So once a month at church, I volunteer to help out in one of the nursery rooms. Normally, I'm in with the 12-15 month old kids, but they moved me to a 2-year old room because they were lacking adults in that room. So, at one point, this little boy comes over to me and tries to put something really small into my hand. It was not a toy. I couldn't figure out what it was for a moment, as it was so small and kids that age don't quite have the finger dexterity to easily transfer this size of item. I thought it was something he had found on the floor, like a piece of cheerio, etc. But it wasn't that either.
It was a booger, which I'm assuming came straight out of his nose. :) I'm not kidding. Never an uneventful moment when you're talking about 2 year olds. :)
Just thought I would pass along this funny moment.
Kristina
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Well, it's back to the grindstone. The last 5 weeks of the semester have begun, and boy are they going to be busy!! I had put all of the upcoming assignments from my mind for the last week and a half and now I had better hit the ground running if I'm not going to go crazy the next month. But it will all work out as about 7 weeks from now, I'll be done and walking across the stage at graduation.
My friend Deborah is coming tomorrow to spend the day and night with us. She is in school out near Washington, D.C. I think my program is hard. It is nothing compared to hers. But she's into science and I avoid science like the plague, so more power to her.
Mike was also able to lock us into a lower interest rate this morning for the house (yay!) to be refinanced, so we are meeting with the mortgage people tomorrow. Yes, we are taking advantage of all the nasty stuff that has been going on in the economy lately.
We are headed to Chicago Thursday night for a little getaway. We haven't been anywhere since the wedding except for family related trips. So we are really excited. I found a great deal on a 4 star hotel on Michigan Avenue, right by all the museums and other things we are going to go to while we are there. I'm super excited about it.
I think that is about it from our neck of the woods right now. Hopefully I'll have (positive) job related news in the next couple of weeks....
My friend Deborah is coming tomorrow to spend the day and night with us. She is in school out near Washington, D.C. I think my program is hard. It is nothing compared to hers. But she's into science and I avoid science like the plague, so more power to her.
Mike was also able to lock us into a lower interest rate this morning for the house (yay!) to be refinanced, so we are meeting with the mortgage people tomorrow. Yes, we are taking advantage of all the nasty stuff that has been going on in the economy lately.
We are headed to Chicago Thursday night for a little getaway. We haven't been anywhere since the wedding except for family related trips. So we are really excited. I found a great deal on a 4 star hotel on Michigan Avenue, right by all the museums and other things we are going to go to while we are there. I'm super excited about it.
I think that is about it from our neck of the woods right now. Hopefully I'll have (positive) job related news in the next couple of weeks....
Thursday, March 20, 2008
I've found the secret
Well, I think I've finally found the secret to a clean house.
Consistently have visitors, and the house will be cleaned out of necessity.
I discovered this as I was appreciating the fact that the house has been in pretty good order the last couple of weeks. And then I realized that we've had visitors every week for the last couple of weeks. Coincidence? I think not. This light bulb moment works out nicely since Mike and I have been wanting to do things with more people more often. We'll kill two birds with one stone: Having a better social life AND a clean house. It doesn't get much better than that.
My spring break has been excellent, minus the fact that I still haven't begun my homework yet. I need to do it today so that I have the weekend free when Mike is home. However, I have accomplished some other goals on my list. I finished the baby shower invites yesterday as well as got them all addressed. I even discovered that I had the perfect size of envelopes in one of my scrapbooking boxes, so I didn't have to special order them. When I made the original template invite, I wasn't really thinking about the size and made them a weird size for which envelopes aren't as easily available. You never know what you'll find when you go through your stuff!!
