Our Fridge Is Massive...

So our fridge is huge.  Like, if you come over to our house you'll see that it sticks out into the middle of the kitchen because it's so big there isn't enough room to open the door if it's pushed all the way back to our wall.  It's huge, and Dave resents that, but I love having so much space in there for everything so I still love it.

Fridge and oven pulled out to make room.

We got our oven delivered yesterday and it was perfect!  I loved it and was so excited to see it under the new microwave.  Unfortunately, when the guys went to slide it in its place, it didn't fit.  It was about 1/8th of an inch too wide on the top so we couldn't make it fit between our fridge and countertop.

I just about had a heart-attack, until one of the guys suggested we take the baseboard off of our wall and push the fridge over as far as it would go.  We hoped that'd give us about 1/2 an inch which would be more than enough to make the oven work.

So we set to work pulling the fridge out and making a space large enough for Dave and a few small tools to fit behind it.  He started hammering a flathead screwdriver into the baseboard and it popped right off after a few minutes.

When we pushed the fridge back in it didn't sit quite flush with the wall on the side so I was worried it still wasn't going to work and I was right.  We were still over by about 1/16th of an inch.  Luckily, we were able to simultaneously force the fridge to the right while shoving the oven in it's space just long enough to get it securely between the fridge and counter.  After that it was easy.  We just slid it back far enough that the top of the oven had the space that it needed against the wall and we were golden.

We absolutely love it!!  Our fridge looks way out of place now since we have all stainless steel appliances, but I love it and we didn't have to pay for it, so I have no qualms about keeping it as long as I can.  I can see Dave sabotaging it to get our appliances to all match though--the white mixed with stainless might be too big of a test for his OCD...I'll keep you posted ;)

Notice the fridge dominating our kitchen.

Um...coolest glass top ever, yes?  You can SEE the coils underneath!

Cinnamon Rolls, Stainless Steel, and Sparklers...

So I am now two weeks post-surgery and I'm still doing well.  Unfortunately, I was a little too optimistic about the recovery in that first post most likely because I was living on Percocet (spelled correctly in this post as opposed to the last one).  Once I weaned myself off the heavy pain meds I had some more ups and downs.  It's hard to tell if the pain I sometimes feel now is just from the surgery recovery or if it's the same chronic pain as before.  It's definitely in the same place and feels similar, but they did a lot of lasering and cutting right there, so it could just be the healing that's hurting.  Only time will tell, I guess.  I've been up and moving around now for about a week, so that's been great, I just need to not overdo it because I still get tired so so so quickly.

Other than surgery, though, let me catch up on the happenings at the Rackham household lately.  That first Sunday I stayed home from church because I didn't feel up to it yet, but something crazy happened that night--Dave played a board game with me!  This is a testament to how not-well I was feeling because Dave hates playing pretty much all games except Settlers of Catan--the one game I don't like.  We played Monopoly and he actually enjoyed it, except that I won, which was unfortunate for him, but in general it was a positive experience I think, so maybe I'll get him to play with me again sometime.  (Unlikely, but there's always hope!)

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Once Monday rolled around I couldn't procrastinate my research any further, so I buckled down and spent lots of hours researching all about attachment theory and where it came from and thinking about how I'm going to attack my thesis.

I really enjoy reading all these articles and studies.  I was talking to my older sister the other day and she was talking about how they're hard to comprehend and take forever to read because they're such a different writing style than we've ever read (as English and Humanities majors), but it really has started to come so easily to me.  I guess it's just that practice makes perfect.  I absolutely love being able to read the actual statistics from the study and draw my own conclusions about it rather than having to rely on third party summaries and often inaccurate predictions based on the research.  It makes me totally jazzed to start my program in the fall.  I can't wait!!

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On Wednesday we had Pioneer Day here in Utah.  To be honest, I don't think we all really know what we're celebrating.  It's sort of turned into another 4th of July here.  There are American flags in everyone's yards, fireworks all night long, and everyone gets the day off work to go do the same things we do on the 4th.  It was fun, but I don't really get it--I thought we were celebrating our pioneer heritage and how a lot of our ancestors trekked across the country to the Salt Lake Valley.  How does the American flag fit into that?  (Maybe just because America was the one place we could practice our religion freely?)  Nevertheless, anytime fireworks are involved, I'm game.  We went over to Russ and Annie's apt. and ate the biggest snow cones of our lives, watched Top Gun (I'd never seen it!), and shot off some little fireworks.  It was a blast, and we actually had some pretty good little fireworks for barely spending any money on them :)  We loved the sparklers we got too--they weren't the kind that shoot out, they just kind of crackled and popped, so cute.  

Annie and Russ

Dave and Me

We were shouting spells at each other like the true
nerds we are, and I said "Expelliarmus!" and Dave kind of
let his arm fly backwards and no one understood what
had happened until he explained, "I was being disarmed!".

Here's me cracking up after he explained what
he'd been thinking.  

So all things said, we had a good Pioneer Day.  Dave got to go fishing all day long and caught a few on the Provo River.  Oh, and sorry about the poor photo quality^^.  It was the best our little iPhones could do.  

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So here in our University Mall in Provo they put a new Cinnabon in and the aroma of freshly baked cinnamon rolls assaults you every time you open the door to the mall so it's nearly impossible to resist buying one.  Even though I frequent the mall as little as possible, it's still absolutely ridiculous to spend so much on just one little cinnamon roll. 

So I've been thinking about how I can fix this dilemma I'm in and I started looking all over the internet for a Cinnabon recipe.  My mom has one that always works perfectly for her, and they really taste just like Cinnabon, but I can't ever get them to tun out.  So I decided I'd branch out with a new recipe.  After a while of searching, I felt pretty confident that this one would be great so I set about making them.  

The dough turned out perfectly and they rose exactly like they were supposed to (up, not out), which is rare for me, and I was so excited to start baking them and put them in the oven.  But after about 30 minutes of no cinnamon roll aroma filling our house (which is half the point of making them at home, right?), I felt the oven and I could rest my hand on the grates...it was supposed to be at 400 degrees!  I turned it up even higher to see if that would help and let them go for about 15 more minutes.  When I realized our oven was broken I was distraught.  My perfect cinnamon rolls had been sitting in a lukewarm oven for 45 minutes just drying out and falling.

I called one of our friends from the ward and asked if I could use her oven.  She was very kind and let me bake them at her house, which gave her house the delicious aroma, haha.  So they cooked perfectly in her oven, but like I said, they had sort of shrunk in size because of sitting so long in the warm oven that dried them out.  They were still salvageable, though, so I just smothered them in cream-cheese frosting and they turned out alright.  I just wish our oven had broken on anything other than cinnamon rolls.  They take literally all day to make with all the rising and sitting and rising again and sitting again.  So to be ruined right at the end was just tragic.  

  

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Come Saturday, my mom's sister Kendra and her 4 boys were here in Utah and the oldest (16 I think) wanted to go climbing with Dave so they climbed in the morning, and then we went looking for ovens when they got back.  We took a break in the middle of shopping around for dinner with Kendra and the kids at Texas Roadhouse.  It was delicious and Kendra was treating as a thank you for taking Tanner climbing.  As we left Dave told me, "I've been taking the wrong people climbing!   I need to take people who are going to take us out to dinner afterwards!"  Haha, he was joking, of course, but it was really nice of Kendra to do that for us and it was fun to catch up with them.  

Anyway, back to the ovens, we figured out the problem with our oven--the element had burnt out--so we thought, great, just a $40 fix!  But after googling it for a while, we learned that with our specific oven once it burns out, it burns out basically every year after that.  We need a new oven anyway since this one is impossible (undercooks and overcooks almost everything) and we hate the coil stovetop.  So we looked around yesterday and found a great deal on one that's stainless, has a glass stovetop instead of coils, and is actually a true convection as well!  Needless to say, I am one excited girl right now.  It's supposed to come later today, so I really hope it looks good in our kitchen. 

It looks huge in this picture for some reason, but in real life it doesn't--
and our new oven matches it,
so it'll be better once that's under it instead of this old one.  

While we were out looking, we also found an over-the-range microwave on an amazing sale.  We'd seen it at other stores and online already for about $150 more than we found it for at the Sears Outlet, and then when we went to buy it, they gave us another 20% off!  So it was really an amazing find, and it's a good quality one so it shouldn't break on us!  We installed that late Saturday night and just about killed ourselves.  But it was so worth it.  We have counter space!!  (Something we seriously lacked before with our counter-top microwave)

While buying a new oven and microwave is a pretty steep unexpected expense, Dave's work made a mistake in his paycheck for the last couple of months so we had an extra $500 on this paycheck that we were able to put towards it.  We were very grateful and humbled once again to realize that the Lord is constantly watching over and providing for us.  

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Please excuse the horrible picture.  No make-up
and running back and forth between houses
for the cinnamon rolls will do this to you. 

I forgot to mention the paint!  So we went over to our friends Jordan and Maddy's house (same girl who let me use her oven for cinnamon rolls) and she had painted her living room a beautiful green-blue-teal-ish color and we loved it.  Since paint colors are impossible to pick I decided I was going to just steal her color for my study.  I've been wanting to paint it differently than the rest of the house but haven't had the gumption to start trying new colors.  It's called tranquility and it looks lighter in real life than in this picture, but after the cinnamon roll fiasco, we painted the room really quickly before heading out to Olive Garden for dinner with Dave's grandparents who were in town.  

We didn't paint where the ceiling meets the wall because eventually we'll be putting crown up there so it doesn't matter if it's painted or not yet.  When my mom saw the color she was like, "That's Tiffany Blue!  Just like your wedding...wow, you really like that color, huh?".  And she's right!  I love it :)  And eventually that room will be a nursery, so I figure it's fitting for a baby, too, right?

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Now that I'm writing all this down, no wonder I'm still in a little bit of pain.  I've hardly given my body any time to relax and heal itself!  Hopefully this week will be a little less crazy...

A Day of Phobias...

For those of you who might not know me well enough to be familiar with my quirks and idiosyncrasies, let me start off by informing you that I am a person of extreme reactions.  Not necessarily extreme emotions (though I'm sure I could make a case for that too), but mostly extreme reactions to things that happen to me.  I've already shared my phobia of needles due to my fainting a few years ago, but I've never mentioned how ridiculous I get when it comes to bees and wasps.

Don't be fooled by this happy little cartoon--I was just
too scared to look up images of real bees on google.  

I've never been stung, which I'm sure contributes to the irrational fear, but regardless, I have a really difficult time staying in close proximity to bees or wasps for more than about 10 seconds before having to choose between hyperventilating or running away.  This seriously embarrasses Dave on a weekly basis because it doesn't matter where we are--we could be attending a luncheon with the president at the white house for all I care--when a bee comes near me I release involuntary gasps and mini-screams, start swatting at the air, and jump up and down or run around in circles like I've lost my mind.

None of this really mattered, however, until I planted my own little garden in the front of our house.  We've had this dreadfully dead-looking planter full of dirt in the front since we moved in, and I'm always a little sad when I pull up to our house with absolutely no color except the green of the grass.  But this weekend my mom helped me plant some annuals just to have something in there until the snow starts to come again.  We picked some pretty shades of pinks and purples and I couldn't tell you the first thing about the kinds of flowers we chose except that the salvia pots were covered in bees when we bought them.

The dreaded salvia.

Now, I noticed this at the nursery and made a snarky comment about not really loving that about them, but the tall purple stalks of flowers seemed so perfect for a border in the back of the planter that I couldn't resist.  (Plus my grandma told me they'd be hard for me to kill, and let's be honest, I needed resilient plants.)

As we were planting the flowers, all was well, and actually for the first few hours all was well, but when I went out to water the plants that first evening, they were covered in bees!!  Of course, when I say covered I mean there were probably about 5 or 6 bees total in the garden.  But still...

I decided I would just be brave and hold the hose a safe, good distance above the garden so as not to get my hands close to the bees at all, and it worked pretty well.  At least it worked until Dave went out later in the evening, came back, and asked with a tone of mild accusation mixed with curiosity, "Um, why is there dirt all over the sidewalk around the planter out front...?"  I very casually walked outside with him acting mildly surprised, but upon seeing how much dirt had splashed onto the sidewalk realized that if I continued to water so high, it would do that every time and the beauty of the flowers would be overshadowed by the dirty/watery/muddy sidewalk.

I resolved to do better today, and after facing a pre-op appt. by myself complete with blood-drawing and absolutely no sign of fainting, I thought I could be brave enough to water the plants at a close distance today.  Unfortunately, my extreme reactions kicked in and I just couldn't do it. I ended up splashing probably more dirt and water onto the sidewalk than I did the first time because I freaked myself out by being so close to the bees!

I'm sort of stuck now.  I don't want my phobia to be the death of my beautiful new garden, but I'm so ridiculously terrified of these bees, what am I supposed to do?  Maybe I should invest in a beekeeper's outfit for when I need to water my flowers?

Thanks for the help Mom!!

 All things said:  I still absolutely love having flowers to come home to, and I have to admit that sometimes I just walk outside so I can look at them.  It really makes this house feel more like a home :)  Aren't they beautiful?

We are such a fan of fans...

