California Here We Come!

Of course a snow storm comes on the night we decided to leave. Why weather!? WHY!? Luckily we just bought new tires that handle very well in the snow. So I get to drive at night, in the snow, with a wailing cat in the back who is going to sound like a dying cow. I think I am trying to imagine the absolute worse so that I won't be overwhelmed. Just set the bar super low so that I can be relieved when the trip goes well. Dallas did take the cat to pick me up at the airport once. And that was a two hour trip with no carrier, no nothin'. It'll be fine guys. I'm sure the cat won't throw up, or poop all over the carrier... or pee on my lap... Oh gosh, so many different awful situations. I will keep you all posted.

Yesterday was our first year anniversary! We left work a few hours early and got our tires realigned (romantic) and then went to a matinee showing of Skyfall then got all dressed up and went out to Outback. After dinner we came home and cleaned the house and got all packed up! It was a great day.

My handsome husband

Is it time to go home yet!? All I want to do is get the car and cat ready to go! I got the pretrip jitters. Merry Christmas everyone! I will let you all know how the trip went and will try to document it as much as possible!

The Semester is Over!

I am finally finished with the worst semester of my life! Did I pass Calculus 2? Probably not! But it's over for now guys. Until next summer, then I will complain some more about it. I'm not really sure why I thought I could take discrete mathematics and calculus 2 in the same semester... but I don't have to worry about it anymore! Yay! I feel severely sleep deprived. And then I decided to go to the midnight showing of the Hobbit last night and be even more sleep deprived!

In a couple of days we will be on our way to Redding. So excited to spend 2 weeks at home relaxing with my family. However the car trip should be interesting. We are taking our kitty home with us because we don't want to leave him alone for 2 weeks. I am pretty sure Oreo is going to destroy our poor innocent kitty who I am pretty sure doesn't even know how to hiss. But we bought him a carrier for the trip and I think he likes it! Probably because I filled it with catnip and kitty treats... I'm sure he will love being stuck in it for 12 hours...

We went to Long Beach for Thanksgiving last month and it was spectacular. My sister hosted the most beautiful dinner.

 

 The pictures don't even do it justice. We also went to Disneyland! The first amusement park Dallas and I have been to together. It was magical. I can't wait until we go again in 2 years with my whole family and I can share the magic with my nieces and nephews. We are lame and didn't take many pictures but we do have this lovely one. As you can see my parents did not enjoy space mountain.

My Dad Rules

It's days like these that make me appreciate my Dad even more. I had a long day of classes and didn't leave campus until 9 o'clock at night and spent 7 hours studying for my calculus test tomorrow! I usually like to complain but then I just think of how hard my Dad works, and all the crazy hours he has worked in his lifetime and I realize I am being a big whimp! So buck up Kirsti. And thank you Dad for showing what its like to really work your butt off!

Side note. I came home for lunch and let the kitty outside. He dragged down a poor helpless little grasshopper and was whacking it around. After much debate I decided to rescue it from the kitty and tried to relocate it. It. Was. Terrifying. I don't understand how I was capable of sticking my hand in a cage of 20 crickets and grabbing one by the tail to feed to our lizards when I was 9. I could barely move the grasshopper that I trapped under a cup. It's little hairy legs were poking out the bottom and I got scared and dropped it once I got to the top of the stairs. Good enough! Poor grasshopper...

I love my Dad!

Oh I have a Blog?

Well it has been quite some time since my last post! I foresaw this happening... Well glorious summer is over and school has begun. It is only week one and I already feel overwhelmed. And this is going to be a tough semester, but I can do it!

I'm taking Calculus 2 from a man with the thickest Chinese accent I have ever heard. I could listen to him say the word "derivative" all day long. And my Ethics teacher has a really thick British accent, which becomes incredibly annoying when I realize that I am reading with a British accent in my head...

I have finally stared to do some programming at my work! It is pretty exciting to get do to what I love! And good to know that I actually still enjoy doing it. I feel like I have learned more in these few last weeks of work then I have in a whole semester. Crazy.

So you know how I had all these ambitious crafting goals? I have done 0. I am currently trying to muster up the confidence to re-stain the table we have. It is Dallas' greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat grandma's table. Maybe not that many greats... but it is very old and is a family heirloom! So I don't want to screw this up guys. I have the sander, the stain... and all the other things... but have not done it yet. It is hard too because we don't really have a good working space. I mean the sanding will be fine and I can do that outside, but I want to spray paint the legs and chairs black which I can't do in our tiny apartment, and I can't do it outside because the paint will bubble in the sun! So I am not really sure what to do...

Anyways, Dallas I had a wonderful summer and I will fill you all in later on some of the fun stuff we did!

And I promised you a picture of the adorable sleepy kitty when he steals my pillow. This is why I can't kick him off. 

