Life As My Phone Sees It 5/18/12 - 5/30/12

I got a little behind on my pictures again, but I'm just so glad I'm doing this to document what my life is like these days. One day I really think I'm going to be exceptionally glad I did these posts :)

 5/18/12 Friday and 5/19/12 Saturday - These pictures are a great example of "cause and effect". Above picture was Friday night late, when the hubby was getting excited for the round of golf he was going to play early the next morning. Below picture is Saturday afternoon after golf, when he was passed out on the floor from golf exhaustion :)

5/19/12 and 5/21/12 - That same Saturday the 19th, we found Charlie hanging out in his crib during naptime, SITTING UP all by himself. He had been doing this for about a day... and so we knew it was time to lower the crib. So, the next picture (taken on the 21st) is Charlie in his new lowered crib for safety!

5/22/12 - A closeup of the flowers I planted on my porch this season. Adds some color to our life!

5/23/12 - T's youngest brother, Trent, graduated from high school! So, we went down to Salem that evening for the ceremony, which was held on the football field. Despite the fact that it was late May, it was sort of rainy, very windy, and cold!! Brr! But we survived, and it was fun :) Congrats Trent! Charlie got to stay up late that night, and he wasn't even too cranky about it! Plus, I captured this awesome picture of the sun getting ready to go down - clouds above and mountains below.

5/26/12 - Shopping spree day! I worked really hard helping build websites, so I won a $250.00 shopping spree. I was able to purchase 5 shirts, 2 skirts, 2 pairs of colorful skinny jeans, 2 pairs of shoes, 1 pair of denim knee-length shorts, and a set of sunglasses! That's an average of $20/item, so I'm pretty happy with my finds :)

5/29/12 - Charlie and I went to Seven Peaks Water Park in Provo for the first time this season! We hung out with Jenny and Henry for a while. The first pictures were taken at home before we left, and the second set of pictures were taken at Seven Peaks. He LOVED the water. He splashed, crawled around, played with some toys, and tried to climb onto Henry. This summer is going to be a BLAST!

5/29/12 - And, in fact, Charlie had so much fun that he was passed out COLD before we got to the car. He even stayed asleep while I transferred him from stroller to car seat. That's a first for him! Sweet sleeping boy:

5/30/12 - Charlie is getting better at crawling by the day! He finally figured it out a few days ago and now he can quickly (awkwardly) crawl across the room and get to what he wants. I left the door open outside while I was watering my flowers and look who came to say hello :)

Shortly after that last picture was taken, Charlie got more daring and tried to climb down the 2 inch drop, lost his balance, and landed on his forehead. Needless to say, he wasn't too happy about that, but I picked him up, kissed it, and made it all better :) I guess he's going to have to learn the hard way, and until then I'll be watching him really closely!

April Showers Bring May Flowers...

... and I planted them on my porch!
They really do bring beauty and happiness to my plain cement porch, and I love them!

From pansies...
To petunias....
And more!!

I really really do love spring! :)

What's New with the Shipps?

I guess it's time for an "update" post since I don't have a lot of pictures but I do have enough to update! I realized as I was reading through my blog posts that I haven't spoken a word about the new jobs that I have! Yep. That's right! I am no longer an employee at the Buckle as of the beginning of August. It's sort of a bittersweet feeling. I loved the people I worked with, the customers I made friends with, and the clothes I got at an awesome discount!! But, I was feeling the need for something new, with a regular schedule, better pay, and somewhere I didn't have to stand on my feet for hours and hours, and where I'd be less tempted to spend money...

A few days after the cruise, I began responding to craigslist ads for receptionist positions... kind of just for fun... and kind of to see if I could really get a better paying job. Well, a few days later I was blessed to receive a phone call asking if I could come in for an interview. I was quite surprised, to be honest, and I went in for the interview about an hour later! The interview went so well, I knew I'd be getting the job. But I was torn - the pay was only mediocre. I wasn't sure if I was ready to leave Buckle.

So, the next day, I called to turn down the position. But I wasn't able to get through, and I decided not to leave a voicemail. Another blessing. Later that evening, I was called again and informed that a new position had just opened up that paid better. Quite a bit better. So, I thought it over for the weekend, prayed about it, and made an executive decision. I took the job!

