Goodbye January

Alright peeps! I know I’m a little late on my “Sunday post”, but Hans and I were visiting some people in the ward this Sunday. It was good to get out and get to know some people in the ward!

Anywho..  This week has been good. Just another one of our average weeks. But still good.

First off, a few good things that happened/ are in the process..

1. Hans got a call about an internship and they are going to interview with him over the phone on Tuesday. Yay! It is with the Department of Homeland Security in D.C.

2. I’m still a student. Yes. We are thinking about moving back to BYU Idaho in the fall. Hans can take 3 out of 4 of his classes in Idaho Falls. The positives are: I will be able to take some fun classes that I have wanted to take, we love Rexburg and have good friends there, and the housing is cheaper. The Negatives are: Hans will have to commute, and he won’t be home as much.

Of course the decision will depend on if I still have my job at the clinic here when we get back from his internship. Of course it is not ideal for Hans to have to commute, but the decision is mostly for me. My husband is that nice :). I will be able to gain some good skills ( I want to take flower arranging, cake decorating, French, sewing, and more), and I won’t be sitting at home doing nothing during the time I don’t work :) ISU doesn’t offer very many choices for the types of classes I want to take.

3. Our headboard came yesterday! I love it! here is a picture:

Not the best picture in the world….

Other than that, we’ve just been livin it up! ok not really.

We did make some pretty good meals this week. some of them were attempted and failed though.

Crock pot meals are good for us, because we can let it sit, and then it is ready for us when we get home from work/school at night!

I attempted crock pot lasagna… failed. anyone have a better recipe for that?

I also made chili… yum. I even took pictures for your enjoyment because it made me feel like a good cook? I don’t know, it just looked pretty.

Yum.

We also made tater tot casserole, and parmesan ranch chicken, which are two of our favorite meals. They are also super easy. let me know if you want the recipes :)

I also bought an exercise ball… I’m hoping it will help motivate me to exercise more.

In other news we have been asked to give talks in church in 2 weeks, and I have been recruited to play the piano in relief society. For the record that is 3 talks for me in the last 18 months. Yes.

Hooray for February! 

Excitement

We are getting a headboard for our bed!

It is a Christmas present from my Grandma.

She ordered me a winter coat online, but when it came it was too big, so she’s getting me a headboard instead.

I love it!

Here is a preview:

I’m excited.

Life

Hello all! I don’t really know how to start out this post, and I don’t have anything even a little bit clever or interesting to say to start this off, so I’m just going to jump right in.

Our life at the moment I would say is pretty boring. Many may disagree, but I stand by that statement. None the less, I’m still going to try and make it sound interesting.

I have decided that we are being welcomed into the real world. Pocatello is not Rexburg at all. I was going to go on a rant about all the differences, but I have decided not to. I guess I’m not that kind of “blogger”. I have a lot of strong opinions, and for fear of offending anyone, I usually choose not to write about them. So… Hans will have to listen to all of that :) To make it short, I will just say that we miss Rexburg.

Alright, moving on.

What did we do this week?

Do you want to know what goes on in the Petrich household every day? Well, I’ll tell you.

We both have things going on at night…. work/school. We usually stay up late and sleep in (until 9:00, which is LATE by the way).

During the day, Hans is usually doing homework, listening to a book, or doing his research hours. I usually look for good coupon deals, find crafts I want to do online, watch T.V., and other things.

Well this week I decided to be ambitious, like I tend to be at times. I decided to organize our closets, and clean the house. ok that wasn’t the really ambitious thing, but I mean, It was really bugging me, and lets be honest,  If I didn’t do it, who would?  Ok, ok, Hans is a good cleaner. Here is a picture of him doing the dishes in his Pajamas…. hehe

When I say ambitious, I mean that I decided to sand and stain our table! I want it to be a dark wood instead of a light wood (if anyone remembers from a previous post of mine).

