Day 17

Day 17: Three Things I'm Grateful For [Today]

1. Opportunities to say "No" to. 

2. My dishwashing/breakfast cooking husband.

3. A sunny weekend with family.

Day 16

Day 14: Picture Of The Place I Work[ed]

The one day Jad and I took pictures of "our faces".

Happy

Silly

Sad

Angry

[this face is his favorite to make]

Fishy

Fishy try #2

Silly

Angry again!

Again!

just talking

We're in a FISH TANK!

Quiet

Bop Carly in the eye face

Last one Happy!

[this one is his best.]

I miss you crazy baba!

Fall Experiment

It all started with gestational diabetes. 

It always does, doesn't it? Someone says their mother had gestational diabetes so they cut out sweets for 2/3 of their pregnancy just in case and the Child Development Major in the room who, contrary to popular belief, did not study 4 years of "how to become a birthing machine" sits there thinking:

"Gestational diabetes? That's a thing? Crap."

I'm not prepared for that! Maybe I should practice living life without sweets now so that if Gestational Diabetes rears it's ugly head when it actually matters, I will know I can keep living without chocolate chip cookies and bananas splits because hey. I've done it already! 

I'll just nix the desserts.

...And soda.

and chips and pizza are pretty junky too and I don't really like them anyway.

And come to think of it, I really need to cut down on my breads, so no crackers. Lets do pasta/bread sparingly.

And I'm really liking alternative milk options right now, so I'll do those all the time.

And I've been eating too much peanut butter. Gotta cut down. 

And fried things really aren't that healthy so no more breaded fish etc.

And hot dogs and burgers can go.

There! Great! That'll pretty much cover...lots of stuff...maybe I should make a list of what I CAN eat. 

And it went on like this Nakies. This plot to ruin my own life.

Do I take breaks for holidays? Would it make me sick to gorge for a day? Probably. 

You get the idea. 

So here it is: 

I will be abstaining from or significantly reducing the aforementioned sweets/junky/nutritionless foods until Thanksgiving. At which point I will take stock of the effects and decide if I want to keep it up or whatnot. 

Meanwhile, it is now two weeks in to this thing and ALL I WANT are sweets/junky/nutritionless foods. I mean, to insane proportions. I crave dessert more times per day than I think I have ever eaten it to begin with. How is that logical?

And then three days ago, I got a pinterest. (Don't look it up, it's not very fun yet.) 

And guess what nakies:

Pavlova. 

Heaven on a cake stand.

Yep. It's a thing!

And no one, 

from Australia, New Zealand or anywhere else, 

told me about it three weeks ago when they should have!

So, I don't care what happens on Thanksgiving, there will be pavlova. 

Day 14

Someone give me a horse!
Thanks to my wonderful SIL Melanie, I'm back on the 30 day challenge wagon. She started it up and due to my guilt, I'm back too! Check out her blog, I'm loving what she's doing with the challenge!

Day 14: Something I made recently.

Gyoza!

strawberry - cucumber - red onion - spinach salad

And Tommy boy has been cooking up a storm as well:

homemade ice cream sandwiches. very serious.

hot dogs cooked into pancake batter = delicious hot dog cocoons

Tommy also has been "making" a house, Mr. Amazing.

A friend of ours bought a mobile home that wasn't as sound as they first thought.

It was pretty much rotten through all of the wood, 

and then the roof blew off during a wind storm,

so Tommy and some volunteer construction majors helped them rebuild over half of the house.

And topped it with a new roof.

I tell ya, it smelled really good inside.

Photo down hallway from untouched half.

The drywall served as a nice table.

And I cleared off a spot for my seat.

That's my baby!

Congratulations Jeffrey and Jennie on getting married! 

I hope you are enjoying your new place!

Nakies, these two got married and came back to Idaho and immediately set to work to finish building their house. 

Major props Jeffrey and Jennie, you guys are amazing!

10 Reasons Why We're Not Having Kids Yet

I read in another blog [that I have now completely forgotten the name of] a post entitled "10 reasons why we decided to have kids". I tell you, I was intrigued. I wish everyone made lists such as this for their grand life decisions and just posted them in public places.

