to which i say, who knows?

All of a sudden things are just coming up.
Research opportunities.
TA positions.
Possibly finishing school early.

All of these things are looming, awaiting decisions.
All of the decisions are dependent on so many other things.

Gah, life is crazy like that isn't it?

so content

I have been feeling particularly awesome lately. Let me tell you why.
I have been exercising.
And eating my fruits and veggies.
And getting an adequate amount of sleep.
And spending as much time as is possible kissing and cuddling my husband.

I also have been doing a lot of;
reading
cooking
cleaning
and other householdy things.

Honestly, I am living my dream. Completely. I am a wife. I am a student. We aren't parents yet and can just focus on each other and being disgustingly adorable. I have the time to dedicate to my body. I get to go to the gym. We aren't destitute so I can buy healthy food. Everything about my life is exactly what I have always wanted.

It is honestly the greatest feeling in the world.

Talk to me in a couple of years when I'm not in school anymore and we have an adorable baby (or two, I'm still feeling like twins are part of our future...) to take care of. Then I will be even happier than I am now! Which I cannot even fathom because I'm so deliriously happy right now.

Another thing about my life that is so stinking awesome and makes me so stinking happy and makes me feel so great about myself?

This boy. Kevin. I love him so much. He is so good to me and makes me feel so valued and loved. :) I love my life with him.

Lovers day

(Warning: Long and disgustingly nauseous post ahead, with lots of discussion about love, gifts, love, mushy sentiments and emotion. Read it anyway, unless you are offended by newlywed love)

I have never experienced Valentines Day while having a significant other. I always was a loner on this day of the year and I was pretty much over it. It didn't bother me, it was just how it was, although there was a part of me that longed to be smothered with love, flowers, chocolate and sweet gestures. A few weeks before Valentines Day, I asked Kevin if he would do something to make it special. I was delighted to see the cogs already working. I knew that I would be happy with anything that he did to make the day a special one.

I woke up to Kevin singing "Happy Valentines Day to You", carrying a tray with a beautiful breakfast. Omelettes, toast, milk and orange juice. It was so yummy. He also gave me the sweetest love letter. We ate together in bed and cuddled for a while. Then he decided he'd better head out to school. I stayed home to "finish a paper" which I really did, but that wasn't the real reason I had wanted to stay home.

As soon as he was gone (and my paper was done), I got down to business. I put on my apron, turned up the heater and started baking. I made some pretzel dough and put it in the warm oven to rise. Then I made homemade meatballs for the very first time ever and put them in the fridge for later. I finished the morning's work by making cake batter truffles and getting them half way dipped and sprinkled. Then I ran out the door like a mad woman to turn in my paper and have some lunch with my aunt (thanks again Janice!).

I got a hold of Kevin when I was on campus and he met up with me before I rushed off to have lunch. He had bought me a beautiful red rose! Just a few days before, we had been discussing how expensive flowers are and I asked him if he would buy me flowers someday when we had money. So this was a sweet surprise. He apologized for not getting a bouquet, but I couldn't stop smiling at my beautiful flower.

Throughout this whole morning, Kevin had been sending me sweet little texts and telling me to "look in the red shoe by the door:" and "check out your right pocket of your gray jacket." He had written me all of these little love notes and placed them strategically so that I wouldn't find them until he gave me the clues. I was constantly smiling as I walked around campus, as I sat in class, I just loved it.

After my class, we started walking to the car and Kevin said we needed to stop at his locker. I was chattering away when I realized that he had pulled a little box out of his locker and was holding it out to me. He bought me chocolate. :) Again, I wasn't expecting this and I loved the little box of fudge.

We went home and changed into our running clothes. The gorgeous weather was too good to pass up. We went for a little Valentines Day run which was awesome!

When we got home from our run, Kevin mysteriously said that he needed to take the car and run a few errands...he left and was gone for over an hour. While he was gone, I got to work in the kitchen again. I rolled out the pretzels and got those baking and then started cooking our romantic spaghetti and meatball dinner. The flower sat in a pitcher on our table and we ate by candlelight. As we ate we reflected about the time we have spent together and our experience falling in love. We shared with each other some of the reasons we love each other so much, and someone might have gotten a little emotional. I'm not tell who though. ;) He melts my heart every day. He is so kind and sweet to me. I am so grateful for his love.

