Catch-Up on Life

Hi! We're still here! :) It's been a crazy week and it's only going to get crazier as the month goes on. Two weekends ago we went back to Fayetteville for a short trip. Eric got to see all 3 of his college roommates - quite an event since three of the four are not living in Fayetteville right now.

We also got to visit with my great-grandmother again, who turns 93 (Mom, correct me if I'm wrong!) next week! Isn't that just amazing?! Here she is at the wedding with mom and I:

And last weekend for Easter we went to Memphis! I took off on Friday so it was nice to have a slightly longer weekend. We did a lot of shopping and wedding planning for Kent and Dreama (almost a month away! We can't wait to see the whole Leemis family and Michiganders again!). I thought this picture was pretty hilarious of everyone in line at the fabric counter at JoAnn's:

In other news, Eric has an internship!! He found out yesterday and it's here within the hospital system at the quality center. Sounds like it's something he's going to enjoy, and we were super glad it's in Columbia - no extra living or gas costs! :) He's got several big projects due the next few weeks until the end of the semester, so he's definitely staying busy!

I'm taking the LEED exam next weekend so I've been studying 5+ hours a day myself. I'm hoping to get that professional accreditation to keep on top of things in the design field. Of course, when I scheduled it, I was looking at a pretty slow month and thought I would have plenty of time to study, but since then 2 art events came up, an inquiry about designing a website, an Etsy order and a couple other side design projects! Talk about a lot to do! (PS- my newest blog post got published yesterday here)

Gotta love studying...here's my huge box and a half worth of notecards! And I thought I was done with school... :)

And it's finally looking like spring here! (Below is outside of Memorial Union on campus)

Here's Eric in front of the columns - I find it funny that he's wearing an Arkansas shirt in front of the Missouri sign! :)

And with spring comes the swarms of wasps. In our apartment, too. No joke - we've found 3 (1 dead, 2 alive) in our apartment in the last week, plus several on our porch. I guess each season brings it's own different critters to our place! (Ladybugs, wasps, a mouse... what's next?! And we don't live in a bad apartment either!)

More to come next week for sure! Along with photos after another trip to HomeGoods - this time the big store near STL! ;)

Weekend Update

Happy Monday! Hope your weekend was went well and didn't feel as short as our's! :)

We had the delight of several tasty meals this weekend, including a new recipe we tried out. Friday dinner was delicious Ruby Tuesdays (I'm in LOVE with the way they cook their broccoli! I never ate broccoli until this past summer and now I'm addicted!). Saturday lunch was the wonderful Harry & David chicken noodle soup mix...



Saturday dinner Eric cooked steak and potatoes...





And Sunday we tried out this new recipe:
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Chicken and Pineapple Slow Cooker Recipe



Ingredients:
-2 Chicken breasts cut up into cubes
-1 can of canned pineapple chunks
-1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon Teriyaki sauce
-Dash of ginger
-Dash of cayenne
-Thawed bag of sugar snap peas (we used mixed veggies above)

Directions:
Mix pineapple, chicken, Teriyaki, ginger, and cayenne in slow cooker. Cook on low for 6 hours. Add in sugar snap peas for the last 30 minutes.

*NOTE: I couldn't find a bag of just sugar snap peas at the store, so I picked up a mix of veggies. It was really good, but ended up being a little too "busy", so you might try to swap out the pineapple chunks with either juice or of larger pieces of pineapple.
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On Sunday, we got a nice little surprise outside our back window (that even almost made us late to church we were staring for so long!)
Eric opened up the blinds to find this...



Look closely or click to enlarge...
You'll see 5 deer hidden in the trees! :)



We've never seen them behind our building before - it's always been behind some of the other buildings. One of them actually got so close that I thought he was going to fall off the edge of the brick wall and land in the alley!







