Differences

The longer I'm married to Seth the more I realize how different we are.

Especially when it comes to our family habits.

Take the bathroom, for instance.

I never realized this growing up, but none of the bathroom door locks have ever worked in my houses. Not in Virginia or Arizona.

So the standard rule in my house is, if the bathroom door is shut, knock first because chances are someone is in there. If it's open, you may enter.

Seth's bathroom doors always locked. You just walked in. The only reason you couldn't get in was if the door was locked. When Seth first started visiting at my houses, he lived in constant fear that one of my family members would walk in on him because he couldn't lock the bathroom door.

He complained about this to me today. I hadn't even realized it was a problem. I laughed at him.

And I know it's weird to talk about bathrooms. My sister Katie just informed me of this obvious fact.

I have about a million pictures and a million stories of our Christmas Break so far but I think I'll end this post with just a hint of what's to come.

You'll probably be hearing stories about our break for the next month or so. . . .

Happy Birthday Isaac and Dad

Happy late Birthday, Isaac! (his birthday was yesterday)

Happy early Birthday, Dad! (his birthday is tomorrow)

Sorry that you each don't get your own post from me, but I really don't have enough wit to write more than about one post every other month.

I was also going to post a funny picture of each of you, but I'm in Arizona and all of my photos are on our computer back in Utah.

I hope the quality of this post isn't representative of the quality of your birthdays...

-Seth

Stories for You

Last night Seth, David and I went to In-N-Out. My mother and Jim were at a Christmas party, Katie was babysitting. It was just me and the boys. They had the following conversation:
D: Hey, which do you like better, Mario or Zelda?
S: Oh... that's a tough decision.
Me: You are nerds. (This was preceded by an eye roll)
S: This is a hard choice!
David concurred.
Me: I've never even played Zelda, so I would pick Mario.
They stared at me in shock. NEVER PLAYED ZELDA! What kind of life are you leading!?
I'm pretty sure that's what was going through their heads. They were so disappointed in me, and I couldn't have cared less.

Seth almost had to destroy his old and terrible suitcase. It is huge and hard plastic and there is a 3 digit lock on it. I think his mother bought it for him at a garage sale. He's never used the lock before but when we got here he discovered that somehow it had locked. We think the airline people probably messed with it. Unfortunately Seth had no idea what the code was and so he was thinking he would have to break it open just so he could get his things.
But, I "married a genius", as Katie said after she discovered his method for opening the suitcase without destroying it (and I heartily concur). He figured out what numbers on the wheel were flat-sided instead of rounded, and then he knew the code was the opposite of that.
That's the best explanation I have for you, and as I'm still not really sure exactly how he did it. He is a genius.

Seth lost his boarding pass in the airport. Luckily, it was after we had already gone through security so he just went and asked the desk people to print him a new one. This meant that we were last in line, and since we were on Southwest (they have an open seating policy) I was afraid we wouldn't be able to sit together. But the flight wasn't full and there were some seats together at the very back of the plane. So it all worked out.
He found his boarding pass during flight when he reached into his backpack to get something.

Church is in one hour and I have not showered yet. I'd better go.

It is so warm here! Efforts to convince Seth to move to Arizona have been forcefully renewed.

Goodbye

R.I.P.

My ipod nano of 5 years has finally died.

Unfortunately the only time I really use my ipod is when I'm flying.

Seth and I fly to Arizona tomorrow.

Next week we're flying to North Carolina.

Then a week later we're flying back to Provo.

It was a very inopportune time for me.

Oh wells. At least I have my sudoku book.

Seth is taking his last final right now. I turned in my final paper yesterday. We've been cleaning the house all morning. We'll pack tonight.

And then Christmas Break!

Disgusting

I started complaining to Seth the other day about how everyone in our family thinks our icy door is disgusting.

"But you said it was disgusting...." he said. "You posted it on our blog for everyone to see."

Irrelevant, I thought. I did not voice this out loud.

"Yes, but I don't want everyone else thinking it's disgusting."

Confusion mounting, he said "But you do think it's disgusting. Why did you tell everyone it's disgusting if you don't want them to think it's disgusting?"

"I just don't want them to think I live in a disgusting house."

"But we do..."

I could write more of this conversation but let's just say that Seth still has no idea how my brain works and I remain satisfied with my impeccable logic.

Let's not count how many times I used the word "disgusting."

For the record, we fixed the icy door the day I wrote that post. We put some rolled up towels down outside the door.

And voila! No more ice.

I know. Ingenious.

And my house is not disgusting.

Icicles

So, as Janette recently posted, it has been freakishly cold outside this last week. Janette hates it, but I definitely think there are some positive aspects of Utah winters.

For one, our house has the most amazing icicles that I have ever seen!

Check these suckers out!

Hoping that they would keep growing, I've been fighting the urge to break any off this whole week. I was actually kind of angry when one of our neighbors broke the biggest one we had.

Unfortunately, I probably should've given into my desire since it rained all day yesterday and today and now they are all melted...

Hey.

Wanna see something gross?

This, my friends, would be yellowish-brownish ice frozen INSIDE MY HOUSE.

Yet another tale to add to my collection of house horror stories.

So this really came about as a combination of two things:

1. We have a lovely large space heater that emits water vapor when it is heating our house. This leads to our windows constantly fogged up and dripping water. Constantly. The water here dripped down to the base of the door and was frozen from the cold air blowing in from outside.

2. There is a little gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. See?

Well you can't really see because there is ice in the way. Nevertheless, snow gets blown under there and then water drips down on top of it, freezing everything into ice.

This makes a nice little ice coating around the bottom of our door. In fact, it freezes our door shut. So much so that every time Seth and I go in and out of that back door (we never use the front) we have to break the ice and yank it open.

This afternoon when Seth decided to go out and shovel the walkway some, he couldn't even get it open for fear of breaking the door. So he got a hammer and one of his nail sets and chipped away at it until he could safely open the door.

The aftermath.

Seth and I have theorized that the ice is yellowish-brownish because it dripped down through all the cracks in the door. And though we scrubbed this house clean, I'm pretty sure I couldn't get all the years worth of disgustingness out of the cracks of the door. Please don't judge me.

The door-freezing has been particularly bad this week because the high for the day hasn't even gotten above 30 degrees.

I drove Seth to class every morning this week because the temperatures were between -3 and 3 degrees at 8 o'clock in the morning.

Countdown to Arizona and beautiful warm weather: 8 days

(On a side note, I talked to my mother yesterday. She wanted to warn me that it was unnaturally cool in Arizona. Why, it was even dipping into the 50s!

....I just laughed at her.)

I am in love...

...with our new heated blanket.

I don't think I ever said thanks in this video, but then again I think it is obvious that I am very grateful. Thanks to Seth's parents for an early Christmas present! I still cannot figure out how I didn't own one before this because it seems essential for a 100+ degree weather-lovin' girl like me.

And it came just in time because this morning we woke up to this:

Snow on Sundays is undoubtedly the worst for females because you are required to go outside in the snow in church shoes and a skirt. And surprisingly enough, those items aren't very conducive to snowy conditions.

Wintertime makes me jealous of boys.

Stop Voldemort

This stop sign is located on UVU campus.

I like to drive by it in the mornings.

It makes me happy to be at school.