when life gives you lemons...drink 4 liters of lemonade.

So these past couple months have been kind of challenging, frustrating, annoying, and kind of inconvenient for Tanner and I.  October of 2010 I had my gallbladder removed because I had constant stomach aches, diarrhea, and food never settled well with me.  I went to the doctor and they found that my gallbladder was only functioning 10% out of 100%. So...they removed it as soon as possible.  That was a hefty procedure, and I was on the couch for like a week watching movies every day. Anyway, while tanner and I were dating, engaged, and now married, I've had nasty stomach issues.  Every food I eat would make me sick and leave me on the toilet.  After about a couple months of being married, my stomach changed from mild stomach aches to sharp pains, nausea, and other things.  Tanner and I did an experiment to try and figure out which foods it was exactly that were making me sick.  We narrowed it down to gluten.  Every time I would eat bread, crackers, cookies, oreos, and some other things, it would make me sick instantly.  So...we set a doctors appointment and scheduled a colonoscopy for tomorrow actually.   Today is Sunday, and I've just been doing the "prep" part of the procedure.  Let me tell you what....most miserable process ever. 

 

Do you see this?? The massive container on the left is 4 liters of liquid that I had to drink in 4 hours today.  it's bigger than a gallon of milk!!!!!  And not to make this even more dramatic but...that was the most disgusting thing I have ever had to drink.  It tasted like lemon flavored syrup.  It was so thick, and not appealing at all.  Glad that's over with. I'm grateful for my wonderful hubby that has willingly been bossed around by me today :) Sure love him!

 Tanner thought it was funny to watch me drink this. goober.  Well, today's heck is almost over, lets see what tomorrow brings.

Strawberry Cheesecake Bites!

I...LOVE pinterest.  Every dinner meal, every snack, every dessert, every breakfast meal I make at our house comes from pinterest.  I found this recipe, and Tanner LOVES strawberries.  So...I bought all the ingredients to make them, and I told him I had a surprise dessert I wanted him to make with me. So...we did.  Holy moly...they were so good!  We made probably 25 of them...and there were 5 left after 10 minutes of making them.  Looks like these will be a keeper!  I'll post the recipe in case any of you want to try making them!  They were definitely a hit :)


And uh...we kind of had fun making them.  And tanner had fun posing for pictures.

 Super easy healthy dessert :) and super easy too!  Here's the recipe if any of you want to try it:


http://www.thesweetslife.com/2011/08/cheesecake-stuffed-strawberries.html    

Bye bye Felix...

Well, last week our fish died.  My sister Ashley moved to St. George in December, and she had a fish bowl, fish rocks, and all those fun things that fishbowls have in them.  So...she gave us her fish accessories for Christmas.  We decided to use them, and buy ourselves a fish.  In memory of them moving, we named our fish...Felix.  I came home from work one day, and I saw Felix floating on his lil belly on the top of his fishbowl.  Tanner wasn't home, and I wasn't about to take the dead fish out, so I just left it there to see if Tanner would notice.  He came home and that was like the first thing he noticed....our dead Felix :( He was our baby for 3 months...we are sad.  We decided we are going to get a frog, name him Felix II and see how long he lives. haha we are so strange. The same night Felix died, we went on a double date with our friends.  We thought we would try and pull a prank on them  by putting Felix in the toilet, and permanently stick him to the side of the toilet bowl.  That way when either of them go to the bathroom, they would see this random dead fish on the side of the bowl and freak out.  And then we would laugh.  Well, that never happened because they noticeda fishbowl with no fish in it before either of them went to the bathroom.  It was worth a try.  Bye Bye Felix...you will be missed in the Stevens  household.

Mountain Dew...

Well...I officially have the funniest husband in the world.  So...let me set the stage for you before I tell you what just happened.  So Tanner has a huge test  in the morning on all the bones in the body.  He's been studying for about 3 hours now...and I've just been waiting for him to be done so we can go to bed.  I've decided that Tanner can't just sit down for hours upon hours and just study.  He has to take breaks, pop his neck 5 times, do 50 push ups, drink mountain dew, dance for me, and many more things.  Well, as I was sitting here looking at pinterest he says to me, while staring at his liter of mountain dew, "Maddie, what if you woke up in the middle of the night and all you saw was this huge mountain dew bottle laying beside you.  You would probably call for me wondering where I was.  "Then all of the sudden the mountain dew bottle comes alive, and it says, I am your husband.  The "E" in dew would move as my mouth...so it would be real.  Wouldn't that be funny?"  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA he would probably punch me if he knew I was writing about this... but I couldn't resist.  I just stared at him trying not to laugh, but then we both exploded.  It was super funny.  He does random stuff like this every day...and it just makes me laugh so hard.  Maybe this is a sign that he has been drinking too much Mountain Dew...whatdya think??

Can you imagine waking up to this in the middle of the night and it's your husband? hahahahahahaha.

Ok so I thought he was done...but he just said something else.  He said, "Maddie, what if I turned into my mac?  Then I would tell you to go out in the living room, and there I would be, the mac,  jumping up and down on the couch."  And then he goes straight back to studying. I love him....so stinking much.

Tanner + Maddie = LOVE

 

Well, it's our first valentines day together!   Last week Tanner came home from a day in Idaho Falls with his mom and sisters and surprised me with something I've been wanting since I was born.  MY OWN PAIR OF SNOWPANTS!  I've always had hand-me-downs, which have always been the 'bib' kind...which i hate.  I kept ranting and raving to Tanner how we should save some money so I can actually have my own snowpants.  haha.  Anyway, he came home one day and totally surprised me with my very own pair of normal snowpants.  I was pretty excited..and they matched perfectly with my coat.  He said that was his valentines gift to me :) such a sweet son of a gun.

