Make That Fifty-Three...

Greg sent me these at work last week. What a sweetheart. I was the envy of all the office :)

52 Days, 52 Reasons

When we were engaged, Greg made a countdown clock on my cell phone that listed how many days were left until our wedding. Now that the wedding has come and gone, my phone lists how many days we've been married. In honor of being married for 52 days (I know I'm random), here's 52 reasons why I love Greg. You might learn some things about him you never thought you would and maybe some he will wish you didn't :) I love, love, love you Greg and here's a small taste why...

1. He absolutely adores our cat, Jade. I often tease him that he loves her more than me.
2. He always makes sure we have a bag of treats for Sacrament meeting.
3. He’s a bad boy—he’s a graffiti artist (but only in places where he’s allowed to :)
4. He’s a good boy—he always remembers family prayer.
5. He pulls the car out of the garage for me every morning.
6. He makes a mean breakfast on Saturday mornings.
7. He smells so good.
8. He loves his calves (they are totally hot).
9. He cleans up real nice (thanks to GQ and Esquire subscriptions :)
10. He cleans up real nice everyday (thanks to Bank of Utah employment).
11. He does laundry.
12. He is adorable when he’s tired or wakes up.
13. He always opens doors for me.
14. He shares my love for crossword puzzles. Or at least he pretends to to make me happy.
15. He definitely shares my love for words, especially when they are made up or used incorrectly. (Deef?)
16. He does favors for me at work.
17. He likes to do grown-up things like play video games, skateboard and catch tadpoles.
18. He dances in the car to his favorite tunes.
19. His iPod Touch is his baby.
20. He will hold me as long as I want.
21. He is always willing and worthy to give me a blessing when I need one.
22. He never complains when I take forever to get ready.
23. He’s a bargain shopper (groceries, clothes, you name it!).
24. He rides his bike to work for extra triathlon training and I get to drive the car.
25. He will eat anything I make, even if he probably shouldn’t :)
26. He always lets me have the last cookie, cracker, etc.
27. He always tells me I’m beautiful, even when I’m a complete disaster.
28. Every now and then I catch him singing in Tagalog (he served a mission in the Philippines).
29. Sometimes he lets me beat him at Rummikub or Dominoes, but never at Boggle or the Dot Game.
30. He always knows how to make me laugh.
31. He lets me cry on his shoulder when I’m sad.
32. He is a super handyman—he opens jars, assembles beds and dressers, puts up lights and ceiling fans, changes the oil in the car, fixes broken power windows, and more!
33. He loves to eat his veggies.
34. He never gets mad if I forget to move the seat back in the car (in my defense, this "rarely" happens).
35. He loves his family and would rather do something with them than anything else.
36. He laughs at my jokes, or at least at me :)
37. We have almost identical food preferences (except he doesn’t like Mexican food—what?! I know.)
38. He always slightly melts his ice cream in the microwave before eating it.
39. He lets me rent just about any movie I want. I still don’t get why he doesn’t want to watch the A&E Pride and Prejudice though…joking.
40. He leaves me love notes in the “love note mailbox.”
41. He always tells me he loves me more although I don’t think that’s possible.
42. He gets really giddy when he’s excited about something.
43. He was more nervous to propose to me than to ask my dad for me hand. He already knew my answer.
44. He likes to cuddle when we watch movies.
45. He’s always reading books, magazines, etc. to get the leg up at work.
46. He takes care of the cat’s litter box, food, water, etc.
47. I can do absolutely nothing other than be with him and be completely happy.
48. He does cute things like make me a piggybank (I collect) for Christmas and getting Jon Schmidt to embarrass/sing a song for me (us) for Valentine’s Day.
49. Everything is so mango with him.
50. Grendy = Joy.
51. He has goooood looking hands. (Anyone that knows me well knows that’s a must!)
52. He’s my best friend.

Greg & Wendy (Soon to be Willis!)

Only 19 days until our wedding! April 12th is coming faster than I anticipated, and I love it!!!

Newest Work Photo

if you don't know me by now...

...you will know me better by the end of this post! Hold on tight as we embark on 7 things you may not know about the elusive Wendy Wilson.

1. At the mere age of 2, my right thumb got smashed in the houseboat door at Lake Powell. Leading to an early exit from the family vacation and leaving me with a maimed finger for life. (See photos below of LEFTY v. RIGHTY) (You will notice that my right thumbnail is markedly longer and pinched near the top.) (Maybe the pics don't show it very well...)










2. A few years later (I was maybe 5 or 6?) I became upset at my good friend Amylee Wilson (no relation) and threw a brick at her while we were swinging on the now condemned Wilson swing-set.
No worries though, it didn't actually hit her (sealing my fate of not becoming a softball player) and I DID run really fast to the cheers of my adoring brothers (sealing my fate of becoming a runner) (I was obviously a crowd favorite from a young age) (and humble about it too) and hid under my bed.

3. I actually enjoy writing in cursive. I know, it's sick.

4. I wouldn't consider myself a very superstitious person but I do think 4-leaf clovers are super lucky. I used to spend nearly every recess in 5th and 6th grade looking for 4-leaf clovers on the seemingly mutant hill behind Windridge Elementary that produced an inordinate amount of them. I averaged at least 2 every recess and sometimes more like 4 or 5!

5. My brothers and I have a yearly contest to see who can gain the most weight on Thanksgiving and I hold the all-time record of 7.5 pounds!!! I have witnesses. We even have rules about weighing in and you get in trouble if you so much as move the scale from it's original position. I dare anyone reading this to try and beat that! Hey, hey, hey-is that Fat Albert?

