Halloween at work

I love Halloween! It's a great chance to dress up and be something that you would never be. About half the people at my company dress up. We have a costume contest and a department decoration contest. Then the employees' kids come in the afternoon and trick-or-treat around the office and have treats in our big conference room.

Derek's mom made my costume this year. I'm a vampire/countess and I love it! It matches Derek's costume (except his is red). He's a vampire and a mighty fine one at that ;). Here are a few pictures from work:

Me

Marci is "Miss MasterControl" supplying all our software solutions

Beth is a domino

I decorated our department with "dead" bodies and tombstones w/ personalized epitaphs for everyone. Here are a few:

Mine. It reads:
Here lies Tawni Jaco
Getting married you know
Her leaving's a blow
Now she's below.

Curt (my boss):
Here lies Curt the boss
A big BYU fan
He screamed like a madman
And lost his head due to their loss.

Jason:
Here lies Jason Clegg
All in all a pretty good egg

Michael:
Here lies Michael Bothe
For his good work ethic we gave him this trophy.
He didn't like it--he thought it was too scary
So he jumped in the river and yelled, "Death come and get me!"

Marci:
Here lies good ol' Marci Crane
She lacked a headline
And so missed a deadline
And that's how the newsletter became her bane


I'll post more pictures later after I see Derek in his costume.

Weekend catch up

I always feel like I have so much to catch up on after the weekend! I got to go to Logan this weekend for Homecoming at USU. The dance was on Friday so I took the day off so I would have time to get ready. And I need to use up my PTO before I quit my job. It's nice to take a day off every once in a while just because, although I ended up being pretty busy.

I hadn't been to a dance since USU's spring formal when I was 20, so it's been a while, but it was a lot of fun! I went with Derek, of course, and we ate at Firehouse for dinner (yum!). His roommate works at the one in Smithfield, so we went there and he got us a free large ph'zookie. Oh baby. This is the only picture we took that night, right after we were done eating. You can't see my skirt but it was hot pink.

After the dance was True Aggie Night. We went. The end.

I stayed the night at my brother-in-law's parents' house so I wouldn't have to drive home so late. Thanks Rick and Cindy! The next morning was the Homecoming parade on Main Street and we went to it. College towns are so cool! I can't wait to live there. They threw out a lot of candy and some other things. Derek got this cow and a t-shirt.

Yay for parades!

We were going to go the game, but ended up looking at a bunch of apartments, one of which we liked. But we're going to keep looking a little more. If anyone knows of a 2 bed, 1 bath apartment for a good deal in Logan/Providence, let me know!

Then we went to our friends' house in Providence and ended up going SHOOTING. My first time. I was kind of nervous, but it was really fun. I shot a .22 rifle and pistol and hit a water bottle like 10 times.

In this one Derek told me to growl and show some teeth, so I laughed instead.

On Sunday after church we went to Derek's parents' house for dinner and pumpkin carving. Here's Derek scooping out the guts (my least favorite part):

This is what it's supposed to look like

The carving process


And the finished result! It kind of looks like I've tackled Derek into a wrestling hold, but I'm really not.

Derek loves candy corn.

Tagged

Here are the rules...

1. Post the rules on your blog:
2. Answer the six "8" items
3. Make sure you tag 8 people!

8 Favorite TV shows:
1. Biggest Loser
2. The Office
3. ER
4. Anything on TLC (I don't have cable, so when I'm at a place with cable, I could keep it on this channel all day)
5. Ummmm....
6. The good old TGIF shows: Full House, Family Matters, Step By Step, etc.
7. I don't really watch much TV....
8. and American Idol I guess

8 Things I did Yesterday:
1. Went to work
2. Did some laundry
3. Went to two fabric stores
4. Searched the mall for neckties in the right color. There were none.
5. Found some ties online that were perfect
6. Drove home
7. Did some crunches (gotta get ready for the wedding!)
8. Talked to Derek

8 Things I look forward to:
1. Getting married!
2. Going to Cancun
3. Moving to Logan and getting a new job. It's just time for a change.
4. Christmas when both of my out-of-state sisters and their families will be home.
5. Thursday soup night with Derek's mom
6. Getting off work every day
7. The weekends when I get to see Derek
8. Halloween and Thanksgiving

8 Favorite Restaurants:
1. Cafe Rio
2. Zupas
3. Ruby River
4. Chili's
5. Mi Puebla
6. Cheescake Factory
7. Applebees
8. Firehouse Pizza! oh yum yum yum

8 Things on my Wish List:
1. Lose 8 pounds
2. Go to Peru
3. Get as many stamps in my passport as possible
4. Have a good family, strong in the gospel
5. A house someday
6. A stronger testimony
7. A lifetime supply of cinnamon bears and Tootsie Rolls
8. Money. Lots of it.

