I Deserve a Refund

Well, we finally made it to Utah. It was quite an adventure. We got on a little plane in Cincinnati and flew to Detroit. There was a crosswind in Detroit, which was kind of fun. When we arrived in Detroit, our next plane was already delayed a half hour, which was not a big deal. We got something to eat, wandered around, and headed to our gate.

Of course, the plane we were supposed to board came in late. After a few minutes, they got on the intercom and said there was a slight mechanical problem and that a mechanic was going to look at it. They eventually told us that the pilots felt a vibration when they braked and they needed to have it checked out before the plane flew again. If it was going to take too long, they would just have us board another plane. We waited for a little bit longer, and then they sent us to another gate.

We arrived at the gate to find that our plane hadn't shown up yet. A few minutes later, the plane showed up. They tried to get the walkway out to it, but it got stuck in the snow. We had to wait for a snowplow to come and dig out the snowdrift so that the walkway could get to the plane. That didn't take too long and the people on the plane were finally able to get off.

After the passengers got off, they got on the intercom and said that our flight was overbooked and they needed some people with flexible travel plans to give up their seat. Um....No. I wanted to see my family. And I was sick of delays.

So, we finally got on the plane and got all ready to take off. Or so we thought. We waited. And waited. And waited some more. The pilot got on and said that he didn't know exactly what was going on, but we were waiting for ground grew to come and load some luggage, shut the cargo hold, and push us back. Well, we waited there for three and a half hours! Yes, on the plane. The pilot would get on and let us know what was going on, but he didn't know much. Apparently, the ground crew was short staffed and there was about 19-30 other planes in our position. Finally, they got Minneapolis (?) on the problem. I guess they are the head honchos of some airports back there. They said that the ground crew had to come take care of us in the next 5 minutes or let us off the plane. Finally, after three and a half hours, we left for Salt Lake City. (At this time, our flight had been delayed a total of 5 hours and we should have already been in SLC.)

The flight was unevental, other than I was uncomfortable within 5 minutes of flying and slept most of the way. We finally got into SLC at 2 am local time (we were supposed to arrive and 9:15 pm) and started to stand up to leave. And nobody moved. The pilot got on and said that Northwest doesn't normally come to this gate and their ground crew didn't have security clearance and we were waiting on that. So we waited some more and then the pilot got on and said that the person that came to unlock the door didn't have the right key on him and needed to go find the right key. At this point, it was just ridiculous.

We finally got off the plane and headed towards the luggage claim. When the first luggage claim started up, only a few bags came and about 2/3 of the people on the plane were still luggage-less. Three baggage claims away, another one started up and more people got their luggage. Now there was only ten of us without luggage. So, we stood in line to talk to the baggage agent. By this time my poor parents arrived and stood in line with us. Because the Delta agent in Cincinnati hadn't given us a baggage claim ticket, it was going to be a little difficult. We finally left the airport at a little after 4 am, stopped by Wal-mart for the essentials, and was in bed by 5 am.

So, we keep bugging Northwest about our luggage. They finally said it was in Detroit. Yes, we had waited three and a half hours for luggage to be loaded on and it didn't include our luggage!! We finally got our luggage today, Tuesday afternoon. Since then, we've been surviving on my little sister's shirts, my mom's washing machine, and Carl's been wearing my 15 year old sister's socks.

Christmas Village and Christmas Tree

I took some pictures of my decorations so everybody could see how cute they are. And also how my obsession with my Christmas Village has grown. I just started it last year and it's already too big. And I love it!
Our little Christmas Tree. I put the lights on last year for the first time ever and put on about 8 strands of lights. So, I refused to take down the tree and just stuck it in a closet.

Here's the entire village. For those of you who saw last years village, you can tell it's expanded. A lot. I don't know what I'm going to do next year!

The rest of the pictures are close-ups of the houses and people.