The company where I now work is called Empower Group, USA. It's a real estate investment company, but it's got a unique business model. The company seeks out and purchases properties that are foreclosed and in not-so-amazing condition. These homes can be purchased for literally $5,000 or less. Then, we sell the properties for a bit more to people who are excited and willing to fix them up a bit and re-sell them for a lot more! Either that or these customers may try to flip the property right away and make a bit of a profit on it because they are able to get it so cheap from us.

I started out doing property research to figure out which homes we should buy. We try to avoid homes with a lot of back tax, because our company will pay for that before we sell it. It was pretty fun. A few weeks later, however, our customer service manager decided to move on with life and the position opened up. So, I'm now the Customer Service Manager as well as property researcher on the side. It's been quite an adventure so far, and I'm really enjoying everything I've learned and the people I've met!

My other job, which I started on the last day of July, is managing 6 apartment units in Provo. They are all 4-person single undergrad student housing. 4 girls units and 2 boys. It's been pretty fun so far, minus the hectic week during move-ins and move-outs!! I have learned a LOT about the good, the bad, and the ugly of owning and managing apartment units. I'm still trying to decide if it'd be something worth doing later in life.

So, now you know about my career adventures. I think it's ironic that I have two "real estate" jobs, of sorts, in this economy where the market for real estate is really bad. I'm hoping the things I am learning now will help me segway into perhaps becoming a realtor one day. It's something I've always wanted to do.

Okay... now for a couple more updates. These next three pictures are a continuation of my last post with our first tomato to ever turn red! A couple days after those photos were taken, we went out to check on the tomato and it fell right off into Trevor's hand when he touched it! We were SO excited. So, we went inside, washed it, and ate it:

It was soo tasty! And it tasted just like a real tomato! Okay okay... not that it WOULDN'T taste like a real one - it WAS a real one. I was just so excited and happy that we ACTUALLY grew a tomato from a seed! And got to eat it! Now, we have about 10 or so more big ones that are going to turn red any day now!! Also, our jalapenos are growing nice and strong! They are so cute when they're little. I am still amazed by this gardening stuff. I can't believe that these complex vegetables just appear from tiny little seeds! It seriously blows my mind and I am humbled by God's wisdom. I can only imagine how I'll feel one day when I have my first child!

Well, anyway, I'm almost done with my updates. Trevor and I finally got to go rafting down the Provo River on Saturday. I was actually shocked at how cold the water was, especially at the end of summer! Apparently the river stays cold during the summer and gets very COLLLLDDDD during the winter. Having grown up in the south where the rivers are warm in the summer, I kind of began to miss tubing down the lazy, warm North Carolina rivers where I grew up. I'll definitely have to go back one day.

But, despite the cold water, Trevor and I had a great time! I laughed when we first got started as I joked with Trevor that he was "stuck with me, on a raft, in the river, for an hour and a half, with no cell phone, and nowhere to run". It really was nice, though, to just be with each other for a while. This picture is an actual picture of the river, and this is pretty much exactly how it looked the other day when we floated down:
By the time it was over, we got pretty good at steering our inflatable two-man tube. Our casualties include 3 bushes, 1 shoreline, 1 very large rock, and 1 very ticked-off fisherman. We really didn't mean to hit him--but he was standing in the MIDDLE of the river!! And even though he knew and we knew we were going to collide, he still didn't move! So SMACK!! Right into him... and he was NOT happy. At all. I yelled "Sorry! It's really hard to steer!" and he mumbled some obscenities in our direction and by the end of it informed my husband that he'd like to "take it to the shore". HAHAHA. What? This 35 year old fisherman was going to beat up my 25 year old husband? Oh dear... we hit a lemon.

But what can you do but laugh? That's all we could do when we thought of the rest of the group of tubes that was coming soon behind us that would be sure to run right into him too. I guess it really just wasn't that guy's day. But that's what you get for trying to fish Provo River on a Saturday afternoon!

