The Martin's New Digs

Yes, we have moved...again. And at times it feels like we make nomads look permanent. We are now at my Uncle Karl's house. He has split the house in between the top two floors and the bottom two floors. He only has one kitchen and it's on our side, but he's rigged up a kitchen-like area that works for him. He has the laundry machines on his side, so we'll probably just do our laundry at my parents' since Annette is almost always in the neighborhood. We really did get the better end of the bargain and we hope that Karl can handle his makeshift living arrangement. David Hatch (Annette's brother) is the only person who's come to visit us so far, but since our place still looks like the inside of Shrek's nose, it's probably for the best.


In other news, Annette got in her first car accident. Some overanxious driver hit the person behind her which drove the car into Annette's. They all pulled over and Annette saw that there was no real damage to our car and she bid them adieu. They probably hit our towing package which would have left a really nice mark on their car. It was dark and she was almost late for a ward dinner group so she didn't survey their damage. She was thrilled to finally be in a car wreck where (A) she was the driver and (B) in which there was little to no damage. She has now experienced what a 3-5 mph impact feels like. It's a surprising jolt!

Speaking of the Beast, it's at a new and somewhat significant mile marker. 180,000 miles! The proof is below.

What else? We bought a Christmas tree! Annette spent a good deal of time putting it up and making it look as good as it can. It's not a super special tree, but it was a super deal and if we use it for more than two years, it's probably paid for itself. I'm sure Annette will post a picture of this at some point.

Last but not least, it's exciting that Annette only has two more semesters and she's DONE! We're both excited and anticipating celebration. Thus it is. The End.

I LOVE DOGS ! ! ! ! ! !

Anytime I hear of dogs being the best pet ever, I just have to shout it from the roof tops... or from our blog.

Charles found this article and told me about it.  It is titled "Canines Improve the Lives of Diabetics: Talented dogs trained to recognize low blood sugar can help diabetics live a more fulfilling and healthy life."  It is all about these dogs that are trained to detect the low blood sugar levels of people with Type I Diabetes.  They said that the dogs can detect it quicker than some machines.  The place they are trained is called Dogs4Diabetics  I think the dogs are so special and amazing.

Here are two stories from the article:

"Kathy was over at a friend's house, and a car pulled up to the curb.  A woman came out with a black Labrador.  Kathy, 'a sucker for black labs,' started to pet the dog, but instead of wagging its tail happily, the dog just stared at her intensely.  It made a strange motion, jumping into the air and back down, and then kept staring.
"'Are you diabetic?' the dog's owner asked.  Kathy said she was and the woman told her that her blood sugar was dropping.  'My dog is trained to detect dropping blood sugar.'  Although skeptical, Kathy went inside and tested her blood sugar.  And sure enough, it was at about 40 mg/dl (Mornal is in the 8- to 100 mg/dl range.)"

"On a recent airplane ride, Odetta [the dog Kathy got for herself] grabbed with her mouth the special black cloth strap (called a 'bringsel') that hangs from around her neck, and nudged Kathy - her signal that something was off with Kathy's blood sugar.  Kathy's blood sugar was fine, but Odetta wouldn't give up.  She started to alert with more urgency, even standing up and walking in the plane aisle to get Kathy's attention.  Something was wrong, so Kathy asked the man sitting next to her if he was a diabetic, and sure enough, he was - and his blood sugar was dropping.

If I was a diabetic I would love to have a dog like this, too bad I'm not.  I guess I'll just have to get a dog anyways.

Life lately

Charles' had a great birthday party.  There were lots of people that came and it was lots fun.  If you weren't there, we wish you were.  A few people brought gifts and it was funny that most of the gifts involved food.  People sure know Charles.

I taught Relief Society Lesson #20 on Baptism.  It went quite well I think.  I noticed that I teach similar to my mom; we must be related.  One woman said that I brought life to the Relief Society.

Charles and Angela (Charles' little sister) played a musical number in Sacrament Meeting, I Know That My Redeemer Lives.  Charles played his viola and Angela played the piano.  It was very beautiful!


