We're going to start the blog out with the above phrase. Not for any reason in particular, just because I'm sure there are many wives out there who will get a kick out of it instead of noticing how long it's taken me to blog. So I last left you all with me leaving to Maryland to babysit my little sister. Many thanks to all the people who made sure my husband actually ate more than crackers and cheese. Below are just a few pictures of the countryside around where I used to live. It's so gorgeous there! I miss it!

While I was there I got to catch up with my two best girlfriends Sarah an Evie, the cute little munchkin I'm holding is Sarah's baby Hannah. We had a great night out on the town, it was awesome catching up with everyone. Below is a picture of my dad's library (where he's the director), huge isn't it? It was so nice to spend some time with Genny who's turning 21 at the end of this month. Crap! I'm really starting to feel old now! My mom and dad and I went to Colorfest which could be more commonly known as the "Spend every last dime you have on trinkets and original artwork fair". It was great spending time with them, it's really interesting living/visiting with your parents after your an adult. We had a lot of good conversations, made a few dinners together, overall it was a fun vacation.

Now here's funny/slightly scary story. They breed freak mutant ducks in Maryland. It's true. Genny and I decided to go feed the ducks at the park so we got in the truck and as we were driving there one freak duck saw us coming and told his friends, they were waiting for us when we parked. Here's Genny wearing my sunglasses waiting to go to the park.


So we get out of the truck and they SWARM US. Did you know ducks have claws on their freakish webbed feet?! I didn't! Long story short they got the bread (that I threw over my shoulder in my attempt to flee with Genny) and I got some duck claw marks to remind me why I love roast duck with sweet potatoes. Here's a picture of them below, menacing aren't they?

Before I left for my vacation I gave my work notice that I would be leaving. WOO-HOO!! I've been with Zagg for three years and while I'll miss my friends there so much I must say that my experience with them has made me understand that I don't like working in an office. It was a good three years, I did everything there from the shipping room, to customer service to office management. My last day there was a week after I got back from vacation (the third week of October). I will now be going to school! I'll write more about that in another blog because there's still so much to catch up on!

I had a little minor surgery on my hand a few weeks ago as well. Turns out I had a cyst that suddenly decided to start hurting and so I got to go to the hospital, wear an insanely indecent gown, get put under and wake up to fabulous drugs that made me feel fantastic. I've never had surgery, a broken bone or even a sprain so it was all new to me. It's all healed up now. I didn't take a picture or anything because that stuff gives me the heebie-jeebies, but I will have a great scar from the three stitches, I'll have to figure out a good war story to go with it.

Oh! Happy late Halloween! Richard and I had the good fortune of going to three parties this year! (Last year we sat at home and ate peanut butter candies). The first party was my sister Lacey's. We dressed up as.....EACH OTHER! I wore Richard's entire cop outfit, which drowned me. Those utlity belts are so heavy! He got to wear one of my skirts, shirts and yes, my bra. We painted his finger and toenails a pretty red, gave him a blonde wig and put some make up one him. His eyelashes are so long they look fake, bonus! He makes a pretty me if I do say so myself. Richard won best costume at that party. The next night we went to Mark and Kellie Rose's party where we won the funniest costume award! On Halloween night we went to Joe and Jessica Starr's party. By that time Richard was pretty sick with men hitting on him (and who could blame them?!) so we let him go as a robber to that party and I was the cop who caught him. ;) LOVED that. All in all it was a pretty fun month! I'll blog soon becaues so much more is going on! Love you all!

Katrina, I hope you catch this kiss in Maryland!

I love you and miss you!

So much to catch up on!

