Days of our Lives

These past couple of weeks have been pretty interesting for us. Eric started the master's program for accounting at the beginning of September so he's been pretty busy between classes, homework, interviewing for internships and working for a professor. I on the other hand was relatively bored and unproductive for about two to three weeks while I struggled looking for a job. I pretty much slept in every day, applied for jobs, waited anxiously by the phone to hear back from employers and read books until Eric came home at six for dinner. It was frustrating and I felt pretty lazy, but I have to admit I did enjoy getting a lot of reading done. Luckily the wife of one of Eric's mission buddies heard I was still looking for a job and helped me get an interview with her employer and tada, starting last Tuesday I'm finally a working woman again. I'm working as an administrative assistant for a company called Mentoring of America, and at the end of my first work week, I feel pretty good about it. I mainly schedule clients which hasn't been too hard, but I've been getting this happy, rewarding feeling helping them out that I didn't get with my last job so it's definitely an improvement.

Besides work and school, we've been enjoying the start of the fall intramural season. Eric's playing ultimate frisbee with "The League of Shadows" again this year, and soccer with a couple of buddies from previous teams. While I can't play many sports right now, I've had a really good time watching Eric's games. His ultimate frisbee team is playing in the upper division, and last night they played a really close game and barely beat their opponents. He then had a soccer game at noon today that went pretty well. I'm not sure if they completely shut out the other team or not, but overall they rocked them. Eric got a number of shots off, including the first goal of the game, about 30 seconds in. It was fun to watch, even though the other team played pretty physical, and somewhat dirty at times.

On another happy note, we felt the baby kick for the first time almost two weeks ago. It generally seems to happen when I'm laying down, but I actually felt it at work yesterday while I was typing. It's been really exciting, and kind of comforting to finally be able to feel our baby. I just worry that being half Eric, it's going to end up kicking a lot and hard by the end. :) We'll let you know in a week and a half when we find out if our little kicker is a girl or a boy!

Creative Dating

So, when it comes to dates, especially since we've been married, our creativity seems to have tragically died and we mostly just watch movies from the library, go out to eat or hangout at home. Adam on the other hand, could claim the title of Master of Creative Dating. He's like a modern artist or something, refusing to follow/succumb to the traditional, uncreative cultural template. Well, to say the least, mine and Eric's traditional dating template was crushed when Adam asked us to double with him and my cousin Holly. He does things pretty spontaneously, and he decided that for our date, both couples would go to the local DI and purchase 2-3 items that the other couple would be forced to take pictures of in random, creative situations as a spin on traditional picture scavenger hunts. We set a time limit to meet back at our apartment to compare pictures and have dessert. Eric and I were a little worried about how creative we could get, but I think we did a pretty good job. First off, we had a blast trying to pick out the items that Adam and Holly would have to use. We tried to be covert about it, and collected many items with potential. The runners up with got thrown out were a metal, one eyed duck, and a doll sized penguin figurine. We ended up picking three winners though, and I hope we didn't make it too hard on them with our randomness. The items they had to work with were a large Mighty Mouse doll, a crafty wooden cow with fake plants coming out of it's back, and lastly this huge blue blown glass lamp. We only have pictures of the last, but let me tell you, it was a steal for only $8, especially since it actually works, and has a night light setting too. ;)

Adam and Holly picked out two items for our use: a Conair appliance that no one really knew what it was, but our neighbor hypothesized was like a leaf blower for inside your house, and this slightly creepy medusa doll with wires in her hair for styling. It took some serious thinking on our part, and in the end we didn't get to realize all of our cool ideas, but here were our contenders.

Playing Zelda on N64, of course. ;)

Unfortunately, I don't have copies of the pictures and videos that Adam and Holly took, but let me assure you, while these pictures may look relatively creative, Holly and Adam pushed the creative envelope and theirs were amazing as well. :)

Stoker Camping Extravaganza/WASHINGTON!

So, the sad truth of it is that our entire summer vacation summed up to two measly weeks. It's kind of our fault since Eric is going to school year round, but I'll blame BYU instead since that's the length of the break they give between summer and fall semesters. ;) We decided to try and make the most of it, so we planned a two week long expedition to Washington to visit my family, who we hadn't seen since Christmas. The drive there has never been described as short or scenic, and my love for Oregon took a blow because of their ridiculously low speed limits, but the company was good and we survived. It was so nice to finally be able to relax as I was done with my job back in Utah and Eric no longer had school or finals looming over him. My family was wonderful, and knowing how much we'd been wanting to go camping, they planned a three day trip to La Wis Wis campground in the Cascade Mountains. I was so excited for Eric to actually experience real camping in an old growth forest, where everything is green and beautiful. I joke with him that if Boise is the city of trees (and I love Boise), then he's never experienced real camping in Idaho. It was nice and cool there, and not real packed since it was the beginning of the week. We got there late Monday afternoon, set up camp, ate dinner and played some games.
Besides both our air mattress and my parent's mattress deflating, nothing too crazy happened. The next day we hiked around and rode bikes, and since it was slightly warm (at least for camping standards), we decided to go swimming and cliff jumping at Blue Hole.

