The Days after Christmas

Christmas was earlier this week. Daniel and I both got wonderful gifts from our families that we opened along with a few gifts from Santa. Daniel got a new razor and I got some kitchen things. Daniel must have been extra good this year because Santa brought him some cinnamon rolls to bake for Christmas morning breakfast.

This year, instead of getting physical gifts for each other for Christmas, Daniel and I each took six months of the year and planned one exciting date per month. Then we put all of our ideas and plans into envelopes and opened them Christmas Morning.  Daniel made some excellent plans, and I'm pretty excited about some of mine too. I think that I'm going to wait until they come to tell you blog readers what they are. It will make for a lot of great suspense for all of you blog readers.

This week Daniel went to his first boys' book club. They read the Hobbit. (We went and saw the movie Christmas Eve. It was a good movie, but I didn't realize they were going to make 3 different 3 hour movies for the book. It was well made, but I'm not sure I can handle another 6 hours. Daniel will probably convince me to see them somehow. ) I think he had a pretty good time at both the movie and at book club.


While Daniel was at book club, I finally got around to organizing our pantry. In all our descriptions of our house, I'm sure that some of you didn't even know we had a pantry. And, until last night, it was pretty empty. Now it is full (thanks mostly to my mom and her Christmas gift),and it is fairly organized! It probably needs more of a system, but at least all of the food is out of the garage and boxes and into the pantry.

Cold Nights but No Snow

With Christmas just around the corner the temperature here in the house has definitely dropped.  Unfortunately there hasn't been any snow (or maybe it's fortunate because no one down here knows how to deal with snow).  I just worked my last day before Christmas and was able to wrap things up pretty well for a long weekend/holiday.  Now we're just making last-minute preparations.

This last week there really hasn't been very much to talk about.  I found out that there's a book club in our Elders' Quorum and the book for December is The Hobbit (thanks to the new movie), which I've been trying to read since I found out.  I don't think I'll make it before we get together, but I've already read it, so no worries.

One highlight of the week was that I came home yesterday and Elissa had made some really good potato cheese dill soup (or whatever they call it).  It was really nice with the colder temperatures and was seasoned really well.  I think she got the recipe from Mom.  Anyway, I won't drag this post out forever since we don't have much more to say.  Merry Christmas everyone!  We wish we could spend it with all of you!

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

This last week we had a cold front sweep through Austin. (All of our friends in Utah and Idaho are going to roll their eyes) It froze for 2 nights in a row, which is pretty cold for here! We decided that we should try out our new fire place while sipping hot chocolate. It was lots of fun. I even made Daniel start reading one of the Ramona Quimbey books with me while we sat by the fire. It was a lovely evening enjoying our new house! It seemed very Christmas like because we were in front of a fire with coco basking in the lights of our decorated Christmas tree. We could have been in a Christmas movie (except we would have been reading a Christmas book and it would have been snowing outside for effect.)

Saturday was our ward Christmas breakfast. Daniel volunteered to bring a dozen scrambled eggs, sausage and our griddle to help keep it all warm. I admit I wasn't too excited to wake up at seven o'clock to cook up eggs and sausage and be to the church by eight. Daniel took my complaining in stride, and we did get up and get everything to the church on time. The breakfast ended up being pretty good, and it was fun to see every one around before they left for the holidays. Also, all of our eggs got eaten, and our griddle stayed clean because they ended up not needing it.

Settling Into a New Ward

Well, with the new house comes a new ward.  Our ward wasted no time getting us in to meet with the appropriate leaders and giving us callings.  We had a tithing settlement, then got called in to meet with a member of the Bishopric, then one with the Elders Quorum, and I got stopped in the hall and asked to teach the 3rd hour lesson the following week.  Now that they've done the sustaining, I can tell you that Elissa got called as a Primary teacher and I was called as a teacher for the 15-18yr old sunday school class (don't worry, there were only 6 kids this last week).  Elissa even got a visiting teaching assignment.

Church isn't the only thing that's been going on lately -- this last weekend we tried waiting outside a store for a deal for the first time.  Tiff's Treats (a local treat delivery company) was selling cookies for more than a 50% discount and we thought it would be fun to go.  We waited in line for quite a while but unfortunately we hadn't come soon enough because we had to go for tithing settlement before we got cookies.  We're pretty sure we were the first to give up on it.

Elissa had a great idea this year for Christmas for us to take Christmas money and plan some exciting dates for the upcoming year with it.  We split 6 months each and we're both really excited about them (but we can't share any details because Elissa doesn't know what I've planned and I don't know what she's planned).

Thanks everyone for reading our blog, and we hope you have a great Christmas!

Setting Up House

We have been busy setting up our new house. Yesterday we probably put 20 boxes out in recycling. It is good that most of our things are out of boxes now so we can find things again. We only have a couple more rooms to go, and we are completely unpacked! Also,  as an early Christmas present, my mom helped me get together the materials to make throw pillows for our new couches. I finally got all the pillows put together. They help coordinate our new valences and our couch and the whole room. You can't see it all, but here is a picture of our new pillows on our new couches.

We also started setting up for Christmas this week, as we started to empty our boxes. We have our Christmas tree all set up along with some other Christmas decorations!

Thanksgiving

Today was Thanksgiving, but before we talk about the joys of actual Thanksgiving, I have to talk about going to the grocery store the night before Thanksgiving because it was pretty crazy!

I'm not sure if any of you have ever been to the grocery store the night before Thanksgiving, but it is like a crazy mad house. First, we decided to go to a new grocery store that is closer to our new house. Since it was dark and we had never been there before, it was already hard to find. Once we got to the store, we  had to search for a parking spot and had to wait to get a cart because almost every cart was in use. Once we got inside we had to tread carefully around throngs of people. It was interesting because people that we started in the dairy section with were just about ready for check out at the same time, even though we didn't coordinate or follow each other around. It was basically crazy.  Fortunately, the store had everything super stocked so there were no fights over the last can of pumpkin or the last box of stuffing mix. Though it was a mad house inside, the store clearly did everything they could to make it a pleasant experience. Next year though, I'm just going to the store a week!

Today, I cooked a turkey for the first time. It was only a boned turkey breast (with extra meat), and I'm not sure I've graduated to a new grade. I put it in the oven and it cooked and cooked and cooked. It got two hours in and I was worried that I put it in upside down! After a lot of struggle, I got it turned over, but I'll do better next time. In fact, next time, maybe I'll just buy  boneless Turkey breast for Daniel and I. It seems a lot easier than a bone in chunk of turkey. (Or I could just buy a frozen pizza!) Everything else went pretty smoothly though. We have enough left overs for several meals. So all in all, I think we had a pretty successful dinner!

Making The House Our Own

Those dedicated readers who check our blog every waking moment (maybe it makes us feel better to pretend they exist ;) ) were probably wondering why we haven't made our post for this last week yet.  Well, the answer is pretty simple.  We have had a busy couple of weeks as we worked on moving our things from the apartment to the house.  Since we took 2 weeks to get this posted, we're each going to make a blog post.

Elissa's parents came down to help us out and with their help we were able to get a lot done around the house.  I'm going to talk about a few of the highlights.

We didn't really love the valances that were left in the main room, but Elissa managed to find a great fabric to re-upholster them with.

All it took was a little help from Elissa's mom and a staple gun (and lots of staples).  We think the blue looks a lot better for the color scheme we want in our house.

