some assembly required

Here we are taking down the "for sale" sign in front of our house. YAY, it's ours!

We bought a dresser at ikea, and had to put it together. Here's the before and after!




Travis is tired from the hard work! He had a pinched nerve in his back that day, so every little move was pretty intense.

Here is the finished product!

This was our first night moving in! We ate dinner at like 11:30 on the kitchen floor because we didn't have a table yet. :)

Here's our bed, also took some assembly...

Living room/Piano room. YES, that is the baby grand piano in OUR house! Thanks mom and dad, I love playing it!

Here is the kitchen table. To the left is our kitchen.

Here's a couple pictures of our family room, and our new comfy couches!!

Okay these pictures don't do justice so seeing them is NOT an excuse not to come over! (Do you love the double negative there?) I would love visitors!

We love our new house and could not be happier! I'll take and post some pics of the other rooms later. OR, you could just come by and see for yourself! :)

slitherin

Here is my first attempt at uploading a video! Travis found a little gardener snake near our old house when we were moving, and brought it into the house. He told me not to yell or scream because it might scare the snake. OH, so I have to be considerate of a snake's feelings now when HE is the one that shouldn't be scaring ME?!!


Anyway, Travis decided to name him slitherin. I liked the name 'Mr. Slithers' from the cartoon Robin Hood. Needless to say, we didn't keep him.







you can hear me freaking out on the video...

the one day

As you all know, I don't work many days recently, and when I do, my hours are horrible. Usually from evening til 10pm or midnight.

As you are also aware, the weather has been so crappy lately. During the day when everyone works, I was at school, and then had to work in the evening. Now that I'm done with school, I have nothing to do all day, and I am bored out of my mind! There's only so much laundry and dishes to do. After that, I read, then play the piano (which I could actually do for hours). I want people to play with me during the day!

So, here I sit at work, the ONE day it finally turns out to be a gorgeous day, and on a Saturday too, when everyone gets to play! Except nooooo.... Kat has to WORK, from 3-10pm! (I'm a little bitter, can you tell?) I should be grateful that I'm even working the few hours I have.

On a much happier note, my house is pretty much all set up! We got a washer/dryer, a new dresser, my baby grand piano, new furniture, a new sleighbed frame, etc! Wow!!! We are slowly but surely settling in and we love it! Still don't have internet at my house so I can't post pictures, but I will soon!

secret wishes!

So my mom and my best friend Rachel did this post about secret wishes, and I decided I'd follow suit. Here are my secret wishes:
I wish:
-to be a singer in a night club/lounge
-to be on Broadway
-that people wouldn't judge me
-to run a marathon
-that I didn't have to wear such dark boring colors when interpreting
-that people wouldn't pressure me about when to have kids
-to have beautiful skin so I don't have to wear foundation or concealer.
- to go back to the SCZ Boardwalk and interpret concerts every Friday during the Summer. I actually really really miss it, even though I claim that "I don't mind."
-to be so rich that I can travel wherever I want to go without worrying about finances when we get back. (This will happen someday!)

moving up and moving on!

We are HOME OWNERS!!! We moved into our new house on Monday! Thanks to everyone who helped in the move, we couldn't have done it without you!

We love our new house. It is soooo much bigger than our other house and we don't know what to do with all this space! We're looking to fill it all up this Saturday. Yay for sales!

Here are some things I love about our new house:
-I have a garage with an automatic remote opener! (Every time I drive up to the house and press that opener, I giggle!)
-I have a huge pantry, and tons of storage space in my kitchen.
-I have a huge walk-in closet! (which for those who know me, is a really big deal!!)
-I have 3 bathrooms. No more waiting!
-Nice master bath with garden tub, jetted!
-Literally 3 minutes from the freeway, and I get to school much faster
-Awesome backyard with overhang for shade.
-Roses, garden, flowers, grass!!!!

Convinced? It's a really nice, cute home, and we love it!
No more bird poop all over our cars. No more shuffling cars in the driveway. No more 15 minute drives to the freeway. Closer to food and fun!

Pictures to come. We don't have internet set up at our house yet, but I'll try to do that soon! We are still living out of boxes because we're both too busy to unpack. School is the priority right now, since I can't wait on doing any of my homework. After Wednesday next week I'll be done for the Summer!

late

Yesterday after a very long and restful sleep, I slowly opened my eyes to see what time it was. I rolled over to look at the clock and it read 8:57. NOT GOOD. I have church at 9:00. I remembered my clock was 5 minutes fast. Great. I have 8 minutes to get ready instead of 3. Oh, but it takes about 2.5 mins to get to the church anyway! Also may I remind you that I was supposed to give a talk in church! I instantly started crying and screaming, NO, NO, NO!!! Travis thought I was having a nightmare and tried to console me. When he realized that it was a nightmare coming TRUE, he told me to calm down, stop crying and focus on getting ready.

I literally brushed my teeth, and got dressed at the same time. I combed my bangs, put on some glasses (to mask my hideous face) and hopped in the car and sped to church. I looked and felt disgusting. I didn't have ANY time to wash my face, put makeup on, or find something cute to wear. If I wasn't giving a talk, this would be no big deal. I could sneak right in and no one would notice me, or how awful I looked. BUT NO!!! I had all eyes staring at me the entire meeting! Wonderful. Luckily I had prepared my talk earlier in the week and printed it the day before. What if I had procrastinated and decided to wait until the very last minute? I would have been totally hosed!