[oh, if they did this in public restrooms I would do a happy dance. What great reading material! If they did it in rest stop stalls I might think about forgiving them for never providing seat liners.]

Anyway, I read it and afterward thought we should make a list why we're not yet "with child". I thought it would be fun, we could take turns, Tommy and I, putting forth reasons as ridiculous as we pleased. 

Turns out Tommy is a wuss.

Here's our list:

1. We got a cat. Tommy says we have lots of parenting practice ahead of us before we have real babies.

2. carly doesn't want to lose her life yet, AHHHHH!

3. "I don't know, I don't feel good about [making a list] anymore" - Tommy

That lasted long.

In truth, 

I think our list is so short because we are genuinely so excited to have kids someday. I think everyone who knows us well, knows we kinda like younglings a lot ;)

And when it happens, you may finally stop having to read posts about our cat haha! 

Until then...

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-love from pepper

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our little writer. 

Moving.

Pepper has declared the house hers. Of course. 

As this apartment is now under her rule, every inch of it is literally littered with her treasures. 

Remember how much she loves garbage or things that should be garbage? 

An apartment covered with "Pepper treasures" basically means an apartment covered in torn up pieces of toilet paper, plastic wrappers, styrofoam bits, socks...and all of our non-garbage, little, fun things that she has claimed as well.

If we move anything she considers hers, she gets very upset. Mine Mine Mine Mine Mine! Put it back, I'm saving it! 

This makes cleaning up very tricky. 

It doesn't help that she thinks the broom is a foe she'd love to fight any day of the week. 

Under our bed is her favorite hoard-base. She found a ball of yarn last week, took it under the bed, and chased it around for three days. Our bed legs are now entangled in about 30 feet of white strands. I thought I'd collect it before I attempt to vacuum. She saw it moving and we began a tug of war which I would say I won, but now that I'm looking around, the pile of yarn is not where I put it....

In order to untangle the yarn I spent a lot of time on my hands and knees peering under the bed to see what besides her claws it was caught on. I found more of her acquired treasures. Both of my chapsticks. The tie for my bathrobe. All of my ribbons. A bunch of jewelry. Some clothes and socks. Pens. Bobby pins. Lots of strips of paper and toilet paper roll centers. 

She's now running around like a crazy kitten, ready to jump in my face if I try to steal anything else. 

At least she's still afraid of the vacuum.

A Morning

Tommy's alarm goes off at 7:34

It is loud and obnoxious the way alarms should be. 

He remains comatose. 

I nudge him until he realizes turning off his alarm is his job.

At 7:37 and 7:40 this all happens again. Because my giant sets his three alarms at odd minutes, and ignores all of them. 

We sleep till 8ish when I ask "when do you need to be up?"

"mmphf...Now."

This is my favorite part when we snuggle in closer and refuse to budge.

Eventually I get up out of bed to go to the bathroom and craftily suspect this might draw the giant from his covers. It works!

"why are you up when you don't need to be and I'm still in bed?!"

I smile. He's smart, my giant.

intestines. that's why. 

But then he stumbles in and gets in the shower. He is so glorious and cute in the morning. 

This is about the time I realize we are out of toilet paper and my near future includes a shufflewaddle to the far side of the bathroom cabinet to get more. Sigh.

"Carly? Are you still there?"

"...Yeah."

"Could you pass me a new bar of soap?"

Yes! The soap is in the nearer side of the cabinet. 

I tell him I'm out of toilet paper, hand him the soap. And he says, "well if you wait three minutes, I'll be done and can get it for you."

Yes! No moving!

We both get dressed. Me in my workout clothes and he in his school ones. 

And that's when I realize, it's a 9am morning. He has school at 9am. Who thinks of these things?? 

Everyday that Tommy goes off to school is a bit of a tragedy. I am like the kid whose favorite teddy bear has to be taken away to go through the washing machine, except in this scenario he has be get washed EVERY DAY, ALL DAY! It's unbelievable. And taking him so soon after we have woken up? Who thinks of these things?! I morn this fast approaching doom by hugging him at least five times. and following him around the house missing him already. pathetic, yes.

I make him a peanut butter sandwich and he gets all of his bags together (today is a big, two bag kind of day nakies). 