The other new and exciting thing I want to talk about is our couch/love seat combo.  We visited a place called Austin Couch Potatoes Furniture.  They had lots of great couches for reasonable prices and we found one we think will look good AND be comfortable.  We decided that we should do something to try to tie some of our colors together, and Elissa wanted a project, so we decided to make some throw pillows.  So far Elissa has made 2 very nice pillows with some more to come (sorry about the bad pictures, my phone doesn't do well with the lighting in that room):

Well, we'll be sure to give you all a picture tour of the house when we get everything set up and put away.  Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving!

Keeping Busy

This week has been a busy one for us! Some of this busy-ness is self inflicted to keep us from stressing and getting antsy about our closing tomorrow. Some of it was not intentional at all on our parts but it kept us busy!

Early in the week we decided that we wanted to make mini apple pies. If you read our blog regularly, you'll already be familiar with our love of mini pies. (see Pumpkin Pie and Apple Pies)  But, what else are you to do when there are 5 kinds of apples are on sale for .50 a pound? This time, we decided to do dutch apple instead of the lattice top. If you look at the link for apple pies, you'll see how handy Daniel was was lattice tops, but we wanted to do something a little different this time. (We are working on making our food pictures better because we talk about food so much.)

If you didn't already know, Daniel had a fender bender down town over the weekend. This has solidified his desire to never drive downtown. Everybody was okay, but cars needed to be fixed up. Daniel got a citation from the police officer, but the other guy got taken away in hand cuffs (on unrelated charges.) Monday we had to find someone to fix up our car. He told us that is should take about 3 days to fix up.

Since we only have one car, we decided to get a rental for the three days. We got a little Nissan Versa.  As the lady led us out to the car, she mentioned that she thought it was pretty new. In this case pretty new was actually brand new. We decided to take a picture because it might be the newest car we'll ever drive. (and for all of you who read our blog!)

Other things that kept us busy this week: packing, Daniel was busy making his work project a reality, eat tasty pie, enjoying driving our rental car, doing a last walk through, and filling some nail holes. Just keeping busy! Hopefully everything goes well tomorrow at closing!

REALLY Late Blog Post

Sorry all of you who diligently stake out my blog at 7:00pm on Thursday nights! This week has been a little crazy, and I just didn't get around to posting in our blog! So I'll give you the rundown about what happened for the week up until about this last Thursday (So we have stuff to put in our blog this next Thursday!) It was actually a pretty quiet week leading up to the weekend, but we did go out to eat. While we were there we saw some crazy birds that were eating sweet and low packets! We finally got a chance to use our new fancy camera phones to take pictures of the action so we could post that along with the story.

This was one of the birds as you can see there are the sweet 'n' low packets are in the back ground. They pulled them off of the tables. It was hard to get them in the act of eating sweet 'n' low. 

But, if you look really closely at this one, you can see that the bird is right there. I think that is incriminating evidence! We were with someone who joked that it doesn't make sense because it isn't real sugar and it is supposed to be no calorie. What benefit is there to be birds? Who knows, but we all eat candy...

Speaking of candy, we did not have any trick or treaters again this year. We don't super love Halloween here anyway, so it wasn't really a moment to mourn over or anything. Next year we'll have  to find out if our house is in a neighborhood with trick or treaters or not! 

New Phones and Fajitias!

This week Daniel and I finally got to try out our new phones from Republic Wireless. They are trying to make a new kind of phone service where you use wifi around you (like at work or at home) to make phone calls which off sets the cost of using cellular minutes for the company. They are a new start up company, and we decided that it would be worth a shot to see how it goes. Especially since the first 30 days have a guarantee to test out the service and see if it is for you.

We are currently a quarter of the way through our thirty day trial. There are some things that we like and some thing that we don't like. It is fun to finally have new phones, and it could come at a better time because both of our phones have kind of had it. (Daniel's t-mobile phone won't hang up sometimes, and mine has a screen that sometimes just whites out so I can't see anything. ) We'll let you all know when we decide. If anyone is interested in joining Republic Wireless, we would be more than happy to tell you about our experiences so far so you can make an informed decision.

 I can tell you that as far as I can tell these cameras are probably superior to any digital camera that we have in the house.That isn't saying much because both of our cameras are kind of getting old.  But,  hopefully this means that we will take more pictures for our blog because we'll have a decent camera with us!

This week we all decided to make fajitas because peppers were on sale. We decided to go all out and get 4 different colors!  Usually, we only get one or two colors because the orange and yellow so expensive. Fortunately, they were all under eighty cents this week.. The adventure helped solidify  Daniel's that the colors do make a difference.

He also got to test out the cameras on our phones after I made I "plated" up my dinner. Pretty fancy!

New Phones

We had two exciting things happen this week:  We're still buying our house (our appraisal came through for our lender), and we got our new phones (which I'll talk about in a bit)!

We got homeowners insurance figured out.  Elissa spent a lot of time researching plans and service and we finally settled on a plan that seems right for us.  She also spent a lot of time looking at different electric plans, and as it turns out, we get a discounted price because of our insurance company, so that was awesome.

Our phones are exciting.  We've mentioned doing beta with Republic Wireless before -- they finally got through their line to us.  We get a 30-day trial period with their Motorola Defy XT phone, which in my understanding is pretty middle-of-the line but reliable.  We've played around with them a little today and they look promising, and if/when we decide we're keeping them, we'll make sure we tell everyone our new phone numbers.  Or, if you send one of us a message, we'll tell you our number there (maybe I'm paranoid but don't like posting things like that on a blog).  Elissa says she's not very good at typing on her phone, so it might take a while to get a response.


Today Elissa made strawberry jam and muffins (but unfortunately the muffins didn't require jam).  The muffins were really good, but since they didn't need jam, I haven't had an excuse to sample her jam yet.  Maybe I'll have toast for breakfast...just to try it.  In any case, homemade jam is always tasty.

Hope you enjoyed our post!

Life Has So Many Details

Another week has passed and we barely noticed it.  This last week we've been working out a lot of the details about our (future) house:

First, Elissa did a whole bunch of research into what plan we should use for electricity (for those who aren't familiar with the concept, some parts of Austin -- and I'm sure other places -- have what they call deregulated utilities, which basically means that a bunch of companies are "competing" for your business; this sounds good until you realize that in general you're paying more for the utilities than other people).  We haven't figure out which option to go with yet, but she's narrowed the choices down a lot.

We also had a home inspection on Monday.  The sellers had some potential buyers back out after having an inspection done, so the sellers had decided to fix just about everything that had shown up in that inspection, so ours turned out pretty well.  There are some things that need repair (some garage door issues, the roof needs a little attention, some broken seals on windows) so we're asking for some money at closing to fix those things up.

I guess really the first thing Elissa did was start looking at insurance.  We've picked an insurance company and just got a bunch of paperwork in the mail to get everything started with them.  Side note -- I don't know how anyone manages their money or any major decisions without Elissa ;) .

Aside from the house, we didn't do a whole lot.  Friday night we picked up Elissa's (resized) ring from the jeweler, so she can wear it again.  It was doubly exciting because obviously they cleaned it all up so it was just as shiny as ever.  After that we headed to volleyball.  Elissa played volleyball with us this last week (she volunteered to play because we would have had to forfeit if she didn't) and we had a lot of fun.  The other team didn't show up but there were supposed to be 2 games going on at the same time and there was only one other team there, so we played them for fun and both got a 'win' on our schedules.

Being (a little) Brave

So, we know you have all been waiting in suspense to hear about our newest house escapades, and we are happy to say that we have a signed contract on the house we really liked! I'm glad we were brave enough to actually do some negotiating to get a price on this house so that we could  actually afford. Hopefully things go well in the inspection on Monday. We have already seen an inspection that was done on the house in July, so hopefully there aren't any huge surprises.  Here is a bonus picture so you know how cool the house is on the inside.

