Round 2

I'm done with finals! Sweet! I think I did pretty ok on all of them too. Except for my final in Management in Dietetics. That was a little rougher. I felt like it was one of those tests where you were playing 'guess what the teacher is thinking.' Oh well. It was still fine. Matthew is almost done. Just one more test in a few minutes, as soon as he's done reading his daily dose of espn.com and KU sports and everything else in the world of college sports. And then we're on our way back to Minnesota! Nathan (3 year old brother) has been pretty excited for us to come. Every time I talk to him on the phone, he says, "Steph guess what?! Matthew's commminngggg!!" haha. Apparently he says that around the house a lot too. It's not that he's not excited for me to come, I think he's just remembering this summer, when I said that a lot before Matthew came up. Crazy how long little kids remember stuff.

Just so it's on the record, we did another try at sugar cookies the other day, and it was a fantastic success. Regardez:

They're so pretty!

Please note that the top right man cookie is a missionary (its my little missionary brother - go Jonathan!) and the bottom right man - his arm was NOT broken off by my mouth, its just in a sling. :)

In other news, Matthew and I played Epic Duels last night, and I beat him! Anyone who knows how Matthew somehow wins every single game he plays knows that this is not a small feat. I was very excited. Especially since the last time that me and him played just the two of us, he absolutely killed me.

We're going home to Minnesota today!

FHE

Monday night Matthew and I went up to Temple Square. It was the first time for both of us, seeing the lights, and boy was it pretty! I really was amazed at how well everything was lit, and the variety of nativities and decorations and everything. One especially impressive thing was how some huge trees had lights on every single branch, all the way up to the top!

This is a tree!

Of course, the temple is fantastic. We did a session there a couple weeks ago with Janae and Matthew's mom, and the inside of the temple is soo incredibly gorgeous. Even more amazing than the pictures, which is quite a feat, because the pictures are fantastic.

LOVE temples

 

Paper bag decoration things. They had "peace" and "joy" and other related things like that cut out of the bags in tons of different languages. Guess which language I'm by???

Zoom

Happy 4 month anniversary to us! (yesterday)

That's 1/3 of a year! Wowza time goes by fast.

Sidenote: Sometimes I want to get married again. Still to Matthew :). It was just so exciting and happy and I just want to dress up and look pretty and have all of my family around and take pictures.

Cookie failure

This past weekend has been fantastic. Last day of classes on Thursday, and reading days on Friday and Saturday. Did we study? Psht, no. On Saturday, I was feeling especially in the Christmas spirit, aka, the lets-make-Christmas-sugar-cookies spirit. This relatively simple task turned into a relatively long process. First we realized we didn't have enough eggs. Then we realized that we didn't have any cookie cutters. If you're making Christmas sugar cookies, they have to be in shapes. I believe that it is scientifically proven that it tastes better that way.

So we go to Smiths to get eggs and look for cookie cutters. Smiths happens to have a whole aisle full of Christmas delights. It was so incredibly exciting. Decorations, candy, plates, giant stuffed elephants, wrapping paper, candles, lots of fun stuff. Also, cookie cutters. Incredibly overpriced cookie cutters! We weren't so excited about spending $3 per cookie cutter, sooo we didn't get any. We did buy my favorite kind of candy (Cadbury thingers, the crispy chocolate thingers), as well as a little thing of chips, and this deal where you get a frying pan, bacon, eggs, orange juice and bread for $10.

Still on the search for cookie cutters, we went over to Walmart. Not a cookie cutter to be found in that store. Also not to be found: any employees to ask about cookie cutters. We did use our Walmart gift card from our wedding to buy some corelle plates (up to this point we've just owned plastic plates. They totally work, but for some things, actual plates just seem to work better) and Spiderman 2 (for $5!).

Still searching for cookie cutters, we stopped at a dollar store. Nul. Then went back to Smith's and bought two of the overpriced cookie cutters. Success! (sort of)

Back at home, we make the cookie dough, and it went fantastically. Then we placed it gently in the refrigerator it for a couple of hours to make it easier to roll out. We've done this at home all the time, but I never realized that taking it out of the bowl and putting saran wrap directly around the dough was such an essential part of the process. We thought saran wrap across the top of the bowl would be enough. Not so. Yes, dried out cookie dough. So sad. It had turned crumbly enough that cookie cutter shapes were entirely out of the question. We just had to squish the dough together and form kinda ugly balls on the sheet.

