A weekly update

Well, we’ve been back and in school for about a week now! Although it seems longer…

Hans has started working again. He works on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and he has classes on Monday Wednesday and Friday, although sometimes he will go into work on one of those days too. I have a full schedule again… this time only 17 credits instead of 18 :)

I had to give a talk in church last Sunday so our first week back the only thing I was worried about was the talk, and I didn’t really focus on what I thought my classes might be like this semester. BUT….. I feel like I have a lot less too do. Fortunately I’m probably speaking too soon because most of the heavy load comes later….

So I Hans started reading The Hunger Games… and he loved it! here is a picture of him and his intense reading….

Even chewing on his nail… haha. he even said he couldn’t get to sleep very fast  that night because he was thinking about the book…. he read it in one day.

Now this isn’t a surprising thing for him, because unlike me, he loves reading! He also loves to listen to books. I am telling you, he is ALWAYS listening to a book. He has his ipod touch, which is in his pocket, then his ear phone….. just one, in his ear and it is always clipped to his shirt. it has a button on the ear phone cord that he can press to pause his book, which he only presses once he realizes that I am talking to him…. which can be VERY annoying to me at times, but i’ve learned to get over it most times…… at least he pauses it right? haha

Actually his listening to books has become very beneficial to me because he likes to do things while he listens to the book. most often what he does is the dishes… ! Anyways, here is a picture of him…. notice the ear phones clipped to his shirt :)

It is actually odd that in both of these pictures he is sitting on the bed because usually he doesn’t like sitting on the bed. Yeah, don’t mind the mess and the less than decorated bedroom. Our apartment is VERY small, and I don’t love it, So I have no desire, or the money to make it cute… Just wait, soon when we are in Pocatello, our place is going to be great!

Here is a Random video

Last Friday we went to craigos (a pizza place) with Mat and Daryn! I had never been there before, and it was fun to actually get out and go eat dinner somewhere with friends. After that we watched some Youtube videos.

On Saturday Hans went to ISU during the day, The Students and teachers that were there were very impressed when he told them what score he got on the GMAT. It’s pretty much a guarantee that he is going to get into the program. No Surprise there!

On Saturday night went to the temple with two couples and did sealings…… It was so great and I loved it….. I think everyone else did too. We went out for ice cream after and saw Emily (my cousin) there.

I was really glad to get my talk over with on Sunday! You’d think that since Hans and I had just given a talk a few months ago that I wouldn’t get asked again. But Hans is in the elders quorum presidency, and the wives of the presidency were asked to speak. I told Hans that, that’s what I get for being married to someone in the elders quorum presidency… haha… no, My talk went really well, and it was fun to get to speak with the other wives. I really did enjoy it. The Bishop introduced us as if we were angels and had each of our husbands stand up in sacrament meeting… I’d never seen that before…. but it was cool, and a great experience.

On Sunday night we got together with Sarah and Jaren and Mike and Stacey at their apartment to play games… which was really fun. My favorite part of Sunday is getting to play games with other couples…… not every Sunday, but when we get to, I love it!

I was feeling a little ambitious and I decided to try something new! I made brownies with a peanut butter topping. I just melted some peanut butter with some white chocolate chips and everyone ended up loving it on Sunday night! And we even left about half of the pan with mike and Stacey because they really liked it, and I knew it would sit on our counter for a week and never get fully eaten.

here is a picture of the remains:

Other than that, it’s only Tuesday! there is still more homework to be done, and fun to be had! On Friday we are going to our ward chapel session at the temple and I get to spend time with Kim and Cynthia, and then who knows what else we will do!

We were excited (especially me) to see our first little green in our plant boxes….. more and more are coming out each day… I’m excited! Here is a picture:

Spring is Finally Here!

Last Friday when we arrived in St. George to see Jarom and Rachel and their family, our eyes were finally opened to springtime! After Hibernating since November, the sun has made us very happy this past week. We love spending time with Jarom Rachel and their family, and this time we got to start and end our trip with them :) it was so sunny and nice there and we loved it! We even got to see their new house!

here are some pictures of their kids listening to their heart  with my stethoscope.

