Gardening

So we have this HUGE garden plot in the middle of our yard. 

The first summer we lived here (2011) we decided to be awesome and plant a garden. Our main focus was corn. I even teamed up with my mom and told her that we would plant a ton of corn so we could share. 

I spent most of that summer weeding and watering and loving seeing my plants grow. While most of the other plants didn't do so hot we had quite the little corn crop and I was so excited. 

The heads were just about ready and the corn about a week or less away from picking when I went outside one morning to discover that my corn crop had been completely massacred. 

Most of the stalks were on the ground and there was not a single head of corn in sight. 

Those raccoons left not one single survivor.

I was SO angry! 

Last year, we didn't get thinking about a garden until it was too late and didn't ever get it done. In between school every day and everything else we had going on we still managed to grow quite the weed patch in our garden plot. It was embarrassing and I felt bad about it all year long. 

THIS year we are going to try again. 

Kolton kindly rototilled (?) the garden one night and then came home from work and helped plant it. It was kind of windy nasty outside but we still had a nice time. 

We planted peas, lots of corn, red potatoes, onions, carrots, zucchini, green peppers, jalapenos, tomatoes and I think that's it. 

I don't know that anything will grow, but it is in the ground!

I even took it easy on Kolton and didn't tease him too much when he pulled out the tape measure. 

I was just happy he was out there helping and didn't want to do anything that would discourage him. 

 I was a little excited.

absent

Christmas was wonderful, like always

And I got spoiled, like always.

I love Christmas for everything, but one thing that iIhave always loved are the Christmas secrets/surprises. 

I love going shopping and finding all sorts of fun things and I especially love giving surprises, things that haven't been hinted at but that I just know they will love. 

I had a few of these surprises forKkolton and it was KILLING me! It is so hard for me to keep a secret from that man. Somehow I did it, but there were so many times that I was going to mention or bring up something I had bought him but hadn't given him yet. 

I also loved spending all sorts of time with our families over the break. 

For the first few days we were out of school we really didn't know what to do with ourselves. 

Really. 

We seriously sat around and looked at each other for three days. After being so busy finishing up school it was nice to have a break, but a person can only sit in an apartment for so long. We were so happy to head out to Monteview to visit our families and to have something to do.

We split our time between Island Park and Monteview and it was just grand. I absolutely love being in Island Park. It's just so relaxing and it feels so remote and away from the rest of the world. We loved being there and in Monteview. Monteview is probably my second favorite place in the world...I know, I know. But it just feels like home (probably because it is).

We also spent inordinate amounts of time playing Wackee Six, Golf, Wizard, Scum, and watching all the new card tricks Kolton learned during the time he had nothing better to do.

All in all, it was a fabulous and much needed break (also much too short). We loved spending time with our families, staying up way too late (anything past 10), and chowing down on anything and everything. I have even been a little homesick for Christmas Break since it ended. 

Now we're back to the grindstone.

Correction: I am back to the grindstone. Kolton has a total of one class and one internship this semester, which adds up to a lot of down time for him.

But it's all good. and I'll try to be better at keeping up now that I'm on a regular schedule.

But that's not a promise.  

 

i married him for his handiness

So a really funny thing happened this morning.

We rolled out of bed about half an hour later than we should have (call me lazy but I just really don't think alarm clocks should work before seven) So we were hustling a little bit to get to class on time. I decided to run out to start my car to get it to defrost a little bit (this cold weather is killing me man! I just feel so unprepared for the freezing-ness).

So I'm running to the door in  my usual start-the-car-in-the-morning attire (my tight, tight, unattractive leggings I wear under my dress pants, a shade shirt, and boots. Kolton shakes his head at me every time I leave the house in this outift. He's slightly embarrassed of/for me.)

I reach the door, try to twist the doorknob and.....

Nothin.

So I try again.

and again.

and again.

and again.

Nothin.

The doorknob will not budge. There's no twisting action or anything going on here.

So I try to mess with the unlock device.

Still nothing.

So I did the only thing I could think to do.

Cried.

Just kidding! I politely asked Kolton if he could come see what the heck was going on with the door.

So Kolton walked to the door, tried to twist the doorknob and experienced the same confusion I had. (see above situation for all the details)

After a little pushing and shoving and unnecessary roughness toward the door and more futile twisting on the doorknob, we just looked at each other. 

And looked at the door.

And looked back at each other. 

Then we decided that we may as well enjoy our prison sentence, jumped back into bed, and watched movies the rest of the day. 

Not really.

But I considered it for about half a second. 

