The scene in our house right now

New ceiling and other updates

School

I finished lecture last week on July 17th. I seriously studied for this one class more than I think I have my entire college life. The entire class was hanging by a thread and I was in the middle C's which made me very anxious. I'm usually in the high B's or low A's. I was very worried about failing out of the nursing program all together. But I didn't! After endless hours of studying, eating junk or not eating at all, getting very little sleep, and attempting to sound coherent while talking I am proud to say that I earned a B in my lecture class!!! Most of my peers passed, but we had three people fail out of the program. Therefore that brings us down to 36/40. We have one other person fail out first semester. Nursing school is not an easy task, but so worth it! I am now doing clinical work at a local hospital three days of the week with the professor that is known to make people cry. We finish clinicals on Aug 14th. I've made through week one. Clinicals may seem easy but the massive amounts of paperwork make it not easy. This professor also has a nice "drill sargent/nazi" feel to her and she grills you while giving medication and asks you other questions about patient care. You better know your stuff or you'll get a lecture or a "You better go look it up now." She gave me a "good job" when she grilled me on my meds, so thank goodness I seem to be on her good side.... for now.

After lecture was over Tyler and I were invited to have dinner and go to the pool of one of my study buddies. She has a cute house in Dallas and such a nice backyard. We decided to go and had fun. Her parents were there and so was the other study buddy. I was asked to bring potato salad and a dessert. I had never made potato salad before and I didn't want to buy it from the store already made. I'm all for the homemade stuff. I found a recipe and went to town. Everyone really enjoyed and I was told to add it to my recipe box. For dessert I made up a strawberry shortcake thing that was delicious!

Here are some pictures:



The potato salad recipe can be found here.






The Strawberry dessert I layered angel food cake, strawberry jello, a mix of cool whip, vanilla pudding and milk (the white stuff), and strawberries. I just layered it as a trifle.

New Calling for Thais

I was called and set apart as a temple worker! I am super duper excited. They ask you to do one shift a week and I was able to choose when. I decided to do Tuesday evenings since that is the only day I am 100% I won't be in class or clinicals. I do have classes in the morning, but the temple is 6 minutes away from my school.

I start on Aug 19th. The Dallas temple is currently closed for cleaning and I didn't want to mess their schedule up because of my current clinical schedule. They are aware that I'm in school and that in January I may have to switch to a different shift, but the temple president was very sweet, he said he understands it because his wife is a retired NA (Nurse Anesthetist) so he knows all about the 12 hour shifts. I should be getting released from my nursery calling this Sunday. Several people have moved from our ward so they've been putting it off until they could reorganize presidencies and whatnot. I can't wait to be released from nursery. It's been an ok calling, but I have come home several times and told Tyler that there was no way we'd ever have kids because the nursery kids were soooo bad. It's funny though because if any of them are sad they always come to me. I was also able to get a new girl to stay in nursery without screaming the whole 2 hours. :-D I'm not sure if I'll get a "Sunday calling" but I guess that we'll see in the next few weeks.

The Ceiling Saga

Our ceiling is finally fixed! As of today. It has been over a week and it's taken forever! All the new sheet rock, the new plaster, the mending, the texturing, the painting. Our house has been in shambles. There's dust all over and it's been driving me crazy! The ceiling fell down because the pan that catches the water from the evaporator coil in the attic overflowed and leaked into the ceiling all day long while I was gone studying for my final. There are two pipes that are supposed to drain it away from the ceiling and both of them were clogged. So the pan overflowed and we got a hole in our ceiling. The AC guy is covering it. To top things off our AC has been tripping our circuit breaker. I have gotten home twice with it being 90 degrees in the house and the AC not functioning. Needless to say the AC guy is not going to replace our circuit breaker panel. I don't think I ever mentioned that our AC unit was completely replaced in early June (before I started blogging) we got several different quotes and ended up with a great deal and warranty on parts and labor for 10 years. Which has already come in handy! But the ceiling is now done and Eddie (sheet rock guy) is packing up. Here are some pictures of the process:

Tyler helping Eddie cut the damp sheet rock

The perfectly square hole

Tyler helping Eddie put the new sheet rock up

Eddie dilling the sheet rock into place


The patched up, plastered up ceiling. We had this look going for one whole week!


The final product!

The paint is not dry yet, but it does look nice. I'm glad this is over and done with and now the house can be clean again!