He tells me with a grin that my shoe situation by the front door is getting ridiculous again. And I think shoes are meaningless right about now! He's leaving and the world is ending and he wants to poke me about my shoe situation! We are in the middle of a travesty!! I clutch him tight and take a peek at my shoes. There's only four pairs...geesh. 

Then I put on sweats and a sweater and we get in the car. I drop him off and get TWO kisses.

"Try to take a nap if you can!" I tell him.

"Try to get off of work early!" He says back without skipping a beat.

I smile. I like that we tell each other what to do. I like that we get things for each other. And as much as I hate it, I like that it is an arrow through my heart when he has to leave every day. I love, love, love my Tommy. 

How We Did Sunday 7.8.12

We usually wake up around 8am 

and fool around with the idea of getting out of bed.

This morning, by the time we did, we were definitely going to be late for church, but hey we weren't scheduled to teach nursery today so we're ok!

We have a lovely time at church, Tommy whispers funny remarks into my ears throughout our combined lessons, we hold hands, give kisses, we're in love : )

He sketches up an awesome floor plan for our future three story house complete with turret and wrap around porch cause my baby loves me, and we remember how amazingly long the Spirit of God is. It took us 7 minutes to sing! I am bouncy happy by this point because we're at church and it's sunday and the spirit is strong and we're at the beginning of a whole day of celebrating being a family together and thinking about all of the wonderful blessings in our lives!

[I am either ecstatically happy by the end of church, moody and hungry, or bored and tired.]

After church we pick up leftover beans, rice and tortillas from the stake activity yesterday and giggle all the way home about free lunch! Tommy fries up the tortillas and heats up each concoction of beans and rice, first separate so we can taste and then we tweak and we mix and I bust out the lettuce and cheese and we eat mini burritos to our hearts content while we finish watching Mary Poppins. 

I fall asleep just as Mr. Banks is entering the bank to get sacked and have a life-changing realization that he hasn't been a good father but that his life is actually wonderful and he's going to finally see his beautiful family that has been just past the end of his nose this whole time. 

I wake up to "Let's go Fly a Kite", the movie ends and my husband kisses my sleepy  forehead and says "happy napping, I'm going to go wash the dishes". (This sort of lullaby is what warrants sleeping with a smile on one's face), and I sink off to a wonderful nap that lasts four hours. Of course. 

Around 5:15pm I realize I'm hot and the clothes they are trying to fit me into are too big and I roll off the couch onto the cool floor and wake up the rest of the way. I watch my man who is still in the kitchen putting away the clean, dry dishes and making a parfait to snack on while listening to his book on iphone. I love love love him don't you know. 

I follow him to our bed where we snuggle and talk about my dreams and he feeds me parfait, and soon he's finally taking his sunday nap : ) Pepper lets me know that she wants a nap time too and snuggles into me and my book I'm now reading (of course lying on the paragraphs I've just gotten to) and I think to myself "This is the best. I love how we do sundays, and it's not even over yet".

Uh-Oh I Want A Hot Dog.

These kinds of situations are what bananas are for. 

I buy bananas because they are my go-to fruit. I love them. 

They are the snack I want to eat when I don't know what I want to eat, or worse, when I want to eat a hot dog or apple cobbler or a whole bunch of mashed potatoes.

My Cure: eat a banana. 

When I don't have any more bananas in my house, I eat hot dogs and buy those really unhealthy pocket pies that are just so good. 

Stock your house with your favorite easy, accessible snacks that are healthy and you will eat them. 

Fact. People are eaters. We've lost a lot of our hunter zeal, now the easier the prey, the happier we are to eat it. Think of it, how many of us turn down free food? Yeah, there is a reason costco samples get downed. 

Make your healthy food as "hassle free" as possible and toss out the hassle free junk food, cause that gives your body plenty of hassle later. 

Here's my theory on craving unhealthy things. It's probably genuine hunger. Even more likely, I should drink a glass of water and then see if I am still hungry (thirst is often mistaken for hunger especially by yours truly). However while I am probably hungry, my body is probably not saying that I am low on a specific nutrient found in the food I'm craving because, nutrients probably aren't in the unhealthy foods we crave. So! If I drink some water, and eat some fruit (or a favorite veggie) I'm saving myself a lot of exercising later. 

