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.