Time Flies

So I guess I could say that a lot has happened in our life lately, but it’s mostly just because I haven’t blogged in a while. First things first, I got a job. Happy me J I work about 35 hours a week at the UPS Store in American Fork. I didn’t think I’d want to come back to UPS ever again, but I actually enjoy it most of the time. I work with some good co-workers and the customers aren’t quite as crazy as the Orem customers. But I do still get my fair share of crazy people. Some days it’s crazy-people-overdose and I run out of patience quick. Like people that don’t understand that boxes are 3 dimensional, not 2… that I can’t text message them the corporate number through a land line… that I really don’t care to hear about your conversation with the T-mobile lady for 40 minutes… the list goes on and on. I have also seen a lot of people walk into the glass window. It’s pretty entertaining sometimes. We kill flies with a swatter when it gets slow… Caught 19 before 11:00 on Wednesday. Gabe has been a trooper and walks to school every day. I hope we can come up with a good solution for that once the snow starts falling. Also, I wish we had covered parking so I don’t have to wipe the windows off every morning. I’m totally not a winter person.

The most exciting news, at least in my opinion, is that we put an offer in on a new condo. We found out that the place we were waiting on before had a plumbing problem and started to grow mold.. and the bank was just taking their precious time to accept our offer. So we decided to look around some more and I am glad we did. We found a cute place that’s all updated, has an HOA that’s a third of the price as the other place, has its own washer and dryer and has hard wood floors. It seems to fit us quite well I think. A good majority of my day is spent thinking about how I want to decorate the condo. I memorized it perfectly so that I can walk through it in my head and see everything. I walk through it in my mind and imagine where I want the TV, what colors I want to paint the walls and on and on and on and on. I almost have everything planned out completely. We put in an offer on Monday I think and have already heard back from them on a counter offer. So it’s definitely moving a lot quicker than the last place and we are THRILLED!!

Besides being super sick the past 3 days, everything is pretty wonderful. I’m really grateful for our friends. We have both been blessed with really good groups of friends. We’re planning a Harry Potter couples date night with some friends in November and are way excited for it. It’s nice having friends so close to us that we enjoy having over and spending time with.

Lets see…

We might not do installs this next summer so that Gabe can finish school sooner.

I’m trying to decide what to do with my hair next. Might grow it out and go a bit darker.

Had an awesome photo shoot with my sister, check it out here: chelsyannphoto.blogspot.com

Gabe’s hair is getting ginormous. He says he wants to grow it out to Halloween, but I may try to convince him otherwise.

We get our backend check this coming week. **Big grin**

Went shooting for the first time in a long time and loved it.

Yup. That’s probably about it this time. Love you all!

I'd Rather be Skinny

About a month and a half ago, while we were still in Alaska, I was watching Oprah on the television. Yes, I DO like Oprah. There was an author on her show talking about a new book that he just wrote about healthy eating. I was super intrigued because I agreed with everything he was saying. Halfway through the show, my sweet husband noticed how excited I was about it and took me to Barnes and Noble to get a couple of his books, “Food Rules” and “The Omnivores Dilemma.” Really really good books, and I recommend them to anyone interested in health. I LOVED “Food Rules” and am about to the last chapter in “The Omnivores Dilemma.” Once I read the first book, I vowed I would try and follow the rules he gives. The general idea of his books is to eat foods that are as minimally processed as possible. He talks about how the food industry is really tricky about how they advertize and how they make money. They can make sooooo many ingredients out of a kernel of corn it’s insane! It’s what surprised me the most. The food industry can buy corn for super cheap so they’ve been busy figuring out how they can make more and more ingredients out of it so they can make money off of consumers. Michael Pollan, the author of these books, believes it is making Americans sick. So I started researching it and decided once we got back from Alaska I would try and make as much of our food from scratch as I could. Amongst the obvious homemade bread, I wanted to make my own foods like ketchup, and mayo. Yeah, I was pretty ambitious and was determined it would be better for our health. I grew up eating margarine instead of butter because it didn’t contain as much fat, but after reading Pollan’s book I found out butter is actually better for you because its not processed. I know that’s hard for some people to believe, but I believed it. So.. after a couple weeks of trying it out, and eating real butter instead of margarine, this is what I told my husband:

“I know that this new way of eating is supposed to be healthier for me, but I don’t think it’s making me any thinner. Healthy doesn’t always mean skinny. I’d rather be skinny.”