Aside from being in St. George, we loved the week we had in California! I can’t say that we did anything out of the ordinary that I could really talk about, but we had such a good time just relaxing and resting!……. well at least for me!

Hans may have had less time relaxing because he spent half of the week studying and taking the GMAT. He did so well though! He scored 620 which is better than 71% of people who take the test! He has already applied for his Masters at ISU in Pocatello, and now we just have to wait and see what happens :)

Here is what we did all week:

- Played Super Mario World and Smash Brothers on the Wii

- Watched some movies at home and went to see Percy Jackson and the Olympians with family.

- Ate some good food and hung around a bunch of family

- We went shopping a few times, I got some new shirts and we stocked up on some stuff from Costco!

-We spent some good time outside soaking up the sun

- Hans finished reading a book, and I read 2 books!

I’m not a reader at all. The only time I will read is if I find a really good book. We’re talking, amazingly good, because if I can’t get into it, I wont finish it. I never finished the Harry Potter series. The last series I read was the twilight series. I attempted to read a book last summer, but it took me 5 months to finish it.

A lot of people have been recommending The Hunger Games. So I thought “Hey, why not?”. I didn’t even get it at the library, I went and bought it, so I wasn’t going to be very happy if it wasn’t amazing.

I read it in one day! (this was partly because I was on vacation and I couldn’t think of anything better to do)

I really was SO good. I recommend it to everyone. If you want to know more about it come ask me….. and if you live close I’d be happy to let you borrow it if you would like :)

The Hunger Games was so good that Hans went out and bought me the second book, Catching fire. I also read that in one day :)

These books are so good, the third book is coming soon too I think!

Here are some pictures of some trees around Hans’ family’s house in California.

I had never seen a lemon tree before so this was really cool for me!

This is a lemon tree!

I had never seen an olive tree either….. so cool!

This is a leftover olive that went bad… apparently it’s not olive season :)

This is a cool birds nest that was in the olive tree.

Oranges… mmmmm

And grapefruit too!

We were just lucky enough to take some fruit home with us, fresh off the tree!

As you can see, Hans let his facial hair grow out last week :)

 

 

One of the nights, Ivan (Hans’ brother just above him), found a baby duck that had wandered away from it’s parents, it was an interesting experience…

Ivan and Sandy were trying so Hard to get it back to it’s parents.. haha!

After spending all this time in California with so many cool plants, I’ve been wanting to plant my own garden. It sounds so fun to me! I remember the little garden that we used to have when I was little right on the side of our house, and I loved it.

But due to our lack of space, I can’t plant a real garden. So I have to settle with some flowers and a planter box.

Even this will be a dilemma because we aren’t allowed to have anything out by our door… which is the only outside we really have. So for now our planter box is sitting on our bedroom windowsill.

We bought the flower stuff today and I made it our family night activity, faith is like a little seed right?

Well, it was fun for me, I don’t know if it was for him though ;)

Hopefully we can nourish these seeds enough as well as our faith! :)  

Happy Easter Birthday :)

This weekend was a lot of fun!…. At least Sunday was :)

Friday I did homework all night, and Saturday we watched conference and I did more homework then too. I really wanted to finish it all so I didn’t have to do it on Sunday!

I spent some time with Kim and Daryn on Saturday during the priesthood session. We went to the dollar store and bought some things for Easter. I got an Easter basket for Hans and for myself :) and I bought a few dollar store things to fill them will with.

My family always got their baskets from the Easter bunny on their bed or in their bedroom waiting for them on Easter morning. In his family their Easter baskets are hidden and they have to search until they find them. So I hid both of the baskets in our front closet :)

Sunday was my Birthday! We got up and Hans started making breakfast! I started getting ready and my family called and sang Happy Birthday to me :) They told me to open up the package they had sent, so we opened it. and… Easter came in the mail! My mom ( I mean.. the Easter bunny) sent us an Easter basket!

It had some good stuff inside…. it was a great start to a wonderful day!

