A New Job...?

After a hard five month long search and applying for 127 jobs...

Yesterday, Monday, Charles got a phone call from the company with which he interviewed two Wednesdays ago in Salt Lake.  The HR person on the other end of the phone offered him a job!  Charles will be starting this next Monday.  It is very exciting that Charles has a job which is in the medical industry which he has been wanting to enter!

Now we have a week to figure out how all transportation will work.  We are open for suggestions...

A New Ward

Annette:
Saturday night Charles and I attended the BYU Traditions Ball at the Hinckley Alumni Center. I had never been inside the building, but it is so gorgeous! The Ball was fun; there was a lot more than just dancing there. They had free photos, delicious hors d'oeuvres, comedians, a live band and other such things. It was a good, fun evening with our friends the Coombs who joined us.

As some of you have heard, our BYU Married Student Ward was getting too large, so they split the ward in half. We, of course, are part of the new ward which is the highest numbered BYU ward (until they split another ward), the BYU 248th ward! Because of this new change, we were automatically released from our prior callings. We have lost our Nursery Leader calling. It was a fun calling, but on to new things. I was sustained today as the Compassionate Service Coordinator. I am not really sure what I am supposed to do, but I do know that I am supposed to call a few people and make sure the people that have babies get meals. I am excited and absolutely thrilled! Charles is now waiting to see if he is called to anything. He has a daunting feeling that since he was the only person that showed up to choir practice regularly that he will be called as the Choir Director. Although our choir was extremely small as a LARGE ward, ALL members of the choir are in our ward. Our old ward will now be choirless until some people step up to the plate.

So the other day I got an email from "Blogger in Draft" which is a blog about new things you can do with your blog. I was able totally revamp our blog with all the neat features. To get to it, go to http://draft.blogger.com/ to log in to your blog with all of the new features and make sure you check the little box on your dashboard that you always want to use Blogger in Draft.


Charles:
My friend Deanna joked that it's time to have kids when you're blogging about your garden plants as though they're your children. And then she joked about how devastating it would be to have those plants die when they're transplanted. Well, she was right. Just about all of them have died. We don't know why; we have many theories, but we don't know why. We took them out for a day into the real sun just to get used to being outside before we really transplant them and it just about killed them. We would show photos, but they're just too gruesome.

REASONS CHARLES HATES LOOKING FOR SCHOLARSHIPS:
Have you ever heard people say that billions of dollars in scholarships go unclaimed each year? I had heard that from several credible sources and it used to blow my mind. Now I know why. I'm trying to fill the $47,000 deficit that we'll incur in the next two years.

REASON #1) Most scholarships are VERY particular as to who can get them. Example: The Charlie T. Thudpucker Scholarship Foundation is giving a $4 scholarship to someone who has 40 years of military combat experience, whose mother died in the September 11th attacks, who is a member of the Qxitzyw Tribe, and has 57,012,593,962 atoms in their right pinky fingernail. If you fit that description, please submit a dissertation on world peace and an invention that will soon cure all STDs and this $4 is all yours.

REASON #2) There are a couple of scholarships out there that everyone can apply for. Problem: 900,000 students are all jockeying for the SAME scholarship.

REASON #3) I alluded to this already, but most of the scholarships that everyone can apply for are worth $500 to $1,000. Don't get me wrong, I'd be grateful for any help, but that's 1% to 2% of my need. So to make a real difference I would have to get TONS of scholarships.

REASON #4) It takes a nice chunk of time to find and apply for scholarships. I could almost just go mow people's lawns in my spare time and make the same or more dollars per hour.

REASON #5) There's a fine line between what feels like a scholarship and what feels like a sweepstakes or a lottery. Some sites give scholarships, but there's an application fee which is turned into the scholarship. That doesn't feel like gambling! And some just give away the scholarship to the lucky person whose name gets drawn.

REASON #6) In order to apply for any scholarship, they need ALL of your personal information. This means that I get spammed like crazy and I get calls asking me if I've picked a school yet and if I have, would I consider transferring. GHAAAAAA!

Annette and I have enjoyed bike rides and walks lately. Annette uses our nice new bike and I use my rollerblades. We went a total of 11.9 miles last week. Fun!

Exciting Week!

Charles job hunt seems at though it is coming to an end! Charles has one company that he is simply waiting for the official offer. One job he is waiting for the second interview. And three jobs that recruiters have sent his resume to. Hopefully something will be happening soon!

Charles and I had my family over for a big dinner where we had homemade pizza (meat-lovers and alfredo) and homemade strawberry lemonade. Charles did an amazing job making all the food. We then played "Gotcha" which is my new favorite game and I think everyone should learn.

General Conference was amazing! It is always great to hear from the Prophet and the Apostles.

For Easter we really didn't do too much besides dying eggs with Charles' nephews. I of course happened to be put in charge of the one child that kept trying to drink the dye. It was fun though to see them all so excited over such a simple thing.

Exciting News!!

