Life in the fast lane

Our life has been a little crazy lately but I wanted to let everyone know we are alive, well and enjoying life! As you will see in the next few posts we have had a fun time celebrating the season with family and friends as well as moving into our new house! We have had a few bumps on the road with our house, as well as my car majorly breaking down, and Dan's car breaking down (needing repairs 4 times within the last week or so)....not to mention our crazy school life...but we are PROUD TO SAY that the semester is over! Yay! And now that finals are out of the way....Christmas shopping and unpacking has begun! We probably won't repeat moving into a home the week before finals ever again but we survived and are excited for this new phase in our lives! In case I don't blog again before Christmas....we just want to send our love and wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

Christmas Party

This past weekend I helped Julia host a Christmas Party in return for her helping with my Murder Mystery Dinner. We had lots of yummy food, a white elephant game, and a timed gingerbread house making contest!

Team #1- Amber & hubby

Team #1- full mansion including a gummy bear family consisting of red mom, yellow dad, and orange baby.

Team #2- Chantel & Hubby

Team #2- The Church

Team #3- Michael & Date

Team #3- The licorice machine gun

and.....

smiley face to top it all off

Team #4- Us (The team with the MOST issues...ironically enough the sideways picture fits our gingerbread house that was determined to fall to the ground!)

Team #4- Refurbished house....only 5 minutes to spare when it crashed and for some reason this Eiffel looking tower thing decided to hold!

Team #5- Mike & Julia (the other gingerbread house challenged team...lol)

Team #5- Their house at least had spikes on it!

Team #6- Seth & Deborah

Team #6- Graham cracker lawn and all (I mean who seriously has enough time for something like that??? We couldn't even get our walls to stay up!)

Team #7- Jordan & Date

Team #7- Flat roof=good idea...they actually finished their house!

Team #8- Lindsay & baby Flint (daddy was working on finding a bottle)

Team #8- Wins the prize for creating a house with one hand that actually stayed up and looked great!

Moral of the story---some people were born with spectacular gingerbread house making skills and then there were those, like us, that had a great time despite our obvious handicap!

***Ignore the sideways pictures...I had issues with getting this to post!

Thanksgiving

So this year for Thanksgiving we decided to start some new and fun memories of our own! The last 3 years Thanksgiving has been a little random with our turkey catching on fire the first year, Dan being deployed the second, and us making a quick stop for a Cajun Thanksgiving last year on our way to a weekend getaway/half marathon on the beach. So this year we decided it was about time to have a traditional Thanksgiving (although I totally missed having cajun fried turkey and the warmth of the beach!!!)

The morning started off with the Crandall boys playing football, winning 3-0.

We decided to be crazy enough to host Thanksgiving at our house this year (we hadn't even moved in yet...my mom and I just packed up her dishes and went to town cooking! We are proud to say...we ended up with entirely edible food despite a oven neither of us knew how to use!)

My mom's awesome Turkey plates that she has wanted for years and purchased just in time for the feast (and she got a great deal on them too!)

Dan's family joined us as well.

I had to put this picture...it just made me laugh. I have no idea what Gabe was eating but this picture just cracks me up!

My grandpa (far left) joined for the day as well!

Gabe has food in his mouth again....lol.

It was fun to have it at our house for our first Thanksgiving back in Utah! The only bad part about the whole day was our water heater wouldn't work. Boiling water to washes dishes by hand for like 3 hours is definitely a memory we won't forget! Thanks family for making it such a special day and helping make our house feel like home! We are so glad you all could come!

House

So....hopefully better late than never is the way to go! We closed on our house on November 12th and do to totally craziness in life the blog has been horribly neglected...but now that finals are over with (yay!) I have a little more time on my hands:)

Due to some complications at closing we didn't officially close until almost a week later. So the Saturday before Thanksgiving I set out to majorly clean the house. I was glad Dan had a few hours off from work to help as well as my parents who graciously spent a portion of their day scrubbing.

I know the next picture is gross...but I had to take it to prove why I spent like 8 hours just on the kitchen alone. Between just total grossness, burnt/moldy top ramen in the microwave, and the ledge pictured below (they kept plants on top of the ledge and would water them up there I assume...there was basically lots of wetness, mold, and rust)...it was a project! But in the end, we have a very clean kitchen!:)

Our Front Room

The front window/door

Looking from the front room into the dining

Dining Room



Dining room looking down into the living room

kitchen (and my sweet dad helping with some of the kitchen grossness! The previous owners tried putting this plastic strip on the top of the countertops for some weird reason to cover a teeny gap and it looked awful. When we pulled it off there is this glue that is everywhere that has to be removed...my dad spent like 2 hours cleaning just a couple feet of it with solvant. So...the kitchen is going to be an on-going project for awhile but it will be worth it in the end)

The kitchen pantry and my retro green contact paper installation

Bedroom #1

The funky fan (we have a blue one too!)

Bedroom #2

Master Bedroom

Walk-in Closet

Master Bathroom

Main bathroom. We re-did the floor before closing and plan on doing the same floor in the master bath.

Overall, so far we LOVE having our house:) Life got a little crazy with finals, cars breaking down, etc but we finally got a little unpacking done this weekend! When we first moved in we found the shower curtain and that was about it! Now you can actually walk into the bedrooms without tripping and our clothes are now on hangers! More pictures to come in the future when we get rid of the sea of boxes!

Murder Mystery Dinner

So I am a little behind, like usual! My friend Julia and I had been talking about having a Murder Mystery dinner for months but never actually got to planning it. About a week before Halloween I decided I was SICK of my life being totally revolving around homework and I wanted to throw the party last minute. Luckily Julia was totally up for it as well as all our guests!

Julia and I had lots of fun decorating and thanks to her excellent spider web skills it turned out quite spooky too, especially with the lights dimmed.