As you might know, I found this cute pattern online for a new temple bag earlier this summer. (http://sewfabulouslypink.blogspot.com/2012/02/temple-garment-bag-tutorial.html)
I finally got up the courage and bought fabric and to get started. I'll admit, I started in the clearance and remnants section at JoAnn's to help me make my decision because I really had no idea what kinds of fabric I wanted. Plus, I didn't want to pay twice as much money for bad fabric!  I ended up getting a really good deal on the white fabric because it was in the remnant pile AND the bolt it came from was 50% off too. (For all of you who don't know, you get 50% of fabrics current price when it is in the remnant pile.) This meant I got the fabric for 25% of the original price! It happened to be meant for "home decor" but I used it anyway because I thought it would be cute. Then, I found the gingham fabric in the clearance section for between $4-$6.

So, this week after running through a whole spool of thread and having to get a new one yesterday, I finally got my project finished! It hangs out at about 6 feet tall and folds up (ending up about a quarter of the size) I will admit, it is much cuter in person because it was dark outside once I wanted to take pictures. I teased Daniel that I need to find a couple to invite to drive down to the temple with just so someone can see how cool my bag is. Daniel assured me that that was a good idea except for the prideful showing off thing. As usual, he was right. Though they aren't excellent, these pictures should give you an idea of how cute this bag is! (So I don't sound TOO proud, the bag certainly isn't perfect, but I'm glad that it at least turned out usable and cute.)

Third House a Charm?

It's been a good week at the Larsen apartment.  We started it off by looking at a few houses, which had dropped in list price recently.  We thought we were really going to like the first house we saw, but it just wasn't quite right.  (I couldn't put my finger on it, and I felt bad saying I simply didn't like the house).  We had several more houses to look at that evening, but as soon as we saw the next house, we called the rest off.  It was pretty much everything we've been looking for in a house.  We both agree that this house is better than (ok, Elissa says mostly the same as) the first house.  The rest of the week, we were distracted by putting in an offer, then getting a counter offer, and once again countering their counter offer.  We've put off the blog post, in hopes that we could deliver awesome news that we had (yet another) a signed house contract.  Well, we decided it was time for the post to be made, either way.

Elissa had a lot of activities going on this week, which meant that I got to spend a lot of time on the piano and Wii while she hung out at things like 'Congratulations-we-missed-a-baby-shower-so-we're-doing-it-late' party, book club, and Women's Conference.  We also got to go to a game night with two other couples in the ward.  We played an interesting game called "telestrations", which was described as "a mix between telephone and pictionary."  We thought it was a lot of fun, and the best part was that the "MVPs" were the ones with the worst drawing skills, because it made the game more entertaining.  The only sad part of the week, was that I missed volleyball because it was at the same time as the other party (if only volleyball had been at the same as Elissa's stuff).

One last bit of exciting news Elissa wanted to share -- she bought her first and second pairs of shoes since we were married (somehow she kept getting people to buy them for her).  I also got a pair of much-needed shoes.

Homemaker Skills

This week was a pretty standard week. Daniel was busy trying to meet work goals during the day. He is working on putting together a testing plan for the product he is working on. It is a super secret project with super secret components that I'm not allowed to give specifics on. All you need to know is that Daniel has been working hard on it, and that it is pretty cool. (Well, pretty cool for engineers :P )

On Thursday we decided it was high time that we get our groceries for the week -- especially since we usually shop for groceries on Wednesday. Sprouts, the mostly produce store, was having a good sale on lots of items, but some of those items were only on sale Thursday-Saturday. We ended up getting 2 pineapples (for Daniel and the love of Psych, of course), 4 pounds of beef, and 2 pounds of cheese. (Along with a few other things, of course.)

As for me, the other day I saw a post that said, "What if Pinterest was made by men to re-domesticate women?" Then, I saw a pin on Pinterest with a "how to" on building your food storage at $5 dollars a week, but it wasn't exactly what I needed. It didn't really include any kind of meat, and the only protein was from beans. So I've added chili, canned tuna, canned chicken, and freezing beef to the list. To that end, we  froze the 4 pounds of beef and one and a half of the pounds of cheese for our food storage. I'm trying to do better at getting something for food storage every week while I'm at the grocery store.

This morning, I finally pulled out my sewing machine and had Daniel help me figure out the directions on how to thread the machine because I found a cute project I want to do, a new temple bag. Of course, I found that on Pinterest too! So in response to the the first pin I say, "Who cares about that! Pinterest tells me how to do all this cool stuff!"

The Couple Who Cried House

We know you've all heard it a thousand times...once upon a time there was a couple, and one time they ran around announcing "we're buying a house!".  All their friends and family got so excited for them and wanted to see, but the next week they told everyone there was no house to buy after all.  Then a few days later they started announcing again, "we're buying a house!"  This time a few of their friends and family wanted details, but after a week they broke the news that there was no house after all.  Well, the third time they announced "we're buying a house," no one believed them...

Okay, so it's a strange adaptation but it fits pretty well.  We found out the house we wanted to buy had an owner who took worse care of their house than most renters do their apartments.  In the end it was clear that they had taken a great thing and ruined it by not taking basic care of it.  We'll let you know when we think we've found the house, and maybe some of you will even believe us that we plan to buy it.

That has been our main focus this last week, but on an unrelated note, I wanted to post pictures of the cards we did last week so I can show off my handiwork (can you tell the fake cards?):

Memorial Day weekend

This week wasn't a super busy week, but Daniel and I did go on some adventures for the memorial day weekend. First we decided to try and find a board game store here in Austin. We like games, but we haven't really gone shopping for any since we moved here. We found a new game store that was pretty cool. We ended up buying some blank playing cards so that we could make up spares for our games that we have. Daniel spent most of Monday figuring out how to print on name tag labels to put on the blank cards. He did a really great job.

Then we want to Central Market. (A huge grocery store closer to downtown Austin.) Daniel had never been, and I had only been once. I thought it would be a fun adventure to go and see it with Daniel. They have all sorts of cool things, and if I ever needed some strange ingredient, I would go there to try and find it. It was a fun adventure for Daniel and me.

Monday we decided that it was high time that we try out Amy's Ice Creams. It is a cool little Austin ice cream place which is pretty well known around here. We got ice cream, and then we went to get fries at Five Guys which just happens to be right next door to the ice cream shop. It was a good time. It reminded us that sometimes it is more fun to go on dates with your spouse than on dates before you were married.

Lessons in Forgiveness

Most of you have probably heard that we won't be able to buy the house we were so excited about last week.  We were (and still are somewhat) frustrated with the sellers, but our Sunday School lesson this week is on forgiveness and Elissa read a book for book club (The Hiding Place) which teaches forgiveness.  We figure we'll have to take the subtle reminder and try to forgive them.

We have resumed looking for a good house but haven't found anything particularly interesting yet.  We imagine if we wait a while and keep watching house listings that we'll find a keeper before too long.  We'll be sure to post it here when we get under weigh on another house.

Other than house shopping we haven't done a whole lot.  We are excited for ward choir to pick up again this Sunday.  Though I was excited to sing in the choir, for the time being I will be playing piano for it instead.  I've never accompanied a choir in a performance, so we'll see how that goes.

I guess that about sums it up this week.  Thanks for reading our blog!