Ah well, it was quite a fun adventure. Our adventure for next weekend will be attending the BYU - Florida State football game!! Yes - we got tickets! It's a miracle :)

So, until then, Trevor will be going to classes and studying hard while I work work work at my new jobs! Please come soon, weekend!!

We Have Color!

After months of cultivating, watering, and a bit of tender loving care, our tomato plants have finally produced fruit! And not only that, but yesterday I came home to the fun surprise of color! One of our tomatoes has begun to turn RED! Since I've never gotten this far in the gardening process (due to cold weather killing our crops last year) I am QUITE excited that we will be harvesting some home-grown tomatoes! They're a bit bigger than cherry tomatoes but not quite the size of your regular tomato either. I think they are perfect!!
Just wanted to let you share in my gardening excitement! And, Dad, this is living proof that you can grow a tomato plant from a seed, AND on a porch in Utah that gets only a good 3 hours of bright, direct sunlight a day! It's a miracle! :)

Things to Update Upon

So I'm sitting here at about 11:30 pm on Sunday night waiting for laundry to finish. Yes. Laundry. Sigh. But it's a necessity so I just have to do it. I won't be to bed until well after midnight and I need to be up at 6:30 to get ready for work at 8... blah. So, I thought I'd kill time by updating my life since our anniversary at the beginning of the month. Here are some things that have happened:

1. I have started working full-time at the Buckle as a Team Lead. I am in the workings to become Assistant Manager and hopefully that will happen here in the next couple weeks. We just need to work on improving our store's sales (compared to other Buckles in the area) before it can happen. So come shop from me! :)

2. Trevor and I completed a 700 piece landscape/painting puzzle together in a matter of a few days. Piece here, piece there, and it was finished! :) It took up pretty much our entire tiny kitchen table. Here's the finished product:3. We both began reading Angels and Demons after I picked it up from the bookstore. The goal was to finish it by this weekend so we could see the movie. Well, since I have quite a bit more time, I finished it and Trevor was only about halfway through so we were going to wait to see the movie until next weekend. But, we were out at Chili's last night and he decided we should just go see it because he needed to save the 6 more hours of reading that lay ahead of him for more important things (like homework... which, by the way, he has a project due tomorrow morning and he just started it about an hour ago... uh oh). Long story short, we went to see the movie last night. It was a good movie, but I couldn't help but find myself cringing or grimacing as the director chose to completely change some important details about the book, add things in, and leave out details I thought were very interesting and pertinent to the story. One character in the book dies, but in the movie he is rescued and LIVES! Whaaa? Oh well, I've been lamenting for a while now and need to learn to get over it (or just not see movies that are based on books when I liked the book so much). Regardless, it was an ok movie and Trevor found it entertaining. I would have liked for him to finish the book and I told him he still should because it's a completely different story, but he says he probably won't. Oh well.

Now I've got to find my next summer read - Any Suggestions?

4. We are going on a CRUISE to Mexico on Royal Carribbean near the end of July! We're going with 3 other couples (YAY!) and I am so excited I've already started buying "cruise clothes" and I've made plans to get a bit tanner before then so I don't turn into a lobster. Pure white sand and crystal blue water? HERE I COME! Wahoo! :)

5. We've planted a veggie garden again this year - this time bigger and earlier so we'll get veggies before winter hits! I'm so excited and will be posting pictures soon. I would post them now, but I realized the ones I took are already outdated because the plants are growing so fast! So I'm hoping to do a "progressive" post to show the life of some of them from seedling to where they are now. That'll be fun, huh?

Well, the laundry is done. Gotta go grab it and fold it so I can get some shut-eye! ;)

New Shoes and Other Such Updates

So I got these new Sketchers on sale at Famous Footwear and I am in love! I have been needing some nice, black, comfy, closed-toed shoes to wear when it's cold and when I work. And I've been eyeing these babies for a while. So I finally took the plunge and got them! :) Yay!This next picture is of our growing tomato plant. The tomatoes are probably 3 times this big now, but this is the only recent picture I took. I'm hoping to get some fruit before the weather stays cold. Fortunately, they made it through the cold weekend! And it's warming up again later this week. So I'm crossing my fingers!
And here's a couple random pictures of Trevor enjoying our TV. Here he's watching college football (Saturday night!) and cheering. He was seriously cheering "Yeahh! Number One!" when I took this picture! :) What a nerrrrd.
And he's making a great face for me. If the picture confuses you, he was on the floor looking up at me and I rotated it. So yeah. Enjoy. Don't we all love these faces??
Happy times. :)

Finally!