Speaking of church, we went to The Crossing again yesterday. It's a Presbyterian-based contemporary church that started in 2000 (that's always filled to the brim!), and to be completely honest, it's been a lot different than what I'm used to. Very casual, a lot of technology, and a more "loose" structure to the service. The church has theater seating (much more comfortable though than Catholic pews! :), screens everywhere, coffee bars in the lobby (and everyone drinks coffee during the service) and a large stage. No altar, no pulpit, and I don't even think there was a cross on the stage this week. I'm still not used to the lighting effects and amped-up musicians. The service consists of a lot of singing, a few readings/prayers, and the sermon. They pretty much always have a really good message, but I'm still warming up to the whole "pop concert feel on a Sunday" idea...I'm much more traditional.

In other news, I'm currently working on some blog updates (you'll notice I got the comments link to work thanks to Kalyn pointing it out!, and I've added labels to the left) so be looking for more little changes soon! :)

I feel like we live at a zoo...

I have to say, our apartment complex has quite the variety of wildlife, and we experienced a new type this morning...

We encounter a group of 4 deer on a regular basis...




We lived with ladybugs all over the place for a few weeks in October (this was our outside storage unit - we'd get a few stranded ladybugs that would make it into our apartment). Surprisingly, this is only about a 1/4 of the total number of ladybugs we dealt with...



Of course you know about the mouse. And then there was a stint for a few days that we found one dead and one alive wasp in our bedroom.

And, today, get this...TURKEYS! Eric has seen them before, but this was the first time I'd ever seen them!



I kid you not, there were 4 HUGE black turkeys outside this morning.

What's next? Pandas or polar bears? :)

Don't get me wrong though, we live at an awesome complex and couldn't be happier with our current living situation. It's just we've seen some crazy creatures lately!

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday everyone! I'm sure counting down the hours until the weekend! :)

So, to update from the last post, we caught the mouse! (Thank goodness!!!) Maintenance stopped by our apartment and put down the "old school" mouse traps in our kitchen, and sure enough by the time we got home after school/work, the big fat black mouse was caught and dead. (I wouldn't even look at the thing - thank you Eric for being brave enough to dispose of it!) Hopefully that will NEVER happen again.

We got to make a quick trip to Fayetteville last weekend to see the Hogs, Anna Marie and Michael's new house!, and have a little "dog date" with Chloe, Summer, and little Linus! Linus is Emily's new ADORABLE puppy - we were so excited to meet him! I think Eric walked out of there pretty sad that our apartment doesn't allow pets, because I know he'd get one in a heartbeat!





Summer


Chloe


Drew and Linus


Anna Marie and Linus


Linus - I actually caught this photo before he ran all over the place again!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Halloween Weekend

So we had a somewhat uneventful Halloween weekend filled with multiple trips to Wal-Mart, studying, and painting. We did get a nice date-night dinner in there though at Ruby Tuesday's which was delicious!

Eric volunteered for the "Tiger Night for Fun" sponsored by Children's Hospital on Saturday, and he and his MHA friend Clayton dressed up as Power Rangers...
Unfortunately Eric won't let me share the pictures of him in the child-sized red Power Ranger costume... ;)





And then we woke up this morning to... a mouse. Of course, it's a Monday, too.

I walked into the bathroom this morning and a minute later, I see a black blur zip into the room. I jumped, let out a blood-curdling scream, and ran to the office to stand on the futon, and Eric leaped out of bed thinking I was dying. Needless to say, I spent the next 45 minutes locked in the bathroom sitting in the sink getting ready for work while Eric, the brave mouse hunter, searched up and down the entire apartment. Unfortunately, the mouse hid pretty well, so he hasn't been found. Hopefully maintenance will have trapped the guy by the time we get home in a few hours.

(In case you couldn't tell, I HATE mice, hate them. As well as fish, snakes, frogs, and other creatures of the like, too :) Luckily though, I have an AWESOME, Eagle Scout, dragon slaying, prince charming, (you get the point), husband who isn't afraid of those things! - THANK YOU ERIC!)

More to come later this week!