Farmer's Market

Every once in a while, Matt and I actually do something out of our everyday routine. It's becoming more and more rare as the weather gets colder.

"Michele, what do you want to do for our date tonight?"
"Watch a movie from Redbox and huddle under the blankets."
"Good plan! And move your freezing toes!"

I have this weird thing that I hate having the heater on, because it gets all stuffy and warm, but if we don't, we both freeze. Matt freezes way more than me since baby makes a lot of body heat for me. (Perk of being pregnant.) It's really pathetic at night, because when I get up in the middle of the night, he'll move to my warm body spot, and then when I get back, he'll wiggle over to where ever I am in bed. It's really hopelessly cute.

Anyway, our house is constantly around 60 degrees, and it gets even colder when I open the window. So therefore we never leave (except for school).

But last Friday, we actually went and did something for thirty minutes before jumping in bed and drinking hot chocolate.

We went to the Farmer's Market at the Riverwoods! The Riverwoods is my favorite place in Provo. It has a Williams-Sonoma and a Victoria's Secret (which no one ever shops at and has the best selection for sales). It also has a Gymboree, which has recently been added to my list of favorite stores to lust in.

This week was their last farmer's market of the year, so they mixed it with a Halloween festival. Minus the live music, it was great!

They had a petting zoo. The best part were the cute toddlers in the petting zoo, but Matt kept reminding me that it was not a kid-petting zoo.  The next best part were the tiny 2 1/2 ft. ponies. They looked so pathetic standing there.

Pumpkin display #1
Matt is not a big Tim Burton fan, but I am!
I loved this display!

This is the Alice in Wonderland pumpkin display. Matt totally didn't recognize it.
I couldn't believe it. He said that only a few people probably knew what it was.
Just as he said this, a group of 8 yr old-ish boys came up and said "Hey! It's Alice in Wonderland."

Cat!

Anyway, after that we very quickly looked through the booths. Everything was so expensive! We have our local grocery store prices memorized, and everything cost more at the farmers market. :( I was quite sad. By then, Matt was freezing so we ate at 5 Guys, before going home.

When we got home, we quickly changed into our warm pjs. Matt grabbed hot chocolate in our giant teacups. (I ended up spilling half of mine all over the sheet.) And we watched Avengers under our wonderful Ralph Lauren comforter for the rest of our date, while poking baby to make sure she was still alive. 

I must confess, cuddling and drinking hot chocolate was way more fun than going out. 

Fall!

On Sunday, Matt and I went on a hike. Although Utah is not my favorite place to live, Fall makes up for the rest of the year. Everything around here looks beautiful, and I absolutely love the weather. 

Matt had to position me in front of the porta-potty that was ruining our view.
Also a great time for a quick pregnancy shot, 29 weeks. (I was totally didn't know he was taking a picture.)

At this point, it's a small miracle that I made it up that far. But the view was beautiful.

A random guy that was trying to impress his date, asked us to take a picture of them.
Thankfully they returned the favor.

Other random things:
1) I had to do a commercial for my media class. The idea my group picked was why having a baby was cool. So for my part, I had to push a stroller around campus. I was so bad at it! I hit so many things, and people kept thinking I was abusing my kid. (At one point I almost tipped over the stroller.) They gave me even stranger looks when they realized there was no kid. Finally I met up with Matt, and he pointed out the front wheel was broken. Hopefully that will fix the problem, but if not, I need to practice my stroller driving skills.

2) Matt is almost done with his grad school applications!!

3) Baby is terrified of flashlights. Back when I was taking Infancy for my major, my teacher mentioned a fetus would move with a flashlight that was put on the mother's stomach. Matt and I were so excited to try this out. At 28ish weeks, baby's eyes apparently open back up, so we tried it. She usually moves like crazy, but as soon as that flashlight was turned on, she freezes. We have tried a few more times since then and she still stops moving. I have found that it is an excellent way to get her to stop kicking my ribs.

4) Matt and I need a new book to read out loud together. Any suggestions? So far we have read, Stargirl, Howl's Moving Castle,  Have a Little Faith, Winnie the Pooh, and The Princess Bride. Basically, we need a book that I won't finish behind Matt's back while he is doing homework but is still fun to read. 

Lance

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

We decided to put a sticker on Lance, so I could find him in big parking lots. 

I'm pretty sure this was the perfect one.

Happy 10/11/12

Life is still busy, and it doesn't look like it will be slowing down anytime soon.

We just about finished up midterms (I have one left tomorrow) and we are getting in the full swing of school. I am already counting down how many class periods I have left until graduation. (While I like school, walking up to campus lately has not been the most comfortable thing.) Matt has been doing awesome in school like usual, and even got his first graduate school application in!!!

The paper that is dominating my life at the moment is about this painting by Andy Warhol.
I'm totally in love with it, and the more I learn about it, the more I like it.

