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.