House Hunting

This week we finally "officially" started our house hunt. (We have looked around at neighborhoods and had see lots of houses online long before this, obviously.) We had already talked when a lender about the money part, and selected a real estate agent! We have been diligently saving up for the time when we could afford to pay for a house down payment.

 Saturday we looked at probably 12 houses around neighborhoods we were interested in.We found a house we really loved, but knew that it would be crazy to buy a house after only looking one day, so with our narrowed down list of things we wanted, and we went out again to look at 4 houses on Monday. We still really loved the house from day one. So we submitted an offer. Since Austin is currently a seller's market and not a buyer's, we knew it would be important to give a good solid offer fairly quickly if we wanted to have the house.

Now, if you thought that was a whirlwind house romance, then wait for it, we are now under contract for the house! Because of the seller's situation, we won't be closing until October. We are super-duper excited. It is exactly what we wanted for exactly the price we wanted. Here is a picture:

Wish us luck! Now we just have to survive through the actual "buying" part.

Another Happy Anniversary

This week was our 3rd wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe that we have been married 3 years. Sometimes it feels like we just got married yesterday, but other times it feels like we have been together forever. It is crazy how our perceptions of time are so skewed, and it is even more interesting how paradoxical our different perceptions can be.

For our anniversary dinner, Daniel took me out to a restaurant called The Blue Baker. The mostly serve sandwiches and pastries. We decided to try out their pizza along with some pastry for dessert. Daniel had been to the place before for lunch, but we had never gone together -- especially for dinner. Since it was a Wednesday evening, the place was almost completely empty. It was good for us because it gave us plenty of time to decide what we wanted to order. It was a pretty cool location, and I'm sure it gets pretty busy at lunch time. The food was good, and we enjoyed our date. We came home and watched some episodes on netflix, and all in all, we had a good time. It is lots of fun to be married!

The other night we were watching Mythbusters on netflix, and Daniel brought up the fact that they often use measurement tools from National Instruments, but you just can't see the name on the screen. He had even talked about it with one of his coworkers over lunch earlier in the week. Then, in the episode, they basically made a product placement of a National Instruments product, and even had one of their engineers on the show with them. You can watch the clip below.

So, in case you ever wondered to yourself "What kinds of things does Daniel work on at work" or "who uses that stuff that Daniel is working on?" You now know the answers. Also,I think, the engineer they brought from National Instruments is basically like a, albeit small, representative sample of the guys working at NI. If you went to Daniel's work today, you would see a lot of guys who looked a lot like the guy from the video. 

Movies and Groceries

This week Daniel and I ventured back to the Alamo Drafthouse to catch a movie. Since the last time we we went there we watched a chick flick, I decided to offer, and watch one of the many super hero movies that came out this summer. We decided that we would go and see the new Spiderman movie. (Partly because I saw the preview and thought it might have a reasonable plot line as well as interesting super hero antics. ) The movie ended up being pretty good. I enjoyed it better than the last Spiderman movies.

Alamo Drafthouse is always fun because they serve you food while you watch the movie -- dinner and a show! This time we decided to get french fries and popcorn. It isn't much for a "dinner," but we were going to a lunch time matinee. (And no one can say we didn't eat any vegetables :P) Anyway, we just had a good time on our fun dinner and a movie date.

This week our grocery ads came a day later than usual in the mail, so I didn't get our menu planned out until Wednesday night (our usual shopping night.) Daniel agreed to go to the grocery store without me because my visiting teachers were coming, and do all the shopping with the list I made up for him. He did a great job getting everything we needed. We even had enough left over to get some ice cream! We decided to try strawberry pie, and it has been pretty tasty so far! (We have only had one bowl, but I'm sure that it will still be good tasting in future bowls as well.)

Volleyball and an Ice Cream Social

This week has been pretty simple. We didn't have anything too crazy or adventurous happen, but we did have a good time. Today is my sister Cortney's birthday as well, so I think that it is appropriate to give her a shout out on the blog today! Happy Birthday little sister; don't let anybody tell you that you are old!

Friday, we went to the ward activity dubbed "Speed Fellowshipping." As you can imagine, it is like speed dating, but people are just getting to know people to become friends not to date. Afterward we had ice cream and enjoyed getting to talk to people a little more. It was nice to get to know some different people in the ward that I hadn't either met or been introduced to. It was a great activity where our ward just got a few new people, and where it was so large to begin with.

Tuesday Daniel played on his work volleyball team in the evening. And, much to our delight, Daniel finally got to be there to win a match! His team has generally done pretty well. They usually ended up in close games and matches with other teams, but this week they finally won the match during the tie breaker game!

Lunch Date!

This week was pretty normal. Sunday we got to see the difference in our ward after the boundary change. It was hard to tell because we know a lot of people were on vacations. However, ward attendance did seem smaller because everyone fit in the pews (and overflow) with room to spare. We got to meet a few new people that we snagged when the boundary moved a little into our neighboring ward. Most of the ward organizations were a similar size except for the primary which lost 40% of its membership. We also realized that many (but not all) of the people we new well were moved into the other ward. Fortunately ward boundary changes don't mean that you can't talk to people in the new ward! (Just imagine Daniel gasping and sarcastically suggesting that fact isn't true. It is a good thing he knows better!)

Now for some background on my main story. Every Tuesday Daniel's work group eats lunch together. They are on a rotation of eating in at the office and eating out at a restaurant every other week. Usually on "eat out" Tuesday Daniel doesn't bring a lunch and goes along to whatever restaurant is chosen for the week. Some he has liked, some he has been ambivalent about, and at least one he really don't like. This week the consensus came to that restaurant; so at 11:45 I get a call from Daniel letting me know that he is coming home for lunch! So I got ready as fast as I could so I wouldn't look like a ragamuffin in pajamas when Daniel got home. Then it was decided that since we didn't feel like sandwiches that Daniel the would take me out to our favorite Chinese place since they have this great lunch special. Anyway, it was a fun surprise for Daniel to come home from work and take me out on a lunch date!

Ward Changes

This week didn't hold much that was out of the ordinary.  We did have a stake fireside where they got several wards together and showed us our new ward boundaries.  It was no surprise that we stayed in our current ward (I'd already heard that we were going to be staying).  We did lose a big chunk of the ward to the new ward they formed.  We'll be sad to see them go, but I'm a bit excited to know that the Elders' Quorum (and hence the number of people I have to remember) has gotten a little smaller.

Since we don't really have much else to talk about this last week, I'll just let it be a short post.  Hopefully next week we'll have some more exciting things to put on our blog.

A Short Post

I know we already posted twice this week, but those posts were for the last few weeks while we were on vacation, so I'm going to post a short update about us since we got home. It hasn't been too busy of a week so far, but it has rained like crazy. Since we've gotten home it has basically stormed every night. There has been thunder and lightning, and buckets of rain. I know that I write about the rain every time it rains, but for a girl from the high dessert in Idaho it might as well be monsoon season when it storms every day for a week. It is good for us here in Texas because any rain helps to end the drought.

I got a copy of this month's book club book The Durnsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Once I started I couldn't put it down. It is always nice when a book that gets recommended is an instant favorite that I would never would have found on my own to read. Anyway, in case you can't tell, I really enjoyed the book. It is all letters back and forth (mostly between the main character and other characters) used to tell the story of Durnsey (an English Channel island) that was occupied by the Germans during WWII. I think I enjoyed it partly because the main characters are always talking about British Romantic and Victorian literature, things which I'm familiar with and really enjoyed. So, if you are looking for an interesting read, this one was pretty good!