We are loving the fall weather too. Matt bought hot chocolate today, and this weekend we pulled out our winter bedding. We put the quilt and comforter on, and Matt looked at me and said, "I really like comforters." (Thank goodness too...since we have 2...Small confession: When we took out the comforter, I realized we now own enough bedding that we have a different set for each season. Luckily, Matt doesn't seem to mind.)  Tonight for dinner we made this recipe with bread bowls. (We don't have a blender, so ours doesn't look pretty enough to take a picture of) Now if the tree in front of our window would start turning colors then fall would be perfect.

Also, this Ted talk is amazing. Everyone should watch it. I think this might be my favorite one to date. Really you should watch it. 

This week

This week has been pretty busy around here. Matt took his first test and graduate school applications opened up. I had my first assignment to turn in, and since Matt has been so busy, a lot of time to do crafts. :). 

Ward Activity

Saturday, we went to our ward 5 k. My hip has been popping out of joint, so I wasn't allowed to run it. Matt did though.

Matt before the run. He wasn't super thrilled about it.

Both of us, after the run (and walk for me). By then happy endorphins were kicking in and Matt was more awake. 

 Books

Matt and I had been reading this together for the last month or so. We both really enjoyed the whole book  minus the ending.  It kept us laughing and it wasn't a super long read. 

These are the two books I read this week. A Change of Heart was an interesting read. It was about cell memory in transplant organs. It was a bit strange, but I enjoyed it. 

This book has been Matt's mistress all week. ::shakes fist::

Crafts/Baby

 Baby is now in 3rd trimester! Woot! Less than 100 days until Christmas and baby!!!! (93 to be exact). She moves a lot, which is a lot of fun for us. Matt likes to watch my stomach move and we both like poking it. It's neat when you poke your stomach and it pokes back at you.

I have been working on baby's quilt for the last month or two and this week I finished it! We also made her mobile and stuff. So her corner of the room is done.

Her corner of room 

Close up of baby mobile

Matt is really proud of the origami pteranodons. 

I know you can't really see it, but the clouds are totally covered in glitter.

We also have stars on the ceiling in different constellations.
So when we turn off the lights, our ceiling still looks cool.
(Also great for me when Matt explains what he is learning in Astronomy.)

Closer up picture of the quilt. I'm really happy with quilts when I finish them .
Since they take 40+ hrs to make. 

 Matt says that's all that we have done that is interesting this week. So that's all folks. Til next time.

Quilts

I’ve been quilting in my spare time, and today we (Matt has probably done at least a third of this quilt) finished one!!! I’m so excited. We did the whole thing, from the appliqué to the quilting to hand binding this thing. It took us around two months to finish it!

Matt said it should have said "poop" too. But I didn't think that was very lady or gentleman like.

I really like the diamond quilting and the polka dot binding.

Of course, this isn’t the first quilt that I’ve done. This summer I’ve been finishing up quilts that I made forever ago (maybe 6 years ago?), and I’m currently working on baby’s crib quilt. (I’ll put pictures up when I’m done. It’s probably my favorite of the 4.)

The binding isn't finished on this one yet. 

And last and not least, I made crib fitted sheets last night. They were really easy, and they match the crib quilt. :)

Matt is slightly worried, since I'm running out of projects to do. A baby only needs so many quilts, receiving blankets, sheets, and burp pads, and we are pretty sure we've reached the limit. So we'll see what I end up doing next.  

What will Offspring look like?

Matt and I were pretty cute kids.

Matt at 5ish

Me at 5ish

I don't think we look to similar, so we keep trying to guess what in the world offspring is going to look like.

I used a two online generators to get a guess.

This one totally freaked me out! Matt and I just laughed over it. She looks like a man!!!
(We had about the same reaction as Lily did when Mitch and Cam from Modern Family  got bored and decided to do this. (I couldn't find the clip. :( ))

This one is a lot better...she at least looks like a kid.

So according to the internet, offspring with have brown hair and hazel or green eyes. The nice thing about the first one has thick hair. So anyone else have any guesses what she really will look like?

Random Things

Nothing super exciting has been going on lately. Matt does homework and I try to entertain myself without distracting him. (I’m really good at being distracting.) But here are few things going on...

Photos

Matt figured out how to get photos off our phones and onto the computer. It was tricky since neither of us have picture text, but here are some of my favorites.

This one and the next one are from when we were dating. We didn't take a ton of pictures (not like we take a lot now),  so getting these made us happy.

Those are rice and beans. If you were wondering.

Earlier this summer, we were walking to where we parked my parents car. Matt goes,  "Michele, there is something on the window. Do you think we got a ticket?" He was starting to stress out, since it wasn't our car, and Matt has never had a ticket. Turns out it was just a bag of cheetos, and being that flamin' hot cheetos are his favorite, I told him that was a sign from God that he needs to cut back on the chips. 

I was in Tenessee for mother's day, and only finished one of  the mother's day gifts. Matt was sweet enough to make the 2nd apron, and then took this picture to let me see it before he sent it. (I think he looks pretty cute too in an apron.)