I was telling my woes to a friend and she said, "well just think of it this way, you got such good and restful sleep the night before!" Very true. I'm just glad my internal body alarm clock woke me up when it did. I managed to walk in as the opening song was being sung. If I had woke up any later, they might have had to put me last in the program!

After sacrament meeting I ran straight home to actually get ready and make food for my sister's farewell, which was also yesteray, at 1:00. She gave a wonderful talk and I am super proud of her! There was a great turnout for the get-together afterwards. Yesterday turned out to be a great day, but the start of it sure had my heart racing! :)

the test

We have definitely been put through the ringer this week. I think it's been just about the hardest week of my entire life. I had huge projects due for school, mounds of homework everynight, preparing for a national interpreting test, preparing a talk for church, closing on our house (which took place on Thursday), a best friends birthday party on Wednesday, selling and loading our piano into a truck, and prepping/packing our house to move. May not seem like a lot to some people, but for my weak self, it was a ton.

I have never prayed so hard and so much in my life. This is a definite lesson to me of more fervent prayers. Thanks to all of those who prayed for me as well. I definitely needed it! Amidst all of this, Travis got a significant pay cut at work, I found out that I am only working a few days in July (even though I bid for a thousand), and we got a speeding ticket. There is still much to be grateful for though. We still have jobs, and even though money will be tight for a while, we are doing great. We gave the check to the title place and I must say it was hard handing over a check for thousands and thousands of dollars. However we were able to pay off one of our cars, so that's less money to worry about each month.

The take home lesson for me wasn't "looking for the good" during these trials. I've learned that lesson a long time ago. The lesson I learned this week is that I am much stronger than I think I am! (Only with the Lord's help.) In retrospect, even though this week was hard, I managed to get everything done, and on time. I didn't think I could do it all, but I did! Although I feel bad that some of my friendships have suffered because I was too self-absorbed this week. I'm sure there are people who needed me that I didn't attend to, and if you are one of those people, I truly apologize!

Thanks to my dear mother who diligently helped me study for my test. She literally spent hours a day sitting with me, giving me interpreting ethical scenarios, and was quite attentive while I gave my response. She also listened to me cry when I broke down and said I couldn't do it, and that I wasn't ready. In my deepest hour of need, she was there to comfort me. I love you mamacita, thank you.

I still have a few hard weeks ahead of me, but I am enjoying the journey. Someday I'll look back on all this craziness and I might even miss it! I am happy though. We will be moving very soon, I'm almost done with the semester and I have the most wonderful support group of friends and family in the whole world. Life is good.

just in time for rachel's birthday!

So it's my awesome friend Rachel's birthday today and consequently, my friend and photographer Ashley finally posted more pictures of Rachel's photo shoot on her blog! Check it out here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RACHEL, I LOVE YOU and you are GORGEOUS!!!

One man's junk, another man's treasure, right? So, we had the yard sale for the past two Saturdays. We had a pretty good turn out last week but we had a ton of stuff left over so we decided to do the yard sale again this week. Surprisingly we did pretty well! The rest of the stuff we hauled off to plato's closet or D.I. Glad to be rid of it! I love purging! (No sarcasm, I really do love it).

So next on this list for news is that we might be closing on our house this Wednesday!! Yikes! I am excited, but I have a ton going on this week, so I'm kind of wishing it was next week. I won't complain though, I can't wait to move! I'll manage to get everything done. I always stress out about it but this time I'm gonna try something new and not stress out. Even though I have the following things going on (just to give you an idea...)

-A project in due my Language 3000 class

-A TON of homework for that same class

-2 sections of math homework a night

-Studying for my National Interpreter test (taking it on Friday)

-Preparing a talk for church on Sunday

-Preparing for my sister's farewell (that same Sunday)

-Closing on our house and all the paperwork

-Packing

-Moving this this upcoming weekend!

Wow, now that I look at the list I'm actually not that stressed! I thought I had a lot more going on, but I guess I don't! :) That was quite therapeudic! Well, I am excited about the upcoming events we have going on. I am only working two days next week and even though we need the money, it's actually a blessing because I need the time to study and do everything else. Okay I suppose that's it for now! Kind of boring post, but exciting for us!

achoo!

I can't seem to stop sneezing these days! My allergies are killing me! It used to be that as soon as I entered a building with recycled air, I had instant relief. Now it takes about an hour for my body to calm down from being outside in the horrible pollen! People who don't have allergies just don't understand. This year I am completely miserable and I love being outside, but I dread the effect it has on my body. I have taken almost every allergy medication out there and nothing works. Or if it does, it's only for a short time. I've tried:
Claritin
Claritin-D
Allegra
Allegra-D
Nasonex
Clarinex
Benadryl
Zyrtec
Zyrtec-D
Sudafed
Afrin
Flonase
Tylenol Allergy and Sinus
...and every other OTC you can think of.

All this complaining said, I'd take allergies over a nasty winter with snow any day!! So I enjoy these beautiful spring days, with itchy/watery eyes, scratchy throat, and stuffy or runny nose. At least it's almost summer and I am done with school in 2 weeks, then I get to play and set up my new house. As for now, I bid you all farewell, and achoo. :)

two little words

...and the best advice I've ever received:

STOP IT.