The only good pizza...

I'm a strange American.  I don't like milk, I don't like brownies, and don't really like pizza.  Yep, I get the crazy looks of... "what?? no pizza??!?!?!?  You crazy!"  Yeah, and I do crave it every 3-4 months, just a piece or so of Hawaiian or something.  I can't really explain it except maybe it's because all pizza's that I grew up with were greasy greasy and cardboardish...

David has changed my world yet again :).  He's introduced me to REAL pizza!!  Yep, I'm here to say that everyone needs to try this.  I have no idea why we Americans haven't embraced other better, healthier pizzas out there.

Italian.  Pizza.  Yep.  It's the best.  You'll either have to go to Italy, or find one of the very few real Italian restaurants, or just believe me.  They use wood ovens to cook their thin dough with mozzarella chunks and tomato chunks.  You can add other toppings but the pizzas are more made to fold up and stuff so it gets a bit messy.  My favorite is the regular margherita pizza.  It's just so great.  You can eat your own whole pizza and you won't feel sick or fatty, etc.  It's wonderful.  So, there is this great little place in SLC called Settebellos.  It is real Italian.  David took me there on one of our first dates, and I fell in love.  Little did he know that I didn't like pizza, but this was different.  We've gone back a few times, I just keep making excuses to get us there - to show our visitors the place, to take someone for their birthday, etc etc.  One day David just suggested we go there as a date night.... so of course I couldn't say no, and we said we'd share a pizza.  But you'll notice below that once we were there, we couldn't do it.  It's just too good to share....  Anyway, if you are ever in SLC (or there's one in Vegas) we'll take you there and give you a new addiction like I have :) :)

These were from our date night on Sept 11th. :)

Work, School, Life as now

Well in January a company bought us (my work company), and then put our company up for sale...  We've been going through this for months and months - and I just have to say finally - we're done!  I've put together so many spreadsheets and reports, yay no more for awhile I hope.  Our company has been bought by an investor.  This is great for me because now our company is on our own with such a small company, well, lots smaller than before.  Our HR team has a lot of decision making abilities.  It's stressful but a great learning experience for me.  I'm involved of a lot of the changes that we'll be making and hope to make some good contributions.  Some people still drive me crazy and there are days that I don't want to be at work...haha, don't we all?  But I'm still here and hanging on.  I like knowing all that is going on in our department - the processes and ways to help employees - which is good - at the same time, I still am stretching myself all over many projects.  Even though we know our future we still have a lot of things to decide: Performance Reviews, Benefits Changes, HR database and starting to support the Europe and Asia groups and doing what I do for US for them... as well as lots of other things - payroll, intranet, terminations, new hires....  The list starts to overwhelm me.  Anyway, just a quick update about it all on my end.  When I come home I still am finding time to finish putting our new home together (I think we're about done and pictures will be coming soon!) and doing recipe and computer projects.

David is probably 10 times more busy as he has part-time work and full-time school.  He has 2 really hard classes, and a 3rd class just starting next week.  All of his classes are part of his pre-dental required classes.  He studies during all of his free hours, and I feel like he should be getting 110% from all that I see him do and help him study with.  He is taking a pre-dental class actually teaching about teeth and stuff.  It is quite fun for me to hear all about it.  I don't have tests, but I get to see our recently purchased teeth model and learn all about how teeth are formed, why my teeth are sensitive and so much more.  Maybe I should have been a dentist!  Except I hate body and blood.  So, we'll leave it to David.  He's got the DAT test this spring so we've got a lot of decisions to make with schools and such.  Fun yet hard times.  David is so great at everything.  I mean besides all the homework he's still such a big help at home and gives me so much of his time.  I sure love Sunday's though since those are my one days with just us.

Anyway just a quick update on our busy lives... I'd say it can't get any busier, but I'm sure it can.  We just keep going with the flow and enjoying it as we can.

My David is so brave!!

CAUTION: This post does mention blood and a bit of gross stuff, so if you don't want to hear about it... or see it... don't read this one....

David has had a lump on his back all year, and we didn't notice it too much until it started hurting him and rubbing against his lower ribs in his back.  Over the past few months we have noticed it just getting slightly bigger and more sensitive.  So next up, we went to the doctor.  We found out David had a tumor, fatty lump, in his back.  Yeah, kinda gross, but also cool because our doctor said he would remove it to check and make sure it was okay and get rid of the pain.

So we still had to wait a month or two to get it taken out, but over Labor Day we scheduled the appointment.  I went in with David on the Friday before at noon, so that I could be there as well as drive him home.  We weren't sure how painful it would be and for how long.  So, first off, I think everyone was more concerned with little me actually WATCHING a bloody event... but I made it through it :)  I didn't watch, but sat to where I couldn't see.  Wish I could have held David's hand, but the scalpel and tools were everywhere!!