So anyone who lives in the Provo area knows it's been ridiculously hot this week.  We have a few ceiling fans in our kitchen and family room and they've been lifesavers, but our own room is sweltering by the end of the day.  We want to cut down on our A/C bill, so we decided to put in another ceiling fan.

After driving to the Lowe's in Sandy (the only one that had the model that matches our other fans) and realizing our fan was half off, we were excited about how cheap we'd be able to install it!  I had helped my dad put a fan in his cabin once, and Dave understood the concept, so we thought it'd be no problem.

It actually was no problem, except that some of the screws didn't line up perfectly so it took a lot longer than it should have (doesn't it always?).  Dave was frustrated, but I was just happy to have a fan!  It looks great and matches the dark wood of our furniture and it's super powerful.  We're so excited!  We just have to watch our heads....(we're not used to that).

Before.  conveniently there was already a sturdy metal
junction box from our existing light fixture
so we didn't need to do too much up in the attic.

Our bed served as a convenient and somewhat unstable table.

We love our Harbor Breeze fans!

The blades before they were attached (this was my job, so proud).

It's up and not falling down!

We really love it in there now.  Just wish we had a
better light switch for it.  As it is, we use the pull strings
like they're the only way to control it, haha. Baby steps, right?  

Dave's 26th...

May 31st is Dave's Birthday, but we were going camping Friday night, so we just did presents at home right before we left for the canyon.  I was shocked to realize that we actually had two different kinds of wrapping paper in our house and some ribbons to make them look pretty.  Happy day :)

I'm sorry, I just can't seem to figure out my camera yet.  They're all just a little blurry.  Working on it.

Meat thermometer for the grill!

I thought the tulle ribbon was very apropos for the gift inside.
(sarcasm)

New grill plates!  Thanks Mom and Dad Penrod!

I just love this wrapping paper :)

He was not surprised at all...totally guessed these
shoes he's been wanting forever.

Isn't it beautiful?

I think so!

Life Update for April...

I'm sorry I haven't blogged in like 2 months!  A lot has happened, and we had family staying with us for almost the entire month of April, so we're going to attribute my blogging failure to that :).  So I last left off with my rant about Shakespeare, and it turns out that that ended up being my Senior Thesis.  Obviously it was better and more fully fleshed out.  I actually got an A on it (miracle) and my professor wants me to present it at a few conferences!  I'm stoked about it :).

Dave and I both had finals in April while his dad, mom, and sister stayed with us to see me graduate.  They were all already here for his sister's graduation from Idaho the previous week, and just decided to stay another week for mine!  They were so incredibly helpful the whole time they were here.  Thanks to them we now have a light in our pantry, all of our outlets are tight and actually hold plugs (yay!!!), our living room is all painted, our hallway including door frames is fully painted, all of the ceilings are painted except in the bedrooms, and our baseboards and crown are puttied, caulked, and painted!  It was amazing that while Dave and I were at school and work studying for finals, his family was just slaving away helping us work on our house.

Old carpet...you can't see the duct tape holding the carpet together, but it's there, believe me.  

We also finally got new carpet in our family room and I am absolutely in love with it...The carpet we have in the house right now is pretty horrific.  It's got stains all over it and is basically ripping up where it meets the tile.  You could kind of compare how it feels to walking on the plastic-y side of velcro.  It's pretty not soft on your feet.  Unfortunately, carpet's expensive so we could only swing new carpet in one room, so we chose the family room.  Now I feel like I'm walking on clouds--clean clouds!!  It's been an amazing addition to the room.  That coupled with our new curtains actually makes our house feel like a home.

This was taken using the iPhone's panoramic feature.  The carpet obviously looks better vacuumed, but I took this right after it was put in.

So that was April...next came graduation!!!

Little House on the Provo Lake...

By the time my parents arrived on Monday morning, we had successfully finished our bathroom tile makeover and we were in love with it.  There was no grout as the mortar had to dry still.  The few tiles at the end that we had to cut with a little tile cutter Dave's dad let us borrow were full of chips, but at least the whole floor was covered. :)  And grout hides everything, right?

Turns out it actually does...lucky us :)

My family was quite impressed and surprised by our new fancy tile (fancy meaning...from Lowe's and eyeballed to make sure we had straight lines when we laid it...), and we were stoked by their christmas present to us, new vanities!!  Our old vanities were extremely well worn...and to be frank...disgusting.  I think my dad called it "Schmutzy"?  Something like that...something he wouldn't want to live with.

