Halloween 2014

We had a fun Halloween this year.  I put up our decorations that consisted of a spider web, poster board bats, a sparkly pumpkin and sparkly roses, and a stuffed bat that we found among Chrisser's old stuffed animals while we were in Virginia.

I wasn't really planning on carving a pumpkin this year because I didn't have much time, but I ended up with about 2 hours of free time on Halloween day so I decided to go ahead and carve the pumpkin my aunt had given us.  I'm not very artistic and didn't have a ton of time, so I just used the bats from our wall as a stencil.

The reason I didn't have much time this year was because I spent forever making our costumes.  We were Lumiére and Babette from Beauty and the Beast this year.

It took me so long to make them that I actually finished Chrisser's about 10 minutes before we left for the dance lab on Thursday.  And by finished I mean I safety-pinned the last couple things because I didn't have time to sew them.  And Chrisser actually had to finish sewing the feather boas onto my skirt while I worked on his costume.  And actually, there is a chunk of the layer with black boas that is missing a boa because we ran out of time.  Oh well.  Everybody loved us anyway.  A lot of people couldn't quite figure out who we were until we told them, but they still loved how fancy Chrisser's outfit was.  So I'll call it a success anyway.

Our festivities included the social dance lab and a ward party.  The ward party included a chili cook-off and costume contest.  It was kind of funny trying to vote in the costume contest, because they split the children's categories into boys and girls, but there were several children that we couldn't figure out if they were a boy or a girl!  Some of them we knew because we know the family, but the newer families we were totally clueless on.  The winners ended up being Captain America for the boys and an elephant for the girls.  The adults that won were Zelda and the Phantom of the Opera, and the family that won was a family of pandas (who can resist a baby panda?).

AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!

So I know everyone already knows this, but WE'RE EXPECTING A BABY!!! I am so excited :)  I have been super baby-hungry ever since we got married (well, before that actually...), and I think Chrisser has been for several months, too, but he just kept feeling like we needed to wait for a while.  Many tears were shed while we waited, but wait we did.  Finally back in July when I brought it up (for the millionth time), Chrisser said he felt fine about trying.  So we did and voila!  Apparently it really was time that month...

We were staying at Chrisser's parents' house at the time, but luckily when I found out, it just happened to be during the week when Chrisser and I were the only ones home because everyone else was gone to a family reunion. So I got to announce it to Chrisser and freak out with him for a couple days without worrying about people overhearing :).  This was how I told Chrisser:

The note says, "CONGRATULATIONS! We made a mini human!"  I know the bow and the tulle and the flowers are kinda cheesy, but I just happened to find them in my in-laws' laundry room.  I'm pretty sure they were actually leftover decorations from my sister-in-law's wedding, haha.  Anyway...  We decided not to wait very long to tell our parents. We actually told them a little sooner than I would have if we had been living in Provo, but since I was getting really sick and it was impossible to hide that, we figured we better tell Chrisser's parents. We also told them because we were leaving for Provo a couple weeks later and figured they would prefer it if we told them in person while we were still there instead of right after leaving.  And of course we had to tell my parents so they wouldn't be left out.  I told my parents by writing them a business letter informing them that we were in the process of expanding our company and were in the early stages of considering them for a promotion to the position of grandparents.  My dad especially got a kick out of that, having been a business major back in the day.  We told Chrisser's parents by putting this photo frame up on the mantle:

The two children are our niece and nephew, and the note in the 3rd opening says, "Photo of Grandchild #3, Available in April."  We actually had to work really hard to get them to notice it, though.  We had it sitting on the mantle when they got back from the reunion, but only Chrisser's brother noticed it, and he didn't read it.  A few days later Chrisser moved all of the other photos to one side of the mantle so that this one was all by itself, but still no luck.  The next day Chrisser put all the other photos face-down so that this one was the only one standing, but still nothing.  So finally Chrisser took all the other photos and put them on his mom's favorite chair so that she would have to put them back.  She finally noticed :).  By this point Chrisser's dad knew, but he hadn't seen the photos.  He had just figured it out because I had been sick and had been talking about how I was pretty sure Chrisser's brother hadn't caught his stomach bug from me, haha.