I also have been reading quite a bit, and I even made a point to start a series that I hadn't read before that was on my shelf. I've read 3 this week already, and have 1 left that I own. The last two in the series I'll have to try and find at the library or maybe a booksale some day. The series I've been reading is the Glenbrooke series by Robin Jones Gunn. It certainly isn't a series that knocks your socks off with how great it is, but it is certainly enjoyable and are just nice, easy reads. Some people I know don't like to read unless it's a just a stupendous book. I am not this discerning. Most of the time I just want something mindless, fun, and uplifting when I read. Also, I think it matters more to some people what they read because they don't read very often or maybe very quickly, so it's a major investment to them to start a book. As I said, I'm on to book 4 for the week, so no major commitment to a book here. :)
I'm going to make a pot-pie for dinner tonight. I've never made one, but I found a recipe for it in my Simple and Delicious magazine. It actually makes two and the 2nd one you are supposed to freeze. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle that, because first, I only have one pie plate (somehow pie plates escaped the wedding registry), second, given Mike's appetite, we could probably eat both over the next couple of days for lunches and what not, and third, my freezer is tiny, and due to the location of the pantry door, the freezer door doesn't open up all the way. This means I can't really fit larger items into the freezer. One of those live and learn things that you don't learn until after you've purchased the fridge. Guess I won't make that mistake the next time we are looking for a house. :)
Consistently have visitors, and the house will be cleaned out of necessity.
I discovered this as I was appreciating the fact that the house has been in pretty good order the last couple of weeks. And then I realized that we've had visitors every week for the last couple of weeks. Coincidence? I think not. This light bulb moment works out nicely since Mike and I have been wanting to do things with more people more often. We'll kill two birds with one stone: Having a better social life AND a clean house. It doesn't get much better than that.
My spring break has been excellent, minus the fact that I still haven't begun my homework yet. I need to do it today so that I have the weekend free when Mike is home. However, I have accomplished some other goals on my list. I finished the baby shower invites yesterday as well as got them all addressed. I even discovered that I had the perfect size of envelopes in one of my scrapbooking boxes, so I didn't have to special order them. When I made the original template invite, I wasn't really thinking about the size and made them a weird size for which envelopes aren't as easily available. You never know what you'll find when you go through your stuff!!
I also have been reading quite a bit, and I even made a point to start a series that I hadn't read before that was on my shelf. I've read 3 this week already, and have 1 left that I own. The last two in the series I'll have to try and find at the library or maybe a booksale some day. The series I've been reading is the Glenbrooke series by Robin Jones Gunn. It certainly isn't a series that knocks your socks off with how great it is, but it is certainly enjoyable and are just nice, easy reads. Some people I know don't like to read unless it's a just a stupendous book. I am not this discerning. Most of the time I just want something mindless, fun, and uplifting when I read. Also, I think it matters more to some people what they read because they don't read very often or maybe very quickly, so it's a major investment to them to start a book. As I said, I'm on to book 4 for the week, so no major commitment to a book here. :)
I'm going to make a pot-pie for dinner tonight. I've never made one, but I found a recipe for it in my Simple and Delicious magazine. It actually makes two and the 2nd one you are supposed to freeze. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle that, because first, I only have one pie plate (somehow pie plates escaped the wedding registry), second, given Mike's appetite, we could probably eat both over the next couple of days for lunches and what not, and third, my freezer is tiny, and due to the location of the pantry door, the freezer door doesn't open up all the way. This means I can't really fit larger items into the freezer. One of those live and learn things that you don't learn until after you've purchased the fridge. Guess I won't make that mistake the next time we are looking for a house. :)
Friday, March 14, 2008
Well, I'm officially on spring break. YAY! Although, one of my profs decided to not give us the details for our project that is due right after break is over until yesterday. So, I'll still have to do some homework over break. But all in all, it won't be too bad. I think after break is over, I only have 5 weeks of class left!
In terms of job stuff, I'm still waiting, although I have heard from both State Farm and Country in the last week and a half. SF called last week. They said they didn't have an opening at the moment, but wanted to know if they could pass my resume on to another department as well. I told them that was fine, but that I still wanted to be considered for the department I interviewed for as well. All in all, I took the conversation to mean that I was at least in the running and that my resume wasn't in the recycle bin somewhere. As for Country, I got an email early this week from the HR lady I have dealt with the whole time, and she said that they didn't have a specific timeline for when they would be doing 2nd interviews or making offers, but that if I hadn't heard from anyone in 3 weeks, to email her back and get an update on their process. Again, not on my time frame, but at least it sounds like they like me and my resume at least a little.