Vacation Part 2: Forth of July and the Police Man

The second half of our vacation Daniel and I visited with my family in Idaho.  On our first day my Mom took me shopping for clothes as a birthday present. (It is hard to pick out clothes when there isn't anyone in the dressing room with you to see the clothes!) Then later we ended up getting to spend some time with my niece and nephews (along with their parents Jay and Amber). at the Lava Hot Springs pool. It was pretty fun to get in the pool for the first time in over a year. (I know, it is crazy, but we haven't gotten to the pool in Austin yet.) We also got to eat some yummy pizza and treats as well.

Then we got to spend some time with my sister Cortney and her husband Kyle. They first made us lasagna, and we got to see their apartment. Then, afterwards, we all went to Shoshone Falls for family pictures. Daniel had never been before. Fortunately the falls were coming over pretty strongly. We even let the photographer try and decide between us for who was the child and who was the in-law. After some subtle finger pointing she figured out who was who!

We ended up attending the annual Raft River Fourth of July community party which, as always, was lots of fun. The food was delicious. It was also really fun to see the people from the ward again! The fireworks show was exciting as always, and Dad was selected to help put music to the show to make the fireworks even more exciting! (He did a really great job, and it didn't even take too long him to put away the equipment after the show was over which was a nice bonus.)

During or first day of driving we were amazed to see that gas prices had actually gone down since we had left home! What a blessing! After our first day of driving our return trip, Daniel and I stopped at the hotel we had picked out. We had decided to try out Travelocity's "Secret Hotel" program. If you don't know about the program this is the low down. Travelocity tells you about various hotels in the area you are planning on staying in. You know basic information about the hotel: the general location, the amenities, and even a simple 1-5 customer rating. The secret of the hotel is not revealed until you have order your non-refundable stay. Sometimes it is a way to get really good deals. (Though other times you just get an average deal.) This time, Daniel and I got a great deal! (We got our room for half price, and it is probably the nicest hotel we have ever gotten for ourselves.) We had a good time splashing in their small pool and relaxing their hot tub after a long day in the car.

On our last day of driving, I was driving along a little two lane highway in New Mexico. I had set my cruise control to the speed limit (which was 65) and even check that with our GPS unit's speed feature. I noticed that a police man had on his lights and was driving down the other side of the road (and appeared like he might be trying to U-turn) Figuring that the law was the same in New Mexico as the other states I had driven in, I decided my best course of action would be to pull to the side of the road. (Driving Rule: Always pull over for emergency vehicles). I was a little more sure about my decision because another car had also slowed down and pulled over on my side of the road in front of me. After being comfortably in the shoulder of the road, I noticed that the policeman had u-turned as predicted, but that he had pulled in behind me and was talking on his radio! The policeman then walked up to our car, I rolled down the window and he said, "So you know, you are being pulled over today for speeding. Going 84 miles per hour." I shook my head and said, "That can't be us. I was going 65!" Daniel also chimed in (he notes, perhaps against his better judgment) that the policeman was wrong, and we were not going 84 miles per hour! (Which was true, the fastest we had gone all day was 75 mph in a 75 mph zone.) The policeman looked at us, and then said, "Well then, get your butt back on the road!" I think the moral of the story is that "It isn't a real 3000 mile road trip unless you get pulled over at least once!"

Vacation Part 1: Santa Fe and Pineapples

Hello blog readers! We are sorry that we didn't post over the last couple of weeks. We did not die, instead, we went on vacation! We left for vacation bright and early Monday morning. We drove almost all day until we got to our hotel in Santa Fe. Now for all of you who have never driven from Austin to Provo, (or Idaho for that matter) you might not know that going through Santa Fe is not the way that google maps for your car GPS unit will tell you to go. BUT, Daniel also happens to be a HUGE fan of Newsies, so we had to go! To the left is a clip of the song "Santa Fe" from the movie.  I picked this one because if I were to put the one from the musical, Daniel wouldn't be happy. He happens to be a Newsies purist. (I like the musical one too. So if you ever want to look that one up, See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-vmScZrcrs or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LdB7khw9CI) 

Daniel's artsy picture of our finished adventure

Anyway, before we left for Santa Fe, we looked up activities to do there. There were lists and lists of historical sites and famous things that we could visit. That seemed like it might be hard to pick what would be cool to see. Then, we found that that city had put together a "Geocaching Adventure" to tour some of the cool sites of the city. We decided that we had a GPS for our car, and that it would be a fun little adventure for us to do. (They also promised some sort of prize for finishing up the whole sheet! ) As you can see on the left, we managed to get to all the sites in one day!

"And then I'm on the train
that's bound for Santa Fe"

We managed to get some pictures from our wandering adventures. We only had real difficulty finding one of the spots on our sheet. We wandered around for a good half an hour trying to find the right spot, and I learned that I had definitely judged the reality tv show people too harshly. It can get really frustrating to find what you are looking for! We got to see lots of interesting fun things though along our way. A nice stranger even took a picture of us in front of a train in the Santa Fe Train yard! We got totally sunburnt, but we also had a really good time even though when we pulled out of the parking garage we learned they didn't take cards! (Fortunately, they took an out of town check!)

Then we drove all day Wednesday to get to Utah. On Thursday we hosted our 4th annual Pineapple Extravaganza! Many of our Utah friends were able to attend. We had a couple of tasty pineapples and played several hands of (Pine) apples to (Pine) apples. It was great to get to see some friends while we were in town.

We also got to host Daniel's family's reunion. It was pretty laid back, but I think the family enjoyed getting together!

Another Late Post!

Last Thursday we found out that we had a colony of fire ants that had decided to take over our kitchen. (Okay, we didn't realized they were fire ants right away.)By Friday morning, I was afraid to go into the kitchen to cook because whenever I did there seemed to be more ants everywhere. (And, I had learned that they made me itchy!) I also realized in the morning that there were ants in my laundry basket of folded clothes! (That would bring very literally meaning to having "ants in your pants!" ) So I spent the next half hour shaking out every item (then refolding and putting away) to make sure the ants wouldn't get on me when I put on my clothes.

Fortunately for us, our apartment complex has a pest control company stop by every Friday in case someone has a problem. We managed to get on the list Friday morning. I am also really grateful for the bug man stopping by, after hours, and doing everything he could to make sure that our kitchen would stay ant free! (Our regular bug guy had a family emergency, so they had a call someone else in to get our complex bug free) We now have gel on the inside wall of our counters, white power all over our floor and and idea where all the ants were coming from. He did a great job and took the time to make sure we were comfortable in our own apartment.

We also learned a lot of respect for the little ants. They will walk as far as a mile to find food for their colony. We were a little sad that the remedies were going to kill all the ants in the colony that lived outside, but now that they know our apartment has food and water (and was much closer than a mile away) they would just keep coming back for more.

So, Friday, we decided that would eat out somewhere so that I wouldn't have to go into the kitchen with all the of the ants and chemicals. We went to the County Line (which is a place we go every few months). Little did we know that we were seated right below the talking cow head! (We didn't even know they had a talking cow!) The cow told some cheesy cow jokes for the kids. ( e.g. Why can't a bull drive a car? His horns down work and he can't steer! :P) We ended up having a really great time there though. Their food is always delicious!

Sunday, I got to go to Priesthood opening exercises (which was a different experience :P.) because Daniel got set apart as Elder's quorum secretary. He is nervous, but I know he'll do a great job!

Finally, We have been busy this week making our final plans for our upcoming vacation! We have a list that is probably a full page (or more) long of items to bring and things to do! That is a lot of stuff. Fortunately, most of the items are things to pack!