In addition to the bathroom changes, we also painted the family room and kitchen walls and put crown molding up.  My dad is quite the handyman, so he helped teach Dave and I how to do the crown ourselves so we can finish in the rest of the house, and my sisters, Jim, my mom, and I worked on painting the main rooms and the ceilings.  Now we have soothing cool beige eggshell (sp?) walls, and white flat ceilings and we are in love with it.  The crown is my favorite though, besides our bathroom.  It just makes everything look so nice.  I can't wait until we can officially finish everything so there are no traces of half-caulked or half-painted walls left.

I couldn't believe how selflessly my family gave up their Christmas Breaks to help us with our house.  Emma and Corinne died a few days in, but before they quit, they helped a ton!  Mom and Dad never quit, which I don't understand since Mom was sick at the time.  I was just overwhelmed with gratitude for my family and their help.   We also celebrated a second Christmas with my family this week one night which was a blast.  Thanks Mom and Dad and Christi for hosting!

So everyone left after a fun night of Noodles and Co. and Australia (a super long, and super great movie we all love).  We were sad to see them go, but stressed about getting our house back to functionality before the semester started.  We spent the weekend recovering with sleep from the week of hard labor and started Monday classes refreshed and excited (not really...).

Thanks everyone for your help with the house!  It looks beautiful!  HOpefully when I get out of class I can put pictures up.  (Yes, already blogging during the second day of class...)  I'm a senior, cut me some slack...

Oh...and...Last night I found out I am getting an INTERVIEW on February 4th with BYU's Marriage and Family Therapy Master's Program!!!!!  I'm so relieved and excited!  Pray for me and wish me luck!

This is real life...

I know meta-blogs aren't super interesting to read...but I just needed to write about my London experiences a little bit before I could move on to today's reality.  So now I am determined to keep up with our lives on here as best I can.  I don't promise to be funny, witty, or clever, (yes, those are all pretty much synonymous, I know) but people tell me we'll look back on these days and wonder what happened with our time, so I want to have a record of it.

The problem with trying to record reality is that you have to pick a starting point...Do I start from the day we got married?  The honeymoon?  Start of school?  Moving into the house?  Last month? Last week?  Yesterday?  There's so much.  I just don't know what to do.

I think I'll opt out of the honeymoon...We were in Hawaii, it was incredible?  A generous gift from my parents.  Enough said?

Start of School?  What is there to say...We didn't have a place to live so our first night back in provo was spent in a hotel and I almost slept through the first day of classes I was so tired from driving from California.  But now school is amazing.  Some of the best classes I've ever taken at BYU.  And Dave is struggling to survive with his PhD program and full-time MTC working.  It's taken some time, but we finally figured out that we actually have to do homework at home...We can't just come home and eat dinner and watch TV or work on the house all night.  So now life is better and much more under control.

Our House :)  Can I just say we love our house?  Dave picked it and I didn't even get to see it until after we were married.  He did so great.  It's little and right by the Utah Lake.  We'll probably be there through Dave's whole PhD program.  We are more than excited to paint it as it is seriously lacking that "sparkling clean" feeling.  And we spent the first month of our marriage mostly in furniture stores of furniture runs checking KSL couches and tables out.  At this point, we are done with the inflatable mattress, successfully have normal people furniture, and we love all of it :)

I don't remember the first month to be honest...I think it was traumatizing to be thrown into a real neighborhood with kids and adults and no one in between.  But we have come to really love our ward.  We have yet to make good relationships with our neighbors, but if Halloween spirit and Christmas Lights are any indication of how great our street is, I have high hopes for the future :)

Keep in mind these went up November 1st...

Last week...Let's see...Dave got a concussion (doing laundry of all things), we had a late night ER visit to make sure his head was not bleeding.  This happened only 7 days after he surgically had his deviated septum fixed, of course...No big deal.  I have just been loving my cooking class so whenever I have extra time I am cooking, experimenting, or baking.  My top ones last week were cinnamon rolls and wheat bread with honey butter--Which, I'm proud to say, my family said was delicious.  (I didn't eat more than two bites...I'm not a huge fan of wheat bread...baby steps?)

I am loving school and turned in an ORCA grant last week.  Working with my professors on finishing my application for BYU's Marriage Family Therapy program.  Really despising my research I embarked on this semester.  I think I'm just spoiled with my English professors.  I always feel so mind-blown when I leave class...This social science research and professor is slightly lack-luster comparatively.

Um...wow, I fail at short blogs.  I just can't do it, I'm sorry!  But now I feel mostly caught up, so they should be shorter from here on out.  :)