hello family and friends and happy spring! it has been beautiful over here in central oregon. 60 degrees today! it has been a while since our last post, i apologize, but it has been an eventful past two weeks. i have been calling them the weeks of mike. i have been super busy with work (i get my keys soon! :) and baby showers/church functions but my husband has been three times as occupied. mike has now lost almost 50 pounds since our wedding in fall 2008 where he was at his heaviest. he has been waking up an hour earlier to do pull ups, push ups and lunges. then, amazingly, after work he still has the energy to go for a run or bike ride. he has also been very busy educating me on what i should and should not be eating (should eat-friut, chicken, whole wheat, fiber...should NOT eat-chocolate, all that cheese, the entire bottle of simply orange+mango, the frosting off of my cupcakes...). i think i have done pretty good. i've only bought one candy bar this month, only made 2 batches of cupcakes, and the orange juice i just finished lasted a whole 5 days!

mike has also been spending his time helping me clean and do laundry. but some days that proves to be too much. on this specific day i was told the laundry would be hung by the time i got home from work. well, this is what i came home to. :) i call it his grandpa jenkins nap position because that is exactly who i thought of while taking this picture! we love you, grandpa!

as a reward for all of his hard work, i took mike to our favorite asain restaurant. we don't go very often...you understand why...

everyone who has ever opened the scriptures knows the launguage can be awfully challenging. especially when reading out loud to your wife, who luckily enough was brought up hearing that strange dialect all the time. we know that reading the scriptures is not just all fun and games but it is so funny listening to mike try to pronounce peoples names! :) also, i made the mistake of telling him that as a little girl i thought every verse began with "and it came to pass..." so when it was my turn to read during family scripture night, that was the very first thing to pop out of my mouth. now when its his turn to read and the verse actually does start with "and it came to pass..." it takes him a second to stop laughing and focus! he really is doing an awesome job and we are so excited for the 27th to come around! we love you all and hope your winter blues are gone. because ours sure are! <3

it got up to 55 degrees this last week so mike and i were finally able to take the dogs to the park. its one of our favorite things to do here in bend. if you have ever met pippin you know how excited and, well, happy he ALWAYS is. after just one hour at the dog park he is calm like this for the rest of the day and night. he really does make the perfect lap dog.



these photos are to showcase two things...1) our pretty new computer and 2) our amazing thrift store find, the desk. before we did our taxes we promised ourselves we wouldn't be as wreckless as we were last year (last year all of our refund was gone in less than a week). So this year we gave ourselves a budget. and we actually spent less. goodbye tiny screened netbook hello comfortable spacious desk with a generously sized screen! yay!
a lot of our remaining tax refund is funding our trip to boise next month. we are so excited to spend time with every one march 19-22nd. mark your calendars! <3

part of my new position at gap is to reward awesome performances in creative ways. in the month of january my store had a goal to sell a specific amount of jeans and both the adult and kids store met that goal. for the reward i was in charge of making cupcakes and writing a letter of recognition. the other manager that i work hand in hand with bought all the other snacks. any way, the reason i am sharing this with you all is because i am so proud of my letter i wrote to my co-workers, plus i think it will make my dad proud (because of the play on words). we had dry roasted peanuts, M&Ms, cupcakes, chicken in a biscuit, and nacho cheese doritos set up all pretty on the table...


and of course, no blog can really be complete without an adorable popplewell photo. we love you all!

our new best friend.

first of all this is NOT our dog. we did not adopt, buy or steal him. as bad as we wanted to just bring him home, we did not. okay now that is out of the way we would love to introduce you to our new best friend, curly. we made a weekly trip to our favorite thrift store, paws and shop, and met a new addition to their staff. one of the employees adopted curly from the humane society and brought him into work. he is a 6 month old poodle pug mutt with an adorable underbite. he followed us around the store and was so precious i just had to take a picture to share. now look into that pup's eyes and tell me you don't love him. yupp i knew you couldn't do it! <3

one eyed one horned and it flies!

we finally got a second couch! now when people come over no one has to sit on our hard wooden kitchen table chairs! it was a fluke of a find. mike and i have been searching the thrift stores for the past two months hoping to find a decent couch for our living room but we hadn't had any luck. but friday afternoon we payed a visit to the dogs in the central oregon humane society (its one of our favorite things to do) and realized we hadn't been to their thrift store in a long time. so after saying goodbye to potential pets we made our way to the thrift store. any way, an awesome and cheap couch had our name written all over it. so we took it. the people eater is purple, extra long in the seat area, has removable back cushions and is oh so comfortable! as you can tell we are super excited about our new edition...and so are the dogs :)

after jodie and clay's post last week all we have wanted was cupcakes. so i finally made the time to make them. a lot of them. but since mike and i are trying to eat healthier, the majority of these tasty treats went to my work and our friends. they were truely a hit. some of my favorite comments were:

"oh the frosting just melts in my mouth!"

"this is the best cupcake i have ever had!"

"i couldn't help but shove the whole thing in my mouth!"

and...

"am i in heaven?"

i'll tell ya if there is an award for best cupcake i think i might win with this batch.

we hope everyone has a good week and we would just like to say to dad & mom olson, we love you so much and are thinking of you always! dad you had an awesome run and no one will ever be able to take your place in the hearts of the ward memebers. you were an amazing bishop!

laugh.

the most important thing that i learned this week was to laugh at myself. it has been a stressful week, to say the least. after an exceptionally difficult day, mike showed me a picture he took of me while i was sleeping and said, "sweetheart, laugh at yourself. just laugh." that was saturday and since then we have just laughed. at everything. may i suggest if you find yourself in a tough position find something to laugh at [search talking animals on youtube...your side will be in so much pain. good pain :)]
here are a few things we have laughed at this week...

happy new year!

family and friends, happy new year! we have never been much for living it up on new years eve so we spent the last hours of 2009 watching episodes of glee. we actually missed ringing in the new year because we were so into what was going on with the glee club :) any way, we thought as our first blog of 2010, mike and i would share our favorite moments of 2009.

[january] i started playing my cello again.

[february] we celebrated having winston for one year.

[march] i discovered my love for baking. i think this is more mike's favorite moment rather than mine!

[april] we celebrated pippin's first year with us. mike's birthday dinner with mom and dad olson at joe's crab shack. we miss them. and joe's crab shack...

[may] kris allen was crowned the american idol.

[june] after 10 years of waiting, i finally got a jetta (thank you kirsten!). we traveled to emmett with the robinsons to pick pounds and pounds of cherries!

[july] as strange as it sounds, mike losing his job with verizon. it was a blessing in disguise that took 5 months to understand.

[august] we finally took our honeymoon to cannon beach! 3 days of gardening with grandma and grandpa jenkins. spending one full week with little hallie, jodie and clay.

[september] we sang-along at the jason mraz concert. the move out of the shannon glen apartments was amazing and much needed. i found a new job. before mike did :)

[october] mike and i celebrated our one year wedding anniversary...in one foot of snow. we moved into our beautiful townhome in beautiful bend.

[november] we were very impressed with the twilight saga: new moon. so worth the wait!

[december] mike lost 30 pounds this year, and i lost 40. according to mike, we lost a 5th grader. we started our own holiday traditions. my wedding ring was recovered by the bend city police after three weeks.

we are very much looking forward to the next 12 months and as most people we made a new years resolution. but our resolution is awesome...this year the popplewells are going to go on an adventure. <3