Thanksgiving Finally

Well, I decided to finally tell you about Thanksgiving. We had Thanksgiving at Colleen and Arlyn's house. This year, our good friends Dustin and Merideth joined us. It was a full house with them and Ken and Michelle here as well. Dustin brought over his X-box and his flat-screen computer monitor, we brought over our X-box and TV, and we had fun playing Halo and Guitar Hero all day long. The food was good, with yummy turkey and ham, rolls, salads, and much more. For dessert, we had a dessert for every person. We had Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie, Pumpkin Pie, Cheesecake, Caramel brownies, Pumpkin cake, chocolate chip cookies, apple pie with ice cream and that's all I can think of. We were eating dessert for days! I made my first ever pumpkin pie. Even the crust was from scratch. Here's a picture, I was proud:

It was a good break from school and we enjoyed having Ken and Michelle and their two kids here. For the first time ever, I went out on Black Friday, stood in lines, and braved the madness. It was a good, relaxing weekend with lots of yummy food!

Bands Of America

Don't fall over in shock. I'm posting.

Quite a few weekends ago, the American Fork High School Marching Band had the opportunity to compete in Grand Nationals in Indianapolis. This is THE high school marching band competition of the year. Unfortunately, they don't do the competition like football, where the best of the best compete and then go on to Nationals. It's more of "whoever can pay the money and get their entire band out to Indiana can compete and we'll choose a winner out of them." It puts the bands out West at a disadvantage: they can't afford to come out here every year.

Well, the band came out to participate and my little sister came with them. My parents flew out as well, so we got to see them. (Indianapolis is only about 1 1/2 hours away from Cincinnati.) My parents actually flew into Cincinnati, we picked them up, showed them around for a few hours, and then we drove to Indianapolis and spent the weekend there.

I had some pictures, but I don't know where they went to. They're on Facebook, if you're that desperate. The band played great and Mallory was awesome. It was a lot of fun to see what the other bands were up to and the cool things they did.

The band didn't make it to finals, but did place 14th out of about 90 bands. They had a good experience and can now go back and dominate Utah. (They've placed first in the state for the last 16 years!) We loved that the band came out so that we could see my Mom and Dad and a little bit of Mallory. Thanks for letting us bug you all weekend long!

Texas Roadhouse

Man, I'm behind on my posting. Carl is studying big time (another big test on Tuesday), so expect some posts this weekend. First up, is Dustin's birthday.

Dustin's birthday was a few weeks ago and to celebrate, we all went out to Texas Roadhouse and then to Britney and Brock's. Mmmm...good food. I got chicken fingers. I think they even beat out Arby's chicken fingers, which is saying a lot coming from me. Carl wasn't too fond of all the peanuts, but he didn't die or have an allergic reaction, so we're okay. (They put buckets of peanuts on all the tables and you eat the peanuts and throw the shells on the floor. A mother's nightmare!) Here's to pictures to record this historic event.

Here is Britney, Merideth, and baby Tanner. Isn't he cute? And no, they are not a happy family, they just happened to be sitting next to each other.

Here's the other halves: Dustin (the birthday boy) and Brock. Don't they look just happy to be there? Maybe our food was taking too long and they were hungry...

Next up is Tessa and Duffy. Don't they make an adorable couple? When Duffy isn't suffocating Tessa, I mean. And no, Duffy is not his real name. And no, I can't tell you his real name. I heard it once, in church, I think.

Here's the gang back at Britney and Brock's house singing happy birthday. I think we terrified little Tanner out. He started crying. I guess we didn't have such great voices.

I can't decide if he's blowing the candle out or going for a mouthful of cake. I'm guessing the mouthful of cake, because that's what I would do.

Happy Late Birthday Dustin!

Multi-Talented

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a cool blog. It's this mom who has this ability to do her girls' hair awesome. It's made me really want to have a little girl so I can do their hair. Here's the link if anybody wants to go look at her creative genius: http://shedoeshair.blogspot.com/

Well, a couple of the hairstyle looked like they would work on my hair. So, I decided to try one. Needless to say, I couldn't get it to work very well. I think my hair was too long. Carl finally stepped into the bathroom and asked what was taking me so long. He finally ended up doing my hair for me. Yes, you read that right. Carl did my hair. He learned lots of cool things, like how to put a bobby pin in and how to curl hair. Here's a picture of the end result.

