The Kofford Guide to Survival

Monday, September 22, 2014

Simon's Birthday Celebrations: Day 3

Ok the last post about Simon's birthday... I promise :). Yesterday we had my family that lives near here over for dinner along with some friends. It was a salad party... so everyone brought a salad of some kind. I also made rolls and we had pumpkin pie for dessert.

Simon told me before everyone got there that he didn't want people to sing him Happy Birthday... so I said ok... we will chant instead! I wish we had gotten it on video, it was so fun and way worse then being sung to.

Here are a few photos:

The salad spread... I made a chicken caesar

Simon's birthday pie from Costco

Jeffrey

L to R: Carson, Nikki, Jeff, and Kira (being a freak in the photo as always)

L to R: Liz, Bryan, Kate, Dalt, Simon, and Baby Eve

He blew out the candles before Dalt had a chance to get a good picture... the chant!

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Simon's Birthday Celebrations: Day 2

Today we headed to the BYU football game to enjoy Simon's birthday gift. It was a crazy hot day with the highest reaching 91 degrees. The sun was bright and shining all during the game. We met my sister and her husband, baby, and his brother and Dad at about 12:45pm to walk to the stadium together. They had tickets, but not in the same section as us. It was baby Brielle's first college football game (same as her Uncle Simon). It took us about 30 minutes to walk to the stadium for their apartment. We got there about 5 minutes into the game and Virginia had already scored a touch down.

The game was a great one and Simon and I enjoyed ourselves even with the heat. We had bought a drink cup from the stadium that had unlimited refills... by 1/2 time the stadium had run out of poweraid... it was that hot. Taysom Hill (BYU's QB) definitely made it a fun game to watch. I loved the touchdown on a 99 yard kick off return. It was awesome. Here is a short clip highlighting it in case you missed it.

I actually got burned on my face pretty badly (well badly for me... you whities out there would think I am weak). I even had to take some excedrin tonight. Ha. Anyway, here are a few picts from the day.

On our way to the game

Baby B showing her BYU pride

Mama bear with baby B

Game

See that sun!?!?!

1/2 time

On our way home... passing by Y mountain

Simon's Birthday Celebrations: Day 1

Simon's birthday was yesterday so we did a little celebrating. He isn't really a huge birthday person, but I like celebrating people's birthdays so we just did some small stuff. We started with a Jamba Juice and then went to the outlet mall up in Lehi because Simon has been wanting a blue pair of pants. We found some at H&M. Then we went out to dinner at Malawis and walked around the Riverwoods shopping center and then came home and hung out. Today we are going to the BYU football game and tomorrow we are having some friends and family over for dinner.

Here are some pictures from yesterday:

I couldn't wait and let Simon open one of his presents the night before... BYU football tickets

Jamba Juice

The blue pants he got at the outlets

Salad at Malawis

Salad and their mac & cheese is to die for... yes it is worth paying for this mac & cheese

Looking at stuff in a consignment shop... we loved this map

Chillin

Outside the Riverwoods

His gift

Oh tissue paper!

BYU tickets, t-shirt for the game, and blue pants

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Work Life

I have officially survived the first 4 months at my new job. It has been somewhat of a roller coaster. It has been difficult for me to go back to working 9 hours a day after not working for 8 months. Ha. I know tough life. Things have picked up since I started though (I was really bored at first because I didn't have enough work). Now I report to 4 executives instead of just 2. I now have the Head of Marketing and the Head of our Support team on top of the other 2. They have definitely helped increase my work load.

I do a lot of random stuff in my job. Some business related and some personal related. I book a lot of travel, do a ton of scheduling, plan events, come up with new business ideas, help with recruiting, help get employee discounts, arrange budget materials/financial reports, attend meetings, lots of research, and a ton of other random stuff.

Some pictures from our company party I helped with (I was mainly in charge of tickets):

We brought Jeffrey along b/c we thought he would love it

Getting Batman on his face (he wanted the Hulk but the line was too long)

Playing in the bounce house

Happy kid

Donuts from one of the food trucks

Me and Simon enjoying the food

I also get to do random personal things like take one of my bosses dogs to the groomer and vet, meet people for furniture or car deliveries, help with videos being filmed, and other random stuff (some things would crack you up).