Charles taught Elers Quorum on Elder Uchtdorf's "You Are My Hands" and did a wonderful job!


I am currently taking an English class at BYU and we were assigned groups to write a 20 page paper together.  Unfortunately my major (Speech Therapy) didn't correlate with anyone else', so I am in a group with two biologists and one public health person.  To pick a topic we all had in common was quite difficult, but one of the girls mentioned the idea of epidurals verse natural birthing.  Out of all the topics presented, that was the one I related to the best since I am a female and will someday have a baby.  So our group decided that we would research it out.  We have come up with lots of information and pros and cons to everything.  I have been able to talk to my sister who has done both, but if anyone else wants to share their experience and to have the chance of being quoted in a 20 page report, you can contact me and I would love to know all about it.

So I had an ingenious idea that I got from a friend and am now going to share with you.  About a year ago, my friend and I were presenting in class and as we were sitting there waiting, I saw that her slip had a thick chunk of lace at the bottom.  I asked her where she got it and she had no idea.  Since that moment, I decided that I was going to get six inches of black lace and attach it to one of my slips.  By doing this, I could then have the lace from the slip sticking out from under the dress to lengthen the dress.  After thinking about it for a year. I finally accomplished my task.  I got some lace fabric, doubled up the lace and hand-sewed it onto the the bottom.  I was nowhere brave enough to machine-sew a lace material on to a stretchy material.  The slip looks quite nice and whenever I wear it to work, I get a lot of compliments and show them what I did.  I guess you could buy a slip with thick lace on it, but it is at least $30 for it and since I already had a slip that was a had-me-down from my mom and the lace wasn't too expensive, it was by far cheaper to do it myself.


This last Monday was quite a day!  As I was driving to school, my car wasn't driving right--not too weird, just didn't feel right.  After about two blocks, I pulled over.  The Holy Ghost told me that I needed to check the tires.  I was kind of surprised because Charles just checked my tires the Friday before.  I looked at them and sure enough, my front right tire was was almost all the way flat.  I drove home and asked my mother-in-law if she could drive me to school.


On Monday as well, Charles called me during the day and told me that he lost his job.  I am not really too concerned about it.  I know that Charles will do great things!
(Charles' Commentary: I prayed that morning with more fervor than I have in a while that something would happen with my job.  Either I needed this job to turn into something great, or I needed to lose it so I could start learning and growing in another company.  I was SHOCKED that I lost it, but praying still helped cope with the shock.  It's rumored that my boss lied about me to his boss which is how he got permission to lay me off, but I hope for his sake he didn't lie and I give him every benefit of the doubt.  Everyone at Merit Medical loved me and I loved them...excepting my boss who didn't seem to love me.  I had just given the aforementioned Elders Quorum lesson in which I urged people with all the conviction I could muster that we need to love everyone regardless of how they treat us, and I guess in a way, being let go from Merit relieves me of a trial in my life and at least I can say in good conscience that I tried to love and serve him to the best of my ability.  I could talk about the lessons learned for hours, but I'll let you get on to Annette's more interesting material.)

The other day while I was at work with nothing to do, we talked about "Hoarders" a show on A&E.  I had never heard of it, but it was fascinating to hear about how these people hoard things for way too long.  They kept telling me all the crazy stories of people and how they will collect the weirdest things because of things in their past.  They said that most of the children of these people say their parents love their things more then them.  One child actually called social services because he would rather be a foster child than live in the filth.  I was quite intrigued, so I googled it and it was absolutely disgusting, but so interesting.

Shoplifter Thwarted

It was Monday, I had just gotten to work.  Another associate and I were on the floor while the two managers were in the back doing some important paper work and such.  There has never been a time when four employees were all on the clock at the same time, it just NEVER happens, except this one time.  My associate was helping another customer and I was casually putting clothes away when an older woman about 60-70 years of age, who looked upper middle class walked in.  I greeted her, asked if I could help her find anything, and then told her about all our wonderful sales.  She was one of those customers that didn't want help.  I let her alone and continued putting away clothes when suddenly I heard a hanger whack wood.  I turned and looked and saw an empty hanger where our last leopard sweater was hung.  I thought it strange for a old woman to pull a sweater off of a hanger like that.  Only men do that, and in a women's clothing stores, men hardly even touch the clothes.  The old woman wasn't trying on the sweater and walked away from the area with out it in her arm.  I suspected shoplifting!