This is my absolute favorite picture of Matt that I have. One day I was reading and Matt felt neglected. So he led a trail of m&m's to his lips in hopes of a kiss. 

Recipes

Also, we’ve been trying out new recipes, since not everything is making me sick again! Here are two that we did this week.

Tom Kha Ghi

This recipe was pretty good. We ended up combining it with another recipe, and now we love it. Twice just this week alone. (We are so excited to have the weather down to the 80's so we can make soups again.)

Beef Empandas

I actually don't use this recipe. Since my grandfather is from Argentina, I've been making these since I was small, but I tried out her dough recipe today. It wasn't too bad.

Offspring

Whenever people ask me what it is like being pregnant, I tell them it’s like having the loch ness monster in my stomach. I like feeling her move all the time, and Matt is happy because my freak-outs that the baby is dead are happening less. (And when I do freak out, all I have to do is poke my stomach a few times and she’ll kick back.)

Baby at 24.5 weeks. She's over a pound now and still looks human. 

Me on the same day.  See? Physical evidence that she is pretty big. People are actually starting to notice I'm pregnant.

School Starts

I love mornings. Especially today.

I poked Matt awake at 5:50 and we laid in bed talking about dreams for 10 min. (I was shocked he woke completely up, but going to bed at 10:30ish has been helping a lot with that. ;) ). I dreamed I was back in high school starting my senior year, which lead us off topic to our favorite teachers and classes, and what we did and didn’t like about high school. After that, we did our normal morning routine, with John Mayer and Journey as our playlist.

I packed him up his lunch, while he folded the laundry. (We took a quick break to sword fight with butter knives. I think we are both “master” level like in the Princess Bride.) Then read scriptures before he left for school.

I missed the mundane routine of that school brings.

Summer was fun, but I like school time (not necessarily being in school.) I like the studying on the bed together, arguing over writing styles, and looking forward to making dinner together. It’s kind of weird that I’m taking my last two classes, and after this I’ll be done. I was feeling a bit sentimental and took a picture of Matt on his first day of his Senior year of undergrad.

I think he looks quite heroic. 

Baby!

1 year

Matt and Michele have been married for 366 days. Wow! That's a lot of days. How have things changed since Matt and Michele decided to tie the knot? Let's turn the time over to our chief analyst for some one year anniversary statistics.

Okay. I'll admit, this graph is pretty boring. Either you are pregnant, or you're not. No in betweens as long as you don't time travel too often. NEXT!

Here is the number of books on Matt and Michele's bookshelf over the last year. As you can see, I've super-imposed their net assets as well. Probably a spurious correlation.

You can never have too much pie, and Matt and Michele have been eating it by the dumptruck load. Take a look at that!

And last but not least; is the love still alive? The verdict is yes! But apparently Matt is quite a monster at the end of the semester. Here are some other random statistics.

Dishes broken: 2

Gallons of paint used: 1.5

Nanny episodes watched: a lot

M+M's consumed: (we're talking the M+M apocalypse here)

That's all, folks

How We Procrastinated Writing Essays

Yesterday was Pioneer Day here in Utah, which meant Matt got the day off.

We had planned for it be a very productive day (writing essays all day long), but after playing bingo with the old people, the last thing we felt like doing was writing.

I decided my form of procrastinating my essays would be sewing receiving blankets for offspring. I got out my sewing machine and started sewing. But after an hour frustration, I looked at Matt in defeat. Sewing a quilt without a cutting mat is really hard!

We tried to think of a solution...but we couldn't find any. Matt glanced at the coffee table...and I did too, where the innocent looking Joann's coupons were sitting. 

This week there were some awesome coupons...and we didn't have to walk all the way up there, because we have Lance! 

Matt -- "We can just drive up to Joann's if you want. I mean you do have to practice driving."

Me -- "Yeah...but we aren't supposed to spend money."

5 minutes later we were in the car to buy a cutting board.

When we got home, Matt worked on finishing the receiving blanket and I worked on my new project.

He was better than me and actually worked on his essay for an hour. I spent the whole night sewing.

So here are a few pictures of our projects...

Back of Receiving Blanket 1

Front of Receiving Blanket 1

Back of Receiving Blanket 2

Sorry I can't get this darker! It's a dinosaur on the back of Receiving  Blanket 2.
(If you click it, you can see it a lot easier. This is also the one Matt did. I love it!)

I have so many scraps...it drives Matt crazy. But I saw this online! I was so excited to make them. 

Other sides

All the naked blocks that we still need to sew. It's our super effective front door alarm right now. 

It's a good thing Matt's mom dropped off some baby clothes, because so far all we had are lots blankets to wrap our naked, diaper-less baby in. She at least made sure regardless of the gender, our baby will have 2 outfits. That's enough, right? Right? (We don't like sewing clothes...)

I still have 4 more essays to write this week, and Matt still has several more drafts of his personal statement -- which translates we have a lot more papers to procrastinate. I'll probably post a few more times this week too...after all blogging is another great way to procrastinate.