I was just frustrated because I had been involved in a really good exercise regime and I wasn’t getting the results I thought I would get with the “clean eating.” For some reason, we’ve been going through a lot (a lot, a lot!) of butter within the last week or two and that just doesn’t seem to be helping. I went out and bought margarine today. Oh happy day! I agree with a good majority of what Pollan talks about in his books, rules that I will stick to, (like: “The whiter bread, the sooner you’ll be dead” and “Don’t eat breakfast cerals that change the color of milk.”) and I agree whole heartedly that processed foods are horrible for a person, but I’m not about to change some of my ways if it will make me go up a pant size. I don’t think most females would. So back to “regular” healthy eating.. we’ll see if I see the results I want this time around :)

Catch Up Time

Things have been a bit hectic around our little household lately. I apologize ahead of time that this may be a bit of a venting post for me today. Gabe started school this week at BYU and from what I can tell, he is excited to be back. He’s been figuring out when to take certain classes so that he can be on schedule for getting his degree. For those of you that don’t know, he is planning on becoming an oral surgeon (yes, I know, lucky me :) ) and so we are going to be in it for the long haul. We decided that while he is going through dental school, I’ll work to put him through and pay our bills. So right now I feel like I’m going through a tiny mid-mid-life crisis. I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with myself. After I graduated from high school I decided to go to school to become a dietician and I had dreams of opening my own practice and being my own boss. I soon realized how expensive school was and I didn’t want to take out anymore school loans so I decided to put school on hold until I earned a bit more money to pay for more schooling. Well, life happened. I eventually got a full time job and started making some decent money. Didn’t save any, because I liked spending it so much, but I made money nonetheless. Other things happened in my life and school wasn’t that big of a priority for me anymore. But now that we’re back home and Gabe is back in school, it’s time for me to earn us some money so that we don’t have to take from our savings we earned this summer. The last couple weeks I have been trying really hard to find a good job. By good job I mean: full time, morning through afternoon, pays at least $9.00 an hour, busy, and any benefits surely wouldn’t hurt. I don’t think most people understand how rare that is in this fine Provo town. I have already scoured this city at least 4 times before, so I know where everything is, and I know what most places will offer me before I even ask. I applied for a super extremely good job last week and they had over 80 applicants so I didn’t even get an interview. I even took a typing/grammar/basic knowledge/spelling test that I thought I did pretty darn well at. So in the meantime, I wake up early and get ready for the day, sit at the computer and go through 8+ job websites every day to see if anything new pops up. No luck. I stay busy so my husband doesn’t feel like he’s the only one doing anything. I do so many dishes, try and organize anything, clean, cook. But sometimes I just want to work. I want a job where I can go in 9-5, sit at a desk, have a list of to-do items, and stay busy all day working hard. Then I can come home and feel accomplished. But I feel anything less than accomplished right now. I feel like I have to be working my butt off to be acknowledged. I’m consistently on my knees praying something will come up. . .Please keep us in your prayers. Hopefully we’ll have some luck soon. So in the meantime, while sittin at home pondering about what to do I have been thinking a lot about going back to school and wondering what online classes would entail. I love school and learning new things. It would be great if I could go to work and during the slow times I could study. So that is a possible option right now, I just don’t know enough about online class options yet. Among going back to school and finding a good job, we’ve put an offer in for a townhome. Actually, we put the offer in during the summer, but we’ve been more proactive about it since we’ve gotten home. It’s a short sale and so it takes FOREVER to hear back from the bank. Our realtor has been trying for months and months to hear back from them. We went to see the place last week and there were a few problems with the place that we weren’t aware of. We found out they are no biggie, easy problems to fix and we knocked down the price a little, so we’re hopeful that we will hear back from the bank soon. We found out that if we buy a place, our monthly payment will be the same as if we were renting, so it’s a no brainer that we want to put it towards something that we can call “ours.” Pretty exciting stuff, huh? So that’s the basics of what is going on with us right now. Maybe soon I’ll be blogging from OUR house..

