Provo Visitors

This week was kind of exciting. The BYU football team came down to Austin. Daniel and I got to go to the football team fireside. It was pretty cool. There was a cool musical number where Brian Smith sang a solo, and the team sang "We'll Bring the World His Truth. A couple of team members gave their testimony of the gospel as well as their stories of coming to BYU and becoming missionaries. Bronco Mendenhall and his wife gave the closing remarks.

Sunday our ward literally doubled in size for sacrament meeting because of all the people who came down for the game. Our whole chapel and cultural hall were filled up! We are usually pretty crowded with the pews and the over flow, but this was crazy!

This weekend Daniel and I worked on our craft projects. Daniel is almost done with his nativity set that he has been making for almost a year now. It is pretty cool! He has a few sheep left to make, and then he will need to find a new project to keep him occupied.

Saturday I decided that our living room needed a rug.  I also decided that I needed something to do. So, I started making a rug. I stole some of Daniel's left over yarn and started working. I'm not sure how other people don't have lines from when they change colors, but I guess it gives my rug a little character or something. I was pretty excited, so I posted a picture of it!

This weekend we are hoping to go to the civic orchestra on Saturday. It should be really exciting!  

To the Church and Back Again

This last week hasn't been super exciting,but we did do a few things. One of the first things we did was make fresh tortillas. I had never done it before and neither had Daniel, but we decided that if we neededh to live on food storage some day that tortillas would be a necessary item. They turned out pretty well.  I just made half a batch or so which makes about 10 or so Tortillas because Daniel and I didn't need 20 tortillas this last week!  I followed the recipe on this website /http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/2009/10/29/whole-wheat-tortillas/ but I just used multi purpose flour instead of whole wheat flour. This is the recipe:

Whole Wheat Torillas
4 cups of whole wheat flour (fine)
¼ tsp baking powder
2 tsp salt
1 cup of warm water (may need a little more – I usually do!)
¼ cup cooking oil

We also ended up going to the ward building several times. Wednesday we went to the building for recommend interviews. In case anyone was worried, we both passed! Afterward, we stopped at the grocery store for oatmeal (which was half off) and ice cream (which was on sale, and we had a coupon) The ice cream was a little disappointing (I think it was on sale because it was a little old.) But, I made some stove top granola with the rest which turned out pretty well.

Thursday I went to our Relief Society activity which was an "episode" of Food Storage Jeopardy. I won two cans of tuna fish as a door prize. Most of the ladies had a good time, and the presentation was informative. I think the storage coordinator was right in saying with disaster so close to home this week that most of us have been thinking about getting our food storage together. (Oh, in case anyone was worried, we are just fine. The Austin fires weren't near our apartment, and we didn't have to evacuate or anything.)

Sorry our blog is late this week, since I went to the meeting last night and came home a little late, there wasn't much time for blogging! I'll do better next week!

To Next Week and Beyond!

This week was not a very exciting week for us. I know I start my blog off every week saying that it wasn't an exciting week and then somehow come up with a bunch of things that we did. This week is going to be different, but I'm going to come up with something for you to read since you came all the way to the blog to read about our week.

Last Saturday we finally finished setting up our new checking account and closing our old checking account. We have been slowly working on moving over payments and things from our old card, and Saturday we finally were able to close our other account. (That is right crazy, mean Internet people, that account information you may or may not have been gathering and intending to use is now useless.) The whole thing was a vaguely frustrating experience because if things were left up to us, we would have gotten to keep our free, no strings attached account, but things were not left up to us. We had a really nice banker named Alison, though, and if you are ever in our part of Texas and need a banker, I would suggest her. We also ended up talking to the branch manager, who treated us like we were twelve or something. It is okay because we are younger and she probably has way more knowledge and experience being a "grown up" way longer than us.

Daniel and I also decided to start exercising in the mornings because I'm home all day and Daniel is at a desk. I mean it probably still isn't enough steps for me to not be living a sedentary life style yet, but we will maybe work up to that. Mostly we have gone on walks around the block and played some Wii sports. We just finished our fourth morning, and I'll say that I've been sore for four days! Hopefully it gets better, but even if it doesn't I feel better getting out and doing something every day.

Our title hopefully means that next week we will have more exciting things to share, maybe even pictures. . . We might even try making our own fresh tortillas this next week. So tune in next week for our next post!

Park, Pizza, and French Fries

This week we didn't do a whole lot of things, but we did do a few, so we are going to blog about those. Saturday we helped one of the members of our Sunday School class with his Eagle Scout project. It was a pretty cool project. They were laying small cement pads to keep in granite 1/4 mile markers along a walking trail in a Round Rock park. It was good to get out and walk around (We set wood frames in pre-dug holes along the path.) It was pretty hot outside by the time we got done with that job. Daniel and I felt really hot and tired by that point, and we slowly got back to the car. But all in all, it was fun to help with a project,and to move around a little bit.

