Happy Birthday To Sam!!!

Today is a special day. My Sam had his golden birthday....27 on the 27th.
Here a few reasons why I like him...

He was a pretty cute little boy.
Now, he was obviously not the prettiest little girl...but at least maybe our male offspring will having a fighting chance in the looks department.

He is also quite the singer and dancer.
And did I mention he does the dishes while he sings and dances? Quite the multi-tasker.

He is very strong. If you haven't felt his muscles you should ask.
Oh and he also did not kill me after I forced him to paint the guest room maybe 4 different times? Turns out June Day is not a good yellow to use to cover 3 walls.

He is super good at reading stories and using funny voices.
Even little babies know to laugh at his jokes.

He is always finding things like this on the internet to make me laugh...And even though he is getting old :)
I guess I am too (only he is doing it faster which thankfully makes me feel younger, one more thing that I love about him).

Happy Birthday Sam....I love you!!!!

Mama Pam Birthday

Mom birthdays are very important birthdays because if your mom doesn't have a birthday then you don't have a birthday.

Having a mom who unconditionally loved me was good because she read me nice books like this when I was little.

And now that I am older she reads me books like this.

That's okay, I would like Quinn better too.

Having a mother who is an English teacher is very helpful when you put off school essays until the last minute, but not very helpful when you play scrabble against her:)

As it turns out wonderful mothers also make wonderful grandmothers!


Happy birthday mama, thank you for bringing me into the world and not taking me back out of it when I was a teenager! We hope that you had a nice birthday, we love you!

A Very Terri Birthday!

A few days ago(on the 7th) Terri celebrated her 24th birthday. The real party didn't begin till later in the day because Terri was 5 days into a new job so she had to work and was therefore robbed of sleeping in and eating a late breakfast in bed, which every birthday girl should get to do.



Several of Terri's secret admirers used this special day as a opportunity to try and win her favor, but unfortunately for Wade,

and Clyde,

she is spoken for....right sweetheart?!

When it was time to get down to it, however, Terri was ready to employ her birthday powers. After an intense 17 holes of miniature golf Terri, Connie, Brandon and I came into the 18th hole with a three way tie for first.

The final hole, which is like unto a rigged county fair game, awards a free game and a single stroke instead of two for a hole-in-one and looked something like this...

With a shot that even Tiger Woods would have marveled at, Terri chipped her ball through an opening in the metal screen, bounced it off a wall and landed it right in the hole for a free game and won the entire event by one stroke!

After the climatic finish of the Terri Clause Invitational, our good friends Bianca and Greg invited us up to a chilly, but romantic chair lift ride at Sundance. Ben and Meg joined us for the adventure and before we knew it we were all squished together trying to pretend we weren't scared of heights :)

I hope you had a happy birthday sweetheart. Every birthday you have marks another year that I got to spend with you, and I can't wait until you have been a part of my life for more time than you haven't(19 years to go!). Now that I found you I don't know what I would do without you, and I hope I never do.

First Day...

The Galeria household had a little tradition on the first day of school.

Why hand shakes? I am not sure, but I do know that my Dad is a genius for thinking of it.



I think we all know what my children will be doing every year on the first day of school, for the rest of their lives...



This tradition will continue....like it did today on Sam and I's first day of work.



All I can do is reiterate what my Grandpa told Sam about 100 times at our wedding reception.
"Boy, you are dang lucky to be in this family."

Funny Friday

Even though they came back from Missouri weeks ago, this one is in honor of Ben and Meg (two of my favorite people).

Prior to them moving back it had been a long time since we saw Ben and Meg (could it possibly have been around our wedding two years ago??? weird). Nobody talked about this story (except Sam and I whenever plumbing issues came up) and I surely did not like the idea of spreading around one of my finer moments. It was not until the four of us sat around the dinner table and this story inevitably sprung back to life that I decided to embrace it, rather than spend any longer denying the fact that I trusted the advice of Ben and Sam.

None of us were married. Meg and I were living together, and Ben and Sam were roommates over at ghetto Academy Arms. I am still unsure how it happened (Ash, do you remember??), but all I can recall was the fact that the toilet was plugged a good one and no amount of plunging would help (at least my plunging...and Meg's...and Ash's...and maybe Christa's...???). We flushed and plunged and plunged some more and then when the toilet water started to spill over onto the floor we put some towels down, shoes on, and kept on plunging. Nothing was working. And then Meg had the brilliant recollection that Ben's dad is a plumber and Ben should come over and fix this problem; so we gave the boys a call.

As luck would have it they were on their way to Salt Lake for a small high school reunion dinner with some old friends. Boo. That meant no help from them in their physical form. However, the kind (and by kind I mean not very nice at all) Ben decided to talk me through the problem. He told me to find some kind of glove to put on (if he hadn't done this I'm sure he would probably be dead somewhere), place my pinky finger to my thumb, and then (because my hands and wrists are small) place them as far up the toilet as possible to see if I could unclog the clog.

Now usually this would be the time where I would say...."in my defense"....but I have nothing. It was stupid of me. I can't believe I fell for it and yes I tried for about fifteen minutes or so to stick my entire hand and arm up the toilet to try to fix the problem (I did have a glove on that did go in the trash after so don't be too alarmed if I have served you sushi). Ben and Sam laughed, a lot, and I would not be surprised if to this day it is claimed as one of the best ideas, moment, etc of their little lives. Its a wonder that both of those boys ended up convincing Meg and I to marry them. They are lucky they are cute, and very funny.