Shortly after that we came back to Utah.  I had been really worried about driving that far since I was feeling so sick, but I survived and never actually vomited during the trip.  Then a couple weeks after we got back I finally got in to see a doctor during my 10th week.  It was kind of nice to go in at that stage because the ultrasound he did to verify the dates actually showed a vaguely baby-shaped image rather than just a blob.

Then about 2 weeks later we decided to go ahead and announce it on Facebook even though I wasn't quite to the 2nd trimester yet because we were just so tired of waiting.

I got the idea for it from Pinterest (of course; that's where I get all my ideas).

Not much has happened since then except that I hit the 2nd trimester 2 weeks ago.  I'm just now feeling like I'm about completely over the nausea, but it has been getting gradually less severe for a few weeks now.  Hallelujah!

Oh Hi...

So we didn't really do much over the summer. Chrisser enjoyed his job, but it took a lot more time being a director than a counselor because he was in charge of putting all the campers in their groups, and he had to read and edit every report that the counselors had to write on their campers. So we didn't really have time to do anything. He did have a lot of fun with the dress-up days they had.

Zoo Day, Wacky Tacky Day, Superhero Day, Formal Friday, and Halloween Day

We did stop in Kirtland, OH on our way back to Utah, though. I had never been there before, so I really wanted to go since we don't know if we'll ever be driving across the country again. I hope we can someday, but you just never know.

Then we got to spend a whole week doing pretty much nothing. It was nice. Ok, we did a couple things. We went with some of my family to the Ogden Temple open house. Chrisser had actually never been to a temple open house before, which was so strange to me since I've been to like 5. Sometimes I forget that Utah is so different...

We also got to go to a wedding open house for one of my high school friends. And that friend and his wife just happened to move into our ward! Small world.

Then Chrisser started back up with school, and I've been working on my Medical Transcriptionist training program and gathering things for our Halloween costumes :)

Finishing Touches

In my post summarizing last summer, I showed some pictures of the bathroom in my in-laws' house that I painted. We hadn't gotten any decorations for it by that point, but a couple months ago when they were in Puerto Rico (where my father-in-law's dad is from), my mother-in-law bought a few sea-themed decorations. And at some point she also found a shower curtain that matched perfectly! So I thought I would do a quick post to show you some true "after" pictures.

(Some of you can probably tell I'm still a newbie at photo editing, haha. I'm sure I overdid it a bit, like how the shower curtain is glowing in the dolphin one, but oh well.)

Another Road Trip

We spent the last week driving to Virginia again. Monday morning was kind of crazy. Chrisser needed to go to the animation lab for an hour to put some finishing touches on his shots for the film they are working on, so I went to take him there at 7:30 in the morning. As we were leaving, we noticed that our car was making noises, kinda like a spraying noise, under the hood. We were freaking out since we were supposed to leave for VA an hour and a half later, but Chrisser really needed to finish those shots so I took him to campus anyway. I drove straight from there to the shop I always take our car to. They weren't going to open until 8:00, so I was planning on just sitting there waiting until then. But the Jiffy Lube that is pretty much in the shop's parking lot was open and a couple employees were just hanging out outside since they didn't have any customers at the moment. So I walked over and, trying not to cry, explained the situation. One of them came over and looked at the car and discovered we were just out of power steering fluid. So he refilled that for me and, when I asked how much that would cost, said not to worry about it. Then he even gave me the rest of the bottle in case we needed more out in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming or something. Yay for nice people!

So we did get to leave right about when we intended to and didn't have any more car trouble, thank goodness. That day we drove all the way to North Platte, NE, stopping at some interesting rest stops in Wyoming on the way.