Meet Barnaby the Labradoodle

Barnaby on the way to his weekly groomer appointment

Meeting the police department at one of my bosses' house to do a VIN inspection on his new Tesla

Filming a video with all the office dogs

Filming

When I think of my job I think of it in 3 terms: glorified gopher, jack of all trades, and gatekeeper. I definitely want to go back to school at some point in my life because I don't want to do this forever and I don't want to manage call centers either. For now, I consider myself blessed to have a good job, good pay, great benefits, with some excellent bosses.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Staycation in SLC

I was in charge of our date night this week, I kind of went a little crazy. I just needed a little getaway so I decided we would go to SLC and stay the night up there. I had to return my boss' car to a dealership in Centerville anyway, so it would work out great. Simon didn't know and had to work a grave the night before so I packed everything and sent him a text in the morning to let him know our date would involve not coming home. I like surprising people.

I got a good deal on hotwire.com using their secret hotel site. You don't know what hotel you are going to get, just the stars and % of people who would recommend it. They do give you general area, but that is about it. We ended up at The Monaco Hotel (A Kimpton Hotel). It was pretty nice, but I would rate it a high 3 star hotel instead of the 4 it is. The location was great.

We dropped off my boss' car and then went and checked into the hotel. We were hungry so we decided to get dinner. We went to the Red Iguana, Simon had never been and I had only been once. I got the Tacos de la Iguana... which were amazing! Highly recommend anything with their shredded beef. Simon got chicken enchiladas, but I don't like their red sauce so I wasn't a big fan. Their salsa was yummy too.

Trying the different types of Mole... we didn't like any of them

Tacos a la Iguana... so good

After that we went and walked around City Creek Mall and then got some ice cream. It was relaxing. The next morning we slept in and then walked to this waffle place that wasn't too far from our hotel. It was one I have been wanting to try... Bruges Waffles and Frites. We shared a vanilla waffle with chocolate sauce, creme, and strawberries plus a small fry (healthy I know). Then we walked across the street to the farmer's market and walked around. We went back to the hotel, checked out, and went to Fashion Place Mall because I needed to stop by the MAC store. After we walked around we got a vanilla bean cheesecake slice to go from the Cheesecake Factory. If you haven't tried it, it is delicious. Then off to home.

Contemplating on this lovely morning

Breakfast of champions... waffle and fries

It was a lovely weekend. Relaxing with lots of good food:).

Friday, August 8, 2014

It's been a while...

I feel like I have been out of touch for a little while. I am just too tired to blog after working 9 hours a day and just want to do nothing :). Bad excuse I know. Not too much has been going on. Simon got a promotion at work- he has only been there for 6 weeks. I am a proud wife. He is now the Director of Programming. He likes it so far and it will be excellent for his grad school applications (for those of you who don't know he wants to do health administration). He plans on applying next fall. He is also thinking of joining the military after (they pay most of the schooling if you commit to 6 years -- plus we would love to live abroad again and they make it easy to do so).

As for me I am still plugging away at Qualtrics. They know I get bored and have down time so they gave me another executive to help. I will now be working with the Head of Marketing on top of my two current bosses (Head of Engineering and Co-Founder/President). My bosses are great, so I can't really complain and I got a bonus... which I didn't think I would because I only worked 6 weeks in the last quarter.

I also recently got called to be the 1st counselor in Relief Society. The President had a baby the day after I was called, so it has been a little crazy trying to figure everything out and do her stuff while she is out. Let's just say that doing the visiting teaching routes was not a spiritual experience. Ha. Oh well. I finally met with the 2nd counselor and secretary last night, so we got things all sorted and had a nice time chatting.

Last Saturday Simon and I finally got everything settled in our apt... including hanging up all the pictures. My sister Becky asked me to post photos of the apartment so hear goes...