Catching Up

I've fallen behind on my blogging again, so here's a catch up post.

A couple Fridays ago Bishop Anderson and his wife invited us and 3 other couples to their home for dinner. It was so nice of them! Their home is absolutely beautiful. Seeing real homes always makes me excited for the day that we'll have one of our own. Dinner was delicious and it was a lot of fun to get to know the other couples and Bishop and Sister Anderson better. We all shared our stories about how we met.

I have this ecology project that I have to take a bunch of pictures of ecological processes for, so on Saturday we drove out to Bridal Veil Falls. The weather was absolutely beautiful and we had a good time walking around. I was a dummy and didn't think to charge the camera before we left, but I did grab the extra battery on the way out the door. About 5 minutes after we got there the camera battery died and I found out that the extra wasn't charged. It all worked out though because we had our iPad with us (we were trying unsuccessfully to use a GPS app), so I used that instead. Finding wildlife was pretty unsuccessful, but I think I got some usable pictures of plants.

That Sunday was Easter. It was pretty low-key around here this year. We didn't do easter baskets or eggs or anything. We kind of decided to save the money instead, and we had a busy week leading up to it, so we didn't really plan for it anyway. We invited Josh, Benjamin, and our friend Dan over for dinner. James and Miranda were up at her parents' house, so they were taken care of. Katy was out of town with her family, but Josh stayed because of school and work. We had homemade scalloped potatoes, rolls, game-hens, and some french silk pie. The game hens were good, but they took forever to cook so we ate later than we had planned. We actually had the pie first because everyone was getting hungry. It was nice to spend the evening with friends and family.

This last weekend was General Conference!! Can I just say that I absolutely love conference weekend? It's such a nice break from the craziness of school and life. We stayed home, slept in, and had yummy breakfasts while we listened to the morning sessions. It was an awesome spiritual recharge and I loved the talks this conference. (I think I say that every conference) The speakers went back to the basics and bore very strong testimonies of Christ. I felt peace about some questions I have been pondering, and I felt a reassurance of God's love and concern for me. I am so grateful for the direction we receive every 6 months from living prophets and apostles to guide us through this world full of distractions and ever-changing morals. I love this church.

This week is the last full week of class. Next Wednesday and Thursday are reading days, and I'll be done with finals next Saturday! It's very exciting, but it also means we have a lot of studying ahead of us in the next week and a half.

Oh! And I cut my hair! I think everyone's seen this already, but here it is anyway. It's very different, but I like it so far. :) I was kind of terrified when she was cutting my bangs.

So there you go. I know you were all dying to hear what's been going on in our lives. Time for me to get some sleep!

Shopping and Parties

I think I blog the most when I have papers that I'm supposed to be writing. :-) It has to be done at some point, right??

First of all, this weekend was really great. I didn't even touch my schoolwork, which I might regret a little bit this week, but I don't have too much going on. It'll be okay. On Saturday I slept in, which was wonderful. I get to about Wednesday and I start wishing it was Saturday every time my alarm goes off. In the morning I cleaned up a little in the apartment, and then I had a relief society activity. It was on meal planning and we learned out this cool little website called ziplist! It's basically an online recipe box where you can assign meals to different days and it will compile a grocery list for the days that you choose. I'm excited about it.

Spencer was on campus doing some MCAT prep with Ben again.

After my activity was over we went to pick up Benjamin and do some shopping for his mission!! It was fun to go and be a part of that with the little guy. And I even took pictures! We did all the Mr. Mac stuff so they can get it all taken in and hemmed for him this week. Next week we'll probably just drop him off at the mall for a while and let him go find the rest of the things he needs and pick him up when he's done. He even took us out to eat at Brick Oven Pizza afterwards with a gift card he's had since his graduation. That was fun.

Saturday night we did some party hopping. My old roommate Devynne was having an easter party at her apartment, so we stopped by there for a while. They had a chocolate fountain, so that was fun. It was also really fun to catch up with her again. I'm such a lame friend sometimes. I've only seen her once or twice since I got married. I'll have to make a point to go to lunch with her or something one of these days. She was a fun roommate. Anyway, after her party we went to James's apartment! Miranda wanted an excuse to make a cake (which was delicious, by the way) so they had a party. :-) We hung out, chatted, and played some games. We Didn't Playtest This Either, which we got for Christmas from Dad, was a big hit.

Sunday was nice, too. We slept in again, cleaned a little, went to church, were home taught, and had some yummy chicken chili for dinner. We both fell asleep on accident for like 2 hours after our home teachers left and woke up at 9:00. So, of course, we stayed up until 1 because we weren't tired. I did make some more progress on our camping sheets. :-) And I finally fixed the gaping hole in the armpit of Spencer's winter coat. (Un)luckily, it's still winter here apparently.

Notice how long that belt is. Spencer was impressed. 

Talking with Dad on the phone before the final purchase. 

This is pretty typical.

Girl's Night

It has been a long time since I've had a proper girl's night out. Last night James was out of town on an overnight geology field trip, so Miranda and I got together. Spencer and I had been planing on going to the temple after school and work (which was so wonderful, by the way), so we didn't start our girl's night until about 8:30. We wanted to watch a chick flick at her apartment and make a cake, but one of her roommates was planning on having a movie night with a boy. Living in single housing stinks. Anyway, we ended up going out for ice cream at Wendy's and stayed there chatting for a long time. It was so nice to get to know her a little more and have some one-on-one time. She's pretty great and I'm super happy for her and James.

I hope Spencer wasn't too bored at home.

St. Patty's Day Breakfast & other Stories

This is what we did to celebrate St. Patrick's Day! Okay, we mostly did it because it was fun and there was a good excuse to. :-) Then we did our usual Sunday morning activities: relaxing, sewing for me, and Spencer fiddling around on his computer. I've been making good progress on Hannah's baby quilt and on some fun tie dye sheets for camping. I'll put some pictures up when I get them done.

In other news, we blew a fuse in our kitchen the other day. It didn't make the lights go out, but it did end up shorting out all the plugs on two of our kitchen walls. We used an extension cord to plug the fridge into another wall and looked for the fusebox. We managed to open what we assumed was the fusebox (it took some work), but it's actually the internet box or something. Incidentally, that's why it was hard to get into. We aren't supposed to get into it. You'd think that because we're in the basement the fusebox would be easy to find, but apparently it's upstairs. We still have to catch the upstairs people home so we can switch it back on.

Last night I got together with Kyrie to make some apple and blueberry muffins (two batches, not apples and blueberries together) and study. For one of our plant classes we are having a lab on fruits so we get extra credit for bringing in food with fruit in it. I thought it was today's lab, but it's actually next week. Kyrie's going to freeze the muffins and bring them next week. So much for knowing what's going on.

That's all for now. I've got a plant classification test I need to go study for. Hooray for plants!

St. Patrick's Day Cupcakes

A couple weeks ago we were at the grocery store and Spencer saw some of those tiny cupcakes decorated for St. Patrick's Day. He wanted to get them, but they were like 3 dollars for 12 teeny tiny cupcakes, so I said I'd make him some if he really wanted me to. Since then he's been reminding me that I promised to make him cupcakes on an almost daily basis. :-) So, even though we're still a few days away from St. Patrick's Day I made some with Sydney on Wednesday. I've had a slow week, with lots of free time, which is really strange for me. Anyway, I found this recipe and we gave it a whirl. 

 Best. cupcakes. ever. (unless you're weird and don't like chocolate and mint together.) 

They turned out just beautifully, and the recipe ended up making like 45 cupcakes! We ended up taking about 20 of them home I think. Spencer's worried that we'll need to make more because we don't have enough. I love that guy. But for real, we need to be healthier. Or at least start exercising to balance out our cupcake splurges and fried food parties. 

It was really fun doing something with Sydney again. I hadn't seen her in forever because of how busy things got. We've started plotting our trip to Las Vegas when the boys take the MCAT in a couple months. They'll need to get lots of sleep the night before the test, so we're going to go out and do something fun, and then maybe we can all go to a show or something the night after their test. They are taking in in Las Vegas because Provo doesn't offer it in May and they wanted some time to focus on it after the semester is over. It'll be fun for Sydney and I, anyway! 

We Love our Deep Fryer.

Last night (Saturday), we had Eryn and Kelly Mooney, and Carly and Brad Hansen over for a deep frying party! Eryn and Carly are my visiting teachers, and last month we were talking about how we should do something together. We did a deep-frying party with the Ottos last year and it was fun, so I thought we'd do that. Spencer and I made eggrolls and some mozzarella sticks. The grocery store was out of eggroll-sized wrappers so we ended using wonton wrappers.

Here's Spencer wrapping some tiny eggrolls!

And of course when people came over I forgot to take pictures. We had a fun time together just hanging out though. We may have convinced Kelly that he wants to get a deep fryer, but I don't think Eryn's on board. Carly and Brad brought corn dogs and they are like 10 times better deep fried than baked. Just sayin'.

We need to eat better.

Other things...

We made some Apple Strudel Muffins late friday night. They are so good. Sorry some of the pictures are fuzzy. Someday we'll get a better camera. It's hard to tell that they are fuzzy on the tiny screen.

And... my dress! I finished this about a month ago, and here I am finally getting around to taking a picture to show you all. I'm pretty proud of it, and it's nice and comfortable. When James saw it he did ask if I was going to shorten it.... Um, no, James. It's supposed to be long. He said that was silly. I wasn't too offended. :-)

Sushi

Yesterday, as I was sitting in ecology chatting with Spencer on google chat like I usually do, he asked me if I wanted to go out for sushi. :) We go out to eat every once in a while, but usually we decide on it a few days before. This time it was like getting asked out by Spencer, and that made me happy even though he said I'm paying. haha. (He did end up paying for me.... from our joint bank account...) So, after class and work we stopped by our apartment so I could get the camera and fix my hair for my date, and went to Kyoto! I love that place. They always have 2 for 1 sushi rolls, and we've liked everything we've ordered there. We had a really nice time together. 

Our waitress didn't seem happy about being asked to take a picture, but we got one! 

And yeah, somehow we ate all 4 gigantic rolls.