We finished the night by watching a romantic movie and sitting wrapped around each other.

I am so grateful to have such a wonderful love in my life. Kevin is absolutely the best thing that has ever happened to me. He is so sweet and kind and thoughtful and loving. He sees me in an entirely different way than I see myself, and he helps me see myself the way he does. He treasures me, protects me, and loves me completely. I love him so much.

Call me cheesy, cliche, obnoxiously in love, whatever. I don't even care. This Valentines Day was a total success, and I love my husband desperately.
Happy love day!

the saga of the epic fort

I've realized that I haven't really posted about some of the fun things that Kevin and I do at home. This is because we are almost never at home.
But, last night we had an awesome date night at home. We made homemade pizza

And we made the most epic fort ever. It was amazing. It was beautiful. It was so much harder to build than I thought it would be, and I got so frustrated. I wanted it to be simple and easy, but it wasn't, and I'm married to an engineer so he was working to solve all the problems with it. But, I was only upset for like 5 minutes because look how awesome it turned out.

This my friends, is how you build a fort. We watched Bicentennial Man in our fort. It was really great. I cried at the end.

And then we slept in the fort. This was not my favorite thing that happened. It wasn't all that comfortable for sleeping in.

Finally at 6:00 in the morning I told Kevin that we had to get in bed!! And in the process of trying to escape the fort, I broke it.

Overall, this was one of the best date nights we've had yet.

Being married is so awesome. 

(Also, if you are wondering why there are no pictures of us in the fort, that's because we pretty much exclusively hang out in our underwear when we are at home. It's too much effort to put clothes on just to take a picture. TMI? Sorry not sorry)

I wonder, I wonder.

Today I realized that this semester has been going for exactly one month.
That's weird.
And then I realized, school gets out for the summer in like two and a half months.
Then I get four beautiful months off.
Oh we are so excited for summer.
There are so many things we are going to do.
It's going to be awesome.
And then, I start my senior year of college.
What the?
Two more semesters and I'm done.
Oh how good that sounds to me.
I can totally do anything for two semesters.
So after I graduate, you may ask, then what?
To which I will say, I have no idea.
Find a job in my field? I don't know.
Make a baby? I don't know.
Bum around our apartment all the time? Sounds good to me.
Kevin will be in school for another year.
Well, his undergrad.
Then we'll be heading to who even knows where for grad school.

Sometimes I get thinking about all of these things, and I start worrying and overthinking.
I wonder about how we can afford to have a baby with Kevin in school and me not working.
I wonder about where we are going to go to grad school, and if we will be far away from family.
And if we are far away from family, how far? And how long? And when will I get to see them again?
I wonder about Kevin's career and where that will take us.
I wonder what his career will even end up being.
I wonder if I should just do grad school right now before we have kids and be done with it.
I wonder what I should even get my masters in.
I wonder if I'll even be able to get into grad school.
I wonder if I wait 15 years and then try to go back to school if I will hate my life.
I wonder what our kids will be like, and if any of them will have any special needs.
I wonder how many kids we will even have.
I wonder how much we should space them out.
I wonder if I will get bored staying at home all the time.
I wonder if I will get overwhelmed staying at home all the time.

Basically, there are a lot of things I really wonder about our futures. I honestly have no idea where we will end up, what we will do. I really can only tell you where we will be for the next year until I graduate. After that, everything is a mystery.

Sometimes when I get all caught up in the wondering about how things will turn out, I try to remember one thing in my life that I know with absolute certainty, one thing that remains constant and that I don't have to worry about ever changing.

I know my husband loves me. I know he will always love me. I know we will be together forever.
And that sure feels good.

This is miraculous.