Doesn't look too bad, does it? We ended up going to a branch Halloween party that night. We dressed up real creative like and went as a doctor and a nurse. In our defense, we didn't remember it until that morning and so just threw some costumes together.

This last weekend, we went to Peoria to the blessing of Ken and Michelle's baby. She's only a month old and is as cute as could be! I loved holding her, she was such a snuggly baby! We had some yummy soups and lots of yummy desserts. I didn't take many pictures, in fact, this is the only picture I took up there.

In case you're wondering, those are baby socks on Ken's ears. Kind of improves him, don't you think?

P.S. If anybody knows to hide a link into a word, let me know please!

Yes, Another One...New Shoes!

Well, I'm behind on my blogging, don't want to study, and I'm watching election results. Although they've already declared Obama the winner, which I think is kind of funny, because the polls in Alaska haven't closed yet. Makes me wonder if I lived in Alaska and I hadn't voted yet, if I would still vote...

Anyways, that's why you're getting a special treat: Another post from me!

A few weeks ago, I was at a seminary inservice. Yes, I do teach seminary. Scary, I know. I teach homestudy and I only have one student, but it's a lot of fun. But back to my story.

I was at a seminary inservice, which was about an hour away. When it was over, I got a call from Colleen asking it I wanted to go to Ikea with her and Arlyn, because Carl and Trav were going golfing that day. (Ikea was close to were I was at) I've been wanting to go for a while, so of course I went.

The only problem was that I was in church clothes, complete with heels. I do not suggest going to Ikea in heels. Wasn't very comfortable AT ALL! About halfway through Ikea, I was informed the plan was also to go to Jungle Jims (a huge grocery store where you can find anything) and Metamora, Indiana (basically a little town full of boutiques). I said I would love to go, but I wasn't sure about the shoes. Colleen had a solution for that. A quick trip to Famous Footwear (ok, the trip itself was quick, the search for the store wasn't) and our problem was solved!

Aren't they cute? I love them! Carl calls them my "Brynn shoe's". I was much more comfortable in these shoes and didn't look too odd in my skirt and tennis shoes.

Look A Like

Every year, Colleen does a Halloween piano recital which the kids get to dress up for. They come in all of their costumes and play lots of cool Halloween songs. Colleen also likes to show off the musical abilities of her boys by having them either play the piano, sing, or play the trombone, depending on what they can do. She claims it's to show that there is other things you can do with music and also to show what happens when you practice, but I think she likes to brag about her boys. (What mom doesn't?)

Well, this means that we have to find a costume for Carl to wear. This year, Carl decided to dress up as Travis. The results were, well, slightly disturbing.

There's a Reason I Don't Cook

I'm not a great cook. It's a fact of life. I never have been. I can remember burning rice in our apartment in SLC, filling it with smoke and Carl coming home to an open door and windows and asking "What's for dinner?"

Another memorable moment was when I spilled half of the stir fry onto the carpet here in Kentucky. Luckily, it was as I was putting dinner away, not putting it onto the table.

These are just a couple of examples of my kitchen disasters. For more evidence, see the following pictures.

These are some lovely cookies I baked today. Don't they look nice? Oh, and aren't those cookie racks awesome? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, they stack on top of each other. Saves a lot of room in counter-challenged-apartments.

However, upon looking at a close-up of the cookies, you notice something peculiar. What could it be? Yes, it is my reject pile. Those are the cookies I refuse to take to my friends house tonight either because they broke in half as I was getting them off the cookie sheet or because they fell on the floor after I knocked the cookie rack off the counter...

Most of them are the second reason. And that's what left after Carl said "You mopped the floor this week, right?" and ate some of them.

Yes, you read that right. Carl was putting cookies onto the second tier of the cookie racks and I knocked the cookie rack off the counter. Luckily, Carl managed to grab the second tier and save most of the cookies. The rest, however, we're doomed.

I guess know we know why my older sister called me "Klutz" growing up.