That night we stayed in a little motel, and we were rather excited to find that our room keys seemed to be "psychic paper" (a Doctor Who thing; a seemingly blank paper that shows a person whatever they are expecting to see, basically. The doctor uses it as "identification" a lot.).

The next day we drove to Nauvoo, IL, where we camped in Nauvoo State Park for the night. That was a bit of an adventure. A huge storm came through that night, which made it hard to sleep since we were just in a tent. Luckily it didn't start raining until after we got our tent set up so we were mostly dry. A few drops would occasionally make their way through the roof and drip on us, but not too often. The biggest problem was just how loud the rain was and how hard the ground was. But we survived. Oh, also, the evening we were there happened to be one of the evenings that Living Legends, a BYU group that performs Latin American, Native American, and Polynesian dances, was performing there. Chrisser and I had both only seen their show once before and it was quite a while ago for both of us, so that was fun. We also got to spend the whole morning wandering around town.

We went to the brick yard, which is the one place Chrisser kind of wanted to go to last year but we couldn't find soon enough, and we got one of the bricks that they give to all the families that sit through their presentation. And we also just wandered the gift shops for a while. Didn't buy anything 'cuz we have no money, but it was fun anyway.

Then we drove to my cousin's house in Ohio. She and her little boy weren't there, as they were visiting her parents that week, but her husband was home so we were still able to spend the night there. He had left for work before we got up in the morning, so Chrisser decided to leave a little thank you note on the kitchen table...

Yes, it was made from the little shape tile toys he found on the game shelf, haha. I had thought about leaving a Thank You on the fridge with their letter-shaped magnets, but I didn't see a T or a Y :(  And this one was definitely more noticeable anyway.

And then we arrived in VA on Thursday. Chrisser didn't get to stay at home for long, though. Early Friday morning he had to leave for a leadership retreat for work. It is a 2-1/2 day retreat for all the directors at the camp he will be working at this summer. It's kind of weird for me, as there hasn't been a single day since we got married that we haven't seen each other at all. There have been a couple of days when we only saw each other for like an hour or so, but never not at all. Ah well, it was bound to happen sometime.

Life is Great

So I had another blog once. It was the blog of my single life. It was not this blog. But it was mine. Today I was going back through it, reminiscing on all the things I did and was back then. And I came across this post: Graduation. In it, I talk about how I will miss BYU now that I am graduated. Little did I know, I would get to spend another 4 years at this wonderful place!

Some people would think I'm crazy, I'm sure, for loving this place so much. I know many people who can't wait to get away from here and move on to the real world, outside "the bubble." Which is all fine and dandy; if we all stayed forever there just wouldn't be room for anyone else to come! But I am glad that God knows me. He knows what I need and what I enjoy. And He was merciful enough to let me stay twice as long as I had always assumed I would (assuming all goes the way I am now assuming it will...).

I had thought I was probably done with ballroom. But then I got to compete in at least 1 event in the next 4 Dancesports, I got asked to fill in for someone on the spring team at a performance just after I graduated, and I got to be in an awesome show piece for my dance-major friend. And, of course, I got to marry someone that I will hopefully always get to dance with, even if we forget all the "real" moves.

I had thought I was done having friends, essentially (I don't make friends easily, haha). But then I got to tag along with Chrisser to all his dance stuff, which is where all my friends were, and I even made a couple of new friends among the ever-changing group of dance people. And I got to marry my now best friend, so I don't have to be afraid of being completely friendless anymore!

And even though I hadn't thought I would be done with Gospel-related experiences, since those can be anywhere you bring them, I am glad I still get to have the Provo variety for now. I am especially glad that I get to be here to witness the renovation of the Provo Tabernacle into the Provo City Center Temple. I definitely had a soft spot for the tabernacle back when it was such. I was in a University Chorale concert there my freshman year, several of my stake conferences and firesides were held there, I loved the architecture, and I loved the pioneer heritage that it had. I was devastated when it burned down and elated when the renovation was announced. But even when it was announced, I thought I would be gone by the time they even started working on it. And now I might even still be here when it is completed!