He is too cute.

Summer Is Just Around The Corner

Three more weeks until school is out! This is about the time were I stop caring about homework and assignments and just want it to be over. Heh...

The best surprise was when I signed up for my summer class I saw that it doesn't start until June 22! Two months of glorious free time. The game I have been anticipating for the past 10 years comes out next months and my brother is moving into town for the summer and its just going to be great! Can't wait to play D3 with him. It will be like the old days, the two of us playing with my Dad until we realize that its now morning time and we have to get in bed before our Mom finds out we stayed up all night ;)

Dallas and I have decided to make a habit of working out with our new free time. So I am excited to have a work out buddy. I started going on runs everyday but that lasted about a week in a half... It was fun until I realized I had to keep doing it. So we will see how these next few months go. Oh how I wish I has one of the people addicted to working out. Instead I am addicted to being lazy, just like my cat. He sleeps so much! Cats sleep about 13-18 hours a day. How amazing does that sound? I wish I could be a cat for a day... lounging around sleeping where ever I wanted...

Anywho. Can't wait for these next two months! Just need this semester to be oooover.

Cleaning Machine

So it has been my spring break this week and I decided to do some major deep cleaning. I'm pretty sure this apartment has never really been cleaned, maybe swept here and there... It's just so gross and old. And in a basement... Anywho. I wasn't messin' around. I scrubbed the tile grout with a tooth brush, and a whole lotta bleach. But the floors looks amazing now! And I even painted the baseboards. This is a big deal for me. I felt like I was on HGTV or something. They were this nasty tan color and were so scraped up and dirty. But now look at them!

Before...

After!!

This was the kinda cleaning that would make my momma proud. So great! I feel so productive and so much happier being in a clean home!

Oh man I gotta tell you what I made for dinner tonight. I made baked southwest egg rolls with creamy chipotle dipping sauce. They were so yummy. Here is the link. It did involve a lot of chopping of veggies. Which takes quite a bit of time when you are using a $20 knife! I will show you the picture to tempt you even further :)

Brain Fry

My brain is not working very well lately. I feel like I have a 5 second delay to everything. The past two weeks have been so stressful because of school and midterms and I am sooooooo looking forward to next weekend. I get to fly to Long Beach and visit my sissy and my dearest brother-in-law for 5 whole days and bask in the warm sunlight! It's going to be glorious. Cannot wait to get out of the snow. Not like its really been snowing that much... but it has been chilly. And I hate being cold. hate hate hate. And not being with Dallas for 5 days is going to be so strange. He was gone for one night in Las Vegas for a work trip last month and it felt like he was gone for half a week!

So the situation with my cat hogging the pillow has become much much worse. He thinks that it is his pillow. And he has such a way of sneaking onto it that by the time I notice he is all situated and adorably comfortable... I tried to persuade him onto a different pillow and that worked for most of the night, but when I woke up he was spooning the top of my head again. I'm sure you all think I'm crazy for not just hitting him or something, but you just haven't SEEN how cute he looks, and how cozy! I would be so upset if someone pushed me off the bed when I was as comfy cozy as he was. I will try to snatch a picture so you can all understand the cuteness. He really loves that pillow! There was one morning where every time my alarm went off (I hit snooze like a bagillion times every morning so it goes off a lot) I would pull him down next to me and then fall back asleep and when I woke up to the alarm again he was right on top of my head again! This repeated itself about 7 times until I finally just decided to get out of bed.

That kitty cat.

Honeymoon!

So I just finally looked at our pictures from the honeymoon! We only took like 20 pictures... We are pretty terrible at taking pictures. Anyways, we went to Cancun and stayed at this all-inclusive hotel and ate tons of food and lounged around by the  pool! What a perfect week.

I felt so bad when I had to move these!

Out on the balcony!

Our very own door sash

Giant comfy beds surrounded by water. So perfect.

Dallas takin' a nap on the hammock 

Best. Nachos. Ever.

Oh can I please go back. 

Yes we had a hot tub in our room. It was awesome.

Room service on the balcony!

I'm Not Crazy

So Dallas insisted that I blog about this. I however would rather not...

This morning I couldn't find my new shirt that I bought the other weekend. I knew that I put it in the wash last night, but it wasn't with the clean clothes. I searched the washer, the dryer, the floor, all around the laundry room and the path back to our room, I searched the dirty clothes hamper, the bedroom floor, everywhere! I really wanted to wear that shirt today! So I barge into the bedroom in a craze asking Dallas, who was sound asleep, where my new shirt was. Poor guy didn't know what was going on. Anyways, ends up the shirt was in my drawer! But guys, I remember putting it in the washer machine. Whats happening to my brain? Dallas thinks I'm crazy. My theory is that someone moved it from the washer to my drawer...

