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!