Charles finally received acceptance into ASU's MBA program which will start in the beginning of July!!!

I finally found a copy of Over the Hedge and watched it twice!

The garden is growing great.

Charles had a first interview for a job in San Angelo, Texas.

My job is fun.

School is winding down and finally less stressful.

We went to the dentist, at the best dentist ever.

We got to see David and talk.

It kind of snowed, but it has been nice and warm at 45 degrees.

2nd Week of Life

The little plants have been working hard and growing well. In this their second week of life, they have made leaps and bounds in their growth.

This is our broccoli which we actually just planted at the beginning of the week.

Here we see from left to right, the okra, peppers, carrots, and tomatoes.

Here we have the peas with the bean plant in the background.

Featured in this photo we have the lettuce in the back with the long pumpkin plant growing out to the right.

In the red Christmas bowl we have potatoes and two pumpkins. In the farther bowl there is zucchini.

The center plant which is just growing up so fast is squash.

In the farthest popcorn bowl we have the onions that are growing so tall they are falling over.

This is our small little honeydew that was started this week because we finally have more room in the little planter.

This is our large bean plant that just keeps growing. I know understand the story "Jack and the Bean Stalk."

In the okra we have a little lost seed that grew and we aren't sure if it is lettuce or carrots, I guess we will find out when it grows a little more. By it's fruit we shall know it.

Here is our little garden, if it expands any more I don't know where it will go.

The Growing Garden

On the bright sunny days in Utah, Charles and I have been planting a garden.

Photo taken Sunday, the 14th of March 2010

Of course we weren't that dimwitted and started it indoors so that we could miss the whole freezing of the plants thing. We started the plants Monday, 8th of March. The picture below was the first of our plants coming up on Wednesday the 10th.

The photo below was the morning of Thursday the 11th.

All following photos were taken Sunday morning the 14th with little captions to tell you what it all is.

Two transplanted onion sets

Transplanted beets

Hordes of lettuce

The thing in the middle is the squash

Beets that are way to cramped

Our tomato plants

The okra that is growing faster than weeds

Here is our set up of our indoor garden, other plants that are also growing which are not pictured are peas and beans. The pumpkins haven't come out of the ground, but their roots are starting to come out the bottom.

When we started transplanting them we needed more space so we rearranged our "office" and put all of the plants on the "art cabinet" with the grow light hanging from Charles' bike which is hanging from the ceiling.

The Masquerade Cake, the making of

Charles and I made a huge masquerade cake for Amanda's birthday. Here is the process ....

A practice cake and frosting which didn't turn out very well.

All of the fun things we used, the spray-on frosting and glitter frosting was quite neat.

Vat o' Frosting

We placed three 9x13 cakes side by side, cut a little into it and added a part at the top. We wanted to try to make it a little similar to the mask that Amanda was going to wear at her party.

We added height to the top, the nose, and cheeks.

Here is a side view of the buildup of the nose that we attached to the cake. Fortunately when we served the cake it all stayed pretty well intact.

We carved out the eyes and into the cake so that it would be deeper than the mask itself. We, as well, cut a little more off of the bottom corners of the mask so that it looked better.

Here it is all frosted with us making sure no white frosting got in the eyes.

Here we have added some of the green spray-on color frosting and the glitter frosting to the top of the eye. As you can see, the bottom of the nose and the eyes, as well as the top edge of the mask have no frosting. We had to make black frosting and place it in those areas. To make the black frosting we used an entire bottle of black food coloring in the white frosting, and added cocoa powder to it which made it look quite shiny for some reason.

Here is the finished mask with all of the trimming and black frosting. It was a long process of five hours with five people helping. At the top of the mask is a rose in the center, which looks gorgeous.

To show you a size comparison to know how large the cake was, here it is next to a regular size eraser.

We didn't have anything to cover the cake, so we used four cones and a cut open trash bag.

It was a lot of fun to make the cake and if we had to do it again we have a lot more awesome ideas. If you need a unique cake built let us know; we would be more than happy to make it for you.

Charles and I would like to give a special thanks to Charles' mom Jan who gave us good ideas and was far braver than us and did the beautiful white lining around the mask. She, as well, let us use her kitchen and helped with the cleaning which was a lot bigger of a job than anticipated because the green spray went into the air intake and went all throughout the house. A little green mist can make a whole house green. We had no idea it would go every where, there was no warning label about doing it outside at all.

We would like to thank Ashley, Charles' sister for being extremely meticulous about making all of the frosting perfectly smooth and beautiful and spent so much time picking out little flecks of cake that had gotten in the frosting. She as well made the beautiful flower that went on the crown of the mask.

We owe a lot of work to my friend Heidi who decided that she wanted to help with the cake. We are so grateful that she came because she had many good ideas and was as well very patient as she picked out cake flecks in the frosting. She was a great asset in the making of the cake.

I guess we should thank Amanda for having a birthday and allowing us to make her cake without knowing what she was going to get.

It was a great experience!

THANK YOU EVERYONE!!!