Lately

This post is going to be slightly boring since all I've been doing lately is homework! I did go out to dinner last weekend with my sisters and Mom for Adrienne and Allison's birthday celebration! I took a few pictures, but have yet to get them off of my camera so they will have to wait. I'm going to California to visit this cute baby and my sister! I can't wait, I need a break from school. But on the bright side I'm pretty sure I will be graduating for sure next Fall! I'm going to take my practicum this Summer hopefully so I can graduate in the Fall. I will be almost 25 by then, so it's about time I finish!

Also this weekend the USU 50th ward that has "adopted" The Child and Family Support Center is having a car wash on Saturday to raise money for us! My dad is the 2nd counselor for this student ward! This is the email from my boss with all the info....

"The USU 50^th Ward is hosting a car wash at Jack’s Tire and Oil (28^th North and Main Street) this Saturday, October 10^th, from 1:00-3:00 p.m. The proceeds they raise will be used for supplies needed for the myriad of projects that are in need of attention at the CFSC! For only $5 you can have your car washed, vacuumed and dried! If you choose to attend, please let them know that you work at the CFSC and are grateful for their energy and efforts! Please pass along the word!"

So if your car looks anything like mine after this rainy weather, come out and get it washed for only $5 and the money goes to a great cause! There I did my job and passed the word along.

And lastly my car is starting to give up. She is going on 16 year old, and she is slowing down! Lately my car will not shift gears so it will just sit and rev the engine and get stuck at 30 mph going up 400 North! I can't accelerate!! I'm hoping it is nothing major, Clark said something about Transmission fluid.... I hope this isn't the end. I can't afford to buy a new car (well I guess we maybe could, but I don't want a car payment!) Also Clark has a stick shift car and I can't drive it for the life of me. I promise you I have tried and I can't get the clutch thing down. I know how to shift, I get the whole "H" thing but the clutch is just too hard! So I'm kinda stuck without a car if mine breaks! I need to go to work, so let's cross our fingers that it will cooperate!

The Life of an Apartment Manager

Would someone please tell me why we are managers of a student housing complex. I've had quite the eventful day today, and I hope it is not going to be a common occurrence around here. So we have had some drama in an apartment since about day 1. I kind of knew there would be a problem with 2 of these tenants before they even moved in (they are weirdos), but I thought it would be okay or that they might somehow get along. This particular apartment has 3 guys and they are all odd balls to put it nicely so I put them together thinking they would be friends! Well 2 of the 3 don't get a long and have many other issues that need to be discussed with a therapist (not the apartment manager). I can't even start to explain to you the weirdness of this one guy... you honestly would have to see it to believe it. I really want to just video tape him so you understand why I run and hide when I see him coming (except that would be creepy if I was video taping the tenants so you will just have to take my word on this). Anyway he isn't even the problem, it's the guy that hates him and that "bullies" him and "threatens him" and is loud during late hours of the night into the morning. So basically he is breaching contract, and we warned him about it, and the behavior continued, and I along with Clark and the owner are so sick of dealing with these guys that we are evicting one of them! So basically my day has consisted of class, coming home and listening to these guys complain about their roommate and how he has anger issues, blah blah blah, then I race to my other class, then I come home and type up a nice little eviction letter. I try to see if a police officer will give him the eviction papers (it makes it a little more official, and I'm a little afraid to do it). But unfortunately their isn't an officer available to do it until Monday and it costs money... so I said forget that I'll do it myself!! Well no one answered so I stuck it to their door. He actually called the owner a little earlier asking her a question about cable and she gave him the bad news! So he technically already knows, and the letter is just a formality and to cover us if he tries to sue.

And you all thought being an apartment manager was boring! Look how fun filled and exciting my day was. Now I have to try and clean my apartment before going to my other job for 3 hours! All the while Clark is in Yellowstone with his Dad looking for Elk, Bison, and enjoying Old Faithful. He will be home tomorrow, and boy will he get an ear full of my eventful Friday.

