Not TOO much has happened in this uneventful town that we live in. Finally getting kitchen table chairs didn't keep me satisfied for very long in our little cottage. The cold weather slowly started to creep into Texas and the paper thin walls of our house weren't helping with that. The bugs were never-ending. I got bit by a spider. The bite was on my thigh for a good two weeks - at it's worst, the mark was about the size of my entire hand and then some. Pretty awful. Oh and then there were the scorpions. It became a habit to look into the corners of our house (esp. in the bathroom) before fully entering the vicinity. We had lived there almost three months and we had already killed about 10. One night I was sitting on the floor (no couch) watching TV - my back was up against the wall - and I felt something kind of tickle my lower back. Obviously I kind of swiped my hand back there to relieve the tickle and then all of a sudden I WAS HOWLING IN A PAIN SO SERIOUS it nearly sent me into shock. Mostly it just scared the HELL out of me (it's ok to use that word in this instance) and I started sobbing and Nate was getting all nervous and freaked out and had no idea what had just happened until I started pointing and blubbering at the HUGE SCORPION RUNNING ACROSS OUR TILE. I ripped my shirt off and immediately went to look in the mirror to see what kind of damage was done. Three THREE 3 sting marks!!! The pain was actually pretty awful and luckily Nate is a saint and was a really good soother after such a traumatic experience. (ps. baking soda + water takes the sting out real quick)
Anyways, enough of the terrors associated with the cottage. We quickly put it up on Craigslist, not expecting anyone to come to us wanting to move mid-semester. Alas, we were wrong (hallelujah) and we moved out the day after Thanksgiving into a BRAND NEW apartment complex (talk about drastic changes) with carpet in the bedroom, and wood floors, and central heating, and an ice maker in the freezer, and a FULL SIZE SHOWER/TUB, and a pool+hot tub, and a GYM. The list goes on. And no I will not miss the squawking geese outside my window at 6am every morning, or getting my shoes/heels muddy every time I step outside, or wearing clothes that are stained with the smell of must. And yes Nathan finally let me buy a couch (Craigslist, holla!) that my parents kindly transported from some random man's house in Austin. He also is finally letting me decorate, which is a huge step, because that wasn't really encouraged in our old place. (he found it pointless since he hated it and it reminded him of the crappy houses he lived in in Brazil) So I'm taking full advantage and I've been slowly creating and collecting little things that will make our new house feel more like home.
Before Thanksgiving break came, Nathan's old roommate, Aaron, came to Dallas for some work-related stuff. We took advantage of the close proximity and treated ourselves with a weekend away to reunite with old friends (which we miss having!!) Nate and I both have this app called Hotel Tonight. It finds you cheap, good, hotels based on your location - luckily I still had $25 credit in my account from first signing up (I love perks), so we scored a sweet deal on a awesome modern hotel right by DFW Airport, allowing us to be in the prime spot for a fun weekend.
Unfortunately, that happened to be the same weekend that the awful wet/cold weather rolled in, so that wasn't very nice. Dallas also happens to be one of the most complicated cities to navigate and drive in - poor Nathan was running on no patience with me and my maps app by the time the weekend was over. But we saw good friends, ate some good BBQ, and slept in a place more comfy than our (at the time) home. Nathan even dragged me to a Texas In-N-Out that was down the street from our hotel (not the same as out West, sadly).
We spent Thanksgiving with my family, which made the moving weekend much easier. And now we're winding down to the last of the semester and we're both very anxious to get a nice long break. Nathan finishes up finals TODAY (lucky) and gets to sit at home doing "nothing" all week next week, since my last day isn't until the 20th. We're spending the holidays in Nevada with his family, so we'll be flying up there next Saturday! I can't believe this year is almost over. This time last year I was trying to decide whether or not I was going on a mission, and now the biggest decision I'm mulling over in my head is what size wedding photo to print out to hang on our wall. HA. Wait I take that back...buying gifts for guys is hard and that's definitely a struggle right now.
Also another struggle I've been experiencing this week: cutting myself with sharp knives. No, not on purpose - all accidents - all resulting in a bloody mess and lots of bandaids. That's what we get for getting really nice knives for our wedding. The weird thing is that we've had these knives since we got married like 5 months ago and this is the first (well technically third, since it happened 3 times this week) time I've cut myself with these blasted things. Here's a cleaned up/healing version of the first one. (curse you, onions!!!)
So much has happened this year. I've experienced such a crazy whirlwind of change in such a short amount of time...and I have to admit, I'm usually pretty good at tackling big changes...but this was so much harder than I expected. And I didn't take it very well. But I've found that it's usually when I'm in one of my lowest points that Heavenly Father really likes to shake things up and help pick up the pieces. He's always been good at that. Sometimes I don't like that He lets us get as low as we sometimes do, I really think that most of the time, we could be out of the slums a lot sooner if we kept ourselves in check more often. It's more our faults than His. All we have to do is ask for His help. As soon as Nate and I started being more serious about the asking, He came through 110%. He always does.
Right after we moved, Nate called his mom to give her some updates about the new place. One of the first things she said to him was, "you guys probably love each other more now, huh?"
It kind of threw him off for a second, and it threw me off too, when he was repeating this to me. But after we both thought about it, we realized she was right - in a strange kind of way. We always loved each other in the old place, but being in a new, clean, nice apartment has brought on this wave of happiness and joy that we didn't really start off with in our first house. We were always complaining about things, and now I'm always catching Nate smiling as he's pacing around our new place...which makes me SO happy, because he never did that before. Our lives got kind of flipped upside down in a really good way, and we are SO, so grateful and happy for what we have now. It makes us cherish and enjoy each other so much more. I love him a lot.
Also- I just have to apologize for the lack of picture taking that has been going on since getting married. I am ashamed and it will be one of my new years resolutions to get better at it (AKA- force Nathan to let me). Instead, I will post more pictures of Beyonce and her family because she slapped us all in the face with an AMAZING new self-titled album last night. I can't stop watching/listening to it. Love her.
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