Tag-I'm It.

Layla tagged me! Watch out, y'all might be next. :)

List:
3 joys
3 fears
3 goals
3 current obsessions/collections
3 random/surprising facts

3 Joys
-Doing things with Richard
-Making a really good meal or dessert to share.
-Taking care of my baby boy.

3 Fears
-Being kidnapped/tortured/murdered/at gun point-the whole deal.
-Losing my family
-Getting Old and sick-losing my independence.

3 Goals
-To take more walks, or exercise more in my apartment.
-To finish my Russia and Wedding scrapbooks
-To go to Sweden with Richard

3 current obsessions/ collections
-Top Chef & Oprah
-Chocolate. Chocolate. Chocolate.
-Settlers of Catan

3 random/surprising facts
-I've had more cavities in my life than I can even count-don't get me wrong, I DO brush my teeth, but it doesn't seem to change the fact that I still get them.
-I like tomatoes now. (Pregnancy did that to me.)
-I don't like playing the game Apples to Apples

The End--Now I am tagging 4 more people, which means you have to answer the exact same questions. I am tagging-KAREN HEISS (now you have to update again. :) ), WILLIE (You should start a blog.), SUZY, and KRISTALEE!

Swiss Family Anderson

Richard has been applying for multiple scholarships--because we need any we can get. On Thursday, he received an email from one of the scholarships announcing he was a finalist (I don't know out of how many), and they just needed him to send verification that he is really attending school currently. They'll announce the winner on Monday. Cross your fingers! I just sent off two more scholarship apps today as well. One which will cover full tuition-and is for Washington art students only. So that limits competition significantly, compared to the other which is for anyone going into Art. Goooooood Luck Ricardo.


And now....to add more pictures of my baby boy, cause he is just too darn cute. He smiles all the time! He's sleeping very well each night. He's such a joy to have around. Nancy gave us a hanging toy contraption and Michael is very interested in it. I should've recorded him today as he was laying underneath it. This toy makes him talk! He'll stare at the toys dangling down and make noise after noise. And he's beginning to realize that he can lift up his hand and hit them and they make noise back at him. 
We got a computer chair. We put Michael on it. He can't sit very well yet (duh)-so I had to keep close to help him stay up straight.


Otherwise, this happened.


The End

Settlers of Catan

Over conference weekend, we visited Enumclaw and spent some time with the Butlers playing Settlers.  Although we both love that game, we hadn't played it for a couple of months. It was very fun. Anyway, a couple days later I suggested to Richard that he and I play it again. However, we decided to add a little bit of a twist.  

Our board started out completely upside down, so we didn't know where resources were, or what number was placed on top of the resource. To start off, we just had to place our pieces randomly, and then we could flip the resources over that our piece was touching to see what it revealed. 

Then we started the game and just built and played blindly, for the most part, hoping we would build on what we needed. 

I won.
The end :)

Celebrate Good Times

I just need to blog about something. Michael slept from 9pm to 6am last night! Good job, little guy!

Scrappy Moments

I have finally finished scrapbooking all the kindergarten and teacher pictures from when I went to Russia with ILP.  (It's been about two years!) Now all I have left are our Scandinavia vacation pictures.  I really like scrapbooking, although, I don't think I am the best at it--in terms of having "the cutest pages."  But, I love looking at other people's scrapbooks and getting ideas

 for my own.  There are so many creative people out there.  I 

think, if you scrapbook, you should post some of your favorite pages on your

 blog so I can see them! :)  

Anna, do you remember this?

Everyone Poops, Part 2

I should've posted this movie clip with the book posting. It compliments the book quite well. Silly baby. 

There was an old lady who lived in a shoe

Well, we sure don't live in a shoe. That's a blessing. So, by request of some people...here are pictures of our apartment, in a not so clean state.

The Bathroom. Enough said.

Richard and the love of his life, in our livingroom. It's a nice livingroom.

Our bedroom...in its natural state.

Our kitchen. It may look kinda messy, but it isn't.  Those counters are clean...minus the papers that are on the side. It's my goal to make that counter always clean, and not to be the collection spot of all our mail, papers, etc. We'll see how that goes.  
And finally, the last of our boxes that are occupying our dining room space.  Not that we really facilitate the dining room space, because we don't have any chairs for our table.  Only boxes--so maybe its good that they are there. As soon as they get smashed, I just take them down to the recycle bin, and get a new one. 

On a different note, I got a library card yesterday.  It was very nice to get out of the apartment again. I always enjoy those moments. The only thing is, I didn't know what book to check out. I want to read "Kite Runner" or "Twilight", but both were all checked out. Does anyone have any suggestions??

Richard also got out of class "early" today.  His teacher gave the students an assignment to follow this map around downtown and observe the different art structures that the teacher highlighted.  Initially, Richard was planning on walking around with some students from his class, but instead of following the map, most of the students made their way straight to the parking garage instead.  Dedicated students, huh? So, Richard called me-and Michael & I made our way to downtown.  We spent about an hour walking around. It was fantastic. I love being downtown!

Seriously, Everybody Does It

We spent part of our Sunday at Brock and Layla's house down in 'da ghetto' watching conference and visiting.  Brock made some yummy pizza for everyone, and Layla treated us with the chips and salsa and chocolate. It couldn't have been better. :)  I took a tour around their house (it didn't take very long) and found a book sitting atop their toilet.  

Don't judge a book by its cover-it is quite the hilarious book.  

Hungry Anyone?

When Michael gets hungry, he'll vigorously starts sucking on his hand.  As his hands flail, they'll touch his cheek and he'll turn his head to catch it.

On a different note, we had a dozen apples in our fridge that we needed to put to use. Richard and I don't eat apples straight up very often, so I wanted to try to find some creative ways to put our apples to use.  I found a couple recipes, and the master chef came out of me. Haha, no, not really.  

The first recipe I tried was Bistro Apple Pizza.  It had a garlic oil base and spinach, topped off with cheeses and apples. I added some pineapple on my side of the pizza as well.  Ironically, we really liked the pizza, except for the apple part of it.  

The second item on the menu for the week was Apple Chicken Curry.  It was a very basic recipe with peppers, onions, curry, and rice.  Overall, it was probably my least favorite of the dinners, but mostly because there were too many apples in it.

The last recipe I tried was the one I was the most excited about: Apple, Potato, and Cheddar Soup.  To start, you saute a potato, some celery, and peeled apples together, and then simmer them in chicken broth for 45 minutes.  Then you are supposed to put this mixture into a blender to puree it.  This part turned out to be a disaster for our poor kitchen.  You see it in the movies all the time, where a character turns on a blender, the lid pops off, and the food goes flying right out of it.  Well, that happened to us. 

Anyway-after the cleanup, I took what we had left and added some heavy cream and the cheese, and walah! A soup!  It was actually pretty good--but needed something else--it was kind of tasteless at times.  Saltine crackers to dip in it would've been good.  

Well, that's the end of my experimenting.  I guess I'll just stick to using the rest of the apples in an apple pie--something I know tastes good.  

To Great-Grandma's House We Go

We made a trip up over the weekend to visit Richard's Grandma Hart/Michael's Great-Grandma. Richard asked her, "So how does it feel to be a great-grandma?" In which she responded, "I don't know. This is the closest I've ever been to being one before!"

We had a nice visit, a yummy dinner, and also took some time to look through some photo albums and see Richard when he was a baby. We had some good laughs at pictures of him as he was growing up. It seems in every family photo, he was making a silly face of some sort.