Whats worse is now I don't get to wear that shirt for a whole week! We only get to do our laundry once a week because the people who live upstairs let us use their washer and dryer.

First world problems.

My Little Shopping Partner

I don't know if I am breaking the blogging rules by posting twice in one day but I must!

Soooooo my husband is amazing. Directly after I posted my last blog post Dallas comes in the room saying, "Hey, do you want to go to the mall with me?" Uhm, Yes. I hate going shopping alone. Actually I hate going places without Dallas. I'd much rather spend my time with Dallas than going shopping without him. And he must know this, since when we got to the mall he didn't need anything there and only said he had to go because he knew I needed some help getting there :)

Also, he is the best shopping partner ever. We walked into Forever 21 first and I was instantly overwhelmed. And started wandering, looking and shirts... and he reminds me that I am here to find jeans and jackets and I shouldn't spend too much time looking at shirts because I will get worn out. Uhhhhh wow. He knows me all too well.

Anyways, I have never boughten a nice pair of jeans. I think the most I have ever spent on jeans is probably 40 bucks. Well, Dallas convinced me to try on niiiice jeans, and oh man, were these jeans nice. And much much more than I have ever spent on jeans. Or any article of clothing for that matter. When I tried them on I just stayed in the dressing room for like an extra ten minutes dancing to the music in these jeans. It didn't even feel like I was wearing pants! And I hate wearing pants. Thats not weird right? Sooooooo I buy these jeans. And the cashier was wearing the same jeans in another color! They have moooooore of the same jeans!? I was so stoked! Gonna start savin for my next pair. Then Dallas says, "Uhm... Why don't you just buy another pair since you will probably wear them everyday." 8O

So my new pair is coming in the mail. And I am currently wearing my other pair. They are amazing. And I have a huge craving to play Just Dance on the Xbox Kinect so I can dance some more in these jeans.

I told Dallas he was spoiling me but he said that I deserve to spoil myself for working so hard for this past year and that I needed to buy myself something nice. Yah. That's my husband. He's amazing. And I get to be with him for eternity. Best decision I ever made... Marrying Dallas, not buying the jeans. Although buying those jeans come in a close second...

If I Only Had a Brain

So remember that assignment I stayed up late finishing a whole day early? Well guess who forgot to submit it. This girl. I realized it an hour after the deadline. I hate my brain.

So Dallas got an internship at Novell as a web developer! Whoopee! So proud of him. Was offered the job on his first interview. In celebration I made enchilada pasta last night and it was a party in my mouth. Holy cow this stuff was gooooood. Here is the link so you can all make it. Because you have to. It was seriously amazing.

I can't wait to have more of the left overs!!

And why is it that whenever I actually have the desire to go shopping, I don't have time, but as soon as I do have time I don't want to go anymore. I have the whole day to do whatever I want and I got all ready to go shopping, but I just couldn't do it. It just sounds too exhausting. I am such a terrible shopper. After about an hour of shopping everything starts to just look the same and my vision starts to blur and I can't concentrate for the life of me. Someday I will go shopping... But until then I think I will stay home and play video games with my husband ^-^

Dear Rockstar

Thank you for allowing me to stay awake last night so that I could finish my homework. I would have surely fallen asleep and postponed my assignment yet another night if it weren't for you.

However, I think you may have over exceeded my expectations of you. I did not appreciate laying in bed wide awake for an extra 2 hours before I fell asleep.

Especially when my kitty keeps hogging the pillow. I wake up with only a corner of the it under my head, while he is sprawled on top of the entire pillow. And he just looks so cozy! I never have the heart to move him...

Dallas and I had steak salad for dinner last night and it was dellliccciiouss. I would like to thank Stephen and Trisha for teaching me how to eat. When they made steak salad it was the bessst. Pretty much everything they made was delicious. I will forever think of you two whenever I make steak salad!

yummmmm.

Oh The Things I Want

I just want so many things! I want new clothes. I've been fantasizing over new clothes. I think I need more than 1 pair of jeans. That just aint right. Dallas has ordered me to go shopping sometime this week but I just can't seem to find the time!

I also want so many things for the house. Pictures, an entry table, a nightstand, a couch! Well I did find a couch. We are going to get it tomorrow! It is a lovely plaid couch. It will look great under a slipcover ;)

I pretty much want everything on save-on-crafts.com. My mom showed me this site when we were planning for the wedding. It has so many neat things! Like this clock! I wants it.

I want new bedding and curtains and a headboard! I think I am on the verge of becoming crafty. I have lots crafty thoughts but never actually plan on actually doing any these projects. Until now! Well almost. I have decided to make a headboard!

