Aaron's latest

There's a point when you've got to draw the line... I won't even do Yoga...

I have lately been obsessed with Kanye West's Love Lockdown, and Aaron surprised me with the CD the other night! He had told me he bought me a present, and I when I got home I saw a new broom sitting out (I've been needing one) and I figured that I was my present! Little did I know I'd be sweeping up the kitchen jammin out to Kanye now... We don't watch t.v. a whole lot (or are at least trying not to) but January happens to be the month of quality television! Aaron got DVR hooked up so we've been recording our favorite shows since I'm working or he's in meetings.
24 will always be one of our favorites. Although it's been a little disappointing so far for me this season, I can't get enough of Jack Bauer...

LOST.. this show was one of the ones we got into after the summer and watched it faithfully every night. (Aaron would never let me fall asleep since I have a tendency to do that when it gets late and I'm too comfortable)!

We just started watching the Biggest Loser this year, since I feel a sudden pride and connection with the show being a trainer and working for 24-hour Fitness. Ali from a few seasons ago was one of the favorites! This season we're rooting for the Blue Team because they're LDS from Salt Lake!!This lovely house is the reason for stress and financial struggles for us and especially for Aaron for the past couple of years. We have a family living in there, renting, but Aaron with his expertise in loans and investing and mortgages has talked to several people to work something out, but nothing's really happened yet. It's a beautiful house in P.G. in which Aaron and his dad did all the landscaping themselves (I'm so proud!) and maybe one day we'll live there, but for now we gotta hope and pray for some good cashflow this summer to refinance!
After being married for 9 months, we have lived in 4 wards. Neither of us have spoken in church, nor had callings, and Aaron has never had a home teaching assignment. So when our ward got dissolved this month and a huge brand new ward was constructed, we were pretty confident that our streak would continue until the summer, but alas... Aaron got called into the Bishoprics office to receive his first calling as a married man: Assistant SCOUTMASTER! Haha one of the callings I would dread, but I'm excited that he'll be working with boys and having some fun with it. Aaron wasn't LDS growing up, but somehow he still managed to do scouting!

Okay, so lately, I don't know if it's the fact that his wife is a personal trainer or if he's just got a natural motivation to achieve New Year's resolutions that we set, but Aaron is HARDCORE about health and fitness right now. He bought this Abs Diet book, and reads it to me every night. It's cute!

Since I work at 24-hour Fitness, we both get to work out there for free which is SO NICE. Aaron especially has been taking advantage that and makes it to the gym everyday after work, without fail. He's been losing weight since Christmas and is getting way ripped... so hot! Aaron is still working for Apx, at NIS, doing phone sales, which hasn't been going super well, but it works. We've chosen a manager for this summer, Jason (and Tauna) who have become good friends of ours, and surprisingly, I am really excited for the summer! Last summer was a disaster in the beginning, but Apx has really been a good decision for us. We'll know where we'll be out selling by next month.

I love family!!

So recently my stepmom Aimee joined Facebook and posted the cutest pictures of the kids that were taken in the last few months. So I stole them.Baby Ali (9 months) sound asleep posed for what looks like a baby commercial! She's soooo sweetFeisty little Mia who has been chubby since she was born (10 lbs!) She'll be 2 in March, right around the time Craig gets home from his mission!

Here's Luke.. he is the funniest and sharpest kid ever! He'll be 3 in MarchHaha I love this! Luke and Mia weight almost the same and I think Mia picks on Luke more than he on her, it's hilarious!Melanie joined Young Women's this past year and will officially be a teenager in May. Yet she's still a sweetheart!

James is a total stud... he doesn't smile much but he's such a fun kid.

Kent is always happy & being silly. He graduates high school this year and is applying to collegs right now.

Craig, Elder Packard himself is on his mission in South Carolina. But he gets home in 2 months and we can't wait!!

Valerie and her husband Taylor. They got married this past year 08/08/08 (yep, they planned that). They live down here in Provo and I'm so glad we get to hang out with them so often!

Latest Project

While Aaron has been gone, I should have been studying, but I decided to use the free time to tackle the lastest project: transform an old mirror into something that would match our guest bedroom! I am by no means artistic but I've found quite the hobby in taking Aaron's old single-life college furniture and accessories and making them less masculine, less shabby-looking, and saving money all at the same time! (I'm really proud of the fact that when we got married we never had to buy a single piece of furniture.. oh, except for kitchen chairs. But we really just got creative and fixed up a lot of old junk that we've had a while anyway).

I'm pretty sure Aaron has had this old mirror for years.. the wood is just blah, and honestly it's kinda falling apart.
Yay, our new white mirror! The coloring turned out weird in this photo.. these walls are pretty green, and that ribbon is a light yellow, not gold. I had had a different idea initially of putting big flat bead-type things around the frame, but that was expensive, so I resorted to little pearly beads instead, which you can barely see but oh well!!

Breaking News..... I've decided to become a BODYBUILDER!
Okay totally kidding, this is disgusting. However, there is a fellow trainer (male) at our gym who is training for a bodybuilding comp- the more natural, non-steroidal kind that actually looks decent and not horrific. He and a couple of other trainers have for some reason gotten excited about the idea of ME doing a FITNESS competition (insane, I know). Let's be honest, I like carbs too much... and I'd probably prefer to keep my boobs. I'm looking into it, but even on the amateur level I'm pretty sure I don't have that kind of discipline. I'll just continue working with clients so THEY can look like this!

