Obsessions

So, a couple of my little obsessions are decorating and organizing. Mike can vouch for me on that :) In the past couple of weeks we've made a few changes in our house to make it a little more home-ish. As some of you know, we live in the married student housing, which is not the most attractive place on Earth. Cinderblock walls are the bane of my existence, especially since we can only have 3 nails in each room and all the nails were already in place when we moved in, and in very odd locations. We love those little sticky hooks you can buy, though.

My project over the long weekend was making a couple of french memo boards. It was surprisingly easy, although a little time consuming, but I think they turned out pretty well for making it up as I went along.

This one was the real reason I wanted to make them. Our bedroom has had no decorations in it except one dream catcher sine we moved in. I thought it was time to change that.

Then I took a couple of pictures that were in the office on a book case and moved them in the bedroom as well. Notice the slightly odd placement. That's because I used the nails instead of putting hooks up.

Mike and I also decided that our balcony door was going to be our monthly project! Last month we had our Christmas tree up, and this month is snowflakes! I also made us as snow men :)

For Christmas my parents got us a visa gift card and one of the ways we used it was to get another DVD shelf because our old one was way too small to hold all of our movies. After we finally figured out how to get both to fit in the room, it worked out quite well. Mike uses the old one for his video games:

And the big one hold all our DVDs, VHSs, and a few decorations.

Slowly, this cinderblock box is turning into a real home! It'll probably be done around August when we have to move again!!

Drum Roll Please!!!!

WE GOT A BED!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think most of you knew that we haven't had a real bed... just a mattress that we got for free that has been on the floor. In July we got a bed frame too, but we still didn't have a boxspring. I look on craigslist everyday watching for people to put boxsprings up. Basically, I was obsessed, but really, we've been married for just over a year and we didn't have a bed yet! About a month ago there was a posting for a boxspring, so we called the guy and he said we could have it. Mike was at work and told the guy he would be there at seven to pick it up. At six thirty the guy TEXTED Mike that he gave the boxspring to someone else. We were very mad. First of all because he promised it to us, secondly because it was only half an hour before we were going to go get it, and thirdly because he texted Mike when he didn't even know if Mike got texts! Anyways, my boxspring dreams were dashed and I was very sad. Buuuuut, last week, one of our friends saw a listing for a boxspring and when Mike called, they still had it! So Mike went over right away and with his friends help, tied the boxspring to the roof of our car. That was a very long story just to explain that we have a bed, but I thought it might help people understand why it makes me so happy. :)

Other than that, nothing really exciting is happening. Mike and I are changing our class schedules around a little bit, but nothing major. I went to work with him today (he has to work one Sunday afternoon a month) and I took pictures for him as he wrote tickets, and boy did he write a lot of tickets! He absolutely loves his job. I love mine too, except the fact that I have a job. :)

Mike also has been happy because he's gotten to play his favorite boardgame, Kingsburg, several times this week, along with his favorite video game, Dokapon Kingdom. He's also been happily buying new songs for Guitar Hero on the Wii. So, he doesn't hide what his favorite Christmas presents were, but at least we all know he likes them!

VA, Christmas, Anniversary and everything else

So, Mike and I are in our last "real" semester of school. For me, ever. For him, it'll be another several years. I don't envy him at all. So far this semester looks like it will be very busy, but pretty good. On my first day I already had two papers due the next class plus a bunch of readings. That's not really a good sign, but at least I won't be bored!

We got back from VA on Saturday and came back to a very cold and white Utah. On Monday it started snowing around noon and didn't stop until sometime last night. It was pretty bad, but the roads are finally being cleared, so at least it isn't as scary as it was for awhile there.

In Va we had a pretty relaxing time. All of my brothers were there with their families for at least a little while, so we spent a lot of time with them. Christmas was really nice, our main gift being the tickets out there. We got some clothes and books and gift cards, too. We celebrated our anniversary on the 28th with my family (just had the cake and some sparkling cider) and then on the 29th we went out to Outback and to a movie. We had gift cards for both, but ended up getting dinner for free because they took so long getting it out, so we still have the full gift card!

The last day we were there we finally went into DC and saw a few things Mike's really been wanting to go to. We went to the Spy Museum which Mike loved. He looked at every single thing and took his sweet time in there :) Then we walked around to see some other things he was looking forward to seeing. First was the National Christmas Tree:

Then the White House:

We went with my parents, so here they are with the White House:

And here we are!

I thought I'd throw this picture in for good measure. This is Mike skipping as he takes the trash out. I wonder how long it will take him to notice I put it up?

We have one other really exciting announcement, but this is pretty long so I'll post about it later!

Finals and Christmas!

So, apparently I have this thing against posting when I don't have any pictures to liven it up... but I'll post anyways since it's been a really long time.