Volleyball Season Begins

It's been a good week.  Probably one of the more exciting bits of news is that we played our first game of Volleyball on my work team this week.  I was really out of practice, and our team as a whole really stunk, but we only lost by a little bit.  I think we'll get better as we improve our communication and get some more practice.  In any case the reason we're doing this is for fun and exercise, which are both accomplished even if our team does stink.

Also, my Elders' Quorum president talked to me on Sunday about a calling that will remain secret until next blog post.  (I know, you're all waiting with baited breath for the announcement).  I'm not sure if we'll be keeping the 12-13 yr Sunday school calling so we'll just have to wait and see.

On Saturday we went to a home buyer seminar thing.  It was supposed to be 6 hours but it was only about 3 because there was only one other guy there for the course.  It felt kind of remedial after all the research Elissa has been doing to make sure that we are informed and make a good financial choice when we get a house.

I'm not sure there's much else new for this week.  Look to next week for another riveting post.

A Very Texas Birthday

This week has probably been the most humid we've had. It isn't unusual to hear the weather man say "well, today is going to be a muggy  day," "oh, dear... it is about 80% humidity," or " well, the 'real feel' is 5 degrees higher than the actual temperature." Suffice it to say, I'm glad that it isn't so dry or so hot as last summer yet (knock on wood!), but that it is really humid. That hasn't stopped Daniel and I from going on our morning walks. It really is the only time of day that feels like a reasonable time to go walking together since the evening is the warmest part of the day!

This week was also my birthday! We ended up going to a crawfish boil party with people from Daniel's work. Now, before you all go and boo him (or write mean things on his facebook wall), I told him that that having us go was perfectly acceptable, and he even woke up extra early to make me surprise, morning breakfast cake! (Which he chose because I really don't love frosting, and I really enjoy breakfast cake!) Anyway, I thought it was super cute and thoughtful. I did have a lovely birthday! (Thanks to everyone for their thoughtful birthday wishes!)

I did get to try crawfish at the crawfish boil, which I admit, was kind of a weird experience. Way out of my comfort zone because I really don't like to see a creature's head before I eat something. (Let along snap the poor thing in half!) I was a little nervous to start, but I did get the hang of it, I think. I did enjoy them more than I do shrimp. I really don't like shrimp, and I was worried that crawfish would be just like shrimp, and they weren't thank goodness.

My birthday presents from Daniel ended up coming in the mail a little later from my birthday, but we ended up getting more crossword puzzles to do together, among other things, because we just finished up our last book of them. Little did we know that this book would be the size of a phone book! That is okay because that means we have lots of puzzles left to do! We enjoy doing them together occasionally.

Along with my birthday presents in the mail, Daniel finally got to order the new Legend of Zelda game. (He has been diligently saving up his spending money for months and months. Now he finally saved up enough to buy this new game.) I don't know much about it, but apparently it takes advantage of the new Wii motion plus technology. Now I'll just have to find a project to do while he is playing the game. So he can play, and I can be productive.

Memorial day and Moving people

This week was Memorial day. We got up with the best intentions to go on a new exciting hiking trail. We woke up and drove the the spot, but even though the website said they were open, the gate was locked! So, our first adventure of the morning was spoiled, but then I remember that Daniel had never been to Central Market,(that is a really, really big grocery store that has basically every kind of food!) so we turned on our trusty GPS unit on and got directions to the store. Upon arriving to the store we found out they were closed too! Foiled at every turn! We returned to our apartment in defeat, but we took a quick walk around the block and came home. Since we didn't have anything else to do, we got to work on our blanket for the family reunion service project. (And finished, it went really quickly.) Daniel told me not to tell any details on the blog because it is top secret until the reunion. I agreed, so you will all have to wait and see how it turned out!

It is now moving season in the ward. Daniel has now helped a couple of times, and he says that his arms might fall off if he moves too many more people out of the ward in the near future. The first was a move on Saturday, and so, he was gone all morning. I helped with the second move by watching the couple's child. (Daniel did all the lifting things, which explains why his arms are threatening to fall off.) I probably had the most fun of anyone helping to move, but they assured me that the help was appreciated.



Today my awesome visiting teachers took me out for ice cream for my birthday. We visited Amy's Ice Creams, which is an "Austin Original" ice cream shop. They had good ice cream in some interesting flavors. I have been near by there before (Austin's Five Guy's is right next door), but I had never been to their little park right behind. It has places to eat, grass, and some bit metal cows for kids to play on. It was fun because a cold front just moved in and there was a breeze making the heat nice instead of dreadful. When I came home, I told Daniel that we had to go hang out outside because it was nice. Our house didn't get quite the same breeze, but it was fun to use our porch for sitting (probably for the first time since we've moved here.)

Exercise and Ice Cream

Daniel and I decided this week it would be good to start go on morning walks. It is too hot in the afternoons after work (the warmest part of the day) to go out, so we started going on walks first thing in the morning. This means that we have to get up when our alarm clock goes off, the first time, in the moring. That is something we haven't done in a long time. It is fun to go out with Daniel in the mornings, and to be outside when it isn't really hot, but currently, I'm at the point where I'm sore, and (obviously) not seeing many results from the exercise. If Daniel wasn't encouraging me to get up on time, I would definitely roll over and hit the snooze button a few more times instead of getting up and moving. It is a good thing I have a good husband to make sure I get up instead of stay in bed!

We also thought it would be fun to get some reading done this week. We finished the first two books in the Prydian Chronicles. They weren't too long, and they were interesting and enjoyable. We'll probably pick up the next ones some time next week. (We considered picking them up today, but our closest library branch that has them is closed on Friday's and all of the branches are closed Saturday-Monday.) So, now we'll have to come up with something else that is fun to do for the upcoming holiday weekend. Hopefully we come up with something. If you have any fun Monday holiday ideas for us, we'd love to hear them!

I have also been craving ice cream, lately. It has been a long time since we've gotten ice cream and it has been getting warm out. Fortunately, this week, ice cream happened to be on sale! So, we bought a new flavor of ice cream to try! I'm not sure it is my new favorite flavor of ice cream, but it was probably some of the best Neapolitan ice cream I have had. (But that isn't too surprising because I do really like the blue bell strawberry ice cream!) We also got some delicious strawberries. They weren't just on sale, but they also smelled so good! It was a good grocery week!

This last Sunday we got to sing as a ward choir. Our choir director is moving away, but besides that it is the last time we'll sing until next fall. (Since there is so much going on in the summer time the ward cancels ward choir until the fall when people are a little more permanent in the ward.) I'm excited for the fall to come so we can have more choir!

Games, Books, and (Future) Goodies.

This week our ward hosted a game night. It was really fun. The really young kids had a nursery provided by our local singles' ward. The primary kids watched a movie and the grown ups all played games! We played a shortened game of Trivial Pursuit. We did okay at that, but we didn't win. I did much better at that than the three 80's themed games that we were offered. As one who didn't live a single day in the 80's I figured that would be like a slaughter. Then Daniel and I joined a huge game of Settlers of Catan. They were using the expansion pack to get to to 6 players and then each player was paired with their spouse which made one really large table of people playing the board game. We had a good time getting to spend some time with our ward members.

This week I realized how much I need to find a way to store larger amounts of flour and sugar at some point. This realization cames this week as I basically ran out of flour, white sugar, brown sugar, and cocoa powder at the same time. I can only get the smallish bags because I have no way to store a larger (maybe 20 lb) bag of flour or sugar, after I open it. Eventually I will buy something to store that kind of stuff in. This week I decided to put off my shopping trip until the weekend so I can get all of those baking supplies and my other things. Hopefully, I can find a good deal on all the baking goods that I'm going to buy. I plan to make something tasty with them at some point! Really, we need to seriously work on our food storage stuff around this house! Hopefully I will get all that figured out at some point.