We love Utah

Okay, so after some poking and prodding from people, I am here to update my blog. WE ARE HOME!!!! We got home ….. 3 days ago I think? But I have been so busy at unpacking and trying to make our apartment look nice that whenever I sit down I just want to sit, I don’t even want to type. Sad, I know. So we left Saturday morning from Fairbanks Alaska and it took us til Tuesday early afternoon to get home. It was a grueling 55 hour drive and we slept in the car for 3 nights. Gabe drove all the way, with the exception of me driving at the rest stop from where we pulled in to closer to the bathroom. Gabe is great, that’s a long drive for one person. But his deer maneuvering skills are a lot better than mine. Sleeping in the car was not fun whatsoever. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it, but Gabe got like $700 worth of audio equipment from a guy for free, so we took it home with us and it took up the back seat, so we could barely recline our seats to sleep. We basically drove until we passed out from exhaustion, so that we would be able to sleep in such an uncomfortable position. I missed our bed so much, it’s one of my favorite things we own. The last night we drove we looked at the GPS and it said if we kept driving we could get to Riverton at 7:00 the next morning and so we figured we could just drive straight and get there at 7:00. We needed a break in between all the driving so we started looking for a casino. We were in Montana, where even all the gas stations have casinos, and me being 21 hasn’t done any gambling yet. So we stopped in one of the towns and found one open. We put in $10 and played til we ran out of money. There was a really nice older lady that worked there and she kept bringing us complimentary sodas and snacks :) We found out we were in there for almost 2 hours eating snacks and playing a game together, so it was great! After a couple more hours of driving we started to get WAY loopy. We were making stupid jokes and laughing at things that weren’t even funny, so we decided we should probably get some sleep. We got home the next day and have been busy getting settled in and visiting all our family. We went out to dinner with his brother and sister in law last night and it was lots of fun.. I’m glad I have awesome in laws. We are living in BYU housing month to month for now. It’s not the greatest, but you know it’s so much better than living in a hotel. And.... drum roll please…. We have a stove!! I’ve cooked a few times on it already and I have the next weeks menu all planned out so I can cook dinner every night. I cannot wait!


We love Utah. Glad to be home.

Any day now!

We are so completely itching to head back to Utah. What a fun time we've had this summer, but we are ready to have a place to stay for longer than a week. We moved into 3 different hotels within the last week and we have to move everything from our car every time... lets just say we're a bit tired of it. You'd be amazed and how quickly it wears a person out.

I can't wait to:
Meet my new nephew
See all our family and friends
Cook big Sunday meals for my husband
Have a schedule
Sleep on our own bed
Set up our new sound system
Get my hair done
Have a freezer
Eat Little Caesars
Buy cheap food

And the list goes on and on and on and on...

Here's to crossing our fingers we can go home this week!!!

Off to the North Pole

Check out the fun weekend we had:

We took a walk around the block and went to a place called the "Fudge Pot" It was delish! They made blueberry fudge, my new favorite.. And then we ordered pizza to the hotel and watched a movie together

On Sunday we took a short trip to the North Pole :) Yes, that's right, the North Pole! There is a city in Alaska just outside Fairbanks named North Pole and its all decked out in Christmas decorations and most of the street names are Christmas and santa oriented. It made me excited for the holidays! 

And then... we met the reindeer! That was really neat for both of us, I don't think we've ever seen a reindeer before. One of the reindeer followed Gabe around and then he sneezed on his arm! ha ha it was pretty great

No way, jose!

Only about a month left in Alaska and then we're headed home.. Its way crazy to think about because I know its going to go by super fast. It'll be good to get home and see our family though, I just hope we'll be able to jump back into our regular schedule quickly.
So yesterday we drove another 9 hours to a new area. It's gotten to the point where a 9 hour drive isn't so bad. As long as its not above 20 miles, the drive doesn't seem that long. It's pretty funny I think. So last night around 10:00 pm we get to the new city and its like this tiny podunk town in the middle of nowhere and me and Gabe are looking at each other going "what the freak?!" and we arrive at the motel we're booked to stay at while we're here and it was like an old long school portable that some handyman put up walls in, looked like it hadn't been decorated since the 70's and was just in super bad shape. The first thing I think about are bed bugs, there's no way we're going through that again! There were pipes coming out of the walls, different colors of shag carpet in every room, and painted on faux wallpaper borders. Gabe and I had a room in another building that you had to get to from the outside, after climbing up a rickety old staircase. Not to mention our first impression of the place - we walk up to the main building to check in and there's 4 grungy lookin guys standing out front by their truck and as we walk up, a kid with one front tooth looks up at us and says, "sup homies!" and gives us a half chuckle, half snorted laugh. After a bunch of complaining from everyone, it was decided that we needed to find a different place to stay. We stopped by another "hotel" and asked for recommendations on where to stay and she recommended a bed and breakfast place, so that's where we're at right now. Its a cute place! Right now we're just a group of 3 sales guys and 2 technicians and we're staying in a big house away from the "city." We woke up this morning and the couple that owns the place made us biscuits and gravy and hash browns. Whats ironic is that the dumpy motel we were going to stay at is the same price as this super nice bed and breakfast. It seems like we all just took a big long road trip and are staying at one of the guys aunts house. Its quite the adventure... Quite a bit different than I had expected. The drive up here was really really pretty and we got lots of cool pictures. I love that we have a camera and are able to document everywhere we've been. Here's the pictures we took of comparison of the two places:

If you can on the one below, zoom in, their faces are priceless.

     

 Bed and Breakfast: