Jared's Got Real Skills

Sorry about writing so many posts right in a row, but I wanted to let our family members (who don't have facebook) know about a cool accomplishment of Jared's. We just found out that a couple of his projects have been submitted to get recognized in the "new talent annual" of the best graphic design magazine in the country called Graphis. It's also one of the top design magazines in the world, so the fact that some of his projects have been submitted is a pretty big deal. I'm not sure when we will find out if they actually get accepted into the magazine, but if they do get accepted, it will be a HUGE deal! Here are a couple of links so you can see the projects that got submitted.

http://www.graphis.com/cfe/online/newtalentannual2012/?id=6948

http://www.graphis.com/cfe/online/newtalentannual2012/?id=6931

A few of Jared's classmates also had their projects submitted as well and it just goes to show how prestigious BYU's graphic design program is, literally one of the best in the country. I'm really proud of Jared for all the hard work that he put into his schooling and that he was able to progress so much in his program. I think it's been paying off pretty well with his new job too. Right now he's basically in charge of a whole entire rebrand project for a company, which is pretty cool considering he's only been working there for 6 weeks or so. Good job babe!  

I've Got Skills!

I've tried to make dinner rolls several times the past few months and none of the attempts have turn out all that great. I blame it on the fact that our apartment is too freezing cold and prevents the dough from rising properly (our thermostat read a whopping 60 degrees when I woke up this morning and when I came home from campus!). . . but tonight, yeast has never been so nice to me, and I made the most perfect batch of delicious, mouth watering rolls in the whole world, quite possibly the best I've ever eaten! (besides Jared's mom or his Grandma's rolls, nobody can touch those babies, sorry people) I don't usually scream with pleasure after eating stuff that I've made myself, but after tasting these I yelled, "Holy crap these are GOOD!!" Jared thinks I'm crazy, but I am dang proud of myself, I even took a picture! Mom and Carolyn, you'd better be impressed, because who knows if I'll ever be so lucky again :)

Here's the link to the roll recipe if you want it. . . seriously, Mel's Kitchen Cafe is the bomb.com, her recipes have never failed me. I made this awesome clam chowder from the blog as well to go along with the rolls and it was pretty freakin delicious too!

http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2007/12/french-bread-rolls.html

http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2009/10/my-favorite-boston-clam-chowder.html

The Copy Machine Hates Me

I got in a fight with the department copy machine today, and I lost. . . failed miserably. So I got to school early this morning because I needed to print some things off for my class. Five minutes before class started I realized that I had forgotten to print off a transparency with a couple of definitions on it. I ran down to the copy room and spent a couple minutes trying to find a dang transparency to make the copy on and I couldn't find one! Finally I found a box of more flimsy transparencies  (compared to what we usually have) so I grabbed one, shoved it in a tray and ran the copy. Two seconds later the stupid thing jams and I start smelling burnt plastic. . . crap! I opened the thing up but I couldn't see the transparency in there, and not because it's transparent people, I really just couldn't find it! Well I didn't have time to hang around to fix the problem, so I let the department secretary know there was a jam in that part of the copy machine, searched furiously for a regular transparency until I found one, made the copy using a different tray and ran off to class. After my class ended (two hours later mind you) I went back down to the copy room to assess the damage and it still smelled like burnt plastic, bad news. The secretary had tried to pull out the jammed transparency but wasn't able to find it either, so they had to call in some pros to fix the dang thing. I went back to my office to work on my thesis and a couple hours later the secretary swung by to show me the bill. . .  500 dollars later and the thing was fixed!!! Oh my gosh I totally freaked out! The secretary actually thought it was pretty funny because somehow the department has a deal with the service company where the department doesn't have to pay for the service so she was just giving me a hard time because it was really kind of funny, who seriously burns up the copy machine?! Moral of the story? I'm never using a flimsy transparency ever again, piece of junk!

After that drama, I spent the rest of the day in class and then grading exams. I always appreciated it when teachers got my tests graded and handed back quickly so I've been trying to get my students' tests graded fast this semester so I busted them out all in one sitting. But now I'm exhausted and am going to bed. . . peace out

Hair Cut

Tonight is a milestone in our marriage. . . I successfully cut Jared's hair for the first time ever, and it actually looks pretty good! We were both a little nervous that he might have to buzz it all off if I butched it bad, but luckily it turned out okay!