Once again, I am so grateful that my Heavenly Father is watching out for me and is leading me where I need to go. I don't know where He will take me after Chrisser graduates, but I am confident that it will be somewhere where I can be happy.

Stuff I Forgot to Blog About

This morning I was giving my sister-in-law a hard time about not having updated her blog in forever, so I figured I should update mine so I wouldn't become a hypocrite :). So here are a few random things we have been doing.

A few weeks ago I went through a phase where I loved drying fruit. I don't have a dehydrator, so I just put them in the oven for several hours on the lowest temperature it would heat up to. I tried putting the slices on parchment paper on a baking sheet and turning them over after a couple hours, but it was annoying to have to turn them over, and I didn't want to use up all my parchment paper. So I tried putting them on cooling racks instead. That was much nicer.

Unfortunately, that phase didn't last too long because a) fruit can be kind of expensive (mostly strawberries), especially when I go through the dried stuff like candy (which I go through very quickly), b) I kept accidentally leaving them in too long and slightly burning them, which makes them not so tasty, and c) my favorites were the bananas, but Chrisser hated them. So much so that he wouldn't kiss me if I had eaten any that day. Somehow, he could still smell them on my breath like 8 hours after I had eaten them. Yeah, he's weird. Anyway, so that kind of killed that hobby.

On May the Fourth (Be With You Day), we made Star Wars sugar cookies. By that, I mean that I made the dough and Chrisser cut them into Star Wars shapes. I don't really know much about Star Wars, having only seen Episode IV and several episodes of the animated Clone Wars TV show.

The next day was Cinco de Mayo, but we didn't do much. We had taco salad for dinner because that seemed pretty Mexican, and Chrisser got a Jarritos soda. I was planning on getting one, too, but the Jumex nectar cans were like 2 shelves above them, they were cheaper, and they just seemed more delicious at the time, so I ended up getting one of those instead.

Then this last weekend we reorganized all the boxes in our storage closet. When we moved in I had just kind of tossed the empty boxes in there. Okay, I had stacked them relatively nicely, but I didn't put much effort into consolidating them and making the pile as small as possible. But lately we've been thinking a lot about how we have nowhere to put a baby when we have one, so we decided to start trying to make more room. And the storage closet seemed like a good place to start so that we would have more space in there to put things from other shelves around the apartment.

First we had to take all the boxes OUT of the closet.

It wasn't a miracle solution or anything, but I did manage to fit several more small boxes in there that were just clutter elsewhere before. All of the shoe boxes in the middle came from our bedroom closet and the desk, and that freed up a surprising amount of space in those locations. And we can actually get to the back of the storage room now :).

Oh, and a couple of weeks ago one of my friends from high school got married and invited us to the sealing, and then the next day my cousin and his wife had their newly adopted son sealed to them. So we got to go to 2 sealings in 2 days! Which I was pretty excited about because I hadn't been to a sealing since my own. Oh, unless you count the one time Chrisser and I did sealings for the dead in the Nauvoo temple last summer. But this was the first time I got to watch someone I know getting sealed. So that was a big deal for me. And it was just a neat experience going to a temple 2 days in a row. I'm so glad we have so many around here. They are definitely some of my favorite places on Earth.

Easter 2014

So Easter was yesterday! I hadn't really done much planning beforehand, so I was very happy that it turned out as fun as it did. The first thing, of course, was finding our Easter baskets. I did much better this year than last. Chrisser actually had to look to find his basket (behind the vacuum in the coat closet), and it had more than just candy in it.

Ok, it's kinda hard to tell in the picture, but it has a giant pen, a thing of bubbles, and a "sticky creature" bunny that you throw at the window or wall and it sort of flops down it. He got quite a kick out of the creature and had to show it to both his sister and his parents when we FaceTimed them. And nothing in that basket cost more than $1, which is much better than my Easter bunny can say about my basket...

