Victorious!

Every year, our good friend Paige throws a fabulous graham-cracker house building party. Over the last couple of years, this has evolved into a competition. If you know anything about us (especially Joseph), you know that our competitive nature sleeps very close to the surface, so we've been trying to win for the last two years, to no avail.

2009:

{This was our first, at home, real gingerbread attempt...needless to say we retired from that medium}

 

{Much better! We redeemed ourself here, but lost to a castle that had two days and several boxes of work on it. We won in our own hearts, but vowed to return next year with our game-faces on}

 2010:

 {Even though Joseph was sick, he bravely helped to construct our cute little Cathedral (far left). However, our scope was far too small, and we lost to the totally awesome Noah's ark to the right}

2011: 

You better believe we pulled out all the stops this year. The idea didn't hit us until early that day, but it hit like a ton of bricks- something cute, something recognizable, something ambitious: The UP house!

 

We toiled for a couple of hours, at least a half an hour after others had finished. Competition was stiff- a golden gate bridge being attacked by godzilla, a huge manger scene, Snoopy's doghouse, Zero's doghouse, the UCR belltower- but this time, we took the trophy...which in this case means Target gift card.

Now we can retire in style.

What we forgot...

This summer we enjoyed a great mini-vacation visiting San Diego. We started in Escondido visiting our other set of amazing grandparents who took us on an adventure to the San Diego Wild Animal Park. The weather was beautifully gloomy (which was great in the middle of the summer), and we had great fun getting attacked by lorikeets (Joseph had no idea what he was in for). The next day, we went into the city to hang out with the Humphreys, who kindly showed us around their favorite spots out in La Jolla with their cute little girl Cora. We were lucky to have their air conditioned car, because the rainy weather left behind the hottest, most humid day of the summer. After a day of riding about, we settled down to a super tasty dinner in old town and sealed our summer with a great trip.

{Attack of the lorikeets, Joseph's first time- bwahaha!}

{Grandparents. Daw!}

{La Jolla}

{Old Town}

I'd been putting off blogging due to our SLOW internet resisting my attempts to upload images, but after much prodding by Joseph, we upgraded. YAY! I will also blame school, busy busy school, but once again everything turned out great for us grade-wise, so no more worries there. Christmas posts to come!

Our Summer Thus Far

This summer has been quite full of activity. Its strange to think how close we are to the end. Time flies! Its even more strange to think that this is Kristin's LAST summer vacation. Next summer will be for EMT training and after that its off to PA school. Summer seems like the last tie to adolescence. Adults don't get summer vacations or spring breaks (unless you're a teacher...hmmm, career change?). It is exciting and scary all at once. Aaaanyways, here's a quick recap:

      Family Reunion

{Soccer}

     Laguna Beach, with friends
   

 

 {Joseph and Reed- Searching}

    

{Finding}

{Must have= Gelato}

Laguna Beach, Pageant of the Masters 2011

{Proposal bench}

{Our view}

Newport beach with friends

{Castle, never destroyed (at least while we were there)}

Sculpting

{Krispie llama and shark. Guess who's is who's.}

Getty Center

{Windy, sunny day}

Huntington Library & Old Town Pasadena

{Kristin's Lotus}

{Joseph's Succulent}

{Macarons- Salted Caramel, Coconut, Pistachio, Madagascar Vanilla}

Just kidding...

So it turns out we will NOT be moving this summer. Sadly, we had just signed a new lease at our current apartment just before receiving the offer from UCR Family Housing. We were so far down the list we had not anticipated being offered housing any time soon (Boy were we wrong!). Our apartment complex does not have a 'pay out' policy, and we would have had to pay for both places if our apartment was not taken over by anyone else. Our manager quickly started searching for a replacement. She found one, and we were SURE everything would work out, but it was not in the cards. Corporate did not approve the other renter for whatever reason, and we were left back at square one with no other biters on our place. The clock ticked away and we were forced say farewell to the dream of an outdoor space.

  

While we will sure miss those barbeque dreams, we were saved the hassle of having to move three times in three years (we would have had to leave as soon as Kristin graduated, and then again once when she gets accepted into a PA program). Instead, we'll put the energy into loving our first place and this summer together.

We're Moving

So after waiting for a year we finally got into ucr married student housing! down side is we just signed a new lease with our current place but we talked to our manager and if everything goes well we should be able to get out of our lease without paying a dime. so that will be nice. so without further adieu here is a picture of our soon to be new home.

Turning 21

March is a busy month for us. First its my birthday, followed by our anniversary two weeks later (always with finals in between), and capped off by Joseph's birthday (which is technically in April, but the first day so please let me fudge it for argument's sake). This year also included a visit from Joseph's trainer and his wife to bring us a little ice-blue Hyundai Accent. Such a manly car for Joseph to drive, right?

This year, being my 21st birthday and all, I wanted to have a mocktails-and-poker party (seeing as the only benefit Mormon 21 year-olds can really take advantage of is being able to buy our own cough syrup) and have a 'pretend' wild night of fun. Instead of a casino-themed party, I settled on a theme that would help cheer us up before finals: Colors! Plus, I had a cake idea in my back pocket that I had been dying to try. Saturday morning I got up early for a date with my Kitchen aid and whipped up a double batch of boxed white cake (I had good reason to cheat, I swear, just wait).  I then divided the batter into six bowls:

 

{I think you can see where this is going}

And added some powdered food coloring which required quite a bit of stamina to properly mix in. I then spent the remainder of the morning rotating my two circle pans between the oven and my cooling station.