I've been meaning to write this blog for the past two weeks! I'll start at the beginning, Richard's singing quartet(Richard, Cory, Mark, Dave) got together for a ward party of Mark's and sang "Lean on Me", it was so good! They sound so wonderful and if I can figure out how to put their music on this site I'll do it! Here is a picture of them singing, aren't they cute?
Here's a picture of Cory's wife Patty-Anne and I in the audience listening to our men, the next picture is of all us wives:

From that performance we got into our car and went straight to a get
together of my old and current co-workers. We met at my former boss's Craig's house and played the funniest game in the world, it's called Quelf. The point of the game is to be the first to the end, but you have to do a ton of embarrassing or awkward things along the way. BUY IT, you'll love it! Here's a pic of all of us:
Funny story! We were in the middle of playing when Craig's son came into the room, Craig said he was just sleep walking and not to mind him. Well his son went straight into the kitchen, opened a drawer and started to go to the bathroom in it! Craig ran into the room and woke up the poor kid to take him downstairs, the drawer was filled with papers and a phone book, all wet. That's a story to tell his future girlfriends...

This past weekend we went to see the comedic opera Pirates of Penzance, our friend Dave was the main character in it. Holy crap! It was so good! I wish that they were doing more performances, I'd go a few more times if I could. Right afterwards we went to see the new "Eagle Eye" movie which is awesome, I recommend it to any and everyone, then poor Richard got about 4 hours of sleep before he had to be at work the next day :(

Random photo opportunity! Who wouldn't want to pose lext to an enourmous pumpkin made entirely of soda boxes?
I'm leaving for Frederick, Maryland tomorrow to babysit my little sister while my parents go on a cruise (poor Richard! all of you who read this blog should call him, make sure he's eating more than just cottage cheese and crackers!). I can't wait, it'll be nice to catch up with some old friends. I'll tell you more about that when I return, Love you all!

It's been awhile since we've blogged! We have a few funny and not so funny stories to share. Let's start with the funny. This past Labor Day Weekend we didn't do much of anything (which was wonderful), but when we were throwing around ideas of what we could do I suggested that we just jump in the car and go to Vegas, maybe visit my brothers. Richard looked very concerned and said, "Well that might be fun but I don't think it would be good to just pop in on them, isn't Labor Day just a Utah holiday? They'll be at work"... :) He's too cute. On a personal note I was laying in bed the other day, about to take a nap and Richard came to kiss me goodbye before he left for work. We started kissing and I fell asleep and woke up to him still kissing me. Awkward! I'm still in the doghouse a little with that one.



Okay a more serious note! Richard shot his gun at work the other day. I'll let him tell that story:



I shot a deer.


I guess I'll tell the story then since Richard's laughing. He went on a call and a deer got caught trying to jump over a spiked fence. Animal control couldn't get there anytime soon so Richard had to shoot it. I feel bad for the deer but at the same time I'm kind of glad that the first time Richard had to use his gun was on an animal rather than a person. Richard also got a little action at work today, he had to jump four eight foot tall fences and run to catch this bad guy who was wanted for aggravated assault with a knife. He had to put "the hurt" on him a few times to make him comply. Go Richard!



In our non-work lives, Richard is back with his singing group "4our"(?) and he's sounding great! If I figure out how to put some of their songs on the blog I will (anyone who knows how to do that please tell me how). I have joined a book club and this month we're reading "Book of a Thousand Days". Hope it's good!


We've included some pictures below of our apartment, it's all decorated for fall! Please ignore our bedroom, we've never decorated it and the second room is just storage, enjoy!

Our tiny
kitchen.

Our dining
room.

Our front room and the bathroom.

The second room

(again, it's only

used for storage).





Our room.

Richard's Camping Trip/ Katrina's AWESOME Husband!

Hi guys this is Richard. Phillip and I got back on the 12th from a camping trip in the Uintas. We had hoped to stay two nights, but we only stayed one. I will explain why we didn't stay the extra night later. Phillip and I had a great time up there. We built our own shelter! It was made with branches and grasses and stuff. This is our site we chose to build it on.

Pretty area huh?

We ended up having some problems. We had to downsize it a couple of tme and it still ended up being too big. Too big means no trapped air, which means no trapped heat.

