Two and a Half Years

It's crazy to think that as of yesterday we've been married for 2 1/2 years. It's been amazing! On our first Valentine's Day we realized that our half-year anniversary was the day after, so we figured we'd celebrate our "Halfiversary" instead -- anything we would buy would be a whole lot cheaper. Anyway, this year we decided to take a day off work, and head to the Temple for an endowment session. We did some other fun things too -- like eating out at Olive Garden (it was Elissa's first time there). I think that was really the highlight of the week. Here's a bit about the rest of the week though:

This last weekend I hosted my first candidate for NI (National Instruments). For those of you who aren't familiar, they fly their candidates down for a weekend and have 3 interviews on Friday (so the candidate can show they're worth hiring) and the host shows them around town and answers questions (so NI can show they're worth moving to). Hosting definitely has some perks -- like free dinner, but it is a drain on free time and can be stressful. Sometimes candidates are married and I would get to bring Elissa with me to dinner. Anyway, it was pretty fun. The guy who came down to interview was a BYU student who came from Beijing and is majoring in computer science. Lucky for me he was a nerd, so we had things to talk about.

I don't really know what else to talk about this week, but know that we're alive and happy down here in Texas.

A Good and Busy Weekend.

This weekend was a busy weekend. My parents flew in Thursday evening and I went and picked them up. In fact, this weekend I've done more driving than I have probably they whole time we've lived here. I did get to drive in the day which is a lot easier than driving at night --when I usually drive. So the first thing that happened was that we found out that one of our headlights was out! So Dad and Daniel went to the automotive store to get a new bulb. They come home with a new bulb (already replaced in the car) and some headlight cleaner. It really did make our headlights a lot brighter!

Friday Daniel went to work for a shortened day. (He had extra time from Thursday because he had to wait for me to pick him up.) We got to go see his cubicle and his office during the afternoon. We played some games and had dinner. Saturday we visited Fry's Electronics and went to our favorite Chinese restaurant.

Dad spent most of the weekend trying to figure out Daniel's rubix cube. They now both have a better understand of how to solve the cube than I do. Monday Daniel went to work, and I drove my parents downtown (ish) to see the Lyndon B. Johnson Museum. It was pretty cool, even a second time. It is my first time driving anywhere near down town too. We managed to find the parking lot after doing a quick turn around the block. Tuesday morning I took my parents to the airport. It was a short busy visit!

Parents in Town!

This week has been a pretty slow week for us. We did finally take our pile of things to give away to the Goodwill store. It was good to finally get that pile of stuff out of our extra room and to people who might need it! This event finally came about because we were cleaning up the house in preparation for my parents coming to visit us down in Texas!

Anyway, the flew in yesterday evening, and I went to go pick them up. Unfortunately I got in the wrong lane and had to go back around the airport a couple of times before I got to the pick up spot. They didn't seem too mad that it took me a really long time to finally get around to pick them up. Unfortunately, it seems like the weather is not cooperating because it is supposed to be raining for most of the weekend and cold for the rest. We'll still find a way to have some fun though!

This morning my mom opened up the barber shop/ salon in my kitchen. She cut my dad's hair, and then she gave me a hair cut too. My hair didn't change much; she just cut a few inches off of the bottom. (It was getting really long!) Later this afternoon we are going for a tour of Daniel's work,and that should be a lot of fun!

Lazy Week and a Late Post

This week hasn't been too busy. We really have just been lazy. We watched episodes -- mostly Star Trek Voyager, and Merlin. We played lots of rounds of Pandemic. (For all of you who don't know, Pandemic is a cooperative game Daniel and I got for Christmas.) We finally got off of "entry mode" this week, but then we ended up losing a lot of games in a row on this new level.  After all those losing all those rounds, We decided to play one more round, and we finally didn't loose! Hooray!

We did go visit a park earlier this week to get outside because the weather was nice outside. We played some frisbee and went for a walk. It was a nice park, and we had a good time. The next day the weather turned crazy! We got 2" of rain, but some parts of the area got 5" of rain in one night. A different part of the city had a very small tornado! For us personally, the thunder was so loud that it set off car alarms in our parking lot! 

I did make some good food for dinners this week. We made tacos with fresh tortillas, but I realized, Sunday night, that I didn't have any taco seasoning for my ground beef. Fortunately, the Internet was able to give me an idea of what to mix up for a taco seasoning substitute. I'm not sure I will be using this new recipe for my taco meat forever, but it did add a good flavor to my ground beef this time! I also made meat loaf with Grandma Call's recipe. That is a sure fire recipe for meat loaf. It turned out great! I was excited that I didn't ruin it.