Well, since I didn’t want to buy a sander, and I was even too cheap to buy the plastic handle that you can put the sand paper on, I decided to do it all by hand. I know, I’m crazy. So all this week, I was sanding the chairs. I decided to paint the backs of the chairs and the legs black and stain the rest, because lets be honest, that is way too much work. Ha.

Anyways, So I bought some stain (with gloss in it) and tried it out, and it was almost clear! So I took it back to Wal-mart ( where no one could answer my questions.. figures) and I got a darker stain w/out gloss.

I tested out one chair and here it is:

It looks terrible! definitely not what I was imagining.

I had to put the tester chair in the garage because the smell was so strong! I was afraid I would get high off of the fumes!

The stain is so dark that I would rather just paint the whole thing black and do away with the staining!

I am an amateur, and you can tell. But in reality I had no idea what I was doing, it’s another live and learn moment for me.

Hans, did say that it was a bad Idea, and he didn’t really want to help me with it, but I refuse to tell him that he was right. It was good in theory, I just didn’t have someone to help me out.

Does anyone have any ideas about how to fix this problem? That would be much appreciated :)

This week we were excited to get a Christmas present in the mail from Hans’ parents! It was a Petrich Family Cookbook!  We are excited about it.

I also got a cookbook from my mom for Christmas with some great family recipes in it.

I have already made quite a few recipes out of these cookbooks, and I’m excited to make more! I’m also excited because 2 days of the week, Hans has been put on cooking duty because I go to work at night and he is home, so he gets to cook dinner for me ( by request of me).

Oh, and just to throw a few more pictures in here…

Here is a picture of our garage, which we are SO grateful to have during the winter.

Disclaimer: We haven’t washed our car since we bought it, almost 2 years ago.

Yep, first door. From our front door it takes a few steps to get to.

Here is a picture of our new keyboard.

Not the best picture.

So there you have it, my attempt at making our everyday life seem more exciting than it actually is :)

Happy last week of January everyone!

Saving

A few weeks ago, I was introduced to couponing by my mom. I’ve always known that coupons were there, and I have used them before, but I never really stuck with it. The last week or so I have been looking at ads, and printing off coupons, and I’m still not sure how all of it is working out for me, but….

I did get some pretty good deals

I got all of this for about 6 dollars! Normally all of these things would be about 17 dollars without coupons.

So, it’s not the best deal you can find out there, but it’s a start. I like to find good deals, so I’m going to keep working on my couponing skills! :)

Another Day, Another Dollar

A week has passed, yet again.

We’re back to work and school!  I worked more than I thought I would this week, which was great! And Hans has had a much more laid back schedule at school, so we’ve been able to spend more time together :)

This weekend we have been able to have a 4 day weekend! So… we went to the movies and saw Tangled ( We loved it!) and we made homemade pizza

It was so good!

We also decided to go out to Applebee’s for their half price appetizers, which was a stretch for us, since we never go out for dinner, because we don’t want to spend the money….

We had a horrible waitress who didn’t inform us that the certain appetizer we chose wasn’t half off…. So we spent more money than we wanted, and we weren’t happy about it! her name was Stephanie too…… I can’t believe it!

It was a little hard to be mad though because the food was still so good! 

I also found some things at DI and the dollar store and decided to fix them up into something cute!

Here is a tray that I decided to paint black, what crazy person would buy a blue duck covered tray at DI?? I guess that would be me :)

Here is the final product:

I stamped the sides of it like so:

I got the candles at Bed Bath and Beyond from their Christmas clearance, for $1!   I’m going to change out the decorations on the tray after valentines day, but I’m really happy with how the tray turned out!

Hans and I are in desperate need of some updated pictures of us, but it can get expensive to pay someone to do it for us, so we attempted to take pictures of ourselves for valentines day….

well, since both of our cameras aren’t very good quality, and we aren’t the best at taking pictures…. this is how they turned out

When I look at these pictures, I feel bad for our future children, because they are going to have big noses….

Well, I would still like some better pictures of us…. new pictures!  but I guess these will do for now!