Free Date...and other odds and ends

A few Saturday's ago, we went on an activity with some young women in the branch. I guess the branch had some extra money and decided to do a special activity with the youth and the branch presidency. The first and second counselor in the presidency couldn't go, so Carl and Brian (the elders quoram president) got to go. Because young women were going, I got to go along to help chaperone. We went to a farm that a corn maze, and a hay ride. After that, we went to Dairy Queen and got dinner and ice cream. It was a lot of fun to have free date!

This is Carl and Brian by an old car they had at the farm. It was one you had to crank to start. That's Micayla (I didn't spell that right) in the background. She's not in the branch, she's in the ward that we combine with for YM/YW and primary. She came with her friends.
Here's the girls Micayla, Whitney, and Daniella on the hayride. That's our tour guide. They gave us a tour of the farm that's been in the family for generations. You can see Skye on the left. She's the branch president's wife. She brought her cute little girl and her mom who was visiting from Canada.
They had us feed the cows on our hayride. They ate corn on the cob whole! They would wrap their tongue around the corn and inhale it. It was kind of fun.

Somebody was actually brave enough to to touch the cow. It took some encouragement from Carl, though.This was a view from the road of the farm. It was very picturesque.

They also had a little petting zoo, with farm animals. They had a llama that was just born the day before. It was cute, for a llama.

In some other news, they finally disconnected our cable last Friday. We had the impression we wouldn't have TV at all, but we still have basic channels. We had get the home shopping channels, HBO, the Soap Network and some free channels. Nice, huh?

Oh! And I finally started working for Kaplan. For those that don't know, I got hired to work for Kaplan back at the end of July. They kept telling me "Training will start soon" and stuff like that. About six weeks ago, they finally gave me the dates for a training session. Two days later, they cancelled it. Finally, I started a training session yesterday. I'm excited to start working and get some money coming in.

Change your password

I hate mandatory password changes. Especially the ones where you can't use the same password for another 2 years or so. I only have so many variations of the same password!

Well, my school makes us change our password every 3 months or so. Not a big deal, but I have to come up with a new password and remember it. What I also hate is that it changes the password across the board. So, I change the password to log on to the school computers and it changes the password for my email and blackboard. Once again, not a big deal, I just make it difficult.

I forward my school email to my gmail account. One less email I have to check. It's really easy to do: you just give gmail your email address and the password and they take care of it for you. However, whenever my password to my NKU email changes, I have to go into gmail and change the password. And I have a habit of forgetting to this step.

Usually I remember in about one or two days. This time, it was two weeks before I caught on. I missed a bunch of junk mail, but also missed emails informing me of canceled study sessions, canceled classes, and training schedules for work. Oops.

You think I would learn my lesson after doing this once. Or twice. Or how many times I've done this. But no. Every time I do this and for some reason, the sudden stop of emails into my account doesn't catch my attention.


We'll blame it on school, genetics, and my medication.

Friends?

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about friends. In high school, I had a lot of friends. I had a big group of friends and there was always something to do on the weekends. As I look back on it now, I realize that I was very linked to my best friends, Alyssa and Krysta. While I loved all of my friends, if Alyssa and Krysta weren't going to a party, I didn't want to go. It wasn't that I didn't like my friends, for some reason that I can't explain, I didn't want to go. I guess I was a hidden introvert. I was more comfortable staying at home, reading my book, or spending time with my best friends, then with a huge group.

When I went off to college, I was determined to change. I could start over, with a new group of friends, in a new town. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. My roommates can attest to that! I mostly just wanted to stay at home, watch movies by myself or with my roommates, or read a book. I didn't make any friends other than my roommates.

After I got married, I wanted it to be different. I wanted to have friends, to go out as couples, and have fun. Unfortunately, Carl is too much like me. Both of us are too comfortable staying at home, watching a movie together than going out.

I also think that I don't make enough of an effort. I wait for people to come to me instead of going to them. By the time I begin to make an effort, it's too late. When we moved out here, we made some friends and were proud of us for being social. Now, we just stay at home, watching a movie. Friday, I fell asleep on the coach at 8:30.

I would like to be social, but both Carl and I have a hard time with it. We have friends at church and at school, but we rarely go out and do anything. Sometimes I just feel like we're doomed to not being social.