8 People I tag:
1-8: Whoever wants to do it!

Denver

This past weekend was UEA for the kiddos and Fall Break for the college students. So I took Friday off and went with Derek, my mom, and little sis and bro to Denver to visit my sister Kaley and her husband Levi for a couple of days. They moved there a couple of months ago for law school. We drove both ways and it took about 8 hours, 6 of which were across the barren landscape of Wyoming. This was the most interesting part of that state:

No offense to those who like Wyoming. I just don't think I would want to live there. Anyways, we got there on Friday at about 4:30 and stopped by Kaley's work to visit her there. She didn't get off until 6 so we did a little shopping nearby. After she got off and picked up Levi from school, we went to a little fast food place called Good Times for some burgers and fries. After that....I think we just hung out at their apartment and watched TV and stuff. We were pretty tired.

Saturday came early when my mom woke us up at 7 (whatever happened to sleeping in?). It was a fun-filled day. First we went to a candy factory where you get a free tour and free candy! What more could you ask for?

Here are some of the employees making candy:

Free candy!

Yum

Which one?

Then Levi met up with us at ESPN Zone where we ate lunch in a very noisy room with a HUGE screen playing the game between Oklahoma and Kansas. It was fun and their food was way good. Outside the restaurant we saw some people dressed up as pirates. You can kind of see one in the background here, talking to the lady in the red/orange shirt.

My mom went up close and asked if she could take a picture and one of the guys said, "Of course. We are vain and self-centered and love to have our picture taken."

After lunch we went to a huge mall and walked around for a while. I got 2 Christmas presents taken care of (yes!) and then we were all exhausted so we went back to Kaley's place and chilled and watched TV for the rest of the night. Poor Derek had to sit through Bring it On 3 with us girls (disclaimer: I told him he could leave if he wanted to).

On Sunday we went to church with them. Usually they have sacrament last, but apparently they had combined that meeting with the earlier ward that day. We didn't know that, so we got our earlier than expected. That was nice because we got an earlier start on our drive home. 8 hours, 2 stops, and 10 wrap sandwiches later, we got home.

Chilling in Denver

I love food

Besides the people I work with, I think I'll miss this place the most when I move to Logan:

Zupas! Soups, salads, and sandwiches. And they're so good. You can get a soup and sandwich, salad and sandwich, soup and salad, or just one individual item. They come in large and half sizes. There's something for everyone! It's really hard to decide what to get, but I have my favorites. I went there for lunch today and got the 1/2 size tomato basil soup with orzo (a short pasta).

Oh my goodness. I will never be able to eat tomato soup anywhere else. The best part about this place is, you get a chocolate-covered strawberry with whatever you order. And if you get salad or soup, you get a piece of bread. Yum!

Dreams

Derek and I always talk about the dreams we have every night. His are quite vivid and he has them often. Mine are pretty rare occurences and I usually only get bits and pieces. It had been a while since I had a dream that I remembered, and I finally had one last night. It wasn't very exciting, but Mia Hamm was one of the main players (get it? "player"? Like a soccer player? Ok, maybe that's stretching it).

So I was at Mia Hamm's house. I'm not sure what I was doing there, but it was a huge house. Maybe I was like a new maid or something. Anyways, she asked me to take something up to her bedroom, so I did, and while I was there I figured I should look around a little because it was a HUGE room. And way nice. I went into the bathroom and she even had a top of the line washer and dryer in there. Then the thought came to my mind that I had been up there for a while and she was probably wondering where I was and I didn't want her to think that I was snooping around, so I quickly walked out into the hallway. She was coming up the stairs at that point and invited me to come back into the room. We went and looked at the washer and dryer and she pointed out that they weren't working and that some guy (she said his name, and I actually work with him. Not sure where that came from) was supposed to fix it, but everytime he did it still didn't work. So that was random. The whole washer/dryer thing probably came from....well Derek has a gas dryer and we need a washer to go with it. So maybe that's where it came from.

Then all of a sudden I was in some Latino country (probably Guatemala) and I was in a car with some kids that we were taking to live with a new family. I might have been one of the kids, I can't remember. Anyways, we got to the house, and it was mostly outside. Like the food/kitchen and everything was outside in a fenced-in yard. I just remember thinking that they weren't the most comfortable, sanitary living conditions. That probably came from the time I spent in Guate over the summer. A large portion of the orphanage was outside the building, including the kitchen/eating area.