I approached the old woman who was meandering aimlessly around and again asked if I could help her find anything.  She responded with, "Where is your sale?"  Kind of an odd response since I had already shown it to her.  I watched her closely as I straightened the clothes  as she continued to wander.  She went back to her original area of the empty hanger.  I though, "Oh good, maybe she is going to ditch whatever she was going to steal."  I watched her closely and could see through the rack what she was about to do.  As I watched her hopefully become a good person again, I was appalled!  She did not take it out of her purse, but put it in her purse!  Apparently she had not taken it the first time, probably because I turned and looked when the hanger banged.  She was now stealing it!

I could not let this happen!  I approached her again and asked if I could assist her.  Corporate doesn't want lowly associates accusing people of stealing, so all I could do was pester her with questions till she changed her mind about stealing.  She refused help, but I could see it in her eyes that she knew that I knew.  I beelined to my associate who was helping a customer and interrupted her, which is not supposed to happen.  I whispered in her ear that the lady over there was shoplifting.  My associates reaction was perfect.  She gasped and said, "NO ?!?!  What do we do?"  Her voice and expression was enough to scare the old lady because now both associates on the floor knew her crime.   I ran into the back room where the two managers were working and told them there was a lady shoplifting.  They ran out and now with four employees on the floor, the lady knew she couldn't steal any more.

 So she started trying on the sweater.  The sweater was a size large and she was obviously more of a size small.  Corporate always puts out fliers for the back room the associates can read about shoplifters and how to spot them.  On the latest flier that I read last Tuesday, it talked about how shoplifters will grab clothing with no regard for size.  It was just one more clue she was trying to shoplift.  One of the managers approached the old woman and asked if she could help her.  The old woman responded that she would buy the sweater.  I thought, "Yea, she is trying to amend her wrong!"

The manager helping her asked her name at the cash register as we ask all of our customers.  The old woman said, "Eloise, but there is a 'u' in there."  I though, "That is really strange."  The old woman wrote out a check, but since we do electronic checks, it was immediately denied.  The manager asked for a driver's license.  The old woman pulled out her wallet to look for it, but could not find it.  The manager could see the wallet and told us later that there was NOTHING in the wallet.  No cash, no credit cards, no ID, nothing but the check book.  She had obviously stolen the wallet from the true Eloise.  Its a good thing for Eloise to have frozen/canceled her checks and credit cards.  The manager told her she could not purchase the sweater without ID.  The old woman was frustrated.

She put her purse on her shoulder, but she did not do it like a normal person with both straps, but only used one strap.  She used the strap that was farthest away from her, that sure makes it convenient to shove things into a purse, now doesn't it.  The manager noted that she had missed a strap, the old woman became flustered and just shoved the entire purse into her armpit.  When the old woman did this the manager saw that it was completely empty!  No normal woman ONLY caries an empty wallet in her large purse.  The two managers and I all stared her down till she left the store empty handed.

A little bit about us

BYU WON!!!!!! Yea, now they are only 2-4!  We have been watching all the games at Charles' sister's house because she is the only one with cable.  She has two little kids and on Saturday while we were there we were in charge of babysitting them while their parents went out.  It was fun to teach their kids about football.

Charles is almost done with his second class for his MBA!  Two classes down, a million more to go.

This next Saturday is Charles' birthday party if you want to come!!!

In my Hearing Science class our teacher looked in everybody's ears with a camera thing and projected it onto the screen for everyone to see.  It was disgusting, but very cool at the same time.  Apparently I had ear infections as a child even though I don't remember any because there was a small spider web shape on my eardrum.  There was one girl who had lots of ear infections and it looked as though a white worm was coiled up in her eardrum.  There was another girl that had had her eardrums replaced as a child and when I looked at it, I wasn't sure where the eardrums were.  There was so much scar tissue and such, it looked awful.