Instead Kolton pulled out his handy dandy drill and went to town taking off the doorknob. After a little more finagling with the inner workings of the doorknob-I was obviously no help with this; I decided it would be a better use of my time to put on some actual clothes just in case Kolton's finagling actually worked. 

Unfortunately, he is a very good finagler, the door was working in no time, and we had to go to school.

Bummer dude.

But it was still a nice adventure to begin the day with.

what have we been up to?

1. We moved.

I know.

It was ridiculous.

And technically we downgraded.

So here's the deal....when we started looking for apartments, mid-Augustish, we didn't have much of a selection. (as you can probably imagine) We saw a lot of creepy basements and then saw some even creepier basements. (Seriously, I still shudder every time I think of it.) Finally, we were discouraged and driving around Rexburg when we pulled into a parking lot to think about our choices, and to try not to think about some of our choices. As we were discussing and shuddering, I looked up and said, "Hey hon, how about these ones?" and pointed to the pretty little buildings in the parking lot. We got a number and discovered there were some openings. 

Wonderful!

But they only had a 3 bedroom available. And I know we have enough junk to fill up a 3 bedroom, but we still didn't feel it was necessary. But we moved in and told the manager that if a 2 bedroom opened up, we would definitely be interested. 

Fast forward about two months and our manager called us and let us know there was a two bedroom opening up and that we could come look at it. I thought this was a dumb idea, but was willing to play along, so we trudged over there and......I didn't want to like it, I really didn't.

But I did.

So we moved!

And I feel the need to give a big shout-out to our buddies Allens, Pearsons, we couldn't have done it without you.

And I hate to drag out this first point some more, but I have one more little thing to mention...

We were planning on moving a little bit on Friday, but the bulk of the junk  stuff on Saturday. By some miracle, Kolton happened to look at the weather and discovered it was calling for snow on Saturday. So we called our buddies and they came over at the last minute to help us out. (Do we have awesome friends or what?) So after we finished moving every single thing out of our apartment, we decided to go our for some ice cream. While eating our ice cream, I looked out the window to see SNOW! holy cow-we were so lucky and right on time.  

2. School.

Enough said.

3. Okay, actually I just have a teeny little bit to talk about about school. I'm in a class right now where twice a week I go to an elementary school in the area and get to mess around with third graders for two hours. (Okay, actually it's not entirely messing around, we do actually do some work too.) It is the greatest class and I just really love it. There are millions of stories I could share about it, but Ii'll just share one for now.

I was reading with a group of three kids about a gorilla named Koko. Well of course, being third graders, (and I maybe might have thought of it too) every time we read Koko's name, someone would attach a "loco" to the end.

"Koko loco".

And I'm sorry, but it really was funny for some reason. I was trying to be mature and stuff, but I just couldn't help releasing a little giggle every time one of the kids said it.

Does that make me a bad teacher?

4. Bananagrams.

I LOVE this game.

Mostly because I always WIN this game.

And if you know me, you know that I NEVER win at ANY game.

This is monumental.

I don't know what it is, but when my brain gets a-going, I can think up the strangest words. Most of the time, I don't even know what they mean-but I can spell them.

for example:

We played a total of five games this weekend.

I won four of those games.

(It's killing Kolton)

5. We watched Tangled a twice in a row last week. I am completely in love with that movie. Every time the floating light/singing part comes on, I get a little teary eyed and wish and wish I could just see that in person.

But basically that's all that's been a-going on.

That, and every day I get more and more excited for Christmas. I'm putting a restraining order on the Christmas music.

I got it bad.

i'm a little nervous...

since we've moved out to our new house some kind of funny things have happened. {"funny" in this instance meaning, "not real funny at all"}

first: we have a teensy little mouse problem. if you understood how much i hate hate hate hate HATE mice, you would know that it's not exactly a "teensy little problem". we've only caught five in the two weeks we've lived there {knock on wood} so it hasn't been terrible, but i just feel like my whole house is infected and disgusting.

however, the worst part is that we've got some smarty pants mice on our hands. the first night we moved in, after i fainted repeatedly from hearing about the mice problem, and seeing evidence of the mice problem. we set some traps and went to bed. i insisted on setting a trap in our bedroom to "protect us" but kolton let me know that that would probably only draw the mice into our room. so instead we set the trap just a few feet away from our door in order to protect us {i.e. me} but not bring them to us. about five minutes after we turned out the light, a mouse trap went off. kolton left to take care of the problem. not ten minutes after that another trap went off and kolton again took care of the problem. this included, i might add, hitting a mouse that had been knocked silly by the trap with the lid of a tupperware container, slipping and falling, and hitting the mouse repeatedly with the said lid. needless to say, there was a lot of noise coming from the kitchen but there was NO WAY i was going to check it out. i was curled up in bed hyperventilating at the thought that there was a mouse in my kitchen and that it could possibly be heading my way.

but that's not what i wanted to tell you.

remember the trap we set down the hall? we woke up the next morning to find the trap completely licked clean of peanut butter and sitting right outside our bedroom door. kolton was ticked that he'd been outsmarted and was now being taunted, i was just terrified that the smart mouse was going to "get me" {i get real irrational when it comes to mice, in case you haven't noticed}

but like i said, we've caught five and haven't seen any for a couple days {knock on wood} we've got a cat and i bought about nineteen million traps that are now set in every corner. we've got the situation under control.....hopefully for my sakes.