Anyhow, our blogger is so messed up.. it will only upload pictures if our connection is through someone else's rather than our own, hence the absence of our main picture that I was trying to switch!! So instead there is this beauty to admire...

We do not have super exciting news, but I'm really just bored and Aaron is preselling in Vegas for the weekend, so what's a bored wife to do but blog?! School started 2 weeks ago, and it's pretty much the busiest I've been since the semester I was engaged.. imagine that: school stressing a student out! Apparently I'm registered for 22 credits this semester, which is unheard of for me, but 3 of those credits are completed from an online class and 4 credits are an internship, which conveniently is also my job at 24-hour fitness. If I've done my math correctly-- which isn't that likely, I'm looking to graduate by December! Hallelujah, the end is in SIGHT!! I am more than ready to move on to other things and leave BYU behind.

New Year's!

For New Year's 2009, my brother-in-law's mom got tickets for a concert at UVU.. in which David Archuleta was supposed to perform. However, after the first group (a horrible acapella girls group who yelled rather than sang), the announcer got on the stage and announced that there had been some mixup- that people had read online that David Archuleta would be performing but that was not the case. Apparently he was to show up with Ashley Tisdale later at the dance. Sooo, Aaron and Taylor ran to the box office to get a refund on our tickets because the show was way lame. The Osmonds- 2nd generation came on, and they were decent so luckily the show got better... Rockapella was the final, main performance and honestly they were so good! I had no idea who they were until they said they were the singers from "Where in the world is.. Carmen San Diego?" Haha that was one of me and Val's favorite shows! They were amazingly good and so funny.

Taylor and Val- so cute. Taylor's mom, half-way through the show also went to the box office and worked her magic and got each of us $10 off our tickets! Either moms or women just have that magic touch!

Me and Air-Bear =) You can tell the concert was waaaaaaaaay packed!

This week marks the one year anniversary of me and Aaron at The Coffin House and I know I just have to write down the story so I don't forget it years later!

So, me and Aaron met around this time last year- December 29th to be exact, the night I came back from Christmas vacation in WA. First time hanging out was kind of blah, but then New Year's Eve came around and that was pretty much the time we hooked up and never looked back! However, as we were still getting to know each other (only our 3rd time hanging out), Aaron decides to play the trick of a lifetime on me which still scares me to this day:

With some other friends- namely Burke and Tessa, we all drove up to Salt Lake to check out Hobbitville (a village of midgets) and then they took us up to the Coffin House. This place really exists- it's an old run down shed with real coffins where they used to make them!! It was almost pitch black in the middle of winter and freezing and the whole way, Aaron and Burke were telling us stories of people murdered there and left in the coffins and that there's an old bum who has a couch in there where he sleeps and chases after anyone who comes there and kills them. I, of course, know this is a prank and am determined not to fall for it. Of course they were just trying to scare us!

The whole place was creepy but I kept my composure for the most part. Then Aaron grabs my hand and takes me down to the other shack, explaining about the creepy man who lives in there. I think it's retarded and of course I don't believe him. In this other shack, there's this huge noisy water tank, then we get in a little farther (and it's getting darker) and there's the nasty old COUCH!! Kinda freaked me out, but I would have been fine if the "bum" hadn't jumped out from behind, screaming at us, saying he was going to kill us!!!!!!!!

What scared me the most, was Aaron pushed me outta there and yelled to run. (You see, I took that seriously and got totally freaked out for my life). Aaron started running right behind me, and I thought that man was really going to kill us. I explain to everyone I tell this story to that ya know in scary horror movies when the victim is running from the killer but can't move, and keeps falling and you're watching it thinking, just GO!! Just get up!? That really happens.. because as I am running as fast as I can, I was soooo scared that I fell 3 times in the snow- just face-planted over and over. Your body freezes up when you are that terrified and frankly I don't know how I did not pee my pants.

So, as I'm struggling to get up, my slip-on shoes get lodged into the snow, and I am too scared to stop and yank them out. SO I leave them and run BAREFOOT in the snow because if I stop, this man will kill me. About the time I spot Burke and Tessa up by the coffins where I'm headed, I realize Aaron is no longer running behind me.. and then I realize, Oh my gosh I'm an IDIOT!! Aaron comes walking up, with 2 guys behind him, who were not the bum, but Aaron's other roommate and friend who hid behind there and gave them the laugh of their LIVES!! I had to catch my breath and calm down and laugh with them, laughing at ME. I think I had to be the best person they ever played that prank on... yet I was still too shook up to be embarrassed about it!

Then they couldn't believe I had run in the snow, felt bad that frost bite could sink in and brought me back my shoes. Aaron, obviously feeling really bad ended up rubbing and warming up my feet the whole way home, and I guess was surprised I didn't really get mad, but was a good sport about it.

You'd think after knowing it was a joke, I'd be fine going back there. But alas, as these boys tried to play that prank on someone else months later and wanted ME and Aaron to hide behind the couch I freaked out just thinking about going back there, I almost cried. Aaron went by himself- and that scared me. I sat in the car outside, and even just being alone NEAR the Coffin House drove me crazy. I hate that place!!!!