Oops!

Ok so I kind of slacked off on the whole counting down posts.... but there are only 4 days left!

In other news.... So i've been having health problems for a long time and have been trying to figure out whats wrong. I found out in like April that I have an ulcer but the pains have been getting worse and i've been getting other symptoms like naseua, dizzyness, extreme fatigue... etc.... its just getting really annoying and its making my life miserable. So I went to the doctor and they did some tests and I got called tonight with the results. I have internal bleeding and so I have to see a surgeon so that he can find out where the bleeding is coming from. I'm guessing its a bleeding ulcer but we'll see!

8 Days!!

Today I can't wait to bake! We're gonna make peppermint bark and all kinda of christmas goodies! :-)

9 Days!

Today I can't wait to see all of my siblings and my parents :-) All 6 of us will be there and I can't wait! :-)

10 Days!

Today I can't WAIT to....

See all of my nieces and nephews!! I have been having baby fever BAD! So hopefully spending time with all of my adorable nieces and nephews will cure my fever for a while! lol :-)

Countdown Until We Go Home!! :-)

So there are 11 days until we go home. So I decided that everyday until then i'm going to post the number of days and something that i'm SO excited for! So today...

11 Days!:
Tonight I can't WAIT for reall food! We have been eating cheap box meals for months and I am so excited for all the yummy REAL food that we have at Christmas!

Dishwasher: 1 Valeri: 0

So our dishwasher is broken. The hinge or something doesn't work so instead of the door stopping a few inches from the ground it goes all the way down. So tonight I was loading it and I opened it and I dropped the door and it fell right on my foot. It hurt SO bad! My head got all fuzzy and I couldn't put any pressure on it. You can see how swollen it is in this picture. It's still getting bigger too! I'm interested to see what it looks like in the morning. Cleaning at the Hotel tomorrow with shoes on all day will be fun... NOT! (Ow:-( )

This only shows the main bruise but there is another big one above it. My cell didn't take a very good picture
This shows the long oval lump it hurts like crazy! Stupid dishwasher

Dos and Don'ts of Staying in a Hotel

So i've learned alot about Hotel Etiquette while working at a Hotel. So I thought I would share some of my new knowledge. You would be surprised at how dumb and nasty some people are!

Dos and Don'ts of Staying in a Hotel (According To Me :-))

Don't: Make your bed in the morning. It doesn't help us, it just takes us longer to strip the room.
Do: Pile all the bedding in a bundle if you want to help at all.

Don't: Leave all the towels all over like on top of the shower rod, under the sink, etc.... we don't want to go on a scavenger hunt looking for towels.
Do: Put them in a pile together.

Do: Put your Do Not Disturb sign out if you don't want us to come in! Check out isn't until 11 but sometimes people leave before that so we go around and check. We don't like waking you up or seeing you in your underwear. If you DON'T put your DND sign out at LEAST answer when we knock.

Don't: Smoke in the rooms. We aren't stupid and we have noses. Even if you smoke in the bathroom with the fan on we will still smell it and you will be charged. Especially if you're stupid enough to leave the joint or cigarette on the side of the bathtub....

Do: Flush the Toilet.
Don't: Don't leave it in there to stink up the room. If the toilet get clogged just ask the front desk for a plunger. It happens to everyone but when you leave it in there is just starts to smell horrible.

Do: Leave a tip. I didn't know that you were supposed to before I started working at a hotel but even a buck or even just the change in your pocket is nice.

Don't: If you are in a pet room don't put the bedspread on the floor for your animal to pee on. Whether you think it or not it's not better than peeing on the carpet. And you will be charged for the bespread. (You wouldn't believe what some people do!) And take your animal out to go to the bathroom because when they pee or poop on the floor the room has to be shampooed and we can't rent it out for a couple days and you will be charged for those nights.

Do: Throw your garbage away! We don't want to touch your bloody tissues. The garbage cans are there for a reason :-)
Don't: Leave it all over the room.

Don't: Clean up spilt coffee with the towels.
Do: Use toilet paper or tissue.

Also - If you are a 'Stay Over' (staying more than one night) and you want us to make your beds and such you have to take all of your stuff off the bed. We can't touch your stuff and so even if you have one little thing on the bed we can't make it. So don't complain when your bed isn't made if you leave stuff on it :-)

I'm sure I could come up with alot more if I thought hard enough but these are just some of the more common and basic things :-)

Pictures

Just a few more pictures of stuff

So Heidi made this one and I have been craving it lately so I got the recipe from her and it actually turned out ok! It's called Candy Cane Popcorn. You're supposed to mold it into candy cane shapes but I just made balls :-) It has spice drops, popcorn and mini marshmallows and it DELICIOUS!