It's pretty hidden, but it's got Despicable Me 2 in there, as well as Nerf Guns (definitely more for Chrisser's enjoyment than mine...:) ) and 3 different chocolate bunnies. (And yes it was hidden in the fridge, haha.) Yeah, it was a good thing that Chrisser had a bunch of cash on him from people repaying him for ballroom concert tickets. I don't include cash on my financial records because it is too hard to keep track of if you don't get a receipt or you lose some, so I don't even know how much that stuff cost (thank goodness). (And don't worry, I used our tax refund to pay off the credit card Chrisser had bought the concert tickets with in the first place.) (I am having a lot of fun with parentheses today, aren't I?)

Anyway, I spent the rest of the morning making rolls. I decided to try something I found on Pinterest where you make round rolls and clip the dough before baking them to make little bunny ears. Only mine turned out more like demon biscuits, haha. I didn't even take a picture of them, they were so horrifying. I think part of the problem is that I clipped them after they had risen, which of course made them deflate. If I try them again I will definitely try clipping them before letting them rise, and see if that works better.

Then we went to church. One of the guys in our ward gave a really good talk in Sacrament Meeting (okay, I'm sure all the talks were great, but I was having a really hard time paying attention to the others). I don't remember everything he said, but the gist of it was inviting us to ask ourselves which of the 5 types of disciples in the Easter story we wanted to be--faithful like John, hopeful like Mary Magdalene, doubtful like the group of apostles, slothful like the 2 disciples on the road to Emmaus, or faithless like Thomas.

Then we came home and made dinner. I had gotten some pork chops because a) they were cheap, and b) Chrisser's brother actually bought them for us along with a few other groceries because he had a bunch of leftover meal plan money that would expire at the end of the semester. So that was nice. Chrisser cooked them up for me while I made the rest of dinner and ironed the tablecloth (yup, I went all out on this dinner!).

I guess you can kinda see the demon biscuits there in front of the ducky wearing bunny ears (isn't he cute?). And there's also mashed potatoes (the gravy was on the stove) and broccoli and cauliflower. It was delicious (at least Chrisser told me so about 7 times... :) ). Although it was also very tiring chewing the pork chops, so we decided the next thing we would do was watch the VeggieTales Easter Carol (we watch a VeggieTales every Sunday) so that we could just sit and rest.

After that we dyed eggs. We decided to try dying them with Kool-Aid this year (another Pinterest idea--1 packet and 1/2 cup of water) since that would be cheaper. It worked pretty well, smelled better than other dyes, and gave us very vibrant colors!

Though we discovered that Grape does not actually make them purple, but rather a nasty gray. Oh well. Also, our eggs weren't very creative this year because we couldn't get the crayons to work for some reason. And we're pretty sure it had something to do with the eggs themselves, because they wouldn't work even before we put the eggs in the Kool-Aid. Sad. But we were done really quickly since we didn't really have to spend time thinking, haha.

All in all, it was a good holiday and we enjoyed spending it together. And here are a few pictures of the jelly beans and Robin's Eggs that the Easter bunny left around the house.

Dancesport

So Dancesport was a couple of weeks ago! Chrisser and I competed in Novice and Pre-Champ Smooth again and did a little better than last time.  Just a little, but it was progress. We made it to the 2nd round in Novice. Watching the videos we have of the 1st round makes me kind of surprised that we made it past that round, haha, but we won't complain. Here is a video of our Foxtrot from the 2nd round.

We definitely danced it better than in the 1st round. Sadly, it still wasn't good enough to make it to the 3rd round. We weren't really surprised, though, because there are a lot of really good dancers here and we didn't have a coach. So we were happy about how we did.