It's absolutely beautiful outside at the moment. The sun is shining, the sky is blue with big white puffy clouds, and it's a fantastic 55 degrees. I have the windows open!! The trees that we planted all have buds on them, so we are hopeful that they all survived the winter and will flourish this spring and summer. The bummer part is that it's only going to be in the 40s all of next week, but even that is an improvement over 2 weeks ago when we had our last 3 inch snow fall.
Some plans over my break include: finishing up Beth's baby shower invites, homework, dinner with a friend from springfield, and reading!!! I haven't decided what yet. I just finished reading all of the Mitford books by Jan Karon. This is a series that I wasn't sure I'd ever like, but I gave it a shot and really ended up liking them alot. One of these days I'm going to try out the orange marmalade cake that is in the book. I have a ton of books on my shelves that I've picked up at library book sales that I still haven't read. I should probably work on some of those. I just have too many authors that I like to read now. In early high school, I probably had only about 3-4 authors that I read all of their books and purchased them as soon as they came out. Then I started working in a Christian bookstore. Let's just say that experience was pretty detrimental to my paycheck. :)
Well, I had better go get dinner in the crock pot. In the middle of writing this post, friends just called wanting to know if we wanted to hang out tonight. There is an Illinois bball game on at 5:30, so they'll come in time for that and then we'll probably play card and board games after that. How fortuitous that we cleaned the house up last night!! No running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to make it presentable!
In terms of job stuff, I'm still waiting, although I have heard from both State Farm and Country in the last week and a half. SF called last week. They said they didn't have an opening at the moment, but wanted to know if they could pass my resume on to another department as well. I told them that was fine, but that I still wanted to be considered for the department I interviewed for as well. All in all, I took the conversation to mean that I was at least in the running and that my resume wasn't in the recycle bin somewhere. As for Country, I got an email early this week from the HR lady I have dealt with the whole time, and she said that they didn't have a specific timeline for when they would be doing 2nd interviews or making offers, but that if I hadn't heard from anyone in 3 weeks, to email her back and get an update on their process. Again, not on my time frame, but at least it sounds like they like me and my resume at least a little.
It's absolutely beautiful outside at the moment. The sun is shining, the sky is blue with big white puffy clouds, and it's a fantastic 55 degrees. I have the windows open!! The trees that we planted all have buds on them, so we are hopeful that they all survived the winter and will flourish this spring and summer. The bummer part is that it's only going to be in the 40s all of next week, but even that is an improvement over 2 weeks ago when we had our last 3 inch snow fall.
Some plans over my break include: finishing up Beth's baby shower invites, homework, dinner with a friend from springfield, and reading!!! I haven't decided what yet. I just finished reading all of the Mitford books by Jan Karon. This is a series that I wasn't sure I'd ever like, but I gave it a shot and really ended up liking them alot. One of these days I'm going to try out the orange marmalade cake that is in the book. I have a ton of books on my shelves that I've picked up at library book sales that I still haven't read. I should probably work on some of those. I just have too many authors that I like to read now. In early high school, I probably had only about 3-4 authors that I read all of their books and purchased them as soon as they came out. Then I started working in a Christian bookstore. Let's just say that experience was pretty detrimental to my paycheck. :)
Well, I had better go get dinner in the crock pot. In the middle of writing this post, friends just called wanting to know if we wanted to hang out tonight. There is an Illinois bball game on at 5:30, so they'll come in time for that and then we'll probably play card and board games after that. How fortuitous that we cleaned the house up last night!! No running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to make it presentable!
Monday, March 3, 2008
Look who's back???
It's me. Your rarity blog poster. I got a bit of a scolding for being so infrequent with my updates, so I hereby pledge to do better...
Actually, you should cut me a little slack. I just got my (our??) home theatre all put together down in the basement and who could blame me for wanting to devote every spare minute of free time basking in the scintillating glow of 110" diagonal splendor? That's what I thought.
Things are going good in other areas too. My job is going well. I have a beautiful cook who treats me well. And we just had our first 50+ degree day yesterday. Aside from a car that's rapidly approaching the unenviable "I've-put-too-much-money-into-this-stupid-car-to-sell-it-at-this-point" standard, all is well.