Our GORGEOUS christmas tree that Alex's parents gave us and the ornaments we got after Christmas last year for really cheap!

Things I Love About The Christmas Season :-)

The way the trees look right after it snows

Christmas Lights!!

Wrapping presents! I LOVE wrapping presents. And I love giving them even more! This year is torture for me because we can't afford to get presents for anyone.

Decorating Sugar Cookies! And making all kinds of Christmas goodies! My Manager told me how to make the peppermint bark she makes and I can't wait to make it.
The first thing I do after Thanksgiving is get out the gingerbread house I bought at the christmas sales the previous year and decorate it :-)

I love driving around looking at the huge houses with all the christmas lights.

Christmas Trees! I am SO excited that Alex's familiy bought us one this year! I can't wait til it gets here :-)

I think the thing that i'm most excited about is the FOOD! I can not WAIT to have REAL food! The deviled eggs!

The ham

the vegatable trays

GREEN OLIVES! :-)

MMMmmm Shrimp :-)

And my F*A*M*I*L*Y I can't wait to have my whole family together! I love them and miss them so much!

Christmas Decorations!

Here are a few pictures of the decorations I put up ;-)

I wrapped all the pictures on the walls. Just like my mom does

I love this little snow man. You cant see it in this picture but he has sparkles all over
Our stockings that we got for our wedding from the Sandstroms

I got these at Costco last year. There are three of them a snowman a tree and a santa

I got this for free (along with all the other decorations pretty much) from that old lady Bob and my Mom helped with her garage sale. Its so pretty! It has LED lights that change colors

All of this stuff came from the old lady!

Things I'm Thankful For...

Not in any order here are some of the many things I have thankful for:

Alex. He is my EVERYTHING. We have alot of hard times but we always get through it and I know we always will. He will be an amazing daddy and I can't wait to see him with our kids. I love that I can always count on him to help me around the house. He makes the BEST dinners. And I LOVE that he is so talented with cars and fixing things.

Family. My family is amazing. Even though we don't tell eachother that we love eachother alot I know that we do. I can't describe how much I love my family. My mom is my best friend and my sisters are amazing. My brothers are protective and strong men that I want my sons to be like. Bob has been an amazing father to us and has put up with our bad attitudes. And I LOVE Alex's family. You see on all the movies how the in laws are always evil but I get along so well with mine. I feel like i've always been apart of their family.

I'm thankful for my job.

I'm thankful for our 2 reliable cars.

I'm thankful for our apartment.

I'm thankful for our friends.

I'm thankful for the gospel.

I'm thankful for eternal families.

I'm thankful for prayer.

I'm thankful for SO many things!

Boring Update

Ooooooooohhhhkkk. I am SO BORED lately. My depression has gotten like 5 times worse. I come home from work and have nothing to do. We don't have any money so I can't do crafts or anything which is what I normally do. My pay checks have sucked lately because i'm getting less than 20 hours a week. So after January 1st i'm going to start looking for a new job. I've already applied to one but we'll see. So I am SO excited to go home for Christmas! We are leaving the 22nd and are driving to Rexburg which is half way and we're going to stay with Heidi and Ben and I am SO excited. Warning to my siblings: I will be hogging your kids during the week i'm home. Everytime I talk to Rad and Cade on the phone and start to tear up. Its SO hard being away from them when i've seen them at least once a week since they were born. I'm not used to being away from family and its NOT fun. So i've been trying to lose weight but its so not easy. You'd think being poor and not being able to afford lots of food would help me LOSE but the saying 'Poor people can't afford skinny food' is so true. I mean I know that I can try harder but we really only get dollar store meals or the $3 box meals at walmart. So i'm having a really hard time with that. I think that's where alot of my depression is coming from because back when I lost the 40 pounds I was SO happy and SO comfortable and now I gained it all back and I don't even like going to the store. It's something I really need to take care of because its not fair to myself or to Alex that i'm so unhappy. So on a less depressing note - i'm still extremely annoyed/frustrated/mad that our roomate moved out after the first week and left us with a two bedroom apartment that we dont need and can barely afford but we've turned it into a garage/christmas storage room so that's cool. Here's a picture of some of Alex's tools and his two axles that weigh close to 400 pounds a piece! His friend Ryan came over today and helped him move them out of the back of the Yukon and into the room. He went and bought a piece of plywood for $8 to put them on.

Don't believe everything you read online...

So Ben typed in our address on lds.org before we moved here and found out what ward we were in. And we double checked when we got here as well and it said on the church website that we were in the Washington Park Ward. I work almost every sunday so we don't get to go alot but when we did go we liked our ward they were very nice. Then last Sunday we had a meeting with our bishop so he could get to know us. And we talking for about 10 minutes and then we started talking about where we live. And we said we lived off of 15th street. And he said "Oh no...." And he went and got a map and told us to point to what side of 15th we live on. And of COURSE we are in a different ward! If we lived across the street we would be in that ward lol but we are in the Spring Creek Ward. Which is in the same building but its at a different time. But it was nice to meet the bishop of the other ward anyways :-) lol

Pros and Cons of Living in an Apartment...

