The Sherwoods

when sal lost his manhood

This past week (who am i kidding the next few weeks) has/will be crazy.

Last week Jay was sick and Sal went to the vet and lost his manhood so we had two sad animals in our house.

which made us sad,

Rehearsing started for Deep Love

and we went to a gluten free expo where i felt like a kid on halloween.

toooooons for free stuff.

people were shoving gluten free desserts and breads in our face left and right.

and it was so good.

sundays weve been going to my aunt Bobbi's for dinner and to hang out with her kids.

she happens to live at the top of the hill, right down the street from the temple.

Insta- over load

Here are photos from the past few weeks from my phone

These three boys love each other so much & I love them so much.

I'm not usually a cat person so I was a tad surprised that I fell in love with Jay so fast. Minus his chewing on things and acting like a dog most of the time, he's pretty great to have around.

We got our family photos back from this past summer and they are really great.

Garrett keeps me company at the laundromat some times.

Monday has become Nacho Night at our house.

We used to eat nachos with everything on them except cheese. Which might sound weird since most people believe that they are not nachos with out cheese. The last two weeks we have spoiled ourselves and put a tad of cheese on them.

There is no such thing as privacy in our house any more. We had a weird/long week which turned into a long weekend and in some ways felt like we didn't have a weekend. Today I decided to take a bath after work with candles. These guys felt left out and tried to join me.

(i have never met a cat and dog who love water as much as these two.)

This is what conference looked like at our house during the Sunday morning session.

Deep Love is in full swing and is happening in 2 weeks! (AHHHHHH)
you can see them on the news here:
and here is a commercial they were featured on:

Humans of NY

i follow humans of ny on facebook and instagram.
they take a photo of someone and ask them a question or have a short conversation with them.

i really liked this one the other day.

"I’ve been examining my values lately, and determining whether or not I like the feelings that result from those values."
"What’s an example of one of your values?"
"I’m very competitive."
"And what’s a feeling that results from being competitive?”
"Jealousy."
"How does competitiveness result in jealousy?"
"When you have a competitive mindset, you tend to view the world in terms of winners and losers. So you resent other people getting recognition, because you somehow believe that less recognition is available to you. I’m learning that this is a false mindset. There’s not a fixed amount of success and recognition in the world. So another person’s accomplishments don’t diminish the accomplishments available to you."

The Parable of the Guinea Pigs

we had fast and testimony meeting today since next week is conference.

a sweet little 9 or 10 year old boy got up to bear his testimony.

he told a story about a guinea pig he got for Christmas that died.

to replace the one original guinea pig, his family got two more.

he talked about how blessed he was to have these guinea pigs and that He made it possible.

he also said that he is thankful that He gave us animals to love us and to teach us how to raise our children.

sal and jay, thanks for teaching us how to raise our future children...

days like this.

"i'm sure i'll collect and take the light wonder bombs
to the point in the universe
where sound does end.
it's the back porch of God's summer home.
and it's so quiet here,
you float.
it feels the way cotton candy tastes.
and i say to Him God, why do i call you God?
and he says, 'because Grand Poohbah would sound ridiculous,'
and i say yes!
i knew you've had a sense of humor.
i saw what you did to phoenix
but God, so many poets have tried to tackle it
ginsberg, corso, and they missed.
what is holy, what is actually holy?"
-derrick brown

it's cold.
overcast.
rainy.
knit sweater and a cup of tea kind of day.

the kind of morning where your bed wont let go of your body.
your animals are snuggled at your feet.
when your alarm goes off, its still dark out.

days like this make me think of certain poems.
like buddy wakefields hurling crowbirds at mockingbars (hope is not a course of action)
and derick browns "a finger, two dots, then me."
and many other emotional and heart wrenching poems.

if you havent heard/read buddy wakefield, go do it.
but here is derrick browns poem.
because its the one that really keeps going through my mind today.
(go ahead and read it at my funeral or something garrett.)

Grown ups.

remember when Garrett got a job?
well, he loves it. (phew.)
and they treat him really well.
most days garrett takes me to work at 7:45am on his way to work.
and then he picks me up on his way home from work at 4:00pm.
this system works out really well most of the time.
i do travel all over the valley for work, but most days we just carpool because duh,
wouldnt you rather have someone else drive you around and keep you company?
me too.

the other day i had to be in west jordan at 6:30am
so i took the car.
when i picked garrett up from work i got to see his office!
(which i hadnt seen before.)

daww.

look at him making business calls and "creating flexo excellence"

(what ever that means.)

we are so blessed to have such good jobs, with great schedules!

want to know what the best decision we made this month was?

getting gym memberships.

we werent doing yoga as much as we wanted to because after work we had no motivation.

so now we go to the gym.

and we actually go.

its great.

the past few times we have gone weve spent an hour and half- two hours there at one time.

and it feels so good.

plus, (i know it supposed to be bad for you and cause cancer and stuff, but so do cell phones right...) we have unlimited tanning...

i like to call it motivation to work out.

knowing that as soon as im done doing that cardio, weights, and 12 minute abs that i get to go lay in the warm tanning bed for 8-10 minutes gets me through it.

they also have hydro massage beds and this cool red light therapy machine that is supposed to help with tight muscles, stress, bad acids, and a whole list of other things.

so thats pretty cool.

basically, gym memberships are really great.

animal love.

i realize, as im sure you have too, that our animals rule our lives.

but what ever. we love them so much.

and they are entertaining and loads of fun to have around.

so im just going to keep talking about them and posting pictures.

we got jay to keep sal company during the day.

and through sal looooves to chase him around

and jay encourages the chasing sometimes/most of the time.

they really are becoming buds.

when we leave the house in the morning we shut all of the doors and let the animals roam around freely.

we even block off the bedroom door sometimes because our apartment is old and you can just push lightly on the door and it opens.

usually when we get home from work both animals run to the door to greet us

well, the other day we came home and the house was quite.

no animals around

all of the doors were still shut

and i swear i thought someone had stolen our animals.

garrett opened the bedroom door and sal stood up on the bed with a look on his face like

"oh, your home...?"

as jay slowly crawled out from under the bed and stretched.

these two are having all sorts of adventures together, snuggle up together, drink out of the same dish at the same time

and sal has less anxiety about us being gone during the day.

but he is still just as excited to see us when we get home.

(and garrett looooooves jay so much. i didnt realize he liked cats. and i dont think he did either.)

i sometimes think that jay is starting to pick up some of sals habits
and is starting to act more like a dog than a cat...

when we first got jay, sal started to "act out" as we would say in my field of work.
he was like a jealous older brother.
which means sal spent a lot of time in his box.

in his what?
yes.
box.
when sal was just a lil guy and would do bad things no matter what we did, it seemed like he still didnt care.
you could pick him up by his scruff and scold him and his tail would still be wagging.
and we didnt want to hit him or anything like that.
so the vet suggested putting a box over him.
his breed has really bad anxiety and doesnt like to be alone.
so when he's in the box one, he's all alone.
and two, he cant see what we are doing and it drives him crazy.

well, since he was acting out and spending more time in the box it got to the point where when he did something he knew he wasnt supposed to do like stick is face in the kitty litter or pin jay down until he was meowing really loud, as soon as i would say "SAL!" he would head straight to his box.
and since he couldnt get the box over his head by himself, he just lays in it.

we sure do love these little guys.

i am so glad i married a man who loves animals.

so glad.