Mike and I are in midlle of finals week, although Mike is officially done with everything now. I'm very jealous of him. I have a final, an essay, and a research paper, plus 2 hours of watching presentations left. Needless to say, I am rather stressed and looking forward to the end of this week. Besides the end of finals, it also means going to Virginia! I'm really excited to go home and see my family. I haven't seen them since the beginning of August and I won't see them probably until graduation in the coming August.

Mike and I have gone to two Christmas parties in the last few days, and have played white elephant at both of them. The first party was a Thorup party, and it was a lot of fun. I met a lot of new people, and so did Mike! We found a second cousin that lives in Provo that may become a new double date friend, so that's pretty cool. We also got smencils. Can you guess what they are? We (I) got kinda jipped on the white elephant at that party, but that's ok. Tonight I had my work party. My boss took everyone out to Red Robin and then we did a white elephant and they had gotten us presents. We got a lot of Christmas decorations in the white elephant, so I'm really happy, I love decorations.

We also had our Bevans Christmas, we opened our presents from each other and from his family (parents and brother). We loved it all! Mark and Shauna got us an Applebee's gift card which is perfect for us! Then we got a lot of games and movies from Mom and Dad Bevans, and are having a lot of fun watching and playing them! All and all, this is shaping up to be a great Christmas!!!!!

Thanksgiving!

Mike and I had our own little Thanksgiving, which was rather different for both of us, but turned out really, really well. I cooked, and we had an abundance of food. I think we'll be eating leftovers until Christmas break! I am actually pretty proud of how everything turned out, but I did cheat a little. Since it was just the two of us, and neither of us really like turkey very much, we just did a turkey roast instead of a whole bird. As it is, we'll probably throw the rest of it out because neither of us are eating it. The most exciting part for me was that we finally got to use our china and our nice silverware! Here's a picture of the place settings:

And here's a picture of the whole table.

You think this is a lot of food? Well, it isn't even all of it! Both of our families have traditional appetizers (mine is this really yummy cheese dip stuff and his is a cheeseball and chips and dip) so we had those as well.

On another note, Mike and I have less that two weeks of classes left before Christmas break, and we are so excited to be done! He has it really easy from here on out because most of his work was due a couple of weeks ago. My semester has hit the hard point though, where I have tons of papers and projects and presentations due. Not exciting. Soon though, we'll have two weeks to just relax and not worry about school, thank goodness!

Backtracking

So, nothing really exciting is going on right now, except maybe that today was my last day of classes for about a week and a half. Mike still has classes, so I get to laugh at him. Anyway, since nothing is really going on right now, I figured I'd go back and summarize Halloween and share a little about Christmas.

The Monday before Halloween we carved pumpkins (that's my family's tradition). Mike got to clean both pumpkins out since I'm allergic to them. This is actually a very convenient allergy because cleaning the pumpkins was always my least favorite part. This year was kind of weird for me because it is the first year that I carved a pumpkin the old-fashioned way in a very long time. My dad and I had gotten into those pattern things for the cool pumpkins, but Mike is against those.

The real fun came when it was time to light the candles in the pumpkins. Mike had cut pretty small openings on top, so he was having a hard time lowering lit candles into the pumpkins and he had to figure out how to light the candles while they were inside. The matches would burn out before they got to the candle and we didn't have any long ones so Mike gets this idea. He tells me to go get a piece of paper, and when I bring it to him he rolls it up and lights one end on fire... As soon as that paper went into MY pumpkin, it just burst into flames. In fact, it looked like my pumkin burst into flames. Flames were coming out the top, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, just everywhere! It was hilarious. I didn't get any pictures of the pumpkin on fire because I was laughing so hard. If you look at the picture where they're lit though you can see how black the inside is because of all the ash.

For Christmas this year we're going to VA. I'm really excited for it, but we decided that traveling for Christmas has certain inconveniences. The main one is how to do our presents for each other. We don't want to have to travel with them, so we decided to do a mini-Christmas before we go to VA. Since we are going to have presents, we needed a tree, but living in Wymount means no room for anything extra so we weren't sure what to do. Then I had a thought that I'm pretty proud of. We decided to make a paper tree and tape it to our balcony door. We had a lot of fun making it, especially the ornaments that we drew on. Mike made a smiley face Santa and a Mario themed one. I made a stable one, a Santa and reigndeer one, a winter scene and then just acouple of colorful ones. We felt so creative when we were done!

We Live!

Since we have so much fun reading everyone elses blogs, Alicia and I have decided to stay in touch with everyone and make our own blog. Granted that this may be the only entry I ever make, I thought I'd let you know that we/I am excited anyway...once we get this all figured out. For the mean time, a disclaimer: We have no kids so there may not be as many clever sayings on the sides that bring smiles, but don't give up hope. You'd be surprised by some of the things that come out of our (my) mouths. :) Anyway, I hope you enjoy our blog. I'm going to get out of the way so Alicia can do her thing. This is our life. Not as interesting without you all, but we have fun. How can you not with Alicia? (she would point the blame my way, oh well)

Love,
Mike and Alicia