6. My 15 minutes of fame includes meeting Andrei Kirilenko in Russia, of all places. I went to Russia during the summer of 2003 for the equivalent of a high school athlete summer olympics. Utah vs. Moscow. Ya, they may have kicked our trash but it was a blast!
I'll post the pic of he and I when I get in scanned in!

7. I nearly kissed my high school principal my senior year. Ok, so it was part of an assembly and it was a joke (OBVIOUSLY) but it got a good gasp out of the crowd. (I'll spare you from a pic of this one...)

Ok, I couldn't stop at just 7 because I kept thinking of things...

8. Someone asked me recently what I excel at. The only thing I could come up with was making paper snowflakes. That may sound really lame but you'll think again when you see my masterpieces! I'll scan some in to show ya'll how it's done. I'm open to giving lessons :)

9. And to end with the BIG one...I enjoy public speaking. I really and truly do. I used to get an adrenaline rush when I taught Relief Society in my previous ward and not from nerves but rather from serious excitement. Sorry for anyone with a weak stomach, I should have warned you.

11 great things money can’t buy:

I found this list in a health newsletter I receive at work. Good stuff.
1. Spending time with friends, new or old.
2. Laughing so hard your side hurts.
3. No lines at the supermarket.
4. A good conversation.
5. Finding money in your coat from last winter.
6. Knowing that somebody misses you.
7. Waking up and realizing you still have a couple of hours left to sleep.
8. Accidentally hearing someone say something nice about you.
9. Running into an old friend and realizing that some things (good or bad) never change.
10. Getting a hug from someone you care about.
11. Knowing that you’ve done the right thing, no matter what other people think.

today!

Today is awesome! I must have woken up on the right side of the bed or something (Which is a good thing because as it sits now, if I were to roll off the other side of my bed I would hit a wall. A literal one.). Why such a great day?

A) I woke up earlier than normal (partially because I went to bed at a decent time last night) and had plenty of time to do a little religious study, get ready, had a good breakfast, and got to work earlier than usual.

B) Our clients are being so proactive/awesome today in calling me back and being happy to talk to me.

C) I read an article about wisdom teeth which basically said I’m evolutionary and therefore more desirable for marriage because I managed to not grow wisdom teeth.

D) My business cards finally arrived although one of the boxes ended up at the Roy Branch. But, that turned into a good thing when an old friend (whom I worked with at Main) called to tell me and we formulated the plan of giving them out for Halloween. Nothing says "Trick-or-Treat" like a random business card!

E) I found an incredible web resource for "my line of work" (that wasn't meant to sound risque although it undoubtedly does).

F) I'm going to the Temple after work.

Things I laughed about today:
My neighbor's cat walked across the hood of my car and up my windshield with muddy paws right through my direct line of vision.
I accidentally typed a stuttering status on Facebook.
I got scared again by my neighbor's dog that always barks at me in the exact same place every single day.

can you say workers comp?

I still hurt. Yesterday, my department (mortgage) had an all day retreat at Layton Park. The theme was "Recipe for Success" so they had put together a cookbook with recipes we submitted, we all got matching aprons, we had a team chili cook-off (all they gave us was a picture of the chili we were supposed to make and we had to guess what ingredients/how much to put in), we played the Price is Right (I know, that has very little to do with recipes), etc.

The painful part was a game we played at the beginning of the day. We were split up into teams and each team was given 50 strips of paper with different words (people, places, things). They would read a question and we had to find the right answer and run to a line of chairs about 15 meters away. Each of the chairs had a point value from 1 to 8 and the goal was to get the most points. I'm sure you can see where the pain came into play. I can be too competitive for my own good at times. I took out several people to get to the chair with a higher point value. My boss (the senior executive over the mortgage department) full-on tackled me at one point and the chair didn't fair so well. In fact, I don't really think you can call something a chair when it is no longer sit-onable. He claimed he only saw me out of the corner of his eye and thought I was someone else who was wearing a shirt the same color as me and also has dark hair. I tried not to take offense for being mistaken for a 40 year old man. I broke a nail in the process of being tackled and almost got a black eye. I'm bummed about the "almost" part. Later, I jammed my left pointer finger quite thoroughly. Needless to say, everyone learned not to mess with me pretty quickly. I battled over one chair for about 2 minutes at one point until the guy (who just happened to be the one I was mistaken as being earlier) thought I was going to let him have it. Little did he know that when he moved I would pull the chair out from under him and claim the 8 points.

The best part of the day was winning an electric griddle in a drawing, and being paid to beat up on senior management. It's all in a days work! I love my job.

ahhh the wonders of nature

I'm in love with the Mt. Ogden Exercise Trails above WSU. I ran there a lot in high school, thanks to Coach Fletcher who ran at WSU in his glory days, and I never get sick of running there. My neighborhood doesn't make for the best running, so I count myself blessed to have this treasure within a short drive of my apartment. There are several different places to run on the trails making it easy to put in serious mileage if I want. I never find the trails overcrowded but I have experienced the occasional entertainment of a golf attempt gone awry. There is one spot on the upper trail that has become "Wendy's special place." The trail bends around the mountain and there is a bench overlooking the Mount Ogden Golf Course with a breathtaking view of the golf links and all of Ogden. Just before sunset is the best with the sun skimming the tops of the trees surrounding M.O.G.C.

Yesterday provided an especially eventful jaunt in nature during my run at the trails. I chanced upon a cottontail hopping across the trail (Dad assured me it was "Budgee Budgee" himself) AND I was stung by a bee. Or a wasp. Whatever it was, it was huge and meant business. I screamed. I'll admit it.

here am i

This is me as "Mortgage Network Coordinator"/career girl extraordinaire. I think it looks good on me. What about you?