I also finally got around to reading this month's book club book Heaven is Here. It was a pretty good book. I enjoyed the read. It wasn't too long of a read. I did have plenty of time to read it, but it only took a couple of hours to read it. I did end up enjoying the book, but it took a little mental pushing to get started reading it. Daniel and I have also been reading some books together. We just finished the Protector of the Small quartet by Tamora Pierce. It was fun to read some books together. This next week we'll probably start another series of books that Daniel will pick out since I picked out that last ones.

Sometimes When It Rains It Pours.

This week has been a good week here in Austin. It has been a very raining week. It has been cloudy most days, and we have gotten lots of rain! Several nights we got over an inch in rain. (Some nearby areas got more like 2 inches.) I know the locals are like "yawn, it is just raining outside," but for a high desert girl it seems like a lot of rain. 2 inches is what we'll get in a whole summer or something. It is pretty crazy to get that much rain in one night. It is like someone is taking huge buckets of water and dumping them over the area! The thunder here is louder too. I don't know why that is, but it is definitely louder here. I guess when they say everything is bigger in Texas, they are including the rain and thunder storms! It is good though because we need lots of rain to get us out of the drought. We aren't there yet, but if it keeps raining we might get there some time.

This weekend we also got to go to the baptism of one of the daughters in a family Daniel home teaches. Their family speaks both Japanese and English, and the little girl wanted her baptism to be in Japanese. The first talk was in Japanese, and I don't speak Japanese. But the principles are still the same, it was fun watch and know the gospel is the same in any language, even if I didn't know what was being said.

Our First Dance (at a dance)

Friday night we got to go to our first dance together.  It was a fund-raising dance put on by the young women in our ward.  They made felt corsages, 'sold' treats, did pictures, provided games, and of course turned the cultural hall into a dance floor.  The music was mostly the kind of music you'd have heard at high schools in the 70-80s, but it was still enjoyable.  They even provided babysitting for people so we got to spend some time getting to know some of the people in our ward with young kids.

The next day, I headed to the church to help out with a merit badge fair (I just signed up to be a merit badge counselor).  I got there right on time -- except that there was no one at the church!  I called Elissa up and we decided that I needed to drive 30 minutes to the right place.  I felt really bad being that late, but I guess every year they've done the fair someone has shown up at the church, so I'm not the first and may not be the last to do that.

I also got to work on a few repairs this week:  I've been working on fixing up a theremin for a family in the ward for a few months (off and on).  I got in the parts I needed to get it up and running and then started the tuning process (I used a tutorial I found online).  I'm sure it could be tuned much better, but it works!  The other repair I did was with Elissa's laptop.  Her fan started acting up so I cleaned it up and tried it out and it seemed fine, so I put it back (but we had to get some thermal grease).  It runs a little better now.

I'm not really sure what else we have to talk about this week.  Hope you enjoyed the post!

One (Fairly) Busy Week

It was just another week here in Austin at the Larsen house. We did to lots of church related activities though! Friday was our ward visiting teaching conference. We had delicious fajitas, and I felt so spiritually uplifted and motivated to do better as a visiting teacher and as a person in general. We also had a silent service auction based on points earned mostly through by identifying sisters from the ward by interesting facts about them. There were over 200 women on the list. I learned that we have smart, talented, amazing women in our ward! And the things that were provided for the auction were creative as well as showing the skills of the women in the ward. 

Daniel participated in the priesthood MAP activity. They asked the elders to go and find those members that are recorded by the church but that haven't been active in the ward. Generally where the ward is not sure whether you are just not coming to church or if you have moved to a new location. Daniel did have a few doors closed in his face, but at least one person was really nice and stopped to talk with him. As a reward, we got to go to a new and fancy restaurant. Daniel tried their salmon, and I had their steak. (along with salads, appetizers and desserts) We even ended up drinking water from fancy glass bottles. It was a fun evening.

Sunday we had a pretty standard meeting schedule, but we did get moved into a new classroom for our Sunday school class. This room is bigger, is not right next to all the adults in the ward AND it even has windows. What an upgrade! Unfortunately, the students in our class don't do well with change. They had a hard time settling down and getting ready to learn. I just have to remind myself that we all have those same instincts, but we've just learned to behave more maturely in certain situations. (It doesn't mean that we all aren't secretly like 12 year olds at heart!)

Today, I even had book club. We read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.  We had a really good time talking about the book, and all agreeing that we don't quite understand why the character would behave in the manner they did, but that the story was very well executed in style. We did wonder why all the Bronte sisters wrote about angry/scary men. Conclusion: we have no idea! Anyway, it was a fun night!

  

Learning How to Make Trash into Treasure

This week Daniel didn't have a lot of plans of things to do, BUT the one thing we did have planned was to go to a one hour class on composting put on by the city of Austin. If we had a house, we could now get a voucher for 75% of the purchase up to $75 off of a composter, but where we rent, we aren't really eligible for the deal.  We did get a little kitchen compost collector to take home though! The City is putting on this class to get to their zero waste goal. They want to not send anything to the landfill. So they are doing lots of recycling, and composting helps reduce the waste that they have to process.

Even though we aren't getting the  money, the class was really informative about the basics of composting. I learned all about the difference between greens and browns. I also learned that you never compost meat products! (Who knew? Not me!) The best tip that I think we got was to reduce the risk of making your kitchen smelly, to store the kitchen keeper in the freezer or refrigerator. It seemed like good information to know because compost can make great mulch and is good for putting on gardens. 

All in all, the lady who gave the presentation did a good job making it fun and informative, but Daniel and I agreed that it seemed like it was part lecture and part interpretive dance. It was a fun and different home evening for us because usually we just stay home for our FHE nights. We found out later that she went to Daniel's work earlier in the day to give the same presentation, but I was glad that I got to go with Daniel to the talk for some family home evening!

There isn't much else to tell about this week. No exciting news. We haven't really gotten closer to house hunting stuff or anything. So, basically and average week!

Arrrh! Let Ye Engineer Things

This week I learned that apparently engineers should be like pirates. NI does this cool thing with its R&D employees where it has all of them take a couple of days off engineering to attend presentations put on by fellow employees. I have just attended the first day's worth of presentations. Every hour there were about a half-dozen choices. I attended classes talking about topics ranging from particle physics (talking about our alleged discovery of neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light) to high-level FPGA design using LabVIEW, and of course, how engineers should be like pirates (we need to use things other people have and know where to get them -- but we're not supposed to actually steal them). Anyway, that was pretty fun.

This last week was my birthday. Lots of people had some good birthday wishes and Elissa made me cinnamon rolls (though she would be very upset with me if I didn't say they were frozen cinnamon rolls and not from scratch). On the day of my birthday we didn't really do anything terribly interesting (I mean, I got to talk to my Mom, Elissa's parents, and some others, but we didn't leave the apartment). On Saturday we drove up to the temple and had some Red Robin, then later that night we got a Redbox movie and had some Bluebell ice cream (which is as close as we can get down here to BYU Creamery ice cream).

Sunday was kind of different -- I've never had an Easter service only be 1 hr, but ours was, because there were fumes in the building from refinishing the gym floor. Elissa had to give a talk (and she did a good job, but will deny it if you ask), and the choir did a couple of numbers, but we didn't have to teach our class.