Sunday we taught Sunday School, and we decided to make treats for the class as a part of our lesson. We made a fruit pizza crust at home and then had the class mix up the frosting and put on the fruit. A 1/3 of the class was not interested in eating the treats, but there were plenty for those who did want them!

This week we also tried out the Five Guy's down here in Austin. (Daniel would like to note that we do talk about food pretty much every week on this blog. That is true, but our food adventures are more exciting than our sitting around the apartment adventures.) The burgers were excellent juicy and fresh. The potatoes were from Rigby Idaho, ( I always check to see where the potatoes come from when we go to five guys) but the fries were not well salted so they were a little disappointing. We were also sad to discoverer that they do not have any fry sauce down here at the the one we visited. Maybe next time we will ask for some extra mayo since they don't seem to have the fry sauce.

Our Future is So Bright that We Need Sunglasses

Well, our future is bright, but this week only Daniel got sunglasses. They are pretty cool. He also visited the eye doctor, and his glasses were a pretty close match to his new prescription, so Daniel decided to get some new prescription sunglasses for driving. He says it feels like he has "super vision" when he wears them to drive. I don't know about that, but he does seem to be able to see pretty well when he is driving the car without any pesky glare! Anyway, they are pretty glass awesome, and we think that an "unspecified" Vision Center should pay us for advertising on our blog. Okay, Just kidding about the advertising part.

This Monday was also our anniversary. We went out to eat at one of Daniel's new favorite Austin restaurants, Firebowl. They serve Chinese food in a cool sit down crossed with fast food atmosphere. Daniel had the orange peel chicken and I had sweet and sour. They were both pretty good. When we got home Daniel hosted a private dance for me. We both got dressed up in fancy clothes, and while I was getting ready, Daniel moved our furniture, set up music and mood lighting. It was a really fun, special surprise! We had a great night remembering that we still like each other even if we have been married a whole two years.

One (Mostly) Boring Week

This week we haven't done a whole lot, but we'll tell you about the adventures we did have. Saturday we decided to go see some neighborhoods around Austin/Round Rock. I decided that Daniel needed to try Round Rock's "famous" donuts. (I had them when we were down here in November.) You might not be able to see it from the picture very well, but they are actually orange. The dough is orange and Daniel thinks that they make the glaze look a little orange to enhance the orange effect of the donuts. I am not sure about that, but they are definitely orange, and tasty. (They remind Daniel of Kristi's donuts. They remind me of Stokes donuts in Burley when they are fresh on Friday nights.) Basically they are a yeast rise donut that they cook every day. The ones we had were warm and a little melty.

The donut part of the adventure was successful. The looking for a favorite neighborhood was less successful. We don't have a favorite, but Daniel liked most of the neighborhoods we looked at, so apparently I picked out good ones. I guess that just means we have more options when we save up enough for a house someday.

Daniel's work is going pretty well. Except this week he was working on a detailed block diagram filed that got corrupted. So he got to spend some time today trudging through the XML style stuff. He basically edited the file and found the problem. So that is good. He has been busy getting things done at work. I think he likes that.

Basically, we had a boring week, but now you all know all about it!
Love you all!

We Can Never Be Movie Critics

So, our title is from an episode of The Office we watched. Andy says, "I could never be a movie critic because I am not deep enough. I could be a food critic, 'that muffin is bad'; I could be a an art critic,' that painting is bad' . . . " We have decided that we do not go on enough adventures of our own, so we can't be movie critics. We can, however, be book critics, which is something we did this week in full force. (No offence to people who loved/might love/wrote these books. We are sure that you are great people.) Daniel started Running with the Demon by Terry Brooks because I liked some of his other books, but Daniel only made it a couple of chapters in the book before he declared it frustrating and refused to read it anymore. I started The Children's Book, I don't remember the author. The cover made it sound really interesting. I understand that it takes a while to get interesting sometimes, but after 5 chapters and 60 pages I was still bored. (Sorry Mr. Roper, I didn't make it to page 100 like you told me to always do before giving up on a book.) Don't worry everyone, we went back to the library and got new, interesting books. We'll have to see if they end up being boring; we'll let you know when we finish them up.

This week we also decided to try roasting marshmallows over our gas stove top since all outside fires are banned until further notice. They turned out pretty well. Daniel was better at it than me, but he is better at it when we have a real campfire too. He decided to make me feel better about it by deciding to lick the fork off which ended up burning his mouth. The edges were cool, but it was really hot where the marshmallow was still on the fork. *Lesson* Don't stick hot things in your mouth even when they have yummy gooey marshmallow on them.

Saturday we went and got our tires rotated. It didn't take too long even though there was a really long line of people in front of us when we got to the store. We flipped through some magazines and got right out of there. Overall, it wasn't a bad experience getting our car tires checked on. Sunday we helped give the 5th Sunday discussion. It went pretty well. The 20 or so people in our group seemed excited to do service and help people. That is good. We also learned that there is a secret lesson manual on LDS.org for our Sunday school class that includes pictures, and stories that isn't in the regular online version. It is helpful to know what story you are supposed to be telling!

That was our week! Hope you all have a great week this week too!