning tool in an apartment with all-tile floors). For my next funny hobby I've decided to try my hand at, Garrett is getting me Photoshop for Valentine's. Hopefully that hobby goes as well as this one has so far.

Happy New Year!

Our New Year's was pretty uneventful since Garrett had to work, but I can't complain about the great year that we had. I decided to steal a cute idea from another blog that I read, so here's a list of the first sentence from the first post of every month in 2008:

January: Back to studying, back to the job search and back to no more free time.

February: You can tell it's almost Spring when there are plenty of baby showers to go to.

March: I'm going to Costa Rica!

April: As I'm sure all of you have guessed, Garrett and I are smack dab in the middle of finals.

May: Garrett graduated last Friday!!!

June: ¡Hola!

July: I’ve never been to Hawaii…but I’m already convinced that Manuel Antonio is one of the best places in the world to spend a vacation.

August: I know you are all eagerly awaiting news of what Mom and I have been up to in Costa Rica.

September: Hi everybody!

October: We had so much fun hanging out with Heather and Jim, Jenny and Aaron, and cute little Jason at Jim's family cabin last weekend.

November: Please forgive the super late Halloween photos!

December: This was the view from outside our apartment on Monday.

It's so strange to look over the posts from the last year. A lot of great things happened in our lives, like Garrett's graduation and my trip to Costa Rica. Even the fun little things like our trip to Arches and Garrett's first time at Timpanogos Cave are so great to look back on, but a lot of the posts also show that as much as our lives change, they also stay the same. Last January I was doing the same thing I'll be doing this January, trying to figure out what to do with the summer. And one other constant is being busy, busy busy!

For 2009, we are really looking forward to all the surprises the new year has in store, but also hoping that things don't change too much. We love our cozy apartment in the Village, being so close to family, and even the challenge of busy schedules to keep us on our toes. We wish you all the best for 2009, and hope that you continue to enjoy some of the best of 2008. Happy New Year!

Finals are finally (almost) over...

And I have so much to do! I do have one more paper I need to turn in, but the deadline was extended so I can stress over it after Christmas. After all, I have much more important things to do. For example, the Christmas tree is not out. There is not a single Christmas decoration making our little apartment feel festive. In fact, if you came over to visit, you might think it's still November from the turkey dishcloth I still have out. The presents have all been bought (thank goodness!), but I will be spending all my time tomorrow wrapping them. For far away family, I'm really sorry, but your gifts haven't made it to the post office yet. And for all you wonderful people out there who were expecting Christmas cards...those didn't get out either. It feels like someone has stolen my Christmas!


The law school is my Grinch this year. Boo! The only fabulous item that is making me feel just a little bit Christmas-y is this comfy pair of fleece socks with rice bags in the feet that smell like cinnamon and cloves. Garrett gave them to me early because my feet were freezing while I was working on my papers. I called Heather to tell her that my feet smelled like cider. They make our whole apartment smell yummy!

My one Christmas wish this year is that finals next year won't be such a monumental pain! At least I'm halfway done officially (almost-just have to finish that one annoying paper). So I'm going to work hard tomorrow to make up for lost time and get into the Christmas spirit. Garrett has to work, so I thought I'd spend the day watching some of my favorite Christmas flicks while I'm doing all that wrapping. Too bad 24 hours of A Christmas Story won't be on yet.