We even have some new friends on the horizon. An attorney I work with down in Heyworth and his wife are going to join us at our place some upcoming weekend. And we even have a tentative double-date scheduled with a random couple we bought our new couch from! Who'd a thunk?
Well, AFN. LTA. And DBAT!
Actually, you should cut me a little slack. I just got my (our??) home theatre all put together down in the basement and who could blame me for wanting to devote every spare minute of free time basking in the scintillating glow of 110" diagonal splendor? That's what I thought.
Things are going good in other areas too. My job is going well. I have a beautiful cook who treats me well. And we just had our first 50+ degree day yesterday. Aside from a car that's rapidly approaching the unenviable "I've-put-too-much-money-into-this-stupid-car-to-sell-it-at-this-point" standard, all is well.
We even have some new friends on the horizon. An attorney I work with down in Heyworth and his wife are going to join us at our place some upcoming weekend. And we even have a tentative double-date scheduled with a random couple we bought our new couch from! Who'd a thunk?
Well, AFN. LTA. And DBAT!
Stir Fry and a Martian child
We had a pretty fun weekend, by our estimation, at least. Friday night we went out to dinner with some friends from small group and got to spend a couple of hours just talking and having fun. Saturday brought Mom's birthday. I'll protect the innocent and refrain from publicizing her new age. :) She came up to Bloomington and stayed with us Saturday night. We went out for lunch on Saturday to a new restaurant that we had wanted to try, but didn't think we would ever be able to. And no, it wasn't the price that was keeping us away!! Due to my nut allergy, I literally haven't set foot in a Chinese, or any sort of Asian restaurant, in almost 20 years. Since my reaction is so severe, Mike hasn't set foot in one either in a very long time. The name of the restaurant is Flat Top grill, and it is a stir fry place, where you combine your own ingredients and make up your own sauce, and they fry it up for you on a big grill and then bring it to you. While this would normally be a big no-no for me, we had heard from people in our small group that they were really good about handling people with allergies. Basically, you put a little white stick in your food to signify that you want it stir-fried separately!! Besides that, the only nut they had in anything was a peanut, which I'm not allergic to. Needless to say, Mike and I are both pretty excited. It's a neat restaurant, good food that we couldn't get anywhere else, and a really good price. I have a feeling it will become Mike's new favorite restaurant.
We also stopped by Hobby Lobby after lunch to pick out curtain fabric for the basement windows. I'd already recruited Mom to make them for me, so it was good to have her along to determine how much fabric I needed. I think the basement is going to look pretty good after we get the curtains up and the remaining wall painted.
To continue breaking in the new projector, Mom, Lindsey and I stopped by the video store and rented 'Martian Child' to watch after dinner. It was such a good movie!! I highly recommend it. I hadn't seen a movie that was that heartwarming and well-done in a long time. It is based off of a book, which I believe is the same title, which is based off of a real life event. Obviously, the movie version of real-life books always take some creative license, but it was all believable and just a great feel good movie.
Mike and I have 2 more Illini basketball games to go to this week, then the season is over. Well, there is the Big Ten tournament next week and then the NCAA March Madness, but we probably won't go far in the conference tournament and definitely won't be getting into the NCAA tournament, so the season is essentially over. There is hope coming in the next couple of years, and we're faithful to the Illini in both good and bad. But we're still ready to put this season to rest. It's been exhausting to watch.
We had a hint, and I do mean a hint, of spring yesterday. It was in the 60s and sunny for the majority of the day. I was able to open some windows and let in some fresh air. But today the temp is supposed to plummet back into the 20s after only reaching a high of the low 40s and we should expect to have 1-2 inches of snow back on the ground by tomorrow evening. yay..... (please note the sarcasm) :)
That's all from here. We would love to hear from everyone sometime!
We also stopped by Hobby Lobby after lunch to pick out curtain fabric for the basement windows. I'd already recruited Mom to make them for me, so it was good to have her along to determine how much fabric I needed. I think the basement is going to look pretty good after we get the curtains up and the remaining wall painted.
