My Hubbaroooski, isn't he cute?

I think I may have already posted something similar on here, but oh well. Here it is again in another format:

1. What is your husbands name?

Matthew Edward Koprowski. Or as I like to refer to him: Hubby, Hubbaroo, Hubbarooski, Husb, or Hew. 

2. How long have you been married?

This coming May, the 20th to be exact will be our 2 year anniversary!!

3. How long did you date?

exactly a year before we tied the knot.  

4. How old is he?

27 until August 5th and then you guessed it, he will be 28. 

5. Who eats more sweets?

I think it's a tie. Although it might depend on what time of the month it is when for 5-7 days Matt just really has to have chocolate. :) or perhaps that's me. 

6.  Who said I love you first?

I did. And guess what, the kid wouldn't even say it back for a whole two weeks! Longest 14 days ever. 

7. Who is taller?

Matt is, but by how much is a question relative to what shoes I am wearing that day. Barefoot though I hit right at his shoulders. 

8. Who can sing better?

Well I can only assume that Matt does since he has admitted to having been in choir and his college major was music related, but I've only heard bits and pieces of him singing hymns at church so I have yet to find out for sure. Look for him on the next American Idol though just in case. 

 9. Who is smarter?

I think anyone can tell you that Matt is way mor smartr than me is.  But don't worry I'm not offended, if it weren't for this math whiz kid I wouldn't be passing chemistry I'm sure of it.  His mom has her Phd and is a professor at USC and his dad taught biology at CSUN so it obviously runs in the family and with genes like that our kid won't be no dummy!

10. Who does the laundry?

I actually like doing laundry, but since I have had class on the weekend Matt has started doing it and he is pretty cute cuz anything of mine that looks somewhat delicate he won't put in the dryer. He says girl clothes scare him. 

11. Who pays the bills?

Well the bill sorter, budgeter, and mailer is Matt. My contribution to the bills is just my measly paycheck. That should at least cover the cell phone bill!

12. Who sleeps on the right side?

How do you know which side is right? I didn't know there was a right and a wrong side of the bed.

13. Who mows the lawn?

Well when we have one I will be mowing it for sure, rocking out to my IPOD in my itsy bitsy yellow polka dot bikini. haha yeah right. There was a lady in my neighborhood growing up though who would do yardword in a getup like that and my mom named her the 'naked lady'. Matt hasn't ever mowed a lawn, his family always had a gardner. 

14.  Who cooks dinner?

I usually do, but on the nights I go to school right after work I come home to dinner awaiting me that Matt the secret chef has whipped up. Usually something with meat that I don't normally like to cook, but certainly like to eat!

15. Who drives?

Matt normally does. He wears his black chauffeur hat and I sit in the backseat. 

16. Who kissed who first?

That would be me. I told my roommate earlier in that day that I was going to find me a boy to kiss and viola I met Matt that day and by the end of the night....Mission Accomplished! Didn't know though that it was his first kiss ever! And I also didn't know that I would end up with a husband out of it!

17. Who asked who out first?

Never really asked each other out per say. 

18. Who proposed?

Matt did. I came home from work and he was at my apartment with roses and after we had a scrumptious dinner of spinach ravioli and cheesecake that he had made he got down on one knee and said he wanted me to be his wife. So I, jumping the gun and also interrupting, said "so.....are you asking me?" I guess I had ants in my pants or something. 

19. Who has more siblings?

I do. My older brother Ben, younger sister Megan and little bro Bryson. Matt has one brother Greg who is my age. 

20. Who wears the pants?

Well I can honestly say that in past relationships  I always wore the pants,  I was Miss Bossy pants to be exact and always got my way. With Matt we share the pants, he's got 75% of them and I'm in there about up to one knee, which is surprisingly just the way I like it.  Matt knows when to tell me no, keeps me in line and takes good care of me all at the same time, which is just what I need. He is my better half! 

The list goes on....