This is the finished project for today. It was about 2-3 feet too thin, and too big. Most the holes were covered up so we couldn't see the light coming through. The other problem we found out later was that because it was on a downhill slope, and because we slept in sleepingbags, we were very uncomfortable and constantly slid down into our packs and supplies. We did sleep very warmly though, all covered up in sleeping bags and a blanket of grasses on top.

Down below you can see our firepit and firewall. The wall very effectively reflected the heat toward our shelter (I would know. I sat on the other side and was very cold for some of the time). We used a rock to heat up water quite effectively as well.

I figured that a breeze would keep us cold, and I didn't want any crazy animals breaking into our impervious fortress. So I built a SUPER strong door that totally covered the entrance. This thing made it impossible for the hungry bears to eat us.

Here we are practicing our use of grasses to make coats.

It got cold, but because we stuffed our shirts with this stuff we were pretty warm. i didn't use my jacket at all that night. We slept with it in our shirts at night and it ended up helping keep us warm.

Here below we are showing how muscly we look with our awesome shirts. WE WILL PUMP YOU UP!!!!!!!

The morning finally came around! I slept maybe an hour and the rest of the time passed soooo slowly. Phillip had crappy sinus stuff that made him go through two rolls of toilet paper as tissues. We got up at 2 AM and built a fire. We sat around and talked until the sun rose at 6ish. We decided to go home and play again later. This picture is how the fire looked when put out.

Here I am in the morning right before we leave. See the packs sitting around? The sun is up, yea. We left the the shelter up for others' benefit. I think we should go back and make it better again next time.

Well anyway, I think this was an awesome experience. We still have to try out making fire, filtering and treating water, making cordage, traps, etc. So still many times to go up and play. Let me know if any of you want to join us next time. Love you all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All right! My turn! So Richard came to my work Tuesday morning looking pretty dirty, imagine my surprise because I wasn't expecting to see him until Wednesday afternoon. Anyways I get home from work that evening and he's waiting at the door with an origami fortune teller, you all know what I'm talking about, you all played with them as kids. Well I choose a number that's written on the outside, and then he unfolds it and underneath that number is a surprise! For example, number four's surprise was a package of OREOS (my weakness) and number two's surprise was a bouquet of daisies (my favorite). Well the last number I chose said for me to start packing. So we packed an overnight bag and Richard took me to The Holy of Holies....The Cheesecake Factory!!! After a gorgeous dinner there he took me to The Castle Creek Inn! For those who don't know this is the bed and breakfast that we stayed in on our honeymoon. We stayed in the Canterbury Room (which is awesome) that had this tub big enough for China to hang out in. If you want to see it go to the following URL: http://www.castleutah.com/

It was all so sweet and unexpected! (!!!) I think I'll let him go camping more often!

The Memory Post

Okay, I've been checking out all of your blogs and this posting looks popular so I thought I'd give it a shot, what you do is add a comment to this blog and write a memory you have of us (Richard or/and Katrina) together. It can be short or long, doesn't matter. Then once you've posted a memory of us we go to your site and post one of you. Blog Chain Mail, gotta love it ;)

Start the party, we're here

All right, we (and by we I mean me) decided to start blogging because it's a Saturday night, Richards working and I'm putting off going to the gym. Of all the Chipping's we are also the only one's without a blog, so I guess peer pressure (Emily) is also another reason to start one. Our computer at home is having another "I'm brand new but still don't want to work for you" episode so I'll try to maintain this blog from here at work, I love comments and suggestions on what to do with a blog, especially since now that we have one I'm not sure what we'll do with it. Seriously. On another note, life with us is good. I just got the office manager promotion here at work, going to see how that pans out. Richard is working hard, he's going on a two day camping trip with Phillip on Monday, I'll see if he'll write some comments about it when he gets back. We're not very exciting people but for the sake of this blog and this blog only, we'll try to be ;) All right, I can't put off the gym any longer, I'll do some posting soon though!