So that's my dream. The coolest part of course was being in Mia Hamm's house.

Better late than never

On Friday a bunch of us celebrated my friend Kristianne's birthday by going to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. The wait there is always HUGE, but she had called ahead so we got seated right away. Actually, I got seated and waited 10 more minutes for the rest of them :) But that was ok, because I had 2 baskets of fresh rolls in front of me to enjoy. It was hard not to eat all of them. They're the best rolls I've ever had at a restaurant, so if you go to Texas Roadhouse remember to call ahead and keep asking for rolls, cuz they're free. Anyways, we had a fun time and afterwards played games at Jenny's beautiful new house.

Jam recipe

Here's the recipe that some of you asked for. Yum!

Mock Raspberry Jam

- 5 cups of green tomatoes finely ground in food processor or blender, drained a bit
- 5 cups granulated sugar
- 1 - 6 oz. pkg raspberry jello
Prepared bottles, lids and rings

Directions:

1. Combine the ground tomatoes and sugar. Boil until sugar dissolves, turn heat to low and cook 25 minutes, stirring often. (It seems like we heated it until it started boiling and then turned it to low. But I guess by that point the sugar probably would have dissolved anyway.)

2. Add the jello and cook 1 minute.

3. Pour into prepared bottles, wipe rims, put on prepared lids and rings.

4. Process in boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Makes approx. nine 1/2 pints.

*Carrie did tell me that she tried doubling the recipe once and it didn't work out, so don't double the recipe. Just follow what it says.

You can also make this into strawberry jam by using strawberry jello instead of raspberry. And I just found this recipe online for mock apricot jam. Sounds interesting!

Domesticated

So yesterday I did the first "big" domestic thing in my life. I made jam! That's a big jump from frozen dinners, let me tell ya. Not that I don't like to cook, I just don't have a lot of time to do it. Anyways, so the jam. Derek's mom helped me make it out of green tomatoes from her garden and raspberry jello. What kind of jam is it you ask? Mock Raspberry Jam. I tried some that she made a few weeks ago and it's soooo good and tastes just like raspberry jam. And it's a whole lot cheaper to make. It was really easy, just took a little time. We got 10 jars made though, which is about half of what I need.

Free handbag

www.handbagplanet.com is giving away free handbags, one every hour for 24 hours! Go to the site to enter and choose which bag you'd like to win.

Weezer and a ring

Life is just flying by! Only 80 more days until the wedding ;) and time is going so fast. Yesterday Derek came down and we met at the ring place to pick it up. Click here for pics.

Another reason Derek came down was to go to the Weezer concert. It totally rocked! They opened with some band called Tokyo Police or something. They were okay. Then Angels and Airwaves came on and they were much better, although the lead guy had kind of a potty mouth. THEN Weezer came out and the crowd went wild. It was seriously awesome. Derek loves Weezer so he was really excited for this. He had a smile on his face the whole time and was singing at the top of his lungs. His younger brother was in general admission and we saw him get in trouble for crowd surfing - it was pretty funny. I didn't take my camera because I didn't want to have to keep track of it the whole time, but here's a pic of us excited to go in!

General Conference

I love conference weekend. Most of Saturday was spent ring shopping, but we listened whenever we were in the car. There were some good talks that day that I think we missed, so I'm looking forward to downloading them. On Sunday Derek and I went to the morning session which was fantastic. I really liked Elaine S. Dalton's talk, even though it was directed to the young women. I'll always be one at heart though right?

On the way to conference I noticed this on the mountains:

Snow! Sigh. :(

It rained and rained all the way down to Salt Lake and was still raining when conference started, but we came out to a beautiful sunny day.

Silly Maggie

I love love love my family's dog Maggie. She's a Jack Russell terrier who loves people, cuddling, and chasing other animals. She also loves to despise anything that makes a loud noise - plastic grocery bags, the vacuum, etc. Derek and I have this thing with hand buzzers. You know, the kind you use to play jokes on people. We got one on our first date as a prize at the arcade and now we both have one and are always "getting each other" with them. Well, we found out the other day that Maggie doesn't like those either. I think we could have entertained ourselves for hours winding it up, pushing the button, and watching her attack it. Her ears perk up when you start winding it up and then she stares at it with full concentration, waiting for it to do something so she can pounce. In the pic below my dad is holding it above his head - when he started winding it, Maggie jumped on him and almost stood on his face, she got so close. Sometimes I feel bad that we tease her so much, but she's so funny!