 {Three cakes- please don't fall apart orange!}

 Then I was back to the Kitchen aid for some cool whip frosting:

After which it was time to take a drink: 

Party hard:

And enjoy the results of all that effort. Yum!

My Birthday Song...

And just like the birthday song, this post won't be very long. I just wanted to pop in and shout out to my great husband who has made this birthday an amazing one, despite the fact I am stressed out by upcoming finals. This morning I woke up to a huge, heavy, blanket covered (we're a little low on wrapping paper) box for me to open. To my surprise (since we had agreed to keep the budget low) I found myself staring at a bright red Kitchen Aid stand mixer; my dream come true.

I had been hoping we could find a used one for cheap on craigslist and would never dream of buying one of these beauties new- but my husband did. Its the smaller model which is perfect (have you seen our apartment?), and is, well, perfect in every way. I can't wait to use it to make birthday cake for my 'friend-party' tomorrow and am excited to taste the oatmeal cake my husband made for me (google it, its not gross and oat-mealy I assure).

That's right- he made me a cake too, didn't I marry the best guy in the world (for me, all you ladies I am sure have great hubbies too)?! This, along with the sweet hand-made cards from my sister-in-law's family, has simply made this birthday great. Can't wait to see what else is in store. Toodles!

Long Awaited Update

After finally emerging from the onslaught of midterms I thought it was high time to give our poor blog a little attention.

Although its already been a few months, I'll start with a quick recap of our first holidays together. Thanksgiving was a bit of a personal triumph as we were able to pull off a full spread (minus the delicious sweet potatoes grandma brought) in our tiny apartment. Thank you Alton Brown for imparting your turkey knowledge onto we first-timers! Ironically, the only thing that didn't work out was the boxed pumpkin pie- that'll teach us to attempt to take short cuts!

 

{Joseph hones his carving skills on Mr Turkey}

Christmas was (of course) a ton of fun including running around to visit various family members and friends. We had a skinny little Christmas tree (which I somehow managed to miss on all of our pictures) and a few strings of lights on our second story railing. We established a new Christmas Eve- Eve tradition of watching Muppets Christmas Carol (which I had never seen) with friends, and then moved on to Christmas Eve with my family. This year was slightly different because they chose to keep it a 'dry' Christmas, meaning no alcohol- needless to say Joseph was thrilled to 'get off easy'. Our favorite part was by far Christmas morning. Joseph was especially excited to finally rip the wrapping off the big box that had been taunting him for the past few weeks.

 {Have you ever seen a smile so big?}

Joseph got me a lovely new iPod nano with double the space of my old so I now don't have to delete half my iTunes library whenever I want to add new songs. Plus a book on the art of Tangled (which if you haven't seen- go forth!). Speaking of Tangled, we enjoyed several family outings during the vacation- including a trip to the Midway aircraft carrier on Black Friday, and then down to Hollywood to ride the train and see Tangled for our niece Hannah's birthday. 

 {Jaron @ Grauman's Chinese}

  

{Disney Ice Cream Parlor. Yes- we consumed that monstrosity and yes- it was delish}

And of course, no vacation would be complete without a trip to the good ole land of Disney with our good ole married buddies Stemanda.

 {Snow-capped castle}

And so now we're pressing forward through school (half way through the quarter!) with the hope of spring break glimmering in the distance. Not to mention an anniversary in there somewhere. However, I promise to update earlier than that. 

Cross my heart! 

Oh Amazon

Ok, I just realized today how genius the people at Amazon are. This realization has been coming to fruition for a while, and, now that think about it, I am going to start from the beginning.

Kristin and I own two video game systems Ps2 and Gamecube (old, i know, but what can you do?) Now on PS2 we don't have the greatest multilayer games, which leaves us playing gamecube when we feel like playing together. On game cube we have 2 games (yes thats it): super smash brother mellee and mario kart double dash. Our normal game of choice is mario kart, and the problem with this is I owned the game before we were married. Therefore, i have logged the most hours played on it. You might ask why does that matter? Well it matters because 9 out of 10 times I will win the race. Now, I must say I am impressed with how much Kristin has improved; the games are getting closer.  She leads most of the game a lot of the time, but i will usually manage to sneak in at the end and steal the victory away from her. Now here in lies the problem with us playing the game: No game is fun when you keep losing. On the flip side when Kristin beats me i feel robbed and that the game is rigged against me. To sum it up, this game frustrates us to no end. Now you might ask what does this have to do with amazon- i will tell you. Because of this frustration I have wanted to get a new game for us to play. Then I remembered mario party 7- a game neither of us has many hours on and we will be evenly matched. If it was at the store i would have to get in my car, drive to the store, find it, stand in line, buy it and drive home resulting in an hour of my life gone. So instead, I just logged onto amazon and had an order placed all within 1 minute. 1 MINUTE!! Sure I have to wait for shipping, but oh well I have other things to do for that week and a half. Now, on top of that I ordered it while sitting in econ class which I feel is appropriate. I am putting what i learn in micro econ into action. To finish up I have to say "Sorry honey for spending $20 dollars it all just happened so fast i didn't know what i was doing." :). Thank you amazon. (sorry for spelling errors i don't care enough to proof read this before i publish it.)