Charles still doesn't know if his job is permanent.  But soon he will have worked there so long he can start applying for other jobs in the company.

Finally cooling down here in Utah after it was 90 at the beginning of October.   Yea!  Since all of our winter clothes were used to cushion all of our breakable things like dishes.  We will see if we stay warm this winter.

Dinner with cousins because Aunt Quenta came into town.  It was LOTS of fun to hang with everyone!

For Charles' birthday,  his friend, BJ gave him lots of fruit and mberry which is this little pill thing that after it dissolves in your mouth that it will make everything taste sweet.  It suggested eating such things as lemons and cheese.  We were both quite excited at trying this new thing.  So on Saturday Charles and I both tried it out.  Charles went first.  After it completely dissolved he stuck three slices of lemon into his mouth.  It was supposed to taste like lemon aid, but it was just as powerful as regular lemons are.  So it continued, he tried other things with no change.  I decided that I would try it because maybe that was a fluke that it didn't work.  I went through the same steps and when I had my chunk of lemon it did nothing.  Well, there are more in the package, maybe we will do a little bit more research on maybe why it didn't work.  Maybe we will try it later.

I LOVE Toblerone chocolate!  It is delicious!  The other day when Charles was at Maceys he saw a bar of Ferrara chocolate.  He decided that it looked similar and I might enjoy it as much as Toblerones.  It was yummy, but I think that my first love with Toblerone chocolate will always hold fast.  Maybe in the next life there will be something that is even better, but for now, it is as close as I can get.

Over a month ago Charles lost his wedding ring.  Fortunately we had boughten it off of ebay for about $30.  We looked and looked and finally gave it up as being lost forever.  We went back to ebay and bought him two rings.  We figured he would now have a spare incase he looses the other.  There may or not be an old saying about once you buy a replacement or ask for help you will find it, but it holds fast and true.  Once the rings came in the mail, Charles' dad found his original wedding ring.  Now Charles has three wedding rings to choose from each day.  The nice thing is that although he has three rings, we didn't even spend near $100 for all of them.

Tribute to Charles

Charles is such a wonderful husband and I am excited it is his 30th birthday!  Here are lots of pictures of Charles over the last year of his life.

 

 

 

Happy Birthday Charles!

Haircuts all around . . .

On Saturday, Charles' dad, Tom, cut my hair into lots of layers.  I just love how my hair is now!

Charles' hair has been getting as long as mine, so I cut it down to the nub.

Charles is not talking about any of BYU's last few games in which they have lost everyone.  I am glad that we didn't buy All Sports Passes this year. (Now Charles Talking) BYU Football is like the seasons.  They have seasons when they're great and seasons when they're not so great.  The goal is to minimize the bad seasons and maximize the good seasons.  I've already hunkered down for this winter.  I'm just praying that summer will come before next August. 

Charles still doesn't know if his job is permanent even though the second deadline has come and gone.  Charles will probably stay a temp until the day he starts his own company.  I can't wait! (Now Charles Talking)  I'm not going to attempt too much until I've finished my masters degree.  But you all just wait...big things will happen in my professional life.  I hope.  In the mean time, I'll just write a book or something.  If anyone has a good idea for the title of it, scream.

General Conference is as wonderful as always!  Hearing the words of the prophet and the apostles is such an amazing thing to know how to become better.

During conference I finished sewing our Halloween costumes!  I can't wait!

We ate out at Sam Hawk for Charles' friend's, BJ, birthday.  It is DELICIOUS Korean food and I recommend that if you are ever in need of food in Provo, go there!  I LOVE it!  (Now Charles Talking)  When Annette says the Korean food is delicious, what she really means is that it is so hot that it could burn the corrosion off of your battery terminals.  In fact, it just might burn through your whole battery.  She has quite a tolerance to spicy hot foods that I could only dream of having.  But, it does have good flavor and if you're a masochist like me, you'll eat it anyway and enjoy the tears streaming down your face.