Well I haven't written anything on here for almost two weeks mainly because I haven't documented anything with our camera since then and a post minus a picture in my opinion is BoOoOoring! But then again, I am more of a visual left brained person who still likes to check out children's books from the library specifically to look at the pictures in them! But it's late and I can't sleep so I thought I would write about a great find I came across a couple weeks ago and have had a lot of fun with lately. I love to write in journals, but I also like to find ones that have questions or whatnot in them already for you to fill in because then you can document your life in other ways you might never have thought about before. I found this journal called Listography that does just that by giving you topics to write lists about (which I compose plenty of each day and have since I first learned how to write) and when you're done you have an unusual and fun autobiography!  It has you list all your past jobs, all the places you have lived, and past hangout spots. It will be fun to look back at it twenty years from now too cuz some of the lists are of current favorite tv shows and music that I will probably have forgotten about by then.  Here are some of my favorites in it and the answers I filled in:

List Your Favorite Cartoon Shows:

1.Spongebob Squarepants!! (who lives in a pineapple under the sea...if you didn't know)

2. Rugrats

3. Bobby's World 

4. Animaniacs 

List Your Favorite Toys You Played With As A Child:

1. Skip-It

2. Barbies

3. Legos (I could make the biggest and best mansion you ever saw, particularly while watching General Conference)

4. Trolls 

5. Cabbage Patch Dolls

6. Giga-Pet

List The Bad Things You Did As A Kid:

1. Told my little sister Megan that everyone in the family were all aliens except her and we were going to eat her on her eighth birthday. (she later told me on that particular birthday she was terrified the whole day....oops, guess I had forgotten to tell her I was just kidding)

2. Read my friends journal once when I was ten (and then regretted it, cuz it said mean things about me in it :(

3. Pinched a kid at school 'til he bled cuz he was chasing me at recess. 

4. Got detention three times in first grade.

5. My friend and I used to hide under Megans bed while her and her friends played in her room and would spy on them and record everything they said. 

The day I got it, I had a good 20 pages of it already filled out by that night! I was having so much fun!  I will admit there are five in there (I counted) that are questionable or scandalous so I just crossed them out and tweeked them a bit so they are now G rated and appropriate for let's say my future kids eyes.  I always wondered how honest you should be in your journal, and I have decided that it's best to only write things in there you would be comfortable with your son or daughter reading one day. I read my mom's journal once from when she was a teenager and it helped me relate to her more because I got to see she once went through the same things I was going through at that time, and that's what I hope my kids will be able to do one day too!  They can see from age 8 and on how I changed over the course of the years and all the phases I went through that they will be going through too and I'm sure they will say "wow mom you were a total nerd!" or "you were a major dramaqueen!" or "wow you were really cool" haha okay probably not that last one, but the list goes on.....

Hidden Valley part deux

Let's try this again.

Tonight Matt and I decided in honor of the extra daylight since the time change that we would go on a bike ride. First Matt had to get the bikes ready which consisted of filling every tire back up with air, some serious dusting off, and some oil on my VERY rusted bike chain would have been nice, but thankfully it didn't cause any problems on our ride. 

  We set out a little after six and rode about a half mile away into a neighborhood.  

In one of the cul-de-sacs near the back of the neighborhood we saw a dirt road and thought we would be oh so adventurous and follow it.  The dirt road took us back into a valley filled with a MILLION bike trails, hills, a creek! I was so excited I nearly fell off my bike! I couldn't believe this whole past year of riding our bikes on boring sidewalks that this place had been under our nose the whole time! I felt like Little Foot in the Land Before Time who had just found the Great Valley full of tree stars. We frolicked along on our bikes looking at all that nature had to offer....trees, birds, rocks, shopping carts (insert screeching brake sound here) yes, that's right, shopping carts.

I don't know what it is with Californians and their fascination with shopping carts. They are everywhere! When we rode our bike last summer along the canal it was littered with them. In our first apartment the 'shopping cart police' used to patrol through the neighborhood loading up their truck with the all the carts people had stolen from the grocery store,  brought back to their home and had intended on keeping. It's bizarre, and maybe everyplace is like that too and I just never noticed. Anyway, we had a lot of fun exploring the valley that had been hiding from us all year and can't wait to go back. One bike trail down, 999,999 to go.  And now I know that if ever my rusted chain breaks out there all I need do is put my bike in one of the carts our hidden valley has to offer and push it home. 

