Our House ... In the middle of a street.

The other night, as I was trying to fall asleept, I was thinking about our little apartment and how much we love it! It's so cute and cozy! It's OLD, and it has some really fun features, but we really like it, and we really like the complex. We feel really fortunate and blessed to be living in such a great place.

When we first moved in, and saw the place all empty, and AS IS, we sort of rethought our plan (even though it was far too late). But after we got all moved in, we really started to like it. And now we LOVE it. Anway, so I thought I would give you all a little tour. Please keep your arms and legs within the vehicle when in motion, and enjoy!

This is our living/family room. It's not very big. You can't see it, but we have two really big couches (both of which we got for 100 bucks from the people who lived here previously...not bad!), and they are really squished and taking up, like, half of the room. It's kind of funny.

This is our "dining room". It has our dining table, so I guess we could call it that. But it's mainly a run-off of the living room. Sorry, the salt and pepper shakers are stealing the show here! They're such show-offs!

This is a shot of our tiny kitchen...There I am, pretending to do something useful! It's really a tiny kitchen. No big deal. One of my favorite features of our house is in the kitchen. Keep reading!

Our bedroom... not much to say about it. That pink quilt is only temporary. We have an AWESOME quilt coming soon, so Dan won't have to sleep under something pink anymore. Poor guy! He doesn't mind much, though.

Bathroom and laundry and extra bedroom (mostly used as extra storage). We are so lucky that we have laundry machines! Thanks to Mom and Dad Holbrook!

Daniel's reading a book on being romantic. Dang, he's a good one.

Okay, now is the fun part. There are a few interesting parts of our apartment, but that we really love, mostly because they make us laugh.

First of all, I don't know if this is a good picture, but our living room carpet is SO awesome. It's, like turquoisey green, but it's color fades from darker to lighter around the whole carpet (that's on purpose, I'm pretty sure). And there are these deep ravines in some funky pattern in it. This is where those deep shadows are in the picture. I think when Dan first saw this part, he was rethinking the apartment. Now its just a fun conversational piece.

This is our oven/stove, my favorite part. Look at it! It's BROWN! It just exudes age and experience, doesn't it? It functions just fine, which is great. Sometimes the door to the oven falls off, but that's just funny. LOVE IT!

Okay, now, look how HIGH these cupboards are! Anyone reading this blog knows how short I am. Why does every place of dwelling have cupboards, like, 7 feet high up? They're like 5 stories up! No one but people, like, 10 feet or taller can reach those upper shelves! And then what about us shorties? It's quite a dilemma wherever I go. I have to jump up on counters or get a chair. Good stuff. At least I get some exercise climbing up on stuff.

And another picture showing how high it is.

So, in order to fix this problem that we have...Daniel bought me a tiny stool:

It's not very big, but it does the trick. It just sits in the kitchen, floats around to different places. I trip on it every once in a while. But it's my trusty little kitchen helper. No more jumping on counters for me, thank you! I've got little Fiona to help me (no I didn't really name it, ...but I'm thinking about it).

And that concludes our tour of the Holbrook Home. Thank you and come again!

Really Great Food

Last weekend, Dan and I had a lot of fun making some really delicious food. We were trying to decide what we were going to eat after church, and we started going through our cupboards to see what we could pull together. And, lo, I was pleasantly surprised to find all the makings for taco soup in our cupboards. And, Daniel had been meaning to make some dilly bread for weeks (he learned how to make it in his cooking class last semester...thank goodness he took that class, we have a whole bunch of fun recipes). So we spent much of the afternoon making food together; me, with the taco soup; Dan, with the dilly bread. It was fun to bump into each other constantly in the kitchen!


Dan's dilly bread, in the making. It was some intensely STICKY dough! It turned out SO good, though!


All over his hands! Please DON'T touch me!


I have no idea what I'm chopping in this picture...maybe onions? At least I'm wearing a cute apron!

Anyone up for a game of ...

As you all know, Daniel and I spend a lot of time studying...



But sometimes (a lot of times), we just need a break to do something else. We often choose playing a game over anything else (although we got a huge collections of really old cartoons, like Popeye, Superman, Felix the cat, at the dollar store, and they are pretty fun to watch for a quick break). But, as far as games go, we have a bit of a dilemma. We don't have many 2 player games to play, just the two of us. We have Uno, but that isn't much fun with two people. We have Phase 10, but trust me, it gets old after a while. And for Daniel, it's too much of a game of chance, which is not his thing. Then, there's Canasta, which we really like...but when we play together, with only us and no one else, it makes our blood boil. So we decided that we probably shouldn't play that one...if only for the sake of our marriage. And that leaves us with...
SKIP BO!




