Thanks mom for the pretty bathroom!

My mom came to visit this last weekend and I had so much fun! I really like her!

Part of her reasoning for coming down (at least to my step-dad) was to help us with the house! So we decided we'd tackle the master bathroom while she was here! It was great because I probably would have saved it for last, and who knows when I would have gotten around to it. But, now that it's done I'm really happy it got bumped up on the list!

Here's the before picture again:

and after:

We painted it a light blue that coordinates with the bedroom. I like it...the color feels clean to me.

Then as an early birthday present mom bought some decorations to help make it happier! 

I really like the flowers!

We found the poster at Michaels for $3.50. However a frame eluded us. I'm not sure what to do about that, but for now it's stuck to the wall with magnets. 

Don't mind that we only have two lightbulbs. 

The vanity. I like the double sink. Phil also fixed the cabinets and then I promptly bend one again. whoops. 

That's it! I like it a lot and I like my mom even more!

I hope everyone had a great easter weekend!

Hello New Year

Well, I'm back from our Christmas break! We had a blast with our family and really enjoyed seeing some of our friends while we were back home! Now I get to figure out what I'm going to do with my life this year!

One thing I know for sure is that I will be learning how to bake all sorts of bread with this beauty:

I've already tried just a generic white bread. I think it turned out well! My favorite part was watching the machine knead the bread! ... it's the simple things that make me happy.

We also got a fancy new ice cream machine! If we could only learn how to make cereal, life at our house would be perfect!

All Alone

So, Phil is gone again. This time not to Africa. Instead he's in California. I think it makes for a little bit nicer experience for him. Unfortunately for me, I'm still just as sad and bored no matter where he goes.

The holidays were a lot of fun. I got to see all of my family and play approximately 1 million games for 2 weeks straight. While at my dad's Phil and I were introduced to a new show that is pretty entertaining...

It's called Mantracker. Basically it's a complicated game of fugitive where two people take off running and have a destination to get to that's usually 30-40 Kilometers away. Mantracker rides around on the horse and tries to find them. It's tricky though...he doesn't know where they're going. It blows my mind how good he is at tracking. He reminds me a lot of how I envisioned Prince Humperdink in The Princess Bride. Oh and it's Canadian...which means they all have fun accents.

In other news, while Phil is gone I'm hopefully going to make some headway in learning how to sew. My mom got me a sewing machine for Christmas and I'm excited to learn some basics.

This is the adorable little machine she got me. Sadly, adorable is about all it is. It broke immediately, we fixed it, another thing broke, we fixed it, and then some more things broke that we haven't fixed. We decided to take it back and get this machine instead.

It definitely is more like a real sewing machine and had more settings than the first one. I haven't used it yet but I'm hoping we can be friends and work together to make some pretty awesome things.

still undecided

Phil apparently thinks I shouldn't go private (as is evident by his comment and our lengthy discussion on the chances of being stalked online from my blog). I haven't decided yet...

In other news I am stoked for the holiday season. It's fun to see everyone and have an excuse to spend some real time together. The sad news is that I seem to be the lone child this Thanksgiving. My brother and his wife are staying in Wisconsin. Phil is in Africa, and all of his siblings will miss Thanksgiving too! Kind of sad...but Christmas should be all the more exciting.

I have decided that I will attempt to make a Thanksgiving dinner for Phil when he gets back...since he won't get one in Africa. I'll have to let you know how that goes. It all makes me nervous, but I've got to tame the domestic goddess in me sometime!

I miss Phil a lot. I need to put in a request that Exxon take a little break in sending him to Africa. It turns out that I'm NOT one of those wives that thinks it's a nice break when their husband leaves. NOT AT ALL! The good news is when he gets back we'll have 2/3 trips that we know about done! The other good news is that we're both anxiously awaiting a time when we can use his bajillion frequent flier miles and fly me over to Paris for a little vacation on his way back home! To date the only other country I've been to is Mexico.

Speaking of which Phil and I went on a little trip to Monterrey, Mexico after her got back from Africa last month! It was a lot of fun! We used some frequent flier miles and had a nice quick and cheap vacation! Phil wanted to go someplace where we could hike a lot (since he had been couped up on an oil rig for so long). We definitely hiked a lot and saw some fun stuff! (refer to facebook album to see pictures....I'm not on my computer at the moment.) The most memorable moment for me was when I got attacked by a camel on our "safari".

Okay and finally, this has been plaguing me a bit lately. I'll start by saying I know eventually I want to have kids, and I hear it will be the most wonderful thing I can do. Hard...but wonderful. And as a Latter-Day Saint I know that my family will be eternal and never ending. So I know Heavenly Father wouldn't reward any of us with an eternity of having kids if it won't be the happiest eternity possible.