Hidden Valley

50 Unknown Facts About Me

1. I sleep with a blanket everynight. Even take it with me when we go on vacation. Usually it is wrapped all the way around my head with only my nose showing before I go to sleep. 

2. I was a lifeguard for three years, but I'm actually not a very good swimmer. 

3. I am deathly afraid of spiders. Even teeny tiny ones.

4. I have had 15 different jobs since I started working at age fifteen.

5. One time I ran straight into a mailbox and fell over when I was jogging with friends and they still tease me about it. 

6. My friends and I used to call each other by each others middle names and attach 'head' on the end so consequently I was always called Mariehead. 

7. My bestfriends still sometimes called me Marie.

8. I have kept a journal religiously since I was about 8 or 9 years old. Started slacking though in the last two years.

9. Apparently when I was 13 and weighed barely 100 lbs I thought I was enormous because I was reading that journal from ten years ago and every other page is about my thunder thighs and how my butt is getting big. Are you kidding me?  I really hope if we have a daughter that she doesn't go through that phase. 

10. I love goats. Especially fainting ones. 

11. I have had 12 different boyfriends since I was in ninth grade and I married lucky number 13. If I could go back I would have waited to have a serious boyfriend until I was at least out of high school. 

12.  I got in detention three times in first grade. 

13.  I have all my future kids names picked out already. 

14. I dwell on the past a little too much and have a lot of regrets I need to get over. 

15. I feel like I definitely married 'up' as they say.

16. I get anxiety everytime I go back home to Boise and worry about who I will run into.

17. I have a great relationship with my sister now, but when I was younger I used to tease her a lot and have always felt bad about that. 

18. I hate talking on the phone. 

19. I write lists. Lots of them. And my journals are filled with them.

20. I used to play the piano, but I would memorize the pieces I played rather than figure out how to read the music. 

21. I have vivid dreams every time I fall asleep and always remember them. 

22. I had my first kiss in summer school when I was sitting under a tree at a park. It lasted about .2 seconds and I felt like a changed women after and was probably glowing for about a week.

23. I almost didn't graduate high school because I skipped class too much. 

24. I have two best girlfriends and we have been friends since we were 12.

25. I wish I had some close friends who lived near me in California.

26. I used to go tanning all the time and have a lot of freckles to prove it that always pop out in the sun now.  

27. My all time favorite dessert is Extreme Moosetracks icecream. 

28. I love snowboarding and used to be able to ride the rails. 

29. My feet are always freezing cold.  My toes are like little icicles I have been told. 

30. I hate washing dishes by hand. The first year we were married we lived in an apartment without a dishwasher and I think I maybe did the dishes once. We lived off paper plates most of the time. 

31. I am not very good with money. Thankfully Matt takes care of all the bills and finances. And does a great job at it too I might add.

32. I love going running and wish I had a running partner down here.

 

33. My favorite t.v. show is One Tree Hill. 

34. I have a bad tendency to compare my life to others and think the grass is always greener on the other side. 

35. I have to tell myself everyday that it is a good decision we made to not have children for the next five years. Some days I wish we could have a baby right now, and other days not so much.

 

36. I watch the Baby Story almost everyday which is probably why I feel the way I wrote about above! 

37. I love taking naps.

38. My favorite colors are orange and yellow.

39. I am a speed demon on the road.

40. I secretly wish I was a celebrity who could go on vacations all the time and go on thousand dollar shopping sprees. 

41. The first real wedding I went to was my own and I wasn't sure how the whole bridesmaid thing worked.  My two bestfriends snuck this in to see if I would notice when we got the photos back. ;0

42. I am decent at cooking, but baking I have difficulty with. I always burn brownies, and cakes come out flat in the middle.

43. I went to Europe when I was a sophomore in high school with my French class and saw the band Oasis in Paris.

44. I pass out all the time. If I cut myself I pass out. If I'm sick or coming down with something I pass out. 

45.  I used to donate plasma twice a week for about two years and everytime...you guessed it, I would pass out. I had to take iron supplements just so I would be allowed to donate. 