Pros:
* If something were to happen to one of us there are alot of people around to help.

* since we live between two apartments and below another we haven't had to turn on our heat! :-) The heat from other apartment seeps into ours.

* We are lucky because everyone in our building in around our age.

* We have a campus police officer that lives in the building - so nobody parties too hard.

* If the appliances break (Like the fridge...) we don't have to pay for a new one. And Sears delivers! :-)

Cons:
* We don't hear anything from the apartments next to us but the upstairs neighbors are a different story.... we hear EVERYTHING! And one of the girls beds is extremely squeeky and we hear every single time she rolls over in bed. And her bed is directly above ours. And she has a boyfriend... who stays over quite often.... read between the lines. Not pleasent.

* The mail gets mixed up alot because our building has 1516 #1 #2 #3 and #4 and 1520 #1 #2 #3 and #4 so it gets mixed up.

*Limited Parking. When we moved in we were told we each got 2 parking spots per apartment. But there are 8 apartments so thats 16 spots and there are only like 10 spots.... so sometimes we have to park behind the building.


That's all I can think of. But so far I really like our apartment. I love the location its close to the downtown stores and it takes me only 10 minutes to get to work and only 10 minutes for Alex to get to school. The landlords are awesome and very friendly. And if there is ever a problem they are very quick to fix it. We haven't had any problems with our neighbors. We don't really know any of them but they all seem really friendly and nice.

Sleep Talking Husband :o)

Soo.... when Alex and I first got married he never talked in his sleep. Ever. But something changed when we moved here. Let me tell you how funny and random his sleep talking is.... So the first time was by far the funniest! So he was sound asleep and I was attempting to fall asleep (as usual - I have trouble sleeping lately) and this is how the convo went.....

Alex: Valeri!
Me: What?!
Alex: Don't!
Me: Don't what?
Alex: Don't make a smiley face (in an annoyed voice)
Me: What are you talking about?
Alex: Just don't make a smiling face out of them....
Me: OUT OF WHAT??
Alex: The cars!
Me: Don't make a smiley face out of the cars?? Your sleep talking!
Alex: No. This is real life

This is how the second one went....

( He was snoring and so I nudged him and said...)
Me: Babe, you're snoring.
Alex: I'll tell you a story later
Me: No, you are snoring.
Alex: Not right now, I'll tell you a story later.

(And then I gave up)

Next one, this happened last night....

Alex: It's the concrete show
Me: What? What's a concrete show?
Alex: The show
Me: Ok.....
Alex: It's starting
Valeri: (messing with him) Are we going? (as I'm laughing my head off)
Alex: Yes.

It is SO FUNNY the things he says!! I love it!

Becoming a Cook!

So I used to absoloutly HATE cooking. But since we've moved here I've started loving it. I get excited about making new things. I'm still getting used to it, I almost always add to much salt or something but i'm learning! So here are a few things I have made recently - I found all these pictures online I didn't take any of them myself :-)

Stuffed four cheese giant shells - SO easy and SO tasty! The only problem - cheese is expensive and you have to use four different kinds.

Tonight we made homemade burgers. Alex made the patties and added all the spices and he did an AMAZING job! I cooked up some mushrooms to put on top and of course, I added to much garlic salt. And then we fried some french fries in the deep fryer :-)
Last night I made cheese ravioli and added mushrooms and some hamburger. REALLY good!

A couple days ago I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and they turned out really good I think :-) Alex took a bunch to school and shared :-)

When we first got here I made my first loaf of banana bread. The oven was broken so the inside was all runny but now that it's fixed i'll have to try it again!

Chocolate Covered Apples :-)

A Few Pictures Of Laramie

Alex and I made a deal that I get to spend $10 on decorations for each holiday/season. So this is my Fall and Halloween decoration :-) I think he's adorable :-)

Ok here are some pictures that I took while we drove around town after conference on Sunday. KEEP IN MIND: All these pictures were taken out of my car window. So they are not my best pictures :-)

This is the bark of a tree

An old church

I love the style of alot of the houses here. Alot of them have vines climbing up the walls and chimneys

I have never seen a drive through liquor store but there are like 8 or 9 in Laramie

This is just a small section of downtown but this is pretty much what all the buildings look like.

As you drive into Laramie

You can tell the wind blows alot! All the trees lean the same way

These cool rock formations are everywhere

This looked like it was a rock slide