What MCAT???

Yesterday Sam left his scooter at BYU and came home with me; why? because anyone would rather take the twenty minute drive in a car rather than a bright green 38 mph maximum scooter. Unfortunately, the bad news came mostly for me the next morning when he decided to take the (my) car to shadow, leaving me to fend for myself two hours later when I needed to go serve some sushi. Luckily Sara is the nicest person ever and picked me up on her way to work.

After shadowing, Sam dropped in and paid the Sumo a little visit. A visit just long enough to grab some sushi and then head out. The plan, like always, was to give him a call when I needed a ride home from work and that was that. At about 2:20 I decided (along with Sara) that I was starving and wanted some food to eat. My answer to this problem was to call Sam and ask nicely for him to bring me some food. No answer. So I sent this text message:

Bring me food. Whatever you want. Just bring something.

My plea for food went unnoticed and no call was returned. At 3:02 another call was made and still there was no answer. Serioulsy, didn't he realize I was hungry? I sent another quick text.

Ok don't get food. Just come get me. I want to go home. Please.

Still no response. At this point my anger was turning into concern. Early in our marriage I learned that concern was not usually necessary because he was usually around somewhere, doing something silly and weird, but this was out of the ordinary. He knew he needed to pick me up from work and should have been expecting my calls. At 3:22 it was the last straw. Still no answer. So I decide to think out of the box and check my voicemails (in my defense I had like several from the past few days that I had not checked because I hate listening to them and Sam usually text messages me). After I skip ahead to the third or fourth message I finally find one from my Sam (he left it at 12:07) and this is the gist of what it said:

Hi Terri. This is Sam (I could tell this by his voice so that was not really necessary). So I just got a call from this lady and I am not sure how this happened, but apparently my MCAT is today, not tommorrow, so I am headed over to take the test right now. I am really sorry. I know I am supposed to be picking you up sometime, but I don't think I will be done till five or five thirty so maybe you could get a ride home; oh but wait I have both sets of keys with me right now so you are locked out. Okay that is some bad news. Maybe you could just work late or something? Well I have like ten mintues to get there and this test is not refundable and it costs like $250.00 to take so I can't miss it. Luckily the testing place is pretty close to our house. I guess just let me know where you are so I can come find you in like five and a half hours when I am done. I am really sorry. Oh yeah the good news is I am feeling really happy today so I think I am going to do really good. Ok, love you. Bye.

At 5:24 he rolled into Happy Sumo to take me home. Gotta love my Sam.

Anyone up for Wendover?

Last Tuesday, after a crazy day of serving sushi in a flooding restaurant I headed home in hopes of some relaxation. I lounged around, watched some tv, and then Sam convinced me to attend his institute class with him (I agreed only because I knew Bianca would be there). After class the three of us headed over to California Pizza Kitchen for some dinner, where we met up with Greg, Kent and Liz.



While we were eating our delicious pizzas and salads the subject of gambling and Wendover kept coming up (I have no idea who started it). The crazy idea of driving out there that evening continued to get thrown on the table and before you know it we all turned young and crazy and decided to go for it (I blame Sam. Why? because I always blame Sam for everything). We paid our bills, piled out of the restaurant, and returned to our homes to change our clothes while Greg headed up to Alpine to borrow his Mom's car so we could all ride together and in style.



An hour or so later we all met up at the Thanksgiving Point (at this point it was around 11:30 pm and I may or may not have been regretting the decision), and then headed Northwest towards that Nevada border. We tried to collect more people along the way and were turned down, so the six of us headed off on our gambling adventure.

I will admit that I fell asleep for two seconds on the way there (us grandmas can not handle pulling all nighters anymore). We pulled into Wendover, stopped at a few casinos, left the super broken down ghetto ones, and finally ended up at not the rainbow or red garter but the other one I can not remember (the memory is still a little fuzzy).

The first stop was to the bathroom of course...

too bad as soon as you finished washing your hands a milion more germs took the place of all the bacteria you just washed off.

Our second stop was to the roulette table. Too bad the scary lady with a frog in her throat was in charge and took an hour to open the table up for us, so while we waited a few of us (not me but everyone else) tried their hand at blackjack. There were a few winners and a few losers, but the worst part of blackjack was that drunk crazy guy at the end of the table that needed to be slapped, hard. We had some fun cracking a few jokes at his expense, and then headed back over to roulette.

Roulette was fun. I won $10.00, Sam lost $10.00 so we broke even. Then Sam ventured back to blackjack (apparently his life calling and he has now downloaded the app on his itouch so he can get really good for next time) and won us $45.00. We then decided to cash out and go home before anything bad could happen.

The girls...

they look great, but can you tell I was tired? It was way past my bedtime.

The boys...

Money bags Kent and doesn't my Sam look so hard core in his bad to the bones Harley Davidson shirt? He picked it out on purpose.

And the group minus B, who was our lovely photographer.

It was a fun trip that may or may not have gotten me addicted to gambling. Thanks for the adventure, and for leaving the decision up to me :)
What do you guys think about a Vegas reunion?