Oh, and then, we both got hit super hard by the napstick last night, and so we woke up this morning, realized we had left the cookies on the cookie sheet... and were now rather hard.

Sigh. Oh well.

That whole big process to make cute and happy shapes, and then it didn't even happen. It was a lot of fun though. Aaannd, we'll probably try again tomorrow.

The Nativity

Matthew's mom came out to Utah, and she brought with her and gave to us Matthew's fisher price Nativity scene. We were both very excited to get this. While Matthew was still at work one night, I got too excited to wait, so I took everything out and set it up on the floor. I arranged everything very nicely, traditionally, and left it there for Matthew to see. This is a picture of what it looked like:

Nice, right?

The next day, I walk into the living room, and see Matthew on the ground facing the Nativity. He turns to me and says "the animals can't be by the baby." Here's what he had done:

Call me crazy, but I found this hilarious.

Early morning ponderings

Ok so In'n'Out just came to Provo. I've never been there before, but personally, I think that all the crazy hype is just a little ridiculous. Matthew and I drove past it today, and even after a few weeks after opening, there was a HUGE line through the drive through. SO long! And they had workers going from car to car taking people's orders to speed up the process. Really, is it that good? I doubt it. It's just a burger joint. With good burgers, yes, but still... burger joint. I have decided to dislike it on principal.

I just took the GRE. I was pleasantly surprised at a decent score, despite feeling like I didn't know that much, and doing almost no test preparation (2 hours? 3 hours maybe?). I also thought that the rules at the testing center were pretty stringent. I couldn't have anything in my pockets when I went into the testing room, and if I wore a hoodie or something in, I had to keep wearing it, I couldn't ever take it off. I feel like I did very well on my two essays I had to write.

This week has been so crazy. Before Thanksgiving break I felt like oh yeah, there's a bunch of stuff due now, but after Thanksgiving it will be smooth sailing. Not so. Came back and realized oh yeah, there's actually so much left. Lots of big projects and final papers.

I think it might be a good idea to invest in a humidifier. It is dry! I am going through chapstick at epic proportions. My clothes are all clinging to me. My hair is flying everywhere. I keep getting shocked when I kiss Matthew. And I can see sparks when I move blankets and clothes around.

I really enjoy reading cookbooks. I don't usually have the time or the money (for special ingredients) to make a ton of stuff, but I love food, so I love oohing and ahing over recipes. Cookbooks with plentiful amounts of pictures are far superior to cookbooks with just a smattering of images.

2 December

Whelp, I saw a neurologist about 2 weeks ago, she referred me to another neurologist who does sleep tests, and after lots of monkey business and hemena-hemena-hemena, I have an appointment for the sleep test where they hook me up to all sorts of stuff and look at lots of... stuff. When is the appointment? January 11. A whole month out. I understand that if they can't fit me in before, then they can't fit me in. But by that point, I'll have been doing all this shaking and seizure whosits and whatnots for a whole 4 months! And who knows if this test will give any answers? (The only guarantee is it won't be cheap.) Just a liittttttttttttttle frustrating.

Télé is short for télévision which is French for TV

So, long story short, we don't have a working TV. The long story is we have a TV, and we have a DVD player, but we don't have all the cords and gizmos and hookups and attachments and converters and whatever else to make it all work (and we don't want to pay to buy them). So we put a frameless picture of Jesus in front of the TV, and it's basically a nice decoration in our living room. We still watch movies - just on the computer.

It's one of those ah-ha moments when you re-realize that its actually really nice not having television. I definitely can still find ways to waste time, but at least its not in front of the tube. It's nice that I feel like we have the spirit in our house, which can at least be partially attributed to the lack of commercials and sitcoms and lots of TV in general.

I won't really be complaining when we're somewhere where we do have working television, all I'm saying is that the side effects are really pleasant.