(Dan doesn't look too happy in this photo! I think I'm beating him in this one. We got through phases...sometimes I go through, like, a week of whomping him, but then I know, in about a week or two, the tables will turn. They always do!)

So, Daniel and I play A LOT of skip-bo. And we really enjoy it! But the danger with us playing A LOT of skip-bo is that someday, we are going to get really tired of skip-bo...and then where would we be? And so, dear friends, if you have any suggestions of some really great 2 player games...

October

So, I'm really bad at keeping a blog so far. I just choose to do other things, I guess. And I whole month went by. Sorry! SO...here's what's happening. Dan and I have been really busy with school, as anyone could have guessed. Dan spent part of last week in CA, San Jose area, interviewing for an internship with PWC and EY accounting firms. He's says that the interviews went really well, but we still have yet to hear back from them.

About a week and a half ago it was my birthday, and a really good one at that. Dan took me to a Thai restaurant after school (and I LOVE Thai food) and then to a pumpkin patch (I'd been wanting to go to a pumpkin patch all month) to pick out some amazing pumpkins. Later, a bunch of people came over to celebrate with us. It was very fun!

About a week ago, we carved pumpkins for Family Home Evening. We put on a chick flic (Dan's a really good sport) and carved the pumpkins we got at the pumpkin patch. The little one we didn't carve...he's really deformed. Maybe we should've made a quasimodo jack.

Personally, I think our pumpkins from last year are a lot better,...oh well!

Pumpkins from October 2008. Dan's is the one eating the other pumpkin.... Perhaps influence from Calvin and Hobbs? Mine is the one looking worried.

Just a Typical Weekend

A couple of weekends ago, Daniel and I, at the end of a busy week, had a busy weekend as well. I was studying a lot, and Dan was working for the army. At the end of Friday, Daniel decided to come home at the end of his training, and he called me ahead of time to tell me he was coming home. I started making dinner right away. It was nothing really special, a rice dish and some veggies. But I decided that, to spruce it up a bit, I would make a romantic picnic out of it. I laid out a blanket in the living room and lit some candles, whipped out some Martinelli's and some goblets. After dinner, we roasted marshmellows over the candles. But it did not turn out as we expected. First of all, it took forever to roast a marshmellow. It kind of bubbled on one tiny spot, and when it started to burn, we had to turn it and roast/burn another part. Eventually, we felt it was roasted enough to eat, and so...we ate. What we were unaware of was that our candles were scented, and our marshmellows tasted like our candles! It was kind of flowery. Suffice it to say, we won't be roasting marshmellows over candles anymore!

The Beginning of the "Best Marriage Ever"

Dan and I started our lives together this year. We got married on May 23rd, and then had an awesome honeymoon in Mexico. The wedding, with all of it's preparations and business, was a lot of fun. Our favorite part, besides being sealed in the temple for eternity, was having all of our family gathered together to celebrate with us, especially extended family we hadn't seen in a while.









Just a fun side note that I'm very proud of: my wedding dress cost $75. A special thanks to my mother-in-law for this one!

Our Honeymoon was amazing! We spent a few days in Mexico city, seeing the city, exploring old ruins, and going to the temple. Then we flew to Huatulco, a little town on the southern cost of Mexico. That was my favorite! We spent our days on the beach, feeling very tropical. We went to some waterfalls a little ways away from the town, and we went snorkeling one day. It was super-cool to see all the colorful fish in the ocean. We even got to swim with some schools of fish. It was great!


At the Mexico City Temple










We are standing on top of the waterfall!








Dan and I in our snorkeling garb


These days, we are living in Provo, going to school and enjoying life together. Dan just started the Masters program of Accounting, and I'm finishing with my last year in physiology and developmental biology. Life is way good!

It's Time!

I've heard from several people that the one thing that generally happens immediately after the wedding is the creation of a blog. And of course, like every other fad, I had to resist it for a little while before actually giving in and starting a blog. So, last Sunday, my wonderful, beautiful sister-in-law, Emily, convinced me of the necessity of a blog, and here I am. I was apparently under the false assumption that one needs to have an adorable child (or expecting one) in order to start a blog, or else the whole thing's pointless (and, by the way, I still think this is the case...blogs are a whole lot more fun with babies, aren't they?). But Emily told me that I should just find pictures of cute babies on the internet and post them. That'll draw people in! Here are some of the cutest babies I found online.