David was great though.  I was nervous enough for him.  We got in and our doctor was pretty silly since he was headed to fly out of town for Labor Day after our appointment.  He numbed up the spot and had David on his side while he proceeded to cut open and pull out the bump.  According to David it just felt weird to feel someone pulling at your insides, but he was pretty numbed up luckily.  After it was out, took like 10 min, Doc sewed him up with a few stitches and taped it up as well.  David was turning pretty white and I could see all the red gauze all over... he was losing blood definitely.  So, we had him lie down still while our doctor told us that it wasn't just a fatty tumor as we thought.  It was actually a bunch of blood vessels clot together.  No wonder it was hurting anyway.  And the blood coming out...  It was bigger, but the doctor had to pull it out rather than "how easy the fat would pop out" is what he told us.  It has been sent to the lab and David is all clear.  It looks small but it was pretty big inside of him...

We went home, David still white, and we both took a nap for like 3 hours.  So nice for a Friday afternoon!  And it was nice too to have the whole weekend to ourselves w/out anything we had to go to :)...  David was in more pain than we thought all weekend.  Most things you do requires your back so that was tough.  Even sitting in one place was hard after awhile.  He slept on his stomach, sat w/out backs, walked slowly, couldn't lift anything, reach high, etc.  Poor guy, but he really didn't complain at all, I could tell he was in pain, but he's just not a complainer.  (unlike me totally!!)  But, we made it through with movies, ice cream, and lots of sleep for him.  The stitches came out a week later and the tissue is finally healing.

We're glad its over but at the same time, it was a fun weekend together all the time and I loved caring for my David.  First of many futures for me.  He's already taken care of me lots for my many colds, sicknesses, sore legs, feet, etc.  Finally it was my turn.  Glad you're okay David!

Our boating trip 2010

Before it got cold, well actually it was a bit cold this day... end of August 2010.

We went BOATING!!!!  Yeah baby :) :)  David kept in contact with an old bishopric member who took us boating last year and said we could go again last year.  Well, we put together a list of those we'd like to see and bring with us again.  David really put it all together and organized it all... for me... for us.  I just needed to be on a boat at some point this year - and I think David was just as excited.

We had our good friends from the singles ward come with since they knew Bro. Linton as well.  He's just such an amazing man...  he's a dentist, our example of someone we'd like to be like someday.  We met him at the dock and he took us out all day despite the wind.  We loved it SO MUCH!!  I miss those singles ward activities I have to be honest, I mean big group boating activities, dancing, etc, so this was so much fun.  Here are some of the pictures, yes it was crazy windy - my hair..haha.

And I'm so proud, I sort of made sure David would get to wakeboard - and guess what??? He got up!!  He didn't feel what it was like last year, but he did it this year!  And then I did tubing with him as his reward since I'm so afraid of them.  Screamed the whole time and laughed too as everyone laughed with us.  We're going to have many more years of this stuff for sure!  We're going to need to buy a boat one day when we're rich.. such a dream huh?  We'll take anyone out who wants to go with us though :)

What the???

What did our freezer do to our ice?  Yes, it's totally up in the air and frozen like that.  We have aliens in our freezer, right?  When we saw this, I just laughed and laughed.

Guess who came to visit???

MY ROOMMATES!!!!  I've been looking forward to this weekend for months!  Actually since Courtney didn't make it to my wedding when the weather wouldn't let her get on a plane.....


It was a girls weekend on August 20th, and I dragged David (actually he came on his own free will and wanted to meet my friends) to some of it.  Yay!!!  We went out to eat a bit - Cafe Rio and Burgers and Frozen Custard, we stayed up late chatting at Megans (everyone but me spent the night)... and we had a bon-fire too on Saturday night with some other good friends still in the SLC area.  We also had some fun singing while Courtney played - some past times we did a lot - although we didn't break out and dance like we used to?? Hmm..  The first night I also set up Courtney with a good friend of David (and me) from our old ward.  It may have been more of a fun date for us to have our friends and each other at dinner, golf, and ice cream.  But I had thought of it since before our wedding so it was fun to actually have them let us set them up.  Even though they live on other sides of the US.  (who knows what could have happened right??)  Sarah and Courtney were so amazing to fly and visit me (and Megan :) ).  It was a total blast to chat with some of my favorite girls.  I've loved having it just be my husband and me, but some girl time was definitely FUN!  Thanks girls for visiting!!!

and of course, one of the cute Clarks :)

Work Play Day

David and I made it to LAGOON this year!! We went last year too - yeah we already have our traditions I guess :) But this year we weren't planning to go. BUT.... I've been in a committee at work to plan our Summer Work BBQ, and finally they approved us to go to Lagoon. It was going to be a BBQ outside our office or at a small golf course that wouldn't fit our 1500 family members. Well, I was excited! David and I left work early that Friday and we did rides from 3-6pm. That's about all you need when you have a free pass right? I mean, if it wasn't so hot that day I think I could have gone up and down the drop and lift off one a thousand times and still been scared and screamed and excited each time. But, it was really hot, I complained as usual, and we got an Icee and then took a break for a BBQ with our co-workers at the picnic area. It was actually fun to see co-workers and have David there and just a relaxed family atmosphere. I forgot to mention that this day was a 2 for 1 day at Lagoon and the last weekend before school - so the park was to the max! Really, we could have picked a better day so that we didn't wait in 1.5 hour lines for little rides! But, it was fun and quick and more memories....  Here was our one picture at the swings, another favorite. We also did the rollie coasties and I got a bit dizzy from some of them - I couldn't believe it since I love rollercoasters so much!