That’s all folks! We’re off to the start of a new week! The last thing I will say is that I’m glad it is a whole lot warmer here than it is in Rexburg :)

Home Sweet Home

We’re back! Back to reality. Reality for us though, isn’t half bad! I will be working  more days now, but not so many hours that it will kill me! Not to mention the fact that going back to work isn’t  something I dread. I’m pretty lucky to have a job that I like! I will occupy my extra time by

1. finding an additional job or

2. doing whatever I want! Sounds pretty good to me!

Hans is going to have an easier semester this time around. He has less classes, which will be way better for him! And he has decided to take some fun classes this semester like volleyball and such. he still has to do research during the week, but that isn’t hard for him at all.

Well, here are some pictures and videos from new years!

Hedbanz! A fun game we like to play!

Apparently, Hans was the only one out of his group that was taking pictures when he was in D.C.  Really?? I thought that was crazy! But it is a bunch of guys, with the exception of about 2.  He told them that he had to or else his wife would kill him!  Which is probably true!

So I didn’t get as many pictures out of him as I would’ve liked, but this is what I did get!

  At a museum…

At the white house, talking to  head computer security people like, the Department of Homeland Security

Washington Monument

The Capitol

Out to eat, with the people in his program

At another museum!

The whole trip went really well for him! He gave away a ton of resumes, and a lot of the people were really interested in him, he should be hearing back from them within the next couple of months. We re hoping for a good internship!

While he was gone, I was still with my family, which was really nice! I did a lot of Thrift Store shopping with my mom, and got some really cute stuff! I won’t show you all of the things I got, But I will show you one cute outfit to illustrate the beauty of shopping at thrift stores.

Pretty good prices, I’d say!  

So, now we are back home and happy! It’s nice to be able to be back in our own house, but we do miss our family. Our trip was great though, it went by a little too fast.

I can’t believe it’s already almost halfway through January! I’m always amazed at how fast time goes by! Sometimes I can’t decide if I want it to go faster or if I want it to slow down. So many things in our future! Isn’t it great to be young?  :)

It’s a New Year!

Well, I have no pictures to show for new years or since then, that’s the bad news. But the good news is, the reason for that is because Hans took the camera and flash drive with him to Washing D.C. for his job fair. Which means he will be taking pictures while he’s there without me bugging him about it…… hopefully.

Hans left early yesterday to go to D.C. for a job fair.I think it will be a good experience for him and I think it could bring us good future job opportunities. We hope that a good internship is what will come out of it. Which we will be going to do in less than 6 months.

We haven’t been away from each other for this long since we’ve been married which has almost been a year and a half. It’s not fun for us to be away for each other. I just hope this times goes by fast because it is not fun!

New Year’s eve was pretty uneventful. I think New Year’s can be a little anti-climactic. We watched some movies played some games, ate some good food, and yelled Happy New Year! at midnight.Oh, and my brothers decided to shoot off some fireworks :)  On New Years day we had to do our annual tradition of racletting, which was fun!

I have some fun pictures and videos that I will post as soon as Hans and I are together again!

SO for a quick recap…..

2010 was a great year for us. We…

Saw my brother graduate from high school

We both graduated from BYU Idaho

I got a great job and passed my CMA exam

Hans got accepted to and started a great Masters program

We moved to a new place

Made lots of new friends

Saw my sister get baptized

Celebrated one year of marriage….. at Disneyland :)

………and so many other great things!

I haven’t been one for New Years resolutions. I feel like people make resolutions and goals at the new year, but they only last a month…. if that. Goals can be made at any time.

So, I haven’t made any specific resolutions for 2011, but here are some things we know and hope will happen this year.

Hans will finish 3/4 of his masters program

We will live somewhere new (probably D.C.) for an internship for 3 months in the summer.

Maybe start our family

Send my brother off on his mission

See Hans’ brother Conrad get back from his mission

Work and save as much as possible

And hopefully many more new and exciting things!

Happy New Year everyone!