Having said that...it terrifies me to think that the happiest I can be is with kids. It also worries me that I honestly have no desire to have a kid right now. I know a lot of that is selfishness...but part of it is that I'm missing that warm gushy feeling that I think normal people feel when they think about having a child. Maybe I'm thinking about it too much, but it scares me. I know I'll try my darndest...I just hope I'll be a good mom.

In A New York Minute

If you know the song I got my title from...I think you're awesome.

Anyways, the family is now back from our trip to NYC. We had a lot of fun and did a ton of things...here's a list of where we went that I can remember:

1. Statue of Liberty (as shown in picture to left)

2. Empire State Building

3. Grand Central Station

4. St. Patricks Cathedral

5. FAO Schwartz Toy Store

6. Brooklyn Bridge

7. Central Park

8. Two Broadway shows!!!! The Lion King and Jersey Boys

9. Ellis Island

10. Wall Street

11. Federal Reserve Building (we saw billions of $ of gold bricks in a vault)

12. Site of George Washingtons presidential inaugeration

13. Times Square (Hard Rock Cafe, Hershey's Store, M&M Store)

14. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (I saw 6 real mummies!!!)

I'm sure there's more, but I can't remember it at the moment. Needless to say in the 4 short days we were there we were constantly on the go.

So, I was watching a show called "call 911" and during commercials I flipped over to "Mystery Diagnosis". Do any of you remember the old show "Rescue 911"...umm I loved that show. So anyways, I've decided there are a few life experiences that I'm perfectly okay never going through...

1. Getting abducted and thrown in the trunk of the car (luckily the ladies cell phone was in her pocket and she called 911, when the guy heard he talking she said she was praying...quick thinking girl!!!)

2. Being stuck in a fire

3. Being held hostage

4. having my child get some sort of crazy disease that is incurable (one little boy had a genetic disorder that basically made him a hardcore masochist as a baby, he bit his bottom lip competely off...and there is nothing the family can do to help it)

5. getting a disease that almost kills me and no one can figure out what it is, and thinks I'm just crazy

My car is officially a Texan.

Well, after almost a year of procrastinating, and my Kansas registration expiring, I finally made my car a Texan. It's weird. 

Another thing that is weird is how genuinely nervous I get whenever I'm going to official county/state places such as the Harris County Tax Assesor, or the DMV. It scares me, and I always feel like everything that can go wrong will. Fortunately for me, today I got a girl who was very excited to talk to me and was super nice. She even had pity on me when I had to leave and have Phil sign a paper and then come back again. She let me skip the line the second time and go right to her window! I feel like she deserves some cookies or something. 

Next week I'll be back in Kansas for a very brief amount of time because my brother is getting married. Him and Alisa have been together for SO long I think in my mind they will be eternally engaged. I'm excited for him though! So excited that he was even in my dream last night....granted we were sword/knife fighting to the death, and I won....but deep down I think it was a compliment to him that he was even in my dream to begin with. AND dream Kathleen was very upset that she had to kill her brother, and cried a lot. I have heinous dreams.

On other news, since my last post I've graduated....

and celebrated my 2 year anniversary!

I loved both occasions! I got to see a lot of my family that I haven't spent time with in a long time! It was very nice to spend time with them! And of course, I couldn't be more grateful to have Phil in my life. He means more than the world to me and I can't imagine eternity without him! He's super cute too!

Hmmmm, I'd try to end this post with something witty but I've got nothing at the moment. Have a good day!

The Crappy Part of Moving Away From Everybody...

...is that you're far away from everybody. 

Going home for the holidays made me realize how much I miss having friends and family around. Seriously. I miss being able to sit and chat with people like Brandon and John for hours on end (even the time that Brandon made the Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVD opening screen play on repeat on his tv for the entire duration of my visit). I miss dicussing inappropriate topics with my old roommates, and I'm really sad I can't be more involved in the exciting things coming up in their lives (like Britany getting married!!!!).  I also miss knowing that Katie is close by, and that we can see each other if we need to. I miss being able to really spend time with friends, as opposed to rushing a visit in while I'm back for a short time.

I don't want to be entirely sad here. I love my life (see post below), and I love being in Houston with Phil. He's for sure the only reason I can live down here and be happy about it. 

On other news, my play opens this week. 

Bah. So my car has a lovely habit of trying to kill me. I'll describe. In about a year or two I've had about 4 popped or flat tires. 2 of them were within a day...and I'm coming up on a 5th. I noticed that my car was shaking as I drove. So Phil took the tires off to look at them, and sure enough there is about a half inch of tire wires exposed on the inner side of the tire. This is the second time a tire has worn itself down to the wires on my car. I've discussed the problem with a guy in my cast, who's a mechanic, and good news...we've got a problem with some sort of alignment thingie that is expensive to fix. ugh. I need to go get the tire repalced and then take my car to the mechanic today...but anything car related like that is out of my comfort zone, so I've been putting it off like crazy. 

I'm a very good procrastinator.