Other Randoms

April is in heat! Unexpected heat. She was an early bloomer. She started at 6 mos and 1 week. They usually don't start until 9 months. Our bishop is our vet and he was surprised and felt bad because I've been asking him for placed to get her spayed at. We had to put her in a puppy diaper. She's finally getting over the messy part. But holy molly.. that was a pain. I think I changed our sheets almost everyday, along with wiping the floor, and changing shirts and pants.

Here she is in her little diapers. Can you tell how much she loved them? :)


I also gave Oliver a haircut. The groomers I used to take him to moved so I haven't found one yet that I like the price. I think it turned out ok, not as good as when he goes to the groomer, but hey I saved us $50. Here is the before:

And the after:

On a last note. I finally decided to put some curtains up in our kitchen! When we moved into our house (2 yrs ago) the previous owners had some white curtains that were filthy so I took them down and never replaced them. I found some at Target that I liked yesterday and got them. We haven't used our breakfast nook to eat because there's always sun in your face! Now we can use it again!

Before:

Old picture with Fall decorations up. This chandelier is now in our formal dining room.

After! Now I just need to figure out what to add to the top shelves.

I think this about covers it all that's been going on! Hope everyone is doing well!

New post coming soon! I promise!

We've been super busy with end of semester, the hole in the ceiling, and I'm at the hospital for 3 12hr shifts a week and have a ton of paperwork to do the rest of the time. Tyler has been busy with work and young men and attempting to calm me down after clinicals. :)

Cursed house

Just when you think that things are looking up.

I got home and our ceiling looked like this:

Then this:

While Tyler was in the attic looking at what was going on this happened:

Then one part fell down

And this is the mess we have to clean up!

Just what I needed before my final tomorrow morning!!! Full story tomorrow after I come back from the hospital from the nervous breakdown I will be having!!!

Raise time

Tyler got a 5% raise at work yesterday. He has been at his new job for 6 months now. He had his review and his boss said that when they hired him on they had very high expectations for him and that he had exceeded all of their expectations. He said that they don't usually give raises in the middle of the year, but they are very happy with him and want to keep him happy. And of course... money talks. His boss has plans for him and told him he will be very successful at their company as he gains more experience. They want to eventually have him be an architect manager type of person. And Tyler is excited for that to happen. He's only been out of college for 2 1/2 years and he's progressing fast in his career. My guess is that he'll get promoted in December and I'm hoping for a hefty Christmas bonus. I told Tyler he needs to tell his boss that in order to keep Tyler happy, he needs to keep the wife happy. Happy wives makes for happy employees. :-D

At Tyler's old company I would e-mail his boss and he and I had a good relationship. He was always teasing me and enjoyed my random e-mails. He told Tyler when he left that he was going to miss my e-mails and thought it was great that I e-mailed him. He's apparently never had an employees wife e-mail him. Maybe I need to get going on his new boss.

In an attempt to congratulate Tyler I ordered him an edible arrangement. I first tried the golf bowl but they were out. I was in class when I ordered it and couldn't return their calls, so they just chose the baseball one without my permission which bugged me, because if anybody knows Tyler then you know he loves tennis and they had a tennis bowl available. I e-mailed customer service and I'm hoping for a refund or some free fruit. :) I had it sent to his work and he liked it but wanted to hide. He said that he doesn't like the attention, so I guess next time I try to do something nice I must not send it to his work. I tried.

He has worked hard and done very well and I'm proud of him. So there you go. Congratulations honey on your raise!

Unsung Lullaby

Despite my better judgment that I needed to be studying for the last hour I took the time to finish Josi Kilpack's book. I have a habit that I must read before sleeping in bed. I cannot fall asleep without reading at least a sentence. Tyler has woken up several times to my lamp on and me sleeping, but still holding a book open in my hands. Yes... sometimes I sleep all night long holding the book open. I first read Kilpack's book "To Have Or To Hold" last year. I enjoyed it tremendously and this year acquired "Unsung Lullaby".

You can read the description of the book and the first chapter on her website here.
You can also read Josi's blogspot here.

I just loved this book. I feel like she did such a good job at captivating you into the feelings that women, men and couples go through as they are faced with infertility problems. It felt human and I was grateful that even if it is an LDS fiction, she made the gospel real and the struggles of life, repentance, forgiveness alive. I would highly recommend both of her books I've read to anyone. Some reviewers have said that it was predictable, but even though you hoped for a certain ending I felt like I could never be sure that it would really happen until the very end of the book. I hope some of you will get a chance to read her work and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Now really... back to studying! Five days until my final and two days until test 3. Eek!!!