Sorry this post was confusing, I just had to get some things off my chest.

I need some help!

I need some suggestions on books to read. I have this habit of devouring books like nothing else. When I finally got a hold of the Twilight series, I read all four of the books in 3 1/2 days. Then I turned around and read them again. I'm one of those people that have to have a book to read. I read every spare moment I can get. I usually just grab a book off my bookshelf and read it once again. When I go to the library, I can never find a book. I have some books on hold, but I'm stuck in a rut. Please help me find some books to read!

The First Shot

Yesterday was my first "official" day of clinicals. Like I said before, I'm on the neuro ward, so our patient had a stroke. It was sad, she had some memory problems. We were constantly reminding her that she was in the hospital and that we were taking good care of her.

Everytime I go into the hospital for my clinicals, it gives me a new appreciation for the health that I have and also for my family. I hope that when I get old and in the hospital, I'll have family there to visit me.

On some exciting news, I finally gave my first shot! And yes, Shanda, it was on a real patient. It was just a flu vaccine, but my clinical instructor said "alright, Tiona, you're giving her her vaccine." And my mind went completely blank. I couldn't remember anything I'd been taught about giving shots. Luckily, it came in a prefilled syringe, so I didn't have to deal with drawing it up. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. And no, I didn't tell my patient it was my first time.

On some other 'exciting' news, it's a test week for Carl. He's been doing nothing but studying all day, with some breaks for Mario Kart. These weeks have always been a joy for us...(yes, I'm being sarcastic)

Hurricane Ike

As you may know, Hurricane Ike swept through Texas this last weekend, devasting the area. Well, we also got hit by it, just not as bad. We got no rain, but we did get wind. Lots of wind. The wind was 50 mph, with gusts up to 74 mph. This went on for about 4 hours! The news people said the wind was at tropical storm strength and the gusts where Hurricane strength. It knocked down thousands of trees and 3 people were killed by trees falling on them. There was a few fires that started, which were a blast for the firefighters to fight, I'm sure. It also knocked out power to over 600,00 customers. The power company said that at one point, they had over 90% of their customers without power. Luckily, neither our power nor the in-laws power went out. Schools were canceled on Monday and many were canceled today due to power outages. I heard a handful of people this morning say they were still without power and somebody said it would be a week until they had power! Here's some pictures I took of the area around our apartment.

This is our "backyard" the next morning. Luckily, no trees fell, but it was mess! Still is, as a matter of fact. It's just littered with leaves and tree branches.

Another view of our backyard. I think the people next to us had a rake and kind of cleaned their part up. Can you tell?

This is the building in our community which probably had the most damage. Many houses in the area, including Colleen's and Arlyn's, are missing shingles. You could tell which way the wind was blowing. Does anybody know a good roofer?

I think this is the building across from us. You can barely see the shingles pulling up on the side. If you click on the picture, it'll be better.

This is the edge of our pond. All that mushed down stuff? It used to be standing straight up, about 3 feet tall.
And this is what is now inside our pond, along with the goldfish, the occasional duck, and who knows what else. Yes, those would be garbage cans. Lots of garbage cans. There was more, but you can't see them in the reflection.
This is one of the trees that fell at the entrance to the apartments. I think that at one point, it was blocking the road, but they moved it. Which is good, because it's the only road in and out of the apartments.
This is what's left of that tree. It's a good thing that it feel the way it did, because there are some power lines nearby. Also, this is just a cool picture.
We actually saw this broken flagpole before the winds got really bad.
The trees on either side of this one were perfectly fine, but the wind just snapped this one right in half. As you can see, huge branches fell off.
I know this isn't a good picture, but the traffic light was out and the drivers were having a hard enough time trying to figure out a 4-way stop without having me try to cross the street.
This is at Thomas More University. It's a Catholic school right by our house. It's a good thing I got this picture, because they cut this down not to long afterwards.