After that, I told Hans that there may be something else hiding from the Easter bunny and that he should look around for it! I wish I had gotten it on camera, because when I told him that he got really happy and excited… it was cute :) Then he started his search!

Hmmm, I guess I could’ve hid it somewhere less obvious… I think it was still fun for him though :) It then made sense to him why I told him we didn’t need to buy Easter candy the night before. ha

Conference started and I had some fun looking through the basket from my parents. Then Hans got breakfast all set up and ready to eat!

Since we eat at the crossroads a lot, sometimes on Saturdays we get breakfast from there. I for some reason have really liked getting biscuits and gravy in the morning, so lately Hans has gone and gotten breakfast there for me and brought it back to the apartment… yum! So for my birthday breakfast he made me croissants and gravy…. due to our lack of biscuits. we also had eggs and hash browns, it was delicious!

We do have a real table, but for some reason we do everything on our coffee table. It’s kinda like our homework eating, studying, and everything table. It’s also right in front of the T.V.  :)

In between sessions I decided that I wanted to color eggs! but first, I opened presents. I got some way cute stuff from my parents… AKA my mom, I think my dad said he helped out :) I loved them though! Hans got me some cute presents, It was so sweet, I could tell that he really thought them out… love them even more!

We decided to blow out our eggs because then we could use them next year for decoration or something! Plus I just didn’t feel like doing them hard boiled. Hans started blowing them out while I was in the shower and I thought he was going to have a heart attack or something! haha. Later I blew out some more….. it was more difficult than I thought! It’s the dang yoke.. sheesh! haha

Kinda a funny picture…

Here are some pictures of our station all set up

We got an egg marbling kit. did you know that you can add oil to the die and it will make your eggs come out with a cool marbling effect? We thought it was cool….

here are our eggs:

I painted and egg of Hans and he painted an egg of me!

here we are with our eggs! haha

After the last session of conference Hans got right to work on making my birthday cupcakes! We thought that one cake mix wasn’t going to be enough so we bought two… and ended up having a lot of extra cupcakes… haha.

oops I cut of Hans’ head…  then I made fun of his droopy eye in the picture… hehe Sometimes we just have issues with our height difference! I mean come on, I’m on my tippy toes and he is crouching down… and still….

Much better…

I  made the frosting for them and we had bought some cool neon food coloring at the store, so I added the dye to some of the frosting, and the colors turned out so cool!

We frosted the cupcakes together, and it was a lot of fun… and a lot of clean up :) on each cupcake we put a different letter and spelt out Happy Birthday Stephanie (yep that’s me!) I have to say though that they turned out so cute! I loved them… and everyone at the party loved eating them too :)

Here are some pictures of the cupcakes:

Our friend Daryn got together a potluck party with some couples in the lounge for that night. Everyone brought a different part of the meal ( it was spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread), we brought the cake….. or cupcakes. We ate and talked for a while.

This is a picture of me blowing out the candles… and me with my birthday cupcakes!

The rest of the time we played some fun games!  I also took everyone’s blood pressure because I had to finish doing 50 by….  tomorrow ah!

Some people left, and I talked to some of Hans’ family that called, and we had a good rest of the night playing some games!

Here is a picture of everyone:

with our delicious cupcakes

All in all, it was a wonderful Birthday and Easter. My favorite part was the little fun crafty things we did. I really liked dying eggs and frosting the cupcakes. I’m thinking about maybe taking a cake decorating class when we are up at ISU, because I love decorating, crafts, and sweets… the perfect combination!

We are still enjoying the time we have together just us right now, and we love it!

Only about 2 more days of the semester and then we are headed to California to see some family and our new niece Avery! (for those of you from my side.. my sister in law Stephanie just had a baby and they named her Avery.. funny huh?)  We are also going to be able to see Jarom and Rachel and their family in St. George.

We are so excited to have a break.  I think that sickness has decided to come upon me now. congestion, sore throat, and coughing isn’t great, but I’m just grateful it decided to come now instead of in the middle of the semester. I guess we’ll see what fun things await us in California!