This week Daniel has been busy working on his project at work. Mostly it seems like he is doing testing on parts and his project. (I'm never quite sure what is going on at work, but I know he is working really hard!) He also played in Elders' basketball again this week. I got to see him make a three pointer! Hooray!

Basketball and a Bathroom idea!

This week has been a less busy (read: less exciting) week. This is partly because Daniel borrowed a really long book from the library onto his kindle, but he only has a couple of weeks to read it! So he has been busy reading his book on his kindle, and I have been busy pretending to not be a distracting person. So far, Daniel has been very successful, and I have been less so.

This week Daniel played his first game of basketball for the Shoal Creek B team. (He kind of volunteered and kind of got roped into it.) Our ward is so big that they decided to make two Elders' Quorum basketball teams. As Daniel puts it: there is an A team consisting of talented and hard playing basketball players who play to win and a B team for people who just want to have fun and hang out with people. He feels like he is on the team he would prefer.

This week I tried to come up with stuff to do around the apartment so I would get really bored. I ended up reading Daughters In My Kingdom. (Our ward is supposed to have it read by the time Sis. Beck comes in the middle of February.)

Hanging bathroom stuff

I also had an epiphany one morning as I was cleaning our second bathroom. Since we moved to our new apartment, we haven't had any need for the metal shower caddy we bought to use in our old apartment. This apartment has places as a part of the edges of the shower, but that means the I had a shower caddy hanging in my second shower that never gets used.

Beautifully empty counter

Then, epiphany! Why not hang it in my regular bathroom and get all the stuff off of my counter! Free easy storage!

So it was really easy for everyone out there who just doesn't have enough room on the counter for all their stuff, or for people who just really don't like yucky rings on their counter this was so simple. Conveniently, I had a space right above my outlet!

A Weeks' Full of Fun

Hey all, responsibility for writing in the blog falls to me this week because Elissa is hanging out with book club people tonight. It's actually a busy week for us. Yesterday Elissa had visiting teaching, tonight she has book club, and tomorrow I have Elder's Quorum basketball which I half-volunteered-for/half-got-roped-into. I'm kind of excited -- it'll be the first organized sport I'll get to have a part in since I played volleyball with Lisa & Elliott at their church (yes, before I moved).

This last week was fun. We decided to go out and see the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. It was pretty fun, but as you'll probably guess there weren't too many flowers this time of year. The major draw (besides that it was free this month) was that we wanted to go somewhere interesting to take a walk together. Yep . . . we do get bored walking around our block sometimes. While we were up that way we paid a visit to The County Line (you knew I was

going to put food in here somewhere). For those of you who don't know, they're a Texas BBQ place with good food, and they make really good bread (I know, it doesn't sound that great, but you haven't tried their bread yet). Anyway, that is a picture of their awesome view.

We got to teach our Sunday School class about Agency this last lesson. It was nice to be able to focus on a really important gospel principle instead of trying to figure out how to make a lesson out of a bunch of stories from prophets (they are really cool stories sometimes -- it's just harder to keep focused on important things).

I can't think of anything else to mention about this week, so I guess that means we're done. Hope you enjoyed hearing about our week!

A New Year that Feels the Same

It is a new year, but Daniel and I are still doing the same old things. Funny how we emphasize the coming of the new year, but in reality, everything isn't that different once the clock strikes midnight. I suppose we are supposed to be looking at where we were when we last celebrated the changing of the new year. Because, I think for most people there is a difference. It is just funny because after all the hype and build up, nothing has really changed.

For us, the change from 2011 to 2012 was a small affair. We ended up watching the first 6 Harry Potter movies in 2 days. We made some almond bark popcorn to snack on New Years Eve, and we had a good time. The fireworks started early in the afternoon. I didn't see even one of them, but I heard them even while it was still light outside! It was a good evening, and we enjoyed our little New Years celebration.

Monday we got to spend the day at home for the "holiday." Daniel helped me clean up our house and put away our Christmas decorations. Basically our house was cleaner than it has been in a long time! It helped that we could put things back in our extra closet now that that tree was going back to the corner so that we could stack all of our other things back in! Also, I decided to check the dry vent (the one in the wall) to see if that is why my clothes were taking so long to dry. And, I was amazed to find lots and lots of fluffy dryer lint was living in our wall. I pulled out what I could, and it seems to have improved our dryers capabilities immensely.

Oh, and in case you all didn't already know this, Daniel and I have been reading the Harry Potter books together for the last few months, and last night, we finally finished reading the last one! I admit that I cried lots of times, mostly while I was supposed to be reading. Daniel was tough and didn't cry at all. Also points for Daniel, he didn't laugh at me while I was trying to read and cry at the same time. Which, I assume probably looked and sounded kind of ridiculous and would have been easy to laugh at.

All in all we've had a great week, and I hope that we (and all of you) have a splendid new year!