Second instance: the other morning i was blowdrying my hair about like i do every day. i had my roundbrush and was blowdrying the top of my hair when i pulled the blowdryer away and noticed a big black spot surrounded by a brownish/orangish bigger spot. i turned off the blowdryer and investigated. i was sure that in the moving something had gotten stuck to my roundbrush and was now stuck in my hair.

i was wrong.

i touched the spot and chunks, and i mean CHUNKS of hair fell off of my head! i must have singed my hair because the sink and counter was covered in hair before i even knew what was going on. as i investigated further and got all the chunks to stop falling out, i noticed that i now had itty bitty baby hair poking up all over and that the hair was still a sickly orange-y color.

luckily i had a hair appointment the next day, so i just threw on a hat and made do.

Third instance: so we bought ourselves a washer and dryer for our house but when it came time to hook up the dryer we realized that the dryer cord did not match up with the outlet in the house. so the next time i went to town i picked up a dryer cord that i thought matched up the closest with the picture i had drawn of our actual outlet {the lady at the parts store actually congratulated me on the fact i had thought to draw a picture. she probably knew the picture was way better than me trying to explain and demonstrate with my hands}

with my new cord in hand, i headed home. when i got there i decided to check to see if the cord i had bought would fit in the outlet.

and in hindsight, i know. i realize that this was really, really stupid. i also realize that it's not a good idea for a girl like me to experiment with electricity. {there's a reason i have a husband, after all}

but at that time and place, i had yet to realize all of these things.

so i....well, i.....i stuck the dryer cord into the outlet while it was still in the packaging and all the prongs were still touching. {this is the equivalent of sticking a screwdriver into an outlet, i soon found out}

but at the time, i didn't know this and was more than a little shocked when a huge blue spark thing blew up in my face {luckily my hair was already singed so it couldn't do much damage} and the pop {or was it a bang?}  that accompanied the spark about blasted out my hearing.

i felt a little dazed and confused and didn't exactly know what had just occured.

when i told the story to my dear father he just looked at me in disbelief and said, "yeah baby girl, how did those 220 volts feel?" in a sarcastic voice. he then let me know how lucky i was that i had flipped the breaker instead of electrocuted myself.

so really- the house is great. i'm just not sure if it's too fond of me living there, after these few run-ins. but i'm gonna go scrub it today and hopefully make peace with it. wish me luck!

so it's been a while....

And I sincerely apologize for my absence. But holy moley, has it been a crazy couple of weeks! We finished school, packed up and headed out to Monteview to live for the summer!

A couple weeks ago when we really started to get nervous about where exactly we were going to live for the summer {neither of our parents basements were an option, by the way} a house on my dad's farm all the sudden opened up and it's become our home sweet home.

Don't get me wrong, I really did love our apartment. It was little and fun and our first home {Kolton doesn't understand sentimental things like that.....MEN!} So it was really sad for me to leave, but we have been loving our new house.

However, some things that we DO miss {or at least, I do} about our apartment are:

-How close we were to our good friends. One phone call, and we'd be over playing card games in about two seconds. We miss being so close!

-I don't know if Kolton necessarily misses this...but our upstairs neighbors played the guitar. almost every afternoon we had front row {or downstairs} seats to a guitar concert complete with singing. And let me tell you-they were seriously GOOD! I loved listening to them and just thought it was so.....charming.

-I don't know that there's really any specific features of our apartment that I necessarily miss, but just that it was our first home together and we had a lot of great memories there. Even if we only stayed for four months.

Some things that were funny about our apartment {"funny" as in "not that great"}

-Being scalded every time we turned on the sink. There were some serious hot water issues in that place.

-The window that wouldn't quite shut. I really did not enjoy the howling all night

-The fact that we were drowning in lint! We had a washer and dryer {also an awesome feature} but it seemed like we always had lint EVERYWHERE! It drove me crazy and I definitely don't miss it.

But all in all....it was our first place together and it was really a lot of fun.