Cute Boys

If you are family you have already seen these pictures I'm sure, but I just had to blog about my cute little nephews! My sister's make some cute kids.

First is little Jack enjoying some corn on the cob! Don't mistake him for a little girl in a purple bumbo, he is a boy! He belongs to my sister Allison and I LOVE his chubbiness!

Here is Max all grown up going to preschool! He is our crazy little red-head boy that says the funniest things at age 3 1/2. He also belongs to my sister Allison.

And little Merrick Man! Look at that face, I can't stop laughing at this picture. He lives in California and belongs to my sister Melissa. I'm sad I can't see him very often but I am going out for a quick sister trip in October! I can't wait to kiss his chubby cheeks

Clark has 11 nieces and nephews on his side of the family, and I don't have recent pictures of all of them. But they are all just as adorable! We are lucky to have such cute kids in our family :)

Can't we all just get a long?

I feel like there is a sign on our door saying "Apartment Managers... but also someone you come complain to when your roommates are bugging you, and someone you go to when you put liquid dish soap in your dishwasher instead of Dishwasher detergent" With how this week has been going, I wish the old people were back. Yes you read it correctly! This batch of students are keeping us busy. Like yesterday some girls decided that liquid dish soap was an okay thing to put in your dishwasher... if you weren't aware now you are. Liquid dish soap is not the same as dishwasher detergent. It causes A LOT of bubbles that come out of your dishwasher. They were not aware of this fact, so they told us there dishwasher was broken... nope just lots of soapy bubbles! Luckily Clark was home and had to deal with it. I was at my other job watching 12 kids! Then today I have a knock on my door and it is a tenant and his Father (it is never good when the parent shows up on your doorstep). Anyway they were there to tell me about the problem the other 2 roommates were having with each other. Apparently grown men (one of them is honestly over 30) can't get a long. I sersioulsy missed one of my classes today because I was dealing with these guys! And to top it all off, in the month that the students have been here 2 of them have already moved out (not anything we did wrong--one girl moved in with her boyfriend and the other guy just up and left) leaving us with empty rooms, and the hassle of filling them up. Since apparently signing contracts don't mean anything to these people! They just think they can "cancel" their contract and leave with out paying rent. Sorry doesn't work that way, you have to sell your contract people! Clark, myself and the owner Sonya are about ready to scream. This seriously is the worst month as far as the apartments go. Sorry this post is me venting.

But in other areas of our life we are doing great! I really like my other job and it is the perfect amount of hours and it works great with my school schedule. It has really helped having that extra pay check every 2 weeks even if I am just getting paid minimum wage! We actually have some savings again, yay! Oh and we splurged and bought 2 new computers... but before you judge us we sold our old Mac desktop to Clark's mom which paid for 1/2 of our new one and then Clark saved up his lawn mowing money from this summer (no he is not a 12 year old boy) and he bought a mac book! We love our Macs and now Carolyn is loving her Mac as well. She can finally ichat with all of her kids in different towns, states, and countries. We also got a free ipod touch which we sold to Clark's brother and a free printer which is way nicer than our old one. So we do have an hp printer for sale if anyone needs one. We are willing to give it away at a very low price!! It has a scanner and is actually not that bad of a printer. My dad is running the TOU marathon along with some other family members this Saturday so that is always fun to go out and cheer them on! Plus my Grandpa makes homemade peach ice cream that is delicious, and we will be enjoying some this weekend. So to sum up we dislike the apartments right now, but everything else is going great! School is starting to get busy and we have tests and papers due so that might change how great we are doing in the next few weeks! Hope everyone else is well and that I didn't bore you too much with my post!

Our Weekend Free From Labor

For Labor Day weekend Clark and I headed up to Sun Valley Idaho! His sister Kim who lives in Twin Falls is currently living in Ketchum for a few months for work. So we decided to use her apartment for free lodging and spend the weekend.