Blue Hole is a portion of the river that gets wider and really deep, and is fed by glacier runoff, so it's ridiculously cold. It looked a bit different this year since heavy snow fall had caused flooding and deposited a lot of small rocks and silt, but luckily we found that the area for cliff jumping was still deep enough. So my family's been camping at this campground for about 12 or so years, and every year I've been, I've tried to talk myself into jumping off the cliff. I've done the lower one, which is maybe 10 feet to the water, but I've never got up the guts to try the higher one. In normal years, we've measured the drop to the water to be about 30 feet, but this year the water was a little lower so it was about 35 feet. I'd sworn to myself that I would actually jump the next time we came, but "unfortunately" I think that cliff jumping is frowned upon for pregnant women so I had to pass again. Eric on the other hand had no excuse, so the pressure was on and he performed marvelously. It took him a bit to talk himself into it, but he did and he was the first in my family to try. Crazy as he is, he actually jumped three times. He passed the pressure on to my 13 yr old brother Garrett, who took a lot more coaxing, but eventually took the plunge as well. I was super surprised when my mom decided that she would be the next to jump. While she screamed like a banshee on her way down, she did it. She's still recovering three weeks later from a bruised tail bone from landing wrong, but she did it. :) I was a pansy and just kind of waded around, but it was fun none the less. So cute story: while I just waded around, I spotted this pretty purple flower growing out of the base of the cliff on the far side of the bank, I jokingly told Eric that if he really loved me, he'd get me that flower. To "prove his love", he swam over, scrambled up the base of the cliff, pulled the flower out of some spiderwebs, and then realized that he didn't know how he'd get back across if he was holding the flower in one hand. Here's a video of him doggy paddling with one arm back across the water to bring me my flower. It was pretty hilarious to watch, but he sure showed me.




It's a good thing we went swimming that afternoon, because in true western Washington fashion, it started raining that night just before bed time and it just wouldn't let up. We actually had to pull the sleeping bags over our heads to stop the water that was dripping through the rain fly from landing on our faces all night. That was probably the second worst night camping I've ever experienced. Everything got wet. A pool actually started forming at the entry to our tent, so twice during the night I grabbed dirty clothes and tried to absorb most of it so it wouldn't reach the air mattress and the sleeping bags. We got so little sleep, and the next morning we found out that all three of the tents had flooded during the night. Everything and everyone was wet, and it was STILL raining, so we ate a quick breakfast and decided to pack everything up and head home a day early. Most of the rest of the break in Washington was nice and went well. We went swimming, helped can some peaches, played volleyball, hung out with extended family, attended court of honors, etc. The least enjoyable experience happened our last Sunday in Washington. My dad is the second counselor in the bishopric of my home ward, and last December when we visited, he and the rest of the bishopric thought it was pretty funny to call me up in the middle of sacrament meeting and ask me to bear my testimony. Everybody but me got their laughs in, and I told my dad if he did that again, we wouldn't come visit anymore (somewhat jokingly). Well, our last Sunday on this summer trip, my dad called me up completely out of the blue in the last 10 minutes or so of Sacrament meeting to make me bear my testimony again. I went from being completely calm and at ease to nervous beyond all reasoning in a matter of seconds. I was so shocked and nervous, I swear I gave the worst testimony EVER. I literally couldn't think at all. Afterwards numerous members of the ward came up and talked to me about it, each offering ways to punish my dad, mainly that I wouldn't ever let him see his grandchild. My favorite though came from an elderly gentleman who used to be my Sunday School teacher. Right after sacrament meeting was over he patted me on the back and then whispered that I had permission to go kick my dad in the shins. He's great. :) Anyway, my dad felt kind of bad afterwards because he thought I was REALLY mad at him (which I wasn't), but I convinced him to take us out to get some good Mexican food later that week as payment for my mental anguish. The rest of the break went well, and though it was really hard to say goodbye to my family, it was a little easier knowing we'll see them come Thanksgiving.

Not So Hideous :)

For my first post ever, I'd like to commemorate the wonderful occasion of painting our bathroom. My mom came in town the beginning of August for about a week, and amazing as she is, she dedicated a good day or so of her vacation to helping me make our bathroom not so hideous as a graduation gift. She was a little hesitant to make the painting of a bathroom my gift, seeing as it's kind of weird, but it's what I've really wanted for almost a year and a half now (since we've lived here). You see, when we moved in, the previous residents had recently repainted the entire interior of the house, and for the most part, we love it. Each room is painted pretty brightly, with our living room painted blue, white and brown, and our kitchen a macaroni and cheese kind of yellow. The problem is they painted almost every surface of the bathroom a hideous sea foam green color, including the ceiling. The bathroom lighting isn't the best to begin with, but with every wall surface painted this nasty green, anything and everyone that wasn't green, GLOWED green. It bugged me for quite a while, and I daydreamed of repainting and redecorating it, but Eric realistically reminded me that was way outside our budget, especially for a rental unit. And so we glowed green for over a year until my mom appeared and saved the day. While Eric was at school, my mom and I spontaneously decided to go pick out paint chips, paint and supplies and fix the bathroom before Eric got home. Was it slightly wicked on my part for plotting behind Eric's back? Probably, but it was a gift and he likes it better now anyways. :) Here are pictures of the bathroom through out the painting process. Like I said, the lighting, plus my camera skills, are terrible, but trust me that the blue and white looks a heck of a lot better than the green.