46. I was hit by a drunk driver when I was 11 and was in the car with my cousins. The car flipped a couple times and I flew out the window.  

47. I used to pretend my life was a movie when I was a kid and I would act out something as simple as pouring my cereal as if it was being caught on camera. 

48. I had a dog named Molly and a cat named Tigger that we had to give away because my sister and I were allergic to them. They were going to be on t.v. on a show called Pets on Parade where people could call in to adopt them. I invited all my friends over and we ate popcorn and watched my famous pets on the television. 

49. I have been told that I embellish my stories. ;) Matt has noticed that as he hears me tell the same story to different people it seems to get better and better every time. I blame it on my poor memory. 

50. I was on the Price is Right once. Not actually called up on stage, but the camera was on me and my friend for a good couple minutes. We were in the audience in the first row.  That Bob Barker is OLD.

I tag all the Howell cousins and double dare you to fill this out in under an hour. It's harder then you think! 

The Eighth Wonder of the World

Yesterday I went through  my normal Saturday cleaning frenzy right around 3 o'clock after a nap and I got my second wind for the day.  I feel like I should tell all the other vacuum lovers, allergy sufferers, and clean freaks out there about my most favorite cleaning toy.  Dun, dun, dun, behold the Dyson......

This vacuum is seriously a miracle worker. When we moved into our apartment it had just been remodeled and the former 'cottage cheese' ceiling had been scraped off and while a smooth ceiling is esthetically pleasing and all, for people like me who have serious allergies to dust it wasn't so great.   But with running the Dyson around the place a couple of times, voila! my lungs could get fresh clean air into them again.  For anyone who knows how much the Dyson costs (between 350 and 450 buckaroos) I'll admit we didn't purchase ours ourselves, it was actually a gift from the in laws right after we were married, but now that I know how truly and utterly amazing it is I would like to think I would shell out the money for it anyways if it hadn't been a gift.  You can get them at Costco for around 400 I think and there is a 5 year warranty on them, no vacuum bags are required, and come on at Costco you can return anything even if it has been twenty years since you purchased it!

 You see, I have a strange addiction to vacuuming, ask any of my former roommates and now my husband.   There is just something about seeing those lines in the carpet that makes your place feel so clean! It may not look like it in the pic above with all the dirt, dust and who knows what else that got suctioned up from our carpet yesterday, but I vacuum at least once if not twice or three times a week (to the misfortune of the people who live below us).  The Dyson picked up that much grodiness that had snuck it's way into our apartment in only a week! A week!!!! If I didn't know better, I would say this vacuum actually MAKES dirt because it is so hard to believe that much accumulated in our less than 1,000 square feet apartment in less than 7 days! My lungs thank you Dyson. 

Fun Fact for the Day: one main component of dust is dead skin cells. Sick! Makes you think twice about who you invite over to your house, doesn't it? :)

Our story

1. Where did you meet?  Well the story starts out that I decided one day to take a break from cosmetology school and move from Provo, UT to Salt Lake City with my bestest friend Melissa. We started working at the Olive Garden in downtown SLC (the one by the temple) and I met a girl named Christine there who wanted to pursue doing hair. I told her she should go to Paul Mitchell in Provo where I was going. Fast forward six months later and I am back in Provo going to school and voila! there is Christine too and we become insta friends. For about a year she tells me about her cousin who lives in California who she thinks would be great for me, but twice when he came up to visit her I was unable to meet him. Finally on her birthday in May he came up to visit again, the same weekend in fact that my brother got married at which his reception I caught the bouquet and my mom told me I would be married within the year and I protested that I wasn't even dating anyone!  I finally met Matt a couple days later on her birthday night and sure enough we hit it off right away! We went to Flemings steakhouse for her birthday dinner and she made sure we sat next to each other.  I had brought my roommate with me and we shared a meal because everything was too expensive there and we were poor college kids. But at the end, Matt paid for everyone's meal. What a guy!  The reason I mentioned the bouquet part is because we started dating via the telephone and seeing each other as often as we could after that day, the following January I moved to California, Matt proposed and we got married May 20th, 2006 exactly one day before my brothers one year anniversary! Ironic, don't ya think? ;) 

 2. Do you remember what he was wearing?  Absolutely not, but I can guess that it was probably a black dress shirt and jeans. 