Picture time outside on Kim's deck

We drove up Friday after class and got there that evening. We decided to go get some dinner in town and then we just hung out. The next morning we got up and walked around the town, visited the Sun Valley Lodge, saw a vintage car auction (Clark wanted a few of the cars), ate some lunch, and window shopped (since we are poor). Then we packed up our things and went camping! We drove about an hour outside of Sun Valley up to Stanley ID. We camped near Red Fish Lake. It is so pretty up there with the lake and the Sawtooth Mountains (which by the way Kim is head botanist over and is currently the acting Ranger up in Ketchum until November!)

Picture time at our campsite. Thank goodness for cameras with timers or we would never get pictures together!

Pretty sunset with the Sawtooth Mountains in the background

Picture time in our tent. This is the first time we have used it outside! We set it up in our living room once but that doesn't count. It held up nicely in the real outdoors!

Sunday we woke up and went for a grueling 8 mile hike! I thought 8 miles round trip wouldn't be so bad, but man did my legs hurt by the end. We started the hike at Red Fish Lake and hiked up into the mountains until we came to the Bench Lakes. It was a really pretty hike, even though it was tiring I'm glad we did it.

We FINALLY made it to the lake!

Just stretching my tired legs before we headed back down!

This was at the top of the mountain and that teeny tiny lake off in the distance is where we parked our car! See how far we hiked!

It was a really fun weekend away from work and school! I wish we didn't have to come home, I loved it up there. If it wasn't so darn expensive I could live in Sun Valley! I hope everyone had an enjoyable Labor Day that was free from Labor.

Starfish on the sand

I've had work trainings the past couple of weeks and on Monday it was the executive director's (the boss lady) turn to train us and give us information. She showed us a DVD she made that they show at one of their fundraising dinners, and it tells about what we do at the center. So it starts with the story of a little girl on the beach with her mom and they see thousands of starfish washed up on the shore. The girl starts to throw them back into the ocean. The mom asks her what she is doing and the girl says she is trying to save the starfish. Well the mom says, "it doesn't matter honey there is no way you will be able to save all of them, it won't make a difference". The little girl looks down at the starfish in her hand and throws it into the ocean and says "Well it made a difference to that one". As the story is being shown on the screen they have music along with it. Then it proceeds to show the cutest pictures of little kids, at this point I'm getting a warm fuzzy feeling and getting a little misty eyed. Then it shows news headlines from Cache Valley of child abuse cases. One said "3 and 5 year old girls prostituted by parents for drug money" "Young child held in boiling water by mother" and the list went on. So I am trying to hold back tears at this point. Then it says how our center has helped so many thousands of families and children. How we are helping all of those "starfish" and how what we do matters and we make a difference for "that one" child or "that one" mom or dad. Oh my goodness I was seriously holding back my tears. I'm probably not explaining it very well, but anything with inspiring music, sad stories about kids, and how what I'm doing at work everyday helps them will make me cry! My boss did start crying, it was cute! She is so committed to the center and helping every single person that walks through our doors. I'm really happy with my job, and I feel so blessed to be able to work there. Anyway I feel like I'm rambling. But one of the reasons I'm talking about this is because our center runs solely on grants and donations, but mainly donations. We get a lot of support from the community along with local law enforcement and firefighters and they have made a cookbook with a ton of recipes in it for us to sell as a fundraiser. So If any of you feel like you need a cookbook either for yourself or as a gift let me know!! It is going to a great cause, plus we need money so that I can have a job! They are $15 for one or $25 for two. I was browsing through it and it has a lot of recipes that sound delicious and look way easy to make! It is 286 pages of goodness. They have Appetizers, Entrees, Breads, Sweets, Dips & Salsa, Sides, Specialty Drinks, Soups, Salads, Breakfast Items, Marinades & Sauces, and Snacks! It would be a great wedding gift or even a Christmas gift! I will most likely buy one for myself since I've found some pretty tastey looking recipes.

"guns & hoses" meaning police and firefighters

Also Saturday Sept. 12 they are having a softball game Law Enforcement vs. Firefighters to raise money for us! You can buy the cookbooks there too!