Since it was our first Valentines Day together as a married couple, I wanted to make it special for tan-my-man.  We both had pretty busy days, which stunk, but i still did what I could to try to make it special for him.  The whole week i had been thinking about it, and what I could do that he would love.  I found some cute ideas on pinterest, one of which was to 'make your own love coupons.'  So...I did that.  Those turned out to be a hit ;)  Before he got home from school, I made our bed and put a bunch of presents for him on the bed. I got P.S. I love you, Unknown, and some other confidential things :) I put almond kisses all over the bed, as well as butterfingers, which he loves to snack on.  Oh ya and he is addicted to Mountain Dew....kind of a problem....so I got him a entire liter.  Yeah I'm a great wife.  You think I would be helping him stop his addiction??...haha well it was 50 cents...and valentines day :)  I made a delicious dinner....and we ate it under candlelight.  That was fun, something we've never done before.  Tanner loves, LOVES strawberries....so i surprised him with a pan of chocolate dipped strawberries.  When he saw them in the fridge he just looked at me with a huge smile :)  The rest of our evening was just so fun.  We decided we are the weirdest couple ever.  But that's what keeps our love alive right?? :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!! This is what i yelled in Tanner's ear at 6:30 a.m. :) He loves me.
As I was looking under our tree to give loverboy another gift, this is what I saw. We got a good laugh. Tanner looked at me and says," Santa and Satan have the same letters in their names. I got them mixed up." hahahahahaha I love him.

For our first Christmas, we decided we wanted to split it between both families. So, Christmas Eve we spent it at my house with mom, dad, Tanner, Ethan, Ashley, and my nephew Wyatt. Eth and Ash are moving a week after Christmas so i really wanted to spend some time with them before they moved 8 hours away from me :( Anyway, Christmas eve we did our famous "pickle tradition," and GUESS WHO FOUND THE BIGGEST PICKLE? that's right- my loverboy did. He didn't let anyone know, so no one knew he found it until my dad noticed he had a bulge in his pocket. sneaky one that one. Because he found the biggest pickle, he got to open the biggest present, which was called Block N Stack. It was a lot of fun. After we played games, mom and dad went to bed and us kids played Just Dance 3 and enjoyed our Christmas Eve! It was funny to dance with all of us 'big kids,' we were laughing our heads off.

Christmas morning- Tanner and I woke up at 6:30 to open our presents to each other! Christmas is my all-time favorite, I feel like a little girl when it rolls around. So I jumped out of bed and rolled over to tanner and said, "WAKE UP SLEEPY ITS CHRISTMAS!!!" I'm sure he enjoyed that. I got us matching pajamas, so we wore them while we enjoyed opening presents. We started with stockings- those were always my favorite growing up. Tanner got me 3 lip gloss's, and perfume. (and I stuffed some snickers in for myself haha) I got him cologne, snickers, chocolate dipped pretzels, cinnamon bears, and butterfingers- his favorite. It was so fun to open presents with tanner- we are both little kids when it comes to opening presents. Let's see, I got him a toothbrush charger, a toolbox, 2 shirts, and a fake ipad. He got me Dance Central 2, a jacket, and sweat pants. What an eventful christmas together :)

My mom asked me to play my violin in her ward choirs christmas concert, so I did. I love playing my violin in church. After church we went over to my parents house and had a little christmas with them! They got us a Johnny Carinos gift card, some sweet stocking presents, and probably the coolest gift was a choral ring my mom gave all my sisters and I. Ashley and Ethan had us for Christmas- they gave us an electric blanket, a fish, and they gave tanner a fake ipad. It was so funny.

After the 'Anderson' Christmas, we went to Ashton and had Christmas with his family! His parents got us a bed set to match the bed Tanner made. Oh yeah, Tanner made us a log bed. It took him hours upon hours, but I LOVE IT!! He did a good job. We played Settlers with Tanners family, and just hung out and had a good time! We spent the night and went to Green Canyon on Monday. We spent the night again and hung out with everyone, and just had a party!

Tanner and I had such an amazing Christmas, and I can't wait for the next Christmas's to come!!

Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving this year was so much fun!!! We woke up thanksgiving morning and looked like this....


We went over to my parents house looking like bums and enjoyed a delicious breakfast made by my mother. It consisted of: Pancakes, buttermilk syrup, fruit, and bacon. mmm mmm good. Tanner and I continued to look homely all day, but we were too lazy to go home and shower. My hubby and my bro played halo for a couple hours, we played settlers, played a little basketball, watched football, and just relaxed. When it was time for the thanksgiving dinner, my mom doesn't have an oven because both of them broke, so we used 3 of our neighbors oven. The turkey was in the Carey's oven, the stuffing was in the Lovell's oven, and the rols were in Claudia's oven. It was a riot. The turkey didn't cook as expected, so we ended up eating at 6 p.m. BUT it was delicious. We went around the table 3 times and said one thing we were grateful for. We stayed and played some more games after that, and then tanner and I went home and relaxed by ourselves.

The next morning, we drove to his parents house in Ashton. All of his siblings and their kids were there, so that was really fun. The activities at the Stevens household consisted of: christmas tree hunting in the middle of nowhere, chopping down a 20 foot tree, playing ticket to ride, playing kinect, (we got it on black friday and it is fun!!!!!)watching Christmas Vacation, (oh that movie was hilarious) and just playing with all the kids!! His oldest sister Jessica is pregnant and due in February so we put together a little shower for her. Guests didn't show up until the shower was supposed to get over. It was interesting. We made homemade ice cream woth liquid nitrogen with delicious brownies, ate like pigs, and decorated the christmas tree. We also made gingerbread houses, and pretty sure tanner and I won!!!! hahahahahaha we rocked. Anyway, we had a lot of fun this year, hope Christmas is even BETTER!!!!