Happy Birthday Tara

Yesterday was my sister Tara's 18th birthday. This post is a day late because our internet has been down.

She's my only sister, and it still leaves me in shock to think that she's grown up and heading to college in the fall. It was weird enough going on my mission and leaving her as a little girl to come back and find a teenager.

Here's some good things about her:

She's pretty much a genius.

All the crazy drama of her high school life is rather entertaining to hear about.

She's a champion thumb wrestler (I can only beat her using treachery, and even that doesn't always work...).

Overall, she's an awesome little sister.

Tender Mercies

This morning I woke up to a couple inches of fresh snow on the ground. 

This was a very depressing start to my day, because it meant I would have to scrape all the snow off the car, drive in it (very slowly) to school, and then try to find a parking space in a parking lot that seems to fill less cars than normal when it snows because of not being able to see the line. 

Very depressing. 

But when I left I saw that someone had already gotten all the snow off my car!

It wasn't Seth, because I came back in and kissed him for it and he was bewildered. 

(He said I should just pretend like he did it for me though...)

It was one of our neighbors. We share a parking lot with two other houses, all full of single boys. Oh I loved those boys this morning! I noticed all the other cars were also free of snow.

Driving wasn't so bad once I got out to the main streets. I did have to park in the farthest part of the farthest parking lot, but because of the time saved not having to get snow off my car, I still got to class on time. 

I love tender mercies.

What Seth said when he left to go home teaching.

Watch for me when the sun sets in the west.

The Dressers

Tonight something I thought would never happen, happened.

Seth's dresser was cleaner than mine.

After 5 months of pestering him to clean all the crap off his dresser (and believe me, there were piles upon piles upon piles...) he finally got around to it.

And I had to fight him to get that picture too.

So in retaliation he took a picture of my dresser.

Hmm...

This is not typical.

I am always, 100% of the time, clean and organized. You could almost say I'm perfect.

Let me again emphasize: Perfection=typical me.

We took these pictures just before my class (it's 7:30-8:45pm) and I was afraid he had taken the last picture so he could do something sinister with it on this blog while I was gone.

Luckily he didn't and so now you get my version.

Obviously, the correct version.

Hooray for MLK

This is actually from last Monday...

In my defense, we didn't talk about healthy eating, we talked about how lazy we are and how we should get out of the house and do stuff. We made an "Activities" list and stuck it on the fridge. So I'm perfectly justified in eating gooey yummy s'mores.

Right? Right?

Today was lovely because we had the day off. So we went to Color-Me-Mine.

And it took Seth much longer than me to decide what to paint.

But it turned out really awesome.

And so did mine.

I can't wait to pick them up on Friday.

We also went to Brick Oven.

And feasted.

And Seth took about 4 million pictures of me before he got what he wanted...

...which was this:

Me stuffing my face.

And now we are home trying to justify turning our one day of holiday into a week-long holiday!

I can't think of anything and neither can Seth so I guess it's back to school for the both of us.

Story time

We love our nieces and nephews.

They just kept flocking to Seth...

This isn't even all of them but these are the only good pictures I have from Christmas Break.

We miss our families.

Seth and the Magic Banana

My younger brother David just e-mailed this to me.

He actually composed this quite some time ago and called Seth and I up to recite it over the phone (because of course Seth was the inspiration for this story).

And I have to tell you, the written version pales in comparison to that performance.

But I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

Seth and the Magic Banana

 

        Seth: I think i will change the world today!

 

        Angry Grandma:Whatever! You never do anything you lazy worthless, cocky...

 

        Seth: Bye!

 

        Narrator: And so Seth set out to do good deeds... but he had only begun 

 

       Creepy Merchant:Hey kid... wanna buy a MAGIC banana?

 

       Seth: Me?

 

        Creepy Merchant: Yes you!

 

       Seth: Yes!!!!!!!!!! Wait... is it healthy?

 

         Creepy Merchant: Um.....yes?

 

         Seth:Sweet! (takes banana)

 

        Creepy Merchant: (mumbles) sucker.

 

                                                               Chapter 2: The Magic Revealed

 

           Seth: Hmmmm..... What should i do with this banana?

 

          Angry Grandma: Oh i don't know... EAT IT!

 

           Seth: No way. The merchant said it was magic! So I'll plant it in the ground and see what happens.

 

         Angry Grandma:Whatever!

 

          Narrator:   Several days later Seth dug up the banana

 

          Seth: Aw man... I guess it's just a normal banana.

 

          Seth:Oh well.... I'm hungry! (eats banana)

 

          Narrator: Several weeks later this happened!