Don't buy it!

Tyler went to a Church Welfare Training this morning due to his new calling and they watched a video that he thought was pretty funny. I wanted to share it with you guys.

Just click on the link below:

SNL: Don't buy stuff you can't afford

Let us entertain you!

Last Sunday Tyler and I had his new 2nd counselor over for dinner along with his wife. We love to have people over our house for dinner and games. Like I mentioned before they're new to the ward and expecting their first baby. I believe we outdid ourselves this time around. I've learned throughout the years that in order to be a good hostess all I need to do is some good, detailed planning and some prep ahead work. This time we chose to make my famous homemade lasagna (the Brazilian version). The lasagna is layered with lasagna noodle, red meat sauce, four cheese white sauce, ham, mozzarella cheese, and parmesan cheese. It really is delicious. Not too sound too prideful but last Sunday's was by far my best batch.




We started the night with some conversation and appetizers. We had cheese cubes (mozzarella and colby jack), green olives, black olives, 7 layer dip, bread and olive oil dippings. We got to use our new bowl that we made for our anniversary and I have to say that it is such a cute dish and perfect for so many things. I'm glad we picked that one.





We played "Celestial companions game" while the lasagna baked. It's a fun game and a good one to get to know people. We got our favorite games out, but only ended up playing that one.

After games we had dinner. We had lasagna, ceasar salad, a fruit salad (red grapes, watermelon, oranges, raspberries, and strawberries), and of course bread. We talked quite a bit around the table after dinner and then we had dessert. I made a dessert called Striped delight. Even though we were all super full by now. Everyone seemed to enjoy all of our food. I really enjoy entertaining over at our house and making things pretty in platters. We spent quite a bit of time cooking that day, but it was great. It was nice to get to know Matt and Vernice better and befriend them. I hope we can it again soon after this semester ends!

Thank you Uncle Sam!

Tyler and I have finally received our stimulus check from the government. We were one of the last group of people to get it.
While we can think of lots of things we'd like to do with our $1,200 such as going to San Antonio on vacation, buying a 50" LCD TV, buying an entertainment center, or going on a cruise. We've decided to be duds and stick in savings. It'll probably end up going towards nursing school tuition for Fall.

Tyler is also due for a raise at work this month. July has been a good money month! We've been doing very well in the last two years. We have a budget in place and are able to save a bit each month. We're working on paying off the cars and debt. We're happy to say that we have never had to take a school loan out and it'll be nice to graduate knowing that. Finances are tricky, but we're doing really good at them and the stimulus check just made life a little easier!

A glimpse into my life

Things you do when you're a nursing student

Tyler is just glad it's not him that I'm poking with a needle!

Fourth of July

Tyler and I spent the fourth by ourselves for the first time. Since I'm in the activities committee we went in the morning to the annual ward breakfast on independence day. This one is our least favorite activity throughout the year because a lot of people from the ward are gone, it's hot, and more geared towards children. We had to go though. Tyler helped with the flag ceremony and we got to know his new counselor better. They're a new couple that recently moved into our ward, they're exactly our same ages and she's expecting their first baby. I helped clean up and we came home. We took a much needed 2 hour nap that was heavenly.

We cleaned up a little, and went to Mastergrill for dinner. We totally splurged on this meal, but it was so worth it. The last time we went was last year while Tyler's dad was visiting. We walked around the mall for a little while. It's an open air mall like the gateway in SLC and they were having lots of fourth stuff going on. We left and came home to let our puppies out, and decided to go watch fireworks at the lake. We were debating on going to a movie because of all the crowds, but didn't pass on some fireworks.

We went to The Harbor by our house. It's such a cute place. They built an outdoor mall around the lake and they have a marina there so that people with boats can park their boats there and come hang out or get some dinner. They also built a new Hilton hotel there and some luxury townhomes. We had a hard time finding parking spots and parked far, but it turned out to be a good thing in the end!! The fireworks weren't as good as we were expecting because we were further away from them than we thought we would be. But we still had fun. It was nice to spend all day together and not have to worry about much of anything.

Here are some pictures for your enjoyment!

America!

Happy Fourth of July!!