I'm so excited!! After about 4 months of planting, watering, staking, and making sure they didn't get too much sun, my tomato plants are FINALLY starting to grow buds! And you know what that means! We'll be getting some tomatoes in a few weeks! And to think my dad said it was impossible to grow tomato plants from seeds! Well, they are officially about two feet tall and they now smell like tomato plants and they are furry as well! :) Here are a couple pictures!! Sorry this first one is kind of weird. I took it with a flash and the shadow makes it look fuzzy!This picture is SO neat! If you look in the middle there, you can see the little flower buds that will soon make flowers and then fruit! :) Nature really is amazing! (P.S. - if you click on the picture it will get big and you can really see all the amazing detail!)
I've been waiting for this for a while now. The plants have been growing really fast because they love our new porch where they get more sunlight (but not too much!). I can't wait to see what happens next!! :)

Our "Children" !!

Since Trevor and I obviously don't have kids and Wymount won't allow any pets (not even fish!!), we have discovered our love for raising... plants!! :)

So here's some pictures of our babies!

This first picture is of Trevor's bonsai tree that he purchased a little less than a year ago from a bonsai salesman on the side of the road. He had been wanting one for some time... so he finally gave in. Currently, our bonsai went through a bit of shock when we left it for a weekend to go camping, so it lost a bunch of leaves. We replanted it in fresh soil just two days ago and it's already growing a lot of its leaves back! :)Next are the tomato plants that I have been growing since the end of May or first of June. I went to an enrichment activity where we planted seeds. I planted grape tomato seeds and basil seeds. My parents told me it's impossible to grow tomato plants from seeds... but they seem to be doing pretty well, don't you think? They're probably about a foot tall or a little more. And they're growing a lot every day. I'm starting to have to stake some of them up... you may be able to see in the middle of the pot there's one with a stake (it's really a shish-kabob skewer).
This next picture has two plants in one pot. Down at the bottom you can see the two surviving basil plants that I grew from seeds. I did have four in this pot, but I came home one day to notice that someone (or something) had knocked it over and then tried to put the soil back in... but I could only see ONE of my four basil plants!! I looked around for the others with no luck, and then I dug into the loose soil and found one buried completely. That's the one on the right in this picture. It's been recovering since. I searched around for the other two smaller ones, but never found them. Oh well... at least I still have two! I'm not really sure what the other plant is. I know that at one point it had little purple flowers on it, but I haven't been able to see more blooms for a while, probably because it's about to be fall. But anyway, it's a plant Trevor picked up from the nursery where he got my birthday present--more seeds to plant! :)
This next plant is Trevor's mission plant. I can't remember what it's called at the moment-- a Japanese something or other. It's also called a money tree in some places. It's cousin to the cactus so it doesn't need much water. It kind of looks weird in this picture, but mainly because it needs to be re-potted when I get a chance. Apparently these things can grow to be big bushes, and if part of it is cut off, you can just stick it straight back into the soil and it will live. You can see the part that accidentally fell off of ours that I stuck back in the soil at the bottom. It's starting to grow new leaves :)
These next two pictures are ones of our brand-new additions! They are the seedlings of pepper plants that Trevor got me for my birthday. I planted the seeds in the little soil packages about a week and a half ago, and just recently I discovered my first sign of life:Just a few days later, this is what they look like! And they are growing REALLY fast. I have a feeling these will be big plants! The nursery said it's okay to plant them this late in the season, so I hope that they make it and we can maybe get some peppers to pick from them! I don't know why I find it so fun to grow things, but it's nice to have a fun hobby!
So... I hope you enjoyed getting to know our little "family" :)

We're moving to our new place with a porch by this Saturday, so my plants will have a nice sunny, safe place to grow! I can't wait!