3. Where was the first time you kissed this person?  hee hee hee. Well I am a go getter, and I realized I liked him immediately so I made the move and kissed him later on that same night. Little did I know, that it was his first kiss EVER! 

4. Where did you go for your first date?  We didn't really have a first date, we met at the birthday party, hung out everyday until he flew back home and talked on the phone everyday after that for hours until I drove down with a friend two weeks later and he took me to Disneyland.  We talked on the phone for most of our relationship and Matt flew out whenever he could. We figured we had actually only seen each other in person a total of 5 or 6 times before we decided to get married and I moved down to California the following January, not even eight months after we met. 

5. How long did you know this person before you became a couple?  We kind of morphed into a couple along the way, without ever discussing it. 

6. Do you and this person have kids together?  no kids as of yet. Not for another five year or so anyway. 

7. When was the first time you realized that you liked this person?  I liked Matt immediately. I knew I loved him maybe a month later and told him so. He didn't say he loved me back though until two weeks later! Cautious guy. 

8. Do you get along with his family?  I love his family. His mom and dad are great as is his younger bother Greg who is actually my same age. Matt is almost four years older than I am. 

9. What is one thing he does that gets on your nerves?  hmmmm, I couldn't say. Maybe perhaps that he watches television a lot and therefore I have now become a t.v. addict as well!

10. What is the thing you do that gets on his nerves?  I know one thing is that I tend to leave the kitchen cabinets open and drawers too. You know, just leavin them open in case I need to get something else out of them, it's called being efficient! :) My mom does it too, that's the best part so I can say that it's hereditary! 

11. Where do you see each other in 10 years from now?  I will be 33 Yikes! And Matt will be 37! I will for sure be a nurse by then for quite some time and we will have at least two kids, possibly three.  We will be a happy family of five (but not with a mini van) and love each other even more then we do now because of all the experiences we had together in our 12 years of marriage by then. 

Neptunes Net

So we heard of a cool place to check out and decided to do so this last weekend.  It's a seafood place called Neptune's Net, hence the above pic, and located along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.  The drive to get there is a winding one through the Santa Monica mountains with twists and turns and corners out of no where, let's just say, I was glad I wasn't the one driving. The sign before you get on the road says it is not recommended for trailers, yeah right, I think it should be upgraded to say: Not recommended for the faint of heart, those who get carsick,and anyone afraid of heights. Luckily, we were none of the above. All along the way there are humungous, ginormous, enormous (and any other 'ous' words you can think of that mean BIG) houses or should I say mansions that were pretty cool to look at.  I don't know why you would ever need a house that has separate wings on them unless you really didn't like the person you were living with, but I will say they looked pretty impressive!  

We got to the PCH and came across Neptune's. Only problem was there were Harleys and motorcycles galore parked outside and masses of black leather wearers out front. I turned to Matt and said I was too scared to go in and too keep driving. So he did....but only to find the nearest parking place! The place was a zoo!  We ordered our food and went out to a picnic bench outside to eat it while overlooking the ocean and stare at all the crazy surfers. I had calamari, fish and chips and Matt had a....burger.  Really seafoodish I know :) If you like to people watch, hands down this place is the place to go! Supposedly, there are a lot of celebrities that go there and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some without realizing it since there was more than a handful of peeps wearing their sunglasses indoors the whole time, who does that unless you are famous?  Anyway, it was quite the experience and I can't wait til my parents come out to visit so we can take them there. We will all rent Harleys for the day and drive them out there so we can fit in!  The best part was that Matt pointed out that half the bikers there are probably businessmen during the week working their 9-5 jobs and then don the leather and bikes for the weekend. Ha! I love it!   So that was our little adventure for the weekend, next weekend we will hopefully have another one in store that I will write about. Until then......au revoir.