I have some more pictures, but on Aryln's camera. We went for a drive after the storm passed to see what had happened. There's a street(Oakbrook) by their house that was just beautiful; it's lined with flowered pears for a few miles and I loved it. I counted all the trees that were destroyed and came up with 44 destroyed trees and 37 good trees. When Carl and I left their house, it was really eerie. Nobody had power. Carl made the comment that it was a good thing he knew the roads so well, because he didn't recognize anything. We left at about 11:30 at night and didn't see any lights from the time we left Colleen's house until the time we reached our house. Colleen warned us to gas up that night because a lot of the gas stations wouldn't have power and it would be horribly to try and find an open gas station. We went a little bit out of our way to find a gas station that has electricty. We passed 11 gas stations that didn't have power and finally found one that had power.


Well, sorry this post was so long. It was a fun storm, although it did a lot of damage. I'm glad that we are all safe and that we have power and that not too many people got hurt.

Just a Quickie

Here's just a quick update on us. I started my clinicals last week. I'm back at St. Elizabeth Hospital, which is nice because it is right up the road from us. I'm on a Neuro ward, so we get all the people recovering from strokes, neck and back surgeries, alcohol withdrawals, and mental status changes. It should be interesting. What I'm really exciting about is that I get to spend one day in the emergency room, one day in out-patient wound care, one day observing a surgery, and one day with IV therapy. So it should be a lot of fun.


On another fun note, Carl's parents bought us our Christmas present early. And it's a Wii!

They wanted to get us one for Christmas, but didn't think they could find one around Christmas, so got us one now. We really like it. We got Mario Kart for it. It's a lot of fun.

Well, that's really all I have time for right now. Just a nice little update!

Problems with my Clips

Alrighty, when I went out to Utah in June, Amber showed me how to make these cute clips and headbands for little girls. However, I have not been able to duplicate them. These are great pictures, but they'll have to do.

The first time I made them, I used the clip on the left and it worked great. However, I thought the clip was too big for a baby's wispy hair. It would work for the headband, but when you tried to just stick it in the hair, I didn't think it would work so well.

So, the next time, I wanted a smalled clip. However, all the clips that were medium sized had stuff on them, so I bought the clip on the right. When I put the ribbon on like Amber taught me, the clip wouldn't close. I experimented with a couple of different things, but nothing worked. With all the glue, the colored plastic finally fell off the clip, so I just glued the flowers right on the clip. I thought it was okay, but all the clips fell off.

I also have some clips like these. Do you think these would work? I need some suggestions!

Melissa, I just got my flowers from Wal-mart. I take the flowers apart and find I can get some really cute ones. I've also seen cute flowers from the dollar store.

Take me out to the ballgame

Late Friday night, Carl and I went to the Reds game against the San Francisco Giants. We got tickets through the medical school so we sat by a big crowd of drunk people. It's always an adventure! Most of the group showed up about 2nd inning and left by the 7th because, as they so loudly put it "We're sick of paying $7 a beer! We're going someplace cheaper!" I kind of got the feeling they weren't there for the baseball game...

We parked across the river at our friends house and walked to the ball park. This is the view from the bridge. You can see the Great American Ball Park and some bridges going across the river.


This is taken from the same spot, but a closeup of the ball park. It's right on the river!

This is the view from our seats. The bridge you see if the one we walked across, called the "Roebling Bridge" It's a cool bridge. See the funky building with the sloped roof? Yes, it's fully built. Our friends live right next to it. The fun thing is, this picture is taken in Ohio and you're looking in Kentucky.

Okay, you could see the players much better in real life. That's just my camera's view. Unfortanely, many of the players don't wear those nice pants that make their butts look hot.


And, suprisingly, the Reds won! We got to see a grand slam in the 3 innings and a good game.
After the game, they put on an awesome fireworks show. It lasted a good 15-20 minutes with lots of fireworks.

You'll notice they're missing the "S". They randomly put up the S later on. I think they had they're firework mislabeled.


On Saturday, we bought a DVD holder because our DVD's no longer fit in our little entertainment center. And I built it all by myself! (okay, Carl helped a little bit.) And it hasn't falled down yet! These are some hair clips I made for my new baby niece. Amber wanted to see some pictures. However, I can't get the clips to work. I tried the baby clips and it won't work. Any hints, Amber?