I'm not sure I can think of anything else out of the ordinary that happened this last week, so hope you enjoyed the post!

"It's Not Even a Thing"

This week has been another regular week for us, but I'll try and tell you about the exciting parts! One of the first things that is exciting about this week is that I bought my first grown up purse. Yes, amazing and hard to believe as it sounds I've never had a real, grown up purse before. I just went to college where I always had my backpack, before that I was in school and I had a wallet to hold my things. Upon graduation I won a canvas BYU bag that I have been using as a purse since we moved here. What is worse is that I've been to the store several times looking at bags trying to find one I liked. Several came close, but I chickened out and decided that I wouldn't buy them because I wasn't sure that they were the perfect bag.  (Yes, I am that crazy about my purchases)

So, my bag is basically the one on the left, except it is white, and the top handles are longer. (It doesn't have the side handles at all). I bought it with the reassurance that "I'd leave the tags on it and then if I hated it in the morning, I would take it back." Well, unbeknownst to me the register lady took the tag off (or it fell off while I was in the car on the way home). So, I'm glad that I still like it this morning, or I would be stuck with a bag I didn't like! No one likes that Buyer's Remorse!

Daniel decided to give blood today. I think it went pretty well, but he has a red spot where they stuck him, but he is bruise free. He says they were pretty sure he was going to pass out. Apparently "He didn't look so good." (I tend to disagree, I always think he looks good :P ) He even got a t-shirt that says "Save a Tree, Save a Whale, Save a Life. (Prioritize. Give blood)" It made me laugh a little. Hopefully none of you are out there thinking "but whales and trees are people too!"  Apparently, I feel the opposite about things because as Daniel and I were driving to church he pointed out to me that someone had hit a little traffic cone with their car. Then I promptly replied, "Don't worry about it. It's not even a Thing." Which I tried to clear up by saying a few seconds too late "that matters." It was too late and we were soon laughing about how not only was it not "a people too," it wasn't even "a Thing."

Changes and Grown Up Adventures

This week Daniel and I realized that we needed to make a decision. We went to the main office of our apartment complex to let them know about a bug home that was growing in our bathroom. (She seemed to think that they were carpenter ants.)

Then she gave up a sheet to mark whether or not we wanted to renew our contract. Either we agreed to another year in this apartment, or we would need to pay an extra $200 a month to go month to month until we find another place to live. We have been getting really close to our house down-payment goal. After a careful look at the number (and a guess as to the future of interest rates and home prices), we decided that we would start looking for a house in the near future. It is exciting and scary, all in all, it is very grown up! In a few months, we will be ready  to start looking for a house. Hopefully it will all turn out to a good choice for us!

This week we spent a lot of time trying to make our decision about whether or not we would sign our paper that we didn't have many activities. We spent a lot of time trying to decide our best options, but we did go visit several neighborhoods to look at the houses and get a feel for the areas. We also tried to figure out a tentative time line for our house looking adventures.

The only other really interesting thing we did this week was starting to plan our summer vacation. We looked at routes to take back to Utah and Idaho, planning stops to see a long the way, and a guess as to how much the trip would cost as well as other things. Finally, we started to plan our family reunion. We are hoping to do some fun things for the reunion. We will just be happy to see our family and friends!

Abolish Daylight Savings

Looks like it's my turn again since Elissa has book club tonight. The book this time is "The Princess and the Goblin." I don't know anything about it, so you'll have to ask Elissa. She read it in a hurry and I haven't had time to ask her about it. I have finally decided to read Ender's Game. I haven't finished it yet, but now that I'm a little older than last time I tried to read it, I can see why people think it's a really good book.

I'm not sure that we've really had much that is new or exciting to talk about. We're still adjusting for Daylight Savings time -- I'm not quite as tired most of the time but I can't seem to wake up feeling rested yet. I maintain my opinion that the world would be better off without it. Either leave it on or off, I don't actually care as long as we don't do this absurd switching every six months or so.

Saturday I got to go with the Youth on a temple trip. It was a really good experience to get to share with the youth, some of which I've had in my class each week. That took most of the day since we had to drive down to San Antonio and back.

A Lazy Week

This week has been a pretty lazy week. We did finish everything we needed to do, but we don't have many adventures to share on our blog! I'll post about what I can remember that might be interesting to all of you!

Earlier this week Daniel send me a message during work that says something like "Hey, I want to take you hiking!" Well, as you probably all know, I don't really love hiking, but because I really liked him, I said, "Okay." So, after some research, we found a place that was supposed to have some good hiking trails. Come to find out our research lied, and it had one short hiking "trail." It was fun to get out and about while the weather was nice and to see some new scenery. If we had been brave and it had been a little warmer, we might have tried a nice little dip in the springs that they have along the trail. We still might have to go back some time and try it out!

This week we also decided that it was about time we buy new sheets. When you see some holes it is probably time for new sheets! And, who knew that there were so many options when you are picking out sheets? (Oh, probably most of you knew, but we didn't!) So, we finally picked out some sheets after lots of looking and deliberating. Next we pre-washed them, and after a test night or two, I think we can agree that they are pretty nice!

Finally,  this week I finally got a new lunch kit for Daniel. So you all know the context for this story, right after we got married Daniel and I bought some Ziploc divided lunch containers to carry our lunches to school. (We got them with a coupon and everything!) They are pretty good little lunch containers. We brought a sandwich along with some fruits, vegetables, and snacks to school with us every day. But, like all cheap containers, they'd had it. After trips through the dishwasher, as well as an inability to store anything liquid, it was just time to let them go!

Unfortunately, that meant that I needed to find a new way of packaging Daniel's lunch to take to work. I fell in love with these American Bento Boxes, but realized that they were really more for children, and not for grown men to take their lunches to work in. (They also didn't have a perfect box for storing a sandwich, which is basically a lunch staple)

So, I went back to researching and after a visit to a few stores found that Rubbermaid was making a nice little storage box, but the size/shape I wanted only was sold in large box sets. Once I got over the fact I'd have to buy some boxes I might never use, Daniel and I went to Walmart. Luckily for us they had a post clearance (returned well after the store sold out) box sitting on the shelves. We got 30 pieces for $7.00!  Then we ordered a lunch box online because the ones we had just wouldn't hold Daniel's lunch!

All in all we had a good week. It was fun to get our containers on sale, and it was a good week over all!

Discovering New Parts of Austin

This week we got to see some parts of Austin that have been here all along but that we hadn't visited yet.

Our first new place was the Alamo Drafthouse, which was pretty fun. Basically it's a movie theater where they serve food to you instead of you having to go get stuff at the concessions stand during your movie. We thought it was fun but probably not worth the price (especially for the food) to do that on a regular basis. The movie was . . . I forget, but it was a decent movie but nothing too memorable. It was about two CIA agents who end up trying to date the same girl and sabotage each other.

Later during the weekend we visited the Lakeshore mall where we got free pretzels (they just didn't compete with PretzelTime). Then we discovered a farmer's market in the parking lot. It was pretty fun to look around, they had all sorts of locally grown fruits, veggies, honey, and then all sorts of crafts. They even had live music and "Locavore" t-shirts (which I thought were pretty ridiculous). We might actually head over there to get honey sometime when we need more.

The other place we found this week was a little bit disappointing -- not because it wasn't nice, but because it was a park that had no parking and by the time we walked to it we were too tired to want to do anything there. Anyway here's a picture:

As you can see, it's made for people to be walking or running around the lake.

Anyway, we had a fun week and got to explore a little more about Austin