I think he's pretty cute . . . just sayin :)

Chili, Date Night and other Randomness

A couple of weeks ago I was at church and they sent around a sign up sheet to bring food to a relief society activity. Well I, being the unsuspecting and naive young girl that I am, had no idea that in family wards, they are hardcore about their relief society food.  I was totally willing to make a dish and take it, ya know, like rolls, beans or some other easy side dish, so when the sign up sheet came around I put my name on it. Then I watch as the girl next to me lift up the sheet I had just put my name as she signed her name on the "Side Dish" list. How am I supposed to know that family ward relief societies are much more organized than student ward relief societies, not only do they pass out sign up sheets. . . but they pass out individual sign up sheets for A) Main Dish B) Salads C) Side Dishes and D) Desserts and that I am supposed to lift up the front sheet marked "Main Dish" in order to sign up for something less important?! I swear they do this on purpose, put the main dish list on the front page to catch unsuspecting people like me off guard. I probably could have grabbed it back from the girl and erased my name from the main dish list, but then I would have looked like an idiot for not having read the dang sheet more closely! So I was stuck with the task of having to make a main dish. Now this had to be good people, this was my first family ward RS activity and being new in the ward, if I made something crappy, all the old ladies would probably label me as "that sweet thing who attempted to make a main dish. . . " This is a little traumatizing!

So I decided to make some Chili. When we first got married my sister gave me this really good recipe for Chili that I've made quite a bit the past couple of years, so I thought it would be the easiest, fool proof thing to do in this situation. I figured I'd make quite a bit because other people were smart enough to figure out that they needed to sign up on the "side dish" sheet if they wanted to actually make a side dish, so there weren't too many of us who had signed up for the main dish. The night before the activity I made 1.5 batches of the stuff, which is quite a bit for this recipe. The next day rolls around and this lady calls me up to remind me to bring a main dish. I made the mistake of asking her how many people to plan for, she says "Well, there were only a few people who signed up for the main dish and you were the only one who didn't have a question mark by their name. . . so plan for 24." Oh boy, it took all my power to restrain from yelling, "What the crap woman, you make a main dish to serve 24!!" I held my tongue and then proceeded to text Jared about the crazy RS lady who wants me to make chili for 24 people! So I ran home, got more ingredients for the chili and made another whole batch of the stuff. The whole time I was thinking, "First of all, we'll be lucky enough to get 24 people to this activity and second of all, these ladies probably eat like birds so we're probably going to have chili coming out of our ears after this!!" but I was faithful in my sign up and I made more chili. Haha it would have been pure comedy for you to watch me try and lug all that chili into the church building, but I did it. I was right on all counts though. Less than 24 people showed up and the ladies ate like birds. . . so I came home with a butt-load of chili. I'm never signing up to take food to a RS activity ever again!  But this randomly brings us to the awesome date night we had with our friends Maddi and Alex.

Maddi let me know that her and Alex got tickets to go see the play Sleepy Hollow and they wanted us to go with them. We decided that sounded like fun, so we got tickets as well. A few days later I had the chili fiasco, so I called Maddi up and asked her if they wanted to come over before the show to have chili with us because we had A TON leftover. They agreed so we made a pretty good dent in the leftovers before going over to the show. It was cool because the play was at an outdoor amphitheater in Provo. I had no idea that this amphitheater existed but it's pretty sweet, it's a replica of a castle, so it worked out well for the play. I had never seen Sleepy Hollow before, I was somewhat familiar with the story, at least the Headless Horseman part, but this particular version seemed more like a love story to me than the scary story I was expecting. It was still good though. . . other than the part where I we sat on hard rocks (this is a "castle" amphitheater mind you) and I couldn't feel my butt by the end of it. . . that wasn't too fun :)  After the play we went back to Maddi and Alex's apartment for hot chocolate and to watch the new X-Men. That movie is really good, we highly recommend seeing it! I stole this picture of all four of us from Maddi's blog.

Check out the kid in the skeleton 

shirt behind us. . . baha

I found some random pictures and videos on my camera when I went to pull some pics off of it. We'll start with the pics. Jared and I watched our nephew Drake every once in a while when my sister and her husband were living in Orem this past year. One night he decided that he wanted to play hide and seek. So he made Jared "hide" with him while I tried to "find" them. His favorite places of choice 1. On the other side of the bed, 2. Underneath the coffee table (totally hilarious to watch Jared try to "hide" underneath the coffee table haha!) and 3. Underneath the pillows on our bed. Here was the usual dialouge as I went to "find" them.

Stacie: Walking around the kitchen "I wonder where Biggie went. . ."

Drake: "I'm right here!!"

Stacie: Looking underneath over by the bed "Is he under the bed??"

Drake: "NO!"

Stacie: Walking around to the far side of the bed "Is he on this side of the bed??"

Drake: "NO!"

Stacie: Swinging the bedroom door "Is he behind the door??"

Drake: "NO!"

Stacie: Jumping on the bed and smashing him with the pillows "He's under the pillows!!"

Drake: Screaming at the top of his lungs, then "Do it again!"

And the process would repeat several times until Jared and I told him we were too tired to play hide and seek anymore (ha hoping this excuse will work with our own kids, likely it won't, but we can always hope right?!). One day when my parents were in town we were all over at our apt. and Drake wanted to play hide and seek, so him and Jared went and hid under the pillows in our room. Haha, we snapped a few pictures and Whit recorded Grammy (my mom) finding him, so funny!

His little feet sticking out, too priceless!

Hiding with Bah

Drake keeps telling Grammy to "get away!" in this video :) maybe it's the cackle that scares him?? Haha love you mom!

The other videos I found on my camera were from a few months ago when our niece Halle and little nephew Cole came and had a sleep over at our apartment when Jared's parents were in town. Only two main reasons why Halle and Cole wanted to sleep over, first because Grandma and Grandpa were staying at our apartment too and second. . . they wanted to play our Wii  (Jared and I probably came in at a close third haha) The kids love playing Mario Kart and it's pretty entertaining to watch them! They would start out on either side of the TV and by the end of the race Cole was usually on the other side of the TV and/or two inches away from the screen, pretty hilarious!

Jared and I have some pretty dang cute nieces and nephews, we love hanging out with them!

Another STG Weekend

Jared and I went down to STG this past weekend to hang out with my family for conference. We had a really fun time and I actually took pictures and videos, so I'm steppin up my game with this post! We couldn't leave Provo till about 7 pm on Friday night because Jared doesn't usually get back from work till then, but we packed up the car and cruised down the I-15 in the Subi. The minute we walked in the door we were greeted by Biggie (my sister's little boy Drake) who wanted to fight Bah (Jared) with his foam sword. So funny!

The next day Jared got up early to go on a bike ride. When he got back from his ride, Drake decided that he wanted to go bike riding with Bah too so we went out in the driveway for some biking. Haha Drake is wearing "unders" now that he's been potty training, and he had no problem wearing his Dash unders to go biking with Bah.

Here's a video from the sword fight and bike riding...

 

We watched the morning session of conference and then we decided that we would go over to this trampoline jump warehouse place in STG with Whit, Drake and my little brother Wess (aka Snipes, ya know Wesley Snipes, well Whit starting calling our brother Snipes a few years ago and the nickname stuck). Whit had taken Drake to this tramp place before and I guess he likes playing there. It was also really fun for us adults and we had a good laugh trying to do tricks on the tramps and doing our best "ugly poses." Jared definitely wins the contest for ugliest pose (see video below), we all got a good laugh from his rendition of a salmon trying to swing upstream haha! Snipes move was "the pencil" and Whit did a pretty sweet running man!

Biggie thought it was pretty cool to "bum it"
That's Snipes in the background doing backflips... nbd

 Trying to climb up the slide

Don't know what was going on here, but 

I still thought it was a pretty cool pic!

Later that night when the boys were at Priesthood, I went and hung out with one of my best friends Nikki who just had the cutest little baby girl a few weeks ago. It was fun to catch up with Niks and to hold her cute little girl! After we all got home we decided to make a fire, which consisted of turning on the gas fire-pit that my parents have on the back deck haha, much better than getting all smokey and gross! Drake loves to "make fire" and cook. . . correction, burn. . . marshmallows so Jared and I humored him until we had burned through most of the bag of mallows. 

Doesn't look like there is a flame, but there totally was!

I guess the flash on cameras does some trippy stuff or somethin

I love this little grin, so cute

Progression of the Burn. . . 

(These were taken with Jared's phone, so it's got a weird haze goin on!)

Shove the mallow in the flame

 After mallow catches fire, fling stick high into air

Yell at Bah to "BLOW IT!"

Replace charred mallow with a fresh one and start cycle over!

Sunday consisted of conference watching and pigging out on chips and homemade salsa, we loved it! Now it's back to the real world, kind of a bummer but it was fun to get away for a couple of days. 

Today I graded the first exam that my students took this semester. Overall it was less painful than I had expected, only took me about 4 hours instead of the 6-7 hours I was planning for. I'm still loving my class and being able to teach although half the time I leave class with a whole list of things I wish I would have done differently, but I figure that's just how it will be for the first few years of teaching in general so I can't worry about it too much!