To continue breaking in the new projector, Mom, Lindsey and I stopped by the video store and rented 'Martian Child' to watch after dinner. It was such a good movie!! I highly recommend it. I hadn't seen a movie that was that heartwarming and well-done in a long time. It is based off of a book, which I believe is the same title, which is based off of a real life event. Obviously, the movie version of real-life books always take some creative license, but it was all believable and just a great feel good movie.
Mike and I have 2 more Illini basketball games to go to this week, then the season is over. Well, there is the Big Ten tournament next week and then the NCAA March Madness, but we probably won't go far in the conference tournament and definitely won't be getting into the NCAA tournament, so the season is essentially over. There is hope coming in the next couple of years, and we're faithful to the Illini in both good and bad. But we're still ready to put this season to rest. It's been exhausting to watch.
We had a hint, and I do mean a hint, of spring yesterday. It was in the 60s and sunny for the majority of the day. I was able to open some windows and let in some fresh air. But today the temp is supposed to plummet back into the 20s after only reaching a high of the low 40s and we should expect to have 1-2 inches of snow back on the ground by tomorrow evening. yay..... (please note the sarcasm) :)
That's all from here. We would love to hear from everyone sometime!
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Bragging rights
So, I'm going to brag on Mike a little here, because well, he deserves it! His office has been planning a workshop for the last couple of months. As a part of this workshop, Mike was going to be one-on-one with some attendees from surrounding municipalities and talking with them about their needs and basically outlining a rough 5 year plan for them during a breakout session. Needless to say, Mike was a little intimidated, because there was no way of knowing which town he would be paired with, or what kinds of questions they would ask him. So, being the proactive person that he is, he pinned his boss down this month and got a lot of questions answered for things that they don't teach you in school. I even learned something interesting in the process, because I helped quiz him a couple of days before. Did you know that when a city plans a water tower, they plan for each person to use 100 gallons of water a day? This seemed like an astronomical number to me!
Anyway, after all of his hard work in preparing for the workshop, it went super well yesterday. He was able to talk with two gentlemen for awhile, and I think he really knocked their socks off with how intelligent and knowledgeable he was. Because it went so well, he (and his boss) are hopeful that the office can start doing some work for this town. It was quite a bit of pressure to perform well yesterday, and Mike passed with flying colors!!
Let's see. Other news. Mike is in the basement as we speak mounting his new projector. I don't know all the specifications as how it is fancy, I just know it is. He ordered it before Valentine's day and has been working ever since getting the basement ready for it. This included rearranging furniture, buying a new couch, running wires in the ceiling, mounting shelves and painting the wall that we are going to project on with special white paint. I'm going to work on painting the other wall after I find curtain fabric. No, I won't be making the curtains myself. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate, no, make that loathe, sewing. One thing Mom wasn't able to pass on to me. :) So I've recruited her to make them for me.
The rest of life has been pretty normal lately. Just school and work and back home again. About the time April hits, life will start picking up and not slow down until September, so I'm enjoying this current lull for the time we have it.
Anyway, after all of his hard work in preparing for the workshop, it went super well yesterday. He was able to talk with two gentlemen for awhile, and I think he really knocked their socks off with how intelligent and knowledgeable he was. Because it went so well, he (and his boss) are hopeful that the office can start doing some work for this town. It was quite a bit of pressure to perform well yesterday, and Mike passed with flying colors!!
Let's see. Other news. Mike is in the basement as we speak mounting his new projector. I don't know all the specifications as how it is fancy, I just know it is. He ordered it before Valentine's day and has been working ever since getting the basement ready for it. This included rearranging furniture, buying a new couch, running wires in the ceiling, mounting shelves and painting the wall that we are going to project on with special white paint. I'm going to work on painting the other wall after I find curtain fabric. No, I won't be making the curtains myself. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate, no, make that loathe, sewing. One thing Mom wasn't able to pass on to me. :) So I've recruited her to make them for me.
The rest of life has been pretty normal lately. Just school and work and back home again. About the time April hits, life will start picking up and not slow down until September, so I'm enjoying this current lull for the time we have it.
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