Fact. If I buy the 2 1/2 lbs. bag of carrots at the grocery store and just stick them in my fridge they could sprout babies by the time I get to eating all of them. 

BUT

If I buy that same 2 1/2 lbs. bag of carrots, bring them home, peel and shop up five of them into slender sticks and stick them in a baggie. They probably won't even make it to the fridge before I've eaten half of that bag. The rest are guaranteed less than 48 hours shelf life before they meet their demise in my stomach as well. 

Just saying. I'm a lazy huntress. 

Too Many Legs

Sounds like a children's book doesn't it? But it's not. Not this time.

This is a post wherein I share my girlie-scream inducing experiences with things that have too many legs. (Pepper is currently trying to catch my fingers as they jot around the keyboard and let's just say I'm doing a lot of backspacing right now.)

Incident 1: The closet.

The other month I was sitting on my bed minding my own business when all of a sudden a fair-sized centipede tweedlescrammed out from under a pile of clean clothes stacking up in my closet. So much said in that first impression:

"Hey carly, I'm a nasty poisonous insect with more legs than I can count and I hang out in your clean clothes all the time. I live here. Oh, you do too? Interesting. I'll poison you next time you decide to wear this soft grey t-shirt I just decided to sleep in tonight." 

Excuse me?!

"BAAAAAAAAAAABE! BUG BIG BUG BIG BUG! CLOTHES, GET IT GET IT GET IT!"

While I'm in a perpetual backwards scoot hailing my confused husband from the other room, three fairly rational thoughts pass through my head.

1. I have never, ever, ever seen a centipede in Rexburg. I've been here five years. What is it doing here?

2. The fact that I'm seeing ANY bugs in April means the ground never froze enough in the winter to create a lovely bug buffered spring time. They are here early and no place is safe.

3. It's a really good thing I don't have babies in this apartment or I'd probably become bug-murderous. 

Incident 2: The Couch

This was the time that I was sitting on the couch and a big spider just crawled out of the corner crevice I was nestled into and proceeded to make it's way down the side along by my legs. Hello! Next time you want to make a break for it, you shouldn't be so huge and dark and hightailing it on my white couch. 

I wish I could just talk to insects and make some kind of peace treaty. 

"You make your home outside, I'll make my home inside. When I go out, I'll try not to step on you or get your flying friends stuck in my chap-stick when I ride my bike down a hill. Sound good? Done."

Incident 3: The Bathroom

I've been trying to get Pepper to notice ants. It's been surprisingly difficult. For a girl who literally leaps at anything that moves she really has a hard time focusing on a tiny ant if you are pointing at it with your finger or foot. I see your finger! Pounce. I see your foot! Pounce! 

Ant, girl. 

ANT.

I finally had success one day in the bathroom. I saw an ant circling around on the tile and Pepper was of course in there with me (she loves the bathroom, such a girl) and after a few attempts to point and gesture, she saw it! She thought it was fascinating! A tiny toy! But then the ant scampered away and Pepper decided to just attack the tile where she'd first seen the ant. Oh well, I guess she won't be our bug-patrol girl. 

Not that I really care about the ants, ants are docile and cute and we hardly have any, but it'd be nice on the bigger things....speaking of...

Incident 4: The Bed

I've been known to eat in bed. I've been known to eat crumbly things in bed. But here's my theory. I don't like top sheets so it's really easy to pull off my loose cover blanket and sweep that puppy clean. Today I served Tommy and I cookies in bed. I was really careful though and kept everything on a paper towel so I thought I was good. As I was getting in I saw a dark thing and figured I'd missed a crumb so I picked it up. It wriggled out of my hand. 

It ran deeper into the bed and I dug frantically until I had caught up with it. I needed 

to know what it was! I saw its ugly butt and knew immediately. Pincher bug. Memories of a clear water bottle and my little brother derek, a pincher bug and some very nasty pinches inside of his poor little mouth flushed straight to the forefront of my mind. I wasn't touching that thing. Tommy is such a courageous hero. He requested light and toilet paper and so I dashed about hopping like a chicken more than happy to oblige and trying to get the squirmy feeling off my skin. 

Now wouldn't it be nice if my cat were a bug eater?