Ketchup

You’ll never guess what happened to us today!  We woke up and noticed that the cows had come home, pigs were flying, and we even heard that hell had frozen over—that could only mean one thing—we need to write a blog.

Michelle has been kindly waiting for me to write a blog before she writes again and I promised many, many times to do so but am just now getting to it.  I don’t know of a better way to catch up than to give you a whole alphabet worth of our life.

Apartment.  No pictures because at this moment, the house isn’t real tidy.  So, you get to read my descriptive writing. J  First, when you enter our front door (if you can get it to open because the humidity changes sometimes make it quite difficult) you will be greeted by so much wood, you feel like you are inside the Keebler elves’ tree house.  The walls are real wood.  I wouldn’t call it paneling, but more like contoured slats that fit snugly to each other.  In most places you won’t be able to see the wall though because there are so many built in cabinets (also made of wood).  The ceiling is made of one foot square fake wood panels.  Each has ridges running along it in one direction and the ridges on the panels are placed perpendicular to each other so that they create a giant checker pattern across the whole ceiling.  The ceiling is about seven feet high, except for where the air ducts and other random pipes come lower.  Don’t worry though; we can’t see any of them because they are covered in the same paneling as the ceiling.  We have a few secret doors in the wall, one is access to the water main and the other is our closet (it is only a little secret though because it has a handle and visible hinges).  Our table is solid wood that is about the same color as the walls and has matching chairs and a bench.  Our coffee table is about the same color and is fake wood.  That pretty much covers the wood in the main room.

The floor is primarily burnt orange tile with a large rectangle outlined in green tiles.  Oh, there is one white wall in this room that separates it from the master bedroom.  We know it was added later because they built it right into one of the cabinets.  We will never be able to open that cabinet door (unless we knock down the wall).  Michelle has done a great job decorating.  We have a picture of Christ and a framed Family:  Proclamation to the World (gift of the Osborne’s) on one wall and a patriotic wall that has pictures of Lincoln, Washington, flags (gifts of Jaynes’) and one of me in uniform.  She has filled all of the little shelves with pictures, books, and other random items.  We have a “Special” plate (thanks to Joe and Ande) next to the table.  Oh, the light switch for the room is also about 30 feet away from the door back in a corner behind the table, so we have a little lamp we can turn on when we walk in the door.  Oh, we also have a love seat adorned with an Air Force Academy blanket (gift of Grace and Abe) and some pillows from the Van Tassel’s.

I’m tired of describing and you are probably tired of reading, so I’ll just take some pictures of the rest of the house when we have cleaned up a little more.

Baby.  We just passed 18 weeks!  That means, we only have 8 more days until we find out the gender of baby Payne.  We are excited to get another ultrasound.  On our last ultrasound in September, we got to hear the baby’s heartbeat and we discovered our offspring was for all intents and purposes a cinnamon bear!

10 Week Ultrasound

Apparently our baby likes to change shapes a lot because since we discovered he or she was a cinnamon bear, he/she has morphed into a cumquat, fig, lime, medium shrimp, lemon, apple avocado, turnip, onion, and a pickle.  We’re not sure how this works, but we sure are excited to see what is next.  Any guesses?

Church.  Michelle told you a few months ago about our responsibility to teach a class to high schoolers (Seminary) online.  Well, it is happening.  We meet three times a week and love teaching.  It is so much harder to do online but we are learning and hopefully getting better.  A few weeks ago, we had two students on the same day for the first time and it was quite the experience.  Student #1 didn’t turn on his webcam because it was slowing his computer down too much.  Student #2 had video of us, but for some reason, his audio was not working so he couldn’t hear us and we couldn’t hear him.  While one of us was carrying on a conversation with Student #1 about Adam and Eve, the other was using instant messaging to keep Student #2 involved.  Good thing we had both of us there!  Since that time, we have changed our meeting time to the afternoon to better accommodate the student’s schedules and we have really enjoyed getting to know the students.  We also love working with and learning from the other Seminary teachers in the Stake and the CES Supervisor for the area.  They do a great job and make our calling fun and easy.

We love our ward.  Everyone has been so kind to us since we moved in.  We have been invited over for dinner or for some other activity by so many couples and families who have been so generous and fun.  We have been given baby stuff, yeast, hand me down maternity clothes, and we've found workout partners.  We love the friendships we have already made and look forward to strengthening them and building new ones in the years to come.

Dishes.  Michelle and I have tried to invite people over for dinner once or twice a month for Sunday dinner.  We usually experiment and try to make something completely new so the kitchen turns into a big disaster and it is never cleaned up before we eat.  By the time people leave, we usually have lost all motivation so we do the unthinkable and leave the mess until Monday morning.  It always makes getting started on chores on Monday morning so much worse.

Electronics.  With Michelle doing online school, we decided we needed a new computer for her to use and one for me to have for my school.  We went against our better judgment and bought an HP because they had risen to the top of the market.  We’re not sure how they got there because the computer was a joke and we hated it.  Luckily Costco has a great return policy so we started looking for a Toshiba online to replace it.  Michelle ordered one and then about a week later they emailed to say they didn’t have any in stock.  She ordered from about 5 different places with the same results until one of the companies told her that the computer was no longer in production so her chances of finding any in stock anywhere were pretty slim.  Michelle ordered a similar computer through that company over the phone where the sales rep promised her they had plenty in stock.  We woke up the next day to an email that informed us the order was cancelled because they were out of stock.  In the end, that was a mistake and the company sent us two computers but only billed us for one.  We called the company and they had no records showing that two had been shipped.  Now we have to figure out how to get it back to the company.  Well, to make a long story short, it has been an adventure getting a computer that works.

Finances.  Michelle and I just completed our first successful month of strictly following a budget and keeping track of every penny we spent.  It feels great to know exactly where all of our money went.  We finally have a system in place that seems to work for us and are so proud of ourselves that we thought we needed to share it with everyone!