 

           Seth: AH! A McDonald's delivery truck headed straight for me! ( ducks and sticks hand out when small projectiles fly from his hand)

 

          Seth: were those ninja stars?

 

          Seth: (after a closer look) Holy Crap! They are banana slices!

 

                                                                 Chapter  3: The Rise of Banana Boy

 

             Narrator: later on Seth adopted a new name and dis covered a new power

 

             Seth: Wow a banana web!

 

             Narrator: And so,  after discovering his powers and rubbing it in his grandmas face banana boy (Seth) Protected the town and brought down evil doers

 

 

                                                                           THE END

Rock Climbing

Seth and I went to North Carolina to see his family for half of our Christmas Break.

While we were there we went rock climbing.

Pretty much all of Seth's family rock climbs, and they have been doing so for years. They even have a lot of their own gear. Before this event, I think the extent of my rock climbing experience was watching other people do it on those portable walls at the carnival.

The Pro.

(Seth was even on a rock climbing team in high school.)

I could tell I was out of my element because they started using lingo that I did not understand. Things like "oh this wall is easy because it's mostly buckets" or "I learned using the figure-8 belay device, i don't like these atc's as much."

Luckily for me my SIL came and she had never been rock climbing before either. We stuck together.

This picture was taken after getting all the way to the top on my first wall.

You see, I'm smiling because this is just seconds BEFORE I realized I was way high up and I would have to voluntarily let myself fall to get back down. I hated this part. Granted, there was a rope, and I wasn't going to fall to my death. But I don't like heights. And I don't like falling from them, rope or not.

Once Seth let the rope out so fast I fell on my butt.

I was not happy with him.

But I did pretty well in the end, although that may only be because I stuck to the easiest walls.

I used muscles I didn't know I had.

And my body really hated me the next day.

But at least now I have the climbing experience and the lingo down.

So next time we get together with the Winsors and go rock climbing, I will understand them when they say,

"Oh you can try bouldering on this wall."

Update

Seth was wrong.

We drove to Home Depot and they had a lovely big selection of o-rings for us to purchase.

So we bought some, took them home, installed it in both water taps on the kitchen sink just for good measure, and thought our problems were over.

Except that our problems are never over in this house.

Turns out the reason the screw ripped the little o-ring to shreds in the first place is because it is the wrong screw. And it would not fit with our new o-ring.

We were not very happy with the people who did that who knows how many years previous to us having to fix their mistake.

So what we did (I keep saying we like I actually had anything to do with the fixing. My parts include: driving to Home Depot with Seth and chronicling it on our blog. That's it.) is install the o-ring, put the screw on as best we could, and then left it alone. As long as we don't try to turn on the cold water tap (and Seth left the little handle off to make sure we didn't in a moment of forgetfulness) the water doesn't leak out of it. He's going to try and find a replacement screw to maybe fix it better.

Which I suppose is better than replacing our whole sink.

And at least our water is turned on now.

Hooray.

Yesterday

I know what hell is going to be like.

You will be traveling through airports ALL DAY LONG.

You will be sick.

There are no places for you to lie down because airport chairs all have those metal armrests.

Medicine will do nothing for you.

And you will never make it home to your bed.

Hell.

Luckily I did make it home. But I still couldn't get into my bed because it was freezing in my house. You could see your breath.

So we dropped off our stuff, turned on the heater, and promptly left for Taco Bell and Costco. It was somewhat warmer when we returned.

None of our canned food froze and burst. None of our pipes froze. Everything seemed fine...

Until we turned the water on.

That's when we realized the cold water tap in the kitchen sink would not shut off.

Seth could probably explain this better than me, but I'll give it a shot.

There is a little rubber gasket inside the tap that makes sure no water can come out through the faucet when we turn it off. This one was held in place by a little screw. I guess over time the screw had started getting looser and looser due to the tap being opened and closed and taken apart and such. Before we left we turned our water off and opened up the tap all the way so as to get rid of any extra water in the pipes. I guess this was the final straw because it came completely unscrewed. The next time we tried to use it (last night) the screw just ripped into the the rubber o-ring and tore it to shreds. Now even though we turned it off, water was still coming out.

So we left it on long enough for us to use the bathroom and get ready for bed, then turned the water off again.

Seth had class at 8am this morning. He gets back at 10 and then we are going to run out and see if we can find an identical rubber gasket to replace the old one with.

Seth doesn't think they really sell them anymore. They'd rather sell you the whole sink.

If this is true, that means we have to get a new kitchen sink.

Yikes.

I haven't taken a shower. I haven't used the bathroom. I haven't brushed my teeth (though I will shortly since I just remembered we have a bottle of water).

And I really need to do all of these things. I smell like sickness.

*Sigh*

I guess our break is over.