I have been looking at lots and lots of tutorials and it doesn't seem too hard... It will be my summer project. It is going to be wonderful. I'd like to thank pinterest for all the inspirational DIY projects it keeps showing me. Maybe one day I will be as crafty as my mother!

Kids

Well Dallas and I had quite a memorable weekend. We babysat our two nephews and our niece for the weekend. Everything was going so well. We watched lots of movies and took them to McDonalds so they could play in the playground.

Then we woke up Baby Chase from his nap and he threw up all over my arm and all over the carpet. I panicked and handed Chase off to Dallas, who then threw up ALL over Dallas. His shirt was soaked. So Dallas went and cleaned up with Chase and I spent the next hour dabbing throw-up out of the carpet. When Chase came back down he came over to me and then threw up next to the spot I had just finished cleaning. Excellent. At this point, the older brother Garret is now starting to feel sick. We decide to just put all the kids to bed early and put a bucket next to Garret's bed just in case.

Dallas and I were exhausted by the time we got in bed. Is this how parents all feel when they get in bed every night? Then I hear a noise and Dallas goes to check on Garret. Garret has thrown-up all over his sheets, his blankets and all over the carpet. Right. Next. To that. Bucket... So close. By then I had used all the carpet cleaner earlier that day, so we spent the next hour or so dabbing out more throw-up with water. Dallas and I were just laughing the entire time about how ridiculous this day has been.

So the next day, Chase throws up all over the couch, by then Dallas and I are about to loose it. Then Ella starts to throw up, but luckily she makes it to the bathroom, bless you child. We decide to take them to their Grandma's house a little earlier than planned because we didn't really get much homework done. Then that night, Dallas starts to throw up! So he spent to whole day being sick yesterday. Poor guy.

And that was our lovely weekend taking care of three kids with the flu :) I now have a whole new appreciation for my parents and all the times I threw up in very inconvenient locations. Dallas and I have decided to wait even longer to have kids after all this. Absolutely nooooo rush there.

Mind Readers

I seem to have a difficult time coming to grips with the fact that Dallas is not a mind readers. I end up not communicating my feelings because I just assume he knows what I am thinking because in my mind, it is so obvious that I would be feeling a certain way after something was said or done. This usually leads to me becoming frustrated that he is not aware of my feelings, but in reality, how is he supposed to know what I am feeling when I have not once said anything about it? Most men do not have a sixth sense when it comes to emotions, and I tend to forget that.

Just the other week I was so upset that he kept playing his computer in bed when I was trying to go to sleep. In my mind I thought, “obviously the volume of his computer and his constant clicking is making it hard for me to sleep, so he must be aware of it.” I didn’t say anything for a week, because in my mind I thought, "I am going to be patient!" and then finally all my bottled up emotions just poured out and his perfect response was, “Oh I didn’t know it bugged you, I will just go in the other room! You should have told me.”

Well. That sounds easy enough. I just have to say what I am feeling. How bizarre! You think this was an obvious solution that I would have thought of at the beginning of the week, but no... Apparently my brain is much too complex to realize such a simple solution.

Thank you to my husband for dealing with my crazy self. He knows me better than I know myself most times.

On another note, we have decided to rename our kitty to Bandit. Because he is constantly getting in trouble.

Yes, he always has that cute/innocent look

A Lovely Night

Last night Dallas and I went on a little date night to celebrate a raise I got at work. I  was ravenously hungry and told Dallas, "I want a bunch of meat... and mashed potatoes." Well this is what I got. A giant turkey leg. Yum. I had to fight the urge to just grab the whole leg and bite into it.

They call it The Barbarian.

We went home and snuggled while watching a movie in our beautiful, full furnished living room.

Who uses couches anymore?

Hopefully we can find a couch soon... and some other key furnishings that are missing in this picture.

We finished the night with a very exciting session of homework. Which is not going all that well. I feel like my brain is coated in mud and I can't remember all this simple programming logic that I knew effortlessly two years ago! Programming is just like riding a bike right? Oh wait, I never learned how to ride a bike. I'm screwed!

My New Name

I need to get used to this whole new name thing. At first I thought that me loosing the name that I grew up with was going to be like loosing my identity. Kirsti Harris is dead. Then I grew to accept it and then it became fun! Ordering room service at the honeymoon and hearing, "Will that be all Mrs. Norton?" Oh that's me! That's fun! Now it's becoming strange again. I guess not strange, but just not normal for me. In my first day of class the other day we had to introduce ourselves. I dragged out my name so long that I'm sure everyone in the class though that there was something wrong with me. "Kiiiirstti.... Noorton..." My brain is not used to saying that yet! Maybe I just need to ask Dallas to only refer to me as Kirsti Norton so that I get the hang of it...

Oh and this is my husband, Mr. Norton :) Isn't he handsome?