Mission reunion

Well it's that time of year again. General conference always brings mission reunions. Mine are only held in the fall and it was last night. Derek came with me and met some of my companions and people that I served with. It was a nice, casual reunion this time. We had a potato bar for dinner and then we could mingle or play Chino ball (a form of handball we played in NY) or leave or whatever. It was great to see some of my companions and their spouses and some of the elders that I served with. It's crazy to find out what has gone on in people's lives the last couple of years. And it's funny to see what elders wear when they're wearing normal clothes, because when you see them in a shirt and tie every day for two years you can't tell what their real style is. I'll just say there were some interesting styles there.

I forgot to take my camera out :( so I don't have any pictures, but it was a really fun night and I'm really glad I went. Derek even "knew" someone from his mission - and elder that I served with in Brooklyn who is from Korea where Derek went on his mission. He lived in Derek's first area and then got called to NY. Crazy!

Officially: Me, Myself and Derek

Well, I'm engaged! That was the "thing" I was going to write about later. It's later! To see the full story go to derekandtawni.blogspot.com. This is going to be the blog I use to post wedding plans, etc. and then after we're married it'll be our family blog and I probably won't post on this one anymore. :) :) :)

High school tag

1. Did you date someone from your school?
Nope, I was pretty shy and not really interested in dating.

2. What kind of car did you drive?
I finally got a car two days before graduation. It was a Plymouth Sundance....?

3. Did you pass your drivers license test on the first try?
Yep, and I even ran a red light.

4. Were you a party animal?
Heck no. I had really good friends and we had parties, but not party animal parties.

5. Were you considered a flirt?
Nah. See answer to #1

6. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir?
I was in choir all three years.

Where is number 7?

8. Were you on any varsity teams?
No...I always wanted to try out for the soccer team but I hate trying out for things so I never did. It's probably my only regret.

9. Did you get suspended/ expelled?
No

10. Can you still sing the song?
I don't think I ever could sing the whole thing. I remember "The Knights of Northridge proud we stand....." and that's about it. I remember the alma mater from choir though.

11. Who were your favorite teachers?
I really liked Mrs. Robbins for sophomore honors English, Mrs. Barnard for accounting, and Mrs. Bridges for marketing.

12. Where did you sit during lunch?
When I was a sophomore we sat in the commons because nobody really had a car. When I was a jr. we went to Target a lot and would get a bagel and sometimes a bagel and a donut. When I was a senior I remember going to Chick-fil-A every other day and getting a kids meal with ice cream instead of a toy :)

13. What is your schools full name?
Northridge High School

14. School mascot and colors?
Knight, silver and cardinal

15. Did you go to Homecoming and with who?
No, I went to Prom though.

16. If you could go back and do it again, would you?
No I don't think so. I'd go back to college in a heartbeat though. It was much more fun.

17. What do you remember most about graduation?
I was down with the choir the whole time and it was really long. The senior all-nighter was really fun though.

18. Where did you go Senior skip day?
We didn't have one.

19. Were you in any clubs?
I was in FBLA, DECA, the ski club (we never did anything), I think I was in National Honors Society....that's probably about it.

20. Have you gained some weight since then?
Yes, unfortunately. I weighed the same all the way up until my mission, but eating rice and beans in large quantities for a year and a half will do a number on you.

21. Are you planning on going to your 10 year reunion?
Most likely. I went to the 5-year and honestly....I thought it was still like high school for the most part. And there were only like 50 people there. But I think the 10-year will be better.

23. Did you have a job while in high school?
When I was a senior I worked at Hogi Yogi.

Volleyball

Last night I went to my parent's house to do some planning with my mom for the thing that I'll be writing about in the future. I forgot, though, that my youngest sister Bethany had a volleyball game at Layton High that day, and that's where my mom was when I got home so I went and watched too. Bethany was on the team at North Layton all 3 years and now she's on the sophomore team at Northridge. They play best out of 5 and I guess usually they win the first 3 so they don't have to go on after that, but this time Layton won the first one, we won the next 2, then Layton won the 4th and finally we won the 5th. It was really fun to watch. I haven't been able to watch her play for a very long time and this will probably be one of the last times I get to.

Getting ready for the serve

The reason why she's wearing a gray shirt while the rest of the team wears red is because she is the labero (sp?). A labero can sub in for any position on the back row, while the other players can only sub in for certain players/positions. She made some pretty sweet saves back there!

My brother Colton was there too. We were sitting by some of our neighbors with there 3 little kids who all happen to love Colton. As soon as he sat down they jumped on him. Here he is with two of them. The youngest is sitting on his other side.