A Place for the Living

More real life stuff!  We moved.  Drew already covered the outside area so I thought I would do a little tour of the innards.  So...here are the innards!  We'll start with the living room:

There's plenty of room for, you know, sitting on the couch.  Clearly most of our pillows have not gotten on board our UK theme but 1 out of 5 is, um, some low percentage.  

Next is one of my favorite rooms--the kitchen!  And it has counter and cabinet space to spare. 

It is such a delight to be able to throw things hither and thither while making dinner.  

Speaking of dinner, we have a new table and now it's no longer a choice between eating at the table or watching TV during dinner.  Now we have our cake and eat it too.

 As you can see, Toothless watches over us.  Now let us go upstairs!

It is fun to have stairs!  Sometimes I drop something upstairs or stomp around and, for a brief moment, wonder if the people downstairs heard.  Then I remember that only Drew is downstairs and he'll just have to DEAL WITH IT. 

Ahem.  

At the top of the stairs we have our children's library.  

So far one visiting child has taken advantage of it so we will call it a success.  

We also have a bathroom.  

It has a mirror in it!  And toothbrushes.

Lucky little squire Drew now has his own office room for work.  Gone are the days of having a kitchen table office, which is a win-win-win. 

If we were the kind of people to use the term, we would perhaps call this his "man cave."  As it is, we call it the office.  

One of the biggest upgrades here is that no only do we have laundry capabilities, but we have a laundry capabilities ROOM.    

Huzzah!

We also have a bedroom!  It features a window nook that is the perfect size for our new dresser.  Did I mention we recently went to IKEA...?

Yes, come morning it is very bright in there.  We are currently pondering curtains, though I always hate to cover nice big windows.  

This room also features a closet, with plenty of room to accommodate both of our wares.

 

I like not digging around in the dark to find my running stuff.  Actually, I like not digging around period.

And thus concludes the tour!  Of course it's best appreciated in person, where you can see other features like the backyard space, pantry and window seat/ledge/thing.  We are happily settled in and every time the dishwasher/laundry/AC run we do a high five.  Eiffel tower!

May: It Was Big

I'm really not even sure how to begin this post. May was one of the more eventful months in recent history, probably the most eventful since I last did the graduation thing at BYU in 2006. At any rate, I've been putting this post off for a while now, but I'm leaving for Disneyland tomorrow and I know I'll want to post about that as soon as I walk back in the door. So I have to do this post now. You know? Hmm. Well let's get to it.

I finished classes, as you all know. A few days later about half my family came to town and we picked up this fellow at the airport. More on the termination of our long-distance affair to come...I should say termination of the long distance aspect, since the affair part is still in full swing.


A few days later, I graduated. It was great, though a bit sad as these kind of conclusions often are. I think this one is still kind of sinking in, and it will probably still be sinking in until a) the fall, when I am not in school and/or b) my degree gets me a job. But it was good, and it was nice to have my family around to fawn over me and take me to dinner. My last graduation was a little overshadowed by other, less pleasant circumstances and so this one seemed even more celebratory. Also, Drew got me a pink Shuffle and I named it Miranda. I suspect this was all a ploy to get me to use iTunes. To sum up: graduation=fun and good.


This is maybe one of my favorite candid pictures ever. It's a caption contest waiting to happen!

So that was graduation. It was fun. This was also my last weekend in Bloomington. Maybe I was little crazy to have this idea to graduate and move in the same weekend, along with having family about. Still, it all worked out, and William and Marissa were so helpful in carrying anything and everything I put in their hands out to the cars.

In the end, it was sad to say goodbye to Bloomington. I never planned on really settling in there, since I knew I'd only be there for 2 years at the most. I just wanted to get in and get out without forming any serious attachments. But confound it all, it happened anyway. So, my list of people to miss just got a lot longer, but life goes on in this way, I suppose. One of the very best things about Facebook is that it makes it so much easier to stay in touch with people. So, thank you, Facebook.

So then it was back to Rolla, where we stayed from Sunday night until Friday morning. It was nice visit, though it went by so fast I forgot half of the things I meant to do/pack. I also got a cold on Thursday and was pretty much out of it all that day, but la dee dah, it was a nice place to stop for a bit. We saw fish, ate delicious foods, played some Lego Star Wars, petted the kitties, Drew showed off his mad puzzle skills and I, for one, stared around at all my belongings in awe. On Thursday night we put a portion of these belongings into trusty little Leeloo, and headed off on Friday morning. Oh, by "we" I mean myself and Drew.



The roadtrip to Utah was pretty uneventful. No bad weather, no mishaps, just rolling hills/flat plains/moutainous mountain scenery and roadkill. We stopped at two little diners in an effort to find one of those magical local places with food like unto perfection. While we did get some good food, we also got this rather wretched Milky Way pie in the middle of Kansas:


The texture was weird and gelatinous, it didn't taste like a Milky Way and it was just kind of goopy. Also, there was a ridiculous amount of unnecessary meringue on the top. It didn't even look pretty! Then again, once you've had Slice of Pie, every other storebought pie is bound to be a disappointment.

So now here I am, back in Utah, right where I never thought I would be again. I still feel pretty transitory, since I don't have a place to live or a job and all my things are in piles and boxes. Still, hopefully I will soon have both of those things and clothes on hangers to boot. Pretty much everything is still sinking in: no more school, no more trips to MCPL, no more permanent living in Missouri, no more webcamming (phew), etc. etc. But so far, so very good and I have survived my transplanting with only a wee bit of trauma.

Oh, and did I mention I'm going to Disneyland this week?