Unfortunately, Chrisser didn't make it past the 1st round of either Novice or Pre-Champ Latin. Which was really sad because his partner this time is more of a Latin dancer than the last couple of times that he competed Latin. So he was pretty bummed about that. And sadly I didn't even get really good pictures of them, but here are a couple of the ones I did get.

Ok, this one is pretty good. You just can't see their faces.

He also competed in some class events, but I couldn't get pictures of them because I was helping pass out the judges' ballots during them. But he got 6th place in his 480 class New York Hustle (ballroom version of Disco) competition. Which he wasn't too happy about because he got 4th place last year, but I think it was pretty great considering his partner this year hates Hustle and therefore didn't care about it.

So, yeah! We had fun dancing and watching our friends and watching the really good out of towners.  The competition in March is actually the National competition, so there are a ton of people from New York and California, etc. here for it.

Christmas

Yes, I know Christmas was a month ago, but my computer was in the shop for 2 weeks shortly after Christmas with a failing hard drive, and then when I got it back I just kept forgetting that I never blogged about the holiday.  But I remembered today!

Honestly, I don't remember a whole lot about the week of Christmas, so I'll probably mostly just post the pictures I took of our decorations.  Chrisser and I were so excited to have an apartment this year that we could decorate!  Last year we had just gotten married 2 weeks before Christmas and didn't have our own apartment until January.  So we had fun this year.  The thing we were most excited about was that we found a 6-foot-tall artificial tree at Walmart for just $20!  So we bought it, of course.

And we didn't even have to buy any of the things we put on it!  Chrisser had bought the lights a couple years ago on an after-Christmas sale, I've had the star for as long as I can remember, my grandma gave me the skirt several years ago when she was cleaning things out, and she gave us the tinsel and ornaments as bridal shower gifts last year (she also gave us several other things for the bridal shower and wedding--thanks Grandma!!!).

The tree went up on Thanksgiving Day because we were just so excited, but we made ourselves wait until the next Monday to put everything else up for Family Home Evening.  Everything we put up was stuff that we already had been collecting over the years.

Chrisser had lots of fun stuffing the sleigh with pinecones...

I never actually got around to arranging this display.
This is just how they ended up when I pulled everything out of the box.

Don't mind the mess on the table...

This will (eventually) be an Advent Calendar.
I started making it just before Thanksgiving but never finished.

The minion is playing Joseph because Chrisser decided that Joseph had to be a shepherd since the set didn't come with a shepherd.  I also love that the donkey (far left) is smiling for the camera :)

So those were our many decorations.  As far as what we did, this year it was my family's turn to have us.  We went up for the Christmas Eve party that my mom's side has every year.  My mom was in charge of planning it this year, and she delegated the craft to me.  I'm not the most creative person ever, but I had seen ideas for popsicle stick ornaments on Pinterest and figured that would be easy enough.  I pre-painted a bunch of sticks and then everyone just had to glue them together at the party.  I was actually pretty dead at the party.  I had thrown up at 2:30 that morning...  But it was just the once, so I figured I could go, haha.  So I was alive, but very tired and afraid to eat.  Anyway.  Sorry, tmi...

That night we slept at my parents' house so we could do Christmas morning with my family.  It seemed that, yet again, I was the most excited one of my siblings.  My mom finally went and woke everyone up at like 8am.  Chrisser and I had been awake for quite some time by then :).  Thankfully we were on the hide-a-bed right next to the video game TV, so Chrisser was able to play games while we waited.  The rest of the morning after presents was pretty chill.  My family doesn't do much on Christmas Day (unlike Chrisser's; bit of a culture shock for him) except that my mom makes a nice dinner and sometimes my dad's parents are there for that, which was the case this year.  Chrisser and I came back to Provo right after dinner (which was in the early afternoon) because it was Chrisser's turn to not feel terribly well.  Thankfully he never actually got sick.

Then right after Christmas I started a busy couple of weeks at work and Chrisser watched a couple entire cartoon series on Netflix and Hulu while he waited for school to start back up again :)