Something has happened since we got married.
I have become Susie Homemaker all of a sudden.
Except I still struggle with the cleaning, laundry stuff.
All of a sudden, I want to cook all.the.time. I look forward to preparing meals for Kevin and I. I'm experimenting like crazy. I'm making really yummy meals.
I'm also making some major mistakes.
But that's okay (remember how I'm focusing on my accomplishes and stuff?).
Although it was really funny when I somehow messed up an easy four ingredient pizza dough. I spent like 25 minutes trying to get that dough rolled flat. I almost had a freak out when Kevin tried to squish it all up again. I ended up just throwing it on the pizza stone and putting everything on it. It was still yummy, just a little hard to chew.
Last week I threw together a cheesy, broccoli, potato soup. It was so delicious. Kevin and I were literally licking our bowls.
One Friday I threw some chicken in the crockpot with salsa and black beans. We shredded the chicken and had some amazing burritos. It was also really good leftovers with rice.
I got inspired by the delicious dinner we had with our friends Kristen and John and I made a huge salad this Saturday for us to eat on campus. It had tons of chicken cooked to perfection in olive oil, garlic and basil. The salad had every vegetable in our fridge. We ate it on campus and the whole time, both Kevin and I couldn't stop making sounds of delight.
Yesterday it felt great to have dinner ready by the time we got home! It was a late day at school because Kevin took a beast of a test, so to just have to boil some noodles and set the table was wonderful. I had put chicken, cream of mushroom, tomatoes, garlic garlic garlic, spinach, basil and a little olive oil. We had a little salad with it and felt like we were eating out.

I've realized that I don't do well following recipes. I will do exactly what they say, every single step, but it never turns out well. I do a lot better when my grandma says, "all you do is this, this and that and it's great!"
Or I see a recipe on Pinterest, then adapt it to what I have at home. Kevin has been so supportive of my experimenting and I'm really starting to enjoy it! It helps that every meal is eaten with gusto by my loving husband, and he always compliments how well I'm doing. It makes want to keep cooking, keep learning and continue to get better.

I'm not a great cook, and I've never considered myself to be, but dang, I am getting there! I'll get the hang of it yet, and maybe someday, if I'm incredibly lucky and work super hard, I'll be as good as my grandma.

today i failed, but it's okay.

This morning, I could not get out of bed.
My alarm went off, I turned it off.
Kevin got up and tried to persuade me to.
Twenty minutes later he was out of the shower trying to get me to wake up.
All of a sudden it was past the time that we had wanted to leave and I was still asleep.
He was kind enough to reset my alarm for 9:30 and walk to school.
My alarm went off at 9:30.
I pushed snooze every 5 minutes for a long time.
I finally got out of bed at 10:45.

I didn't go to the gym,
I didn't clean the apartment,
I didn't even shower.

I felt like a failure.
I told Kevin that I was failing as a wife.
I apologized.

For the next few hours I started stewing about how...
Lazy I was.
Selfish I was.
Boring I was.
I wasn't focusing on my homework like I should be.
I wasn't focusing on my scripture study/prayer/spiritual side.
I should be keeping the apartment spotless, the dishes done, always having dinner on the table for my sweet husband who works so hard.

I voiced all of these things (and more) to Kevin who was so kind and understanding and firm on the opinion that I'm not a failure. He helped me feel a little better.

And then (when I was supposed to be working on a paper, oops), I found this blog post that had been shared on Facebook.

Please read it if you are feeling like a waste of space, a horrible person, a failure.
It's all about how we tend to tell ourselves little lies about who we are when we do something wrong. We tell ourselves that we aren't good enough, that we are lazy, selfish, boring, failing. Then she talked about how instead of focusing on our little setbacks, we should recognize our "little drops of awesome", when we do something good.

It helped me out so much.
I realize that today was not a great day in terms of productivity.
But, instead of dwelling on all that I didn't do, or all that I did wrong, I want to share what I did accomplish.

I got dinner all ready in the crockpot, it's cooking right now and will be ready to eat as soon as we get home.
I made lunch for my husband.
I loaded and started the dishwasher so we will have clean dishes getting home.
I went to all of my classes and stayed awake.
I took a quiz and submitted an assignment.
I participated in class.
I told my husband that I love him and I gave him lots of kisses.

All of these things are drops of awesome in my bucket.
I want to be more positive.
I want to be happier.
I want to focus on the good things in my life, instead of on the things I am sorely lacking in.
A little bit at a time.