Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

We are winners for the following reasons:

1 - Darren made the most delish chicken for dinner tonight. Yum to the extreme.

2 - The pest guy comes tomorrow to spray and set some traps.

3 - Darren got a call today that the teacher he is long-term subbing for next month needs to start her maternity leave earlier than expected, so he starts tomorrow!

4 - We took full advantage of Baskin Robbins' 31 cent scoop night and got ourselves some ice creamy goodness for dessert tonight.

Life is good!

We've Relocated

Well, to our living room that is.

After church yesterday Darren and I made an emergency run to Walmart and got an air mattress to sleep on for who knows how long. We just went down to the office and told them about our situation, again, and they're supposed to get back to us...lovely. The air mattress actually isn't bad, and we think it might be softer than the mattress we were sleeping on in our room!

Let the countdown to moving day begin...32 days.

*Update: Apparently treating bed bugs is a process. We were told that the pest control company will be by on Thursdays for the next two weeks to inspect our room and treat any new/future pests. Would've been good to know a few days ago!

They're Back

I want to cry.

...don't let the bed bugs bite!

Unfortunately, Darren and I unknowingly did just that. Shortly after we moved in Darren started getting crazy itchy bug bite looking welts during the night. We never saw anything in our room, and I wasn't getting them, so we just figured it was an allergy or something and that it would go away. Well, that didn't really happen. About a month ago I started getting them too, right about the time things warmed up and I started sleeping in shorts and a t-shirt instead of sweats. We still couldn't find anything, so we just dealt with it by buying stock in anti-itch cream.

Well, last Sunday Darren woke up about 1am with a new bite that itched like mad. He got up to go put stuff on it and in the process saw that a little friend had joined us in bed. I know, gross. He killed it and we went back to sleep, confident we had caught our little critter. Well, the next day there was one on the lamp shade next to my side of the bed. I got a good look at it this time and googled it right after I got home from dropping Darren off at school. It didn't take long to find out that we had "bed bugs". Who knew there actually was such a thing?! They "feed" during the night and then hide in the cracks and seams of your box spring or carpet during the day. I was utterly grossed out and immediatly went down to our complex office and told them we had a bug problem. Our manager was out for the day, so the lady in the office didn't really know what to do, so Darren and I decided to avoid the problem for the night and began our three night camp out on our living room floor. The next day our manager came by and told us their pest control company would come by Thursday to spray/bomb for them, but we had a list of 16 different things that had to be done before.

We got to work on all the laundry that had to be done on Tuesday, and then spent Wednesday vacuuming, bagging and covering everything we had in our apartment.

Darren hard at work

Our bedroom

Our linen closet packed with stuff and covered in plastic

  Our living room

Our kitchen

It has been a pretty rough week trying to get everything ready, but we were happy when Thursday finally came...and even more when the pest man finally showed up. We got up early on Thursday to get everything ready to go before 9am (he was supposed to come between 9 and 6. Like waiting for paint to dry). We had to be out of the apartment for 4-6 hours once he got there, so we packed everything up about 8:30 and waited. And waited, and waited, and waited. He finally showed up about 12:30, so we headed out. We knew we had a ton of time so we headed over to the temple to do a session. We ended up doing sealings, and it was such a great experience.

We were done there by 2:30, so we went over to the laundromat and got the rest of our pillows and blankets washed. We still had a little bit of time so we drove around downtown Mesa and then headed home to unpack everything. Turns out moving into an apartment twice is no fun. We got just about everything done pretty quickly though and then crashed for the night.

We woke up biteless this morning, so now we're just crossing our fingers this lasts for the next 5 weeks until we move out!

Easter...and a meltdown

Darren and I started off our Easter weekend by heading over to the Mesa Temple on Friday night to see their annual Easter pageant.

It started at 8, and we figured that if we got there at 7 we'd be fine. Boy, were we wrong. There were people everywhere! I seriously underestimated how many people go. We were lucky enough to find some seats in the very back of the lawn, but it was still great. It was a great way for Darren and I to be reminded of the Atonement and the real purpose for celebrating Easter.

Saturday we stayed in and watched Conference. Darren went to the Stake Center to watch the Priesthood session and I had my own girls' night in. I got myself a Redbox movie and had wonderful leftovers and cookies. Turns out the movie was lame, but it was fun anyway. After Darren got home we dyed our own little batch of Easter eggs!

Bet you can't figure out which ones are Darren's. I unfortunately had never even hard-boiled an egg before, so getting everything ready was quite the experience. We had fun, but we still have all six of those eggs in the fridge...

Sunday morning Darren got up and found our Easter basket in the kitchen.

I hid his plastic eggs before he woke up, so he went on his own little egg hunt in our living room before breakfast. Our nice morning was turned upside down soon after that...This was my first real holiday away from family, so I wanted to do it right and make it special. I'm a little OCD when it comes to holiday traditions, and being away from family was making things pretty hard for me. The day before we had gotten everything we needed to make Egg McMuffins for breakfast. Darren started the eggs while I stuck the english muffins in the oven to toast. He was having a tough time flipping them, so I went to help him and soon noticed smoke coming out of the burners on the stove. I was so confused as to where it came from, and then Darren opened the oven. My poor english muffins were black. I immediately lost it. I cried, and cried for about twenty minutes, and poor Darren couldn't do anything but just sit there and try to calm me down.  I finally got myself together and we went out and fixed up the two remaining english muffins and had one each, before putting the rest of the eggs and ham between slices of toast. It certainly made our first Easter together memorable!

The rest of the day went much better. We watched the two remaining sessions of Conference on our computer, talked to our families, and had a wonderful Easter dinner. Easter is one of my favorite food holidays. I love ham, potatoes and rolls. They should all be basic food groups :)

It was SO yummy. We actually have enough leftovers to have Easter dinner again on Saturday. My mouth is watering at this very moment...We finished our night by watching Sandlot, and having some delish strawberry shortcake.

All in all, it was a great day, even with our little bump in the road.

7th Inning Stretch

It seems like our life these days has been all about baseball, whether it's Giants' spring training or the high school's JV team that Darren assistant coaches. Unfortunately, one of these has finally come to an end. The Giants finished their time in Arizona on Thursday, and Darren is already sad. Luckily for him, he got to say goodbye in person.

One of Darren's mission companions lives in Chandler, and works at the Dodgers/White Sox training complex in Camelback Ranch/Glendale. He knows how much Darren loves the Giants, so he called us Sunday night to see if Darren would like tickets to the Dodgers/Giants game on Wednesday, the 31st, at 1pm. Well, as most of you know, Darren was student teaching up until yesterday, and the game fell right during the school day. He really wanted to go, but his supervisor was supposed to stop by the school Tuesday or Wednesday to pick up his final evaluations and drop off her letter of recommendation for him.

Well, where there's a will, there's a way, and Darren played hookey from school on Wednesday just to see his Giants smash the Dodgers. He called his supervisor to see what day she was coming in, and he got lucky when she told him she'd be there Tuesday. All he had left to do was sweet talk his cooperating teacher, which apparently was pretty easy.

He was so excited and we had fun sitting in actual seats this time instead of sitting on the lawn. Unfortunately my skin must hate sunscreen because I lathered myself but still got burnt. At least I've got a good base tan now to start off the summer!