The Murder Mystery was centered around the death of Hal O'Ween...and this is where his body lied (It must have taken us quite awhile to solve the mystery because he looks quite dead...lol).

The dinner table. We used a black table cloth with spiderwebs all over with clear classes to accent it all. It looked really cool...but will probably not repeat it. Eating spiderwebs for dinner didn't go over so well:)


We even had witches brew (other menu items included fingers and toes for appetizers, brains and eyeballs with bloody witches fingers for the main dish, and death by chocolate for dessert, oh and we had a monster mash drink as well)!

The murder takes place right before a cast party for the filming of "Gouls Just Want to Have Fun". We are all members of the cast and discuss the murder over dinner at the cast party. The one murdered, Hal O'Ween, was the main character in the movie.

Mike was Ace Filmer, the filmer and Julia was Kat People, the starring actress.

Deborah was Carrie Coffins, an up and coming actress and Seth was Watt Madaxman, the carpenter.

Katie was May Cup, the makeup girl and Jared was Moore Bodies, the film director.


Hunter was Dawn Ovdee-Zombiz, the writer and researcher and Jordan was Gore Underfoot, the special effects specialist.


Cami was Diane Screemin', the actress with the loudest scream in Horrorwood and Andrew was Drake Yewlarr, an actor.

Natalie was Elle Razor, Hal's Secretary dressed as a vampire, and Mike was Franke Stein, an actor who plays monsters.

Dan was Adam Family, the owner of the Haunted House where the movie was filmed at and I was Eve L. Dedd, an aspiring actress.

Each round everyone was given lines to say as the game progressed. We all had a lot of fun playing our parts, which all got quite ridiculous (and embarrassing for me! I would NOT have chosen my character had I known who she would end up being!!!) at some point in the game. Andrew especially liked playing his part!

After much contemplation, almost everyone was SURE that Natalie was the murderer....and Jordan tricked us all as we learned that he poisoned Hal to death!

After the party I made Dan take a picture with him just smiling instead of trying to bite me...he had WAY too much fun being a vampire:)

A smile from Mike and Natalie as well!

Another picture of Mike and Julia.

and one more of the murderer and his date....

Overall, we had a lot of fun! I love Halloween so it was nice to get to celebrate it this year. I think I have finally found my substitute for trick or treating. I love dressing up and never get to anymore so this was perfect! Thanks everyone for coming and especially Julia for all your help!

Fall Break

A few weekends ago we went down to St. George to visit Dan's Grandma Crandall and meet up with all the Crandall brothers. Spencer and Kristen are moving to South Carolina soon (currently living in Arizona) and we all wanted to see each other one last time while it was easier. So we all met halfway! We had a short fall break (it consisted of Friday) from school but it was so worth making the trip.

We arrived early Friday afternoon and visited for the rest of the day with Grandma Crandall. It was really nice because usually whenever we see her has always been really quick as we drive through St. George to other destinations. We even got to cook her dinner which was fun:)

Saturday the boys hiked the part of the Narrows as well as Angel's Landing.

The Narrows


Andrew, Dan, and Michael at the Narrows.

All the Crandall Boys at Angel's Landing. (This was the first time they all were able to hike together in years so they were quite excited about it!)

Spencer flying off of Angel's Landing.

Ok...well as you can see on Dan's, flying=lying on a rock with your arms spread out like wings:)

Some parts of the trail were so steep and close to the edge (with up to 2000 ft dropoffs) that they had to hold onto metal chains bolted in the rock as they hiked (not pictured).

On Saturday while the boys hiked the girls swam with the kids, shopped, went out to lunch, visited with old friends, etc,etc...I didn't get any pictures. Wish I would have because the kids were cute to watch swimming and Aidan even got brave enough to swim!

Sunday we ended our trip with going to church with Grandma and having a quick lunch. I didn't get the greatest picture of all the boys with their grandpa (so Kristen and Cami if you have better please share!!!)

Aidan showing off his "cool" boot. He dropped a brick on his toe a few days before the trip:(

Dan and Abby

Dan and I with Grandma Crandall. It was so nice to actually visit for awhile and for me to get to know her better!

Updating the randomness

Okay, so I know the picture below is kinda gross but I can't help but think that a TB bug must look something like this...it has to be ugly. It just has to be! Anyways, after much struggle for Dan's work to follow through with his TB testing they FINALLY did at his last day on the job. His chest xray came out clean. GOOD NEWS! So he doesn't have TB but does still have TB exposure. So once our insurance switches again with Dan's active duty status he will be taking 3 different meds daily for 9 months. This will be an adjustment for him since I don't think he has ever really taken medicine in his life, guess he was just wanting to compete with me and the bagillion pills I take each day! All in all, we are just happy to know that all is ok.

Second, I think "crossing my fingers still..." that we finally found a house! In case anyone wanted to know, number 4 is the new lucky number. We put an offer on a fourth house a week or so ago. I couldn't even remember what the house looked like at the time (we had looked at so many houses that day and have probably seen 75 houses total. We put an offer on the one we liked best from that day, which fell through and this was our next favorite). I was so sick of looking at houses but knew it was nice so we went for it. Guess the less thought the better! Since we have gone under contract we have seen the house two more times and it is really nice. I was hoping for a different town, but the neighborhood is really nice. There are a few things that need to be addressed in the home in order for our loan to be approved so if all goes well we should be in our new home by about Thanksgiving:)

Our house...lol. I haven't taken any pictures so I thought a doll house would do. Blog posts are much more interesting with pictures in my opinion so I improvised!

And last but not least.....Dan is loving his new job. He started on Sunday so this is only his 3rd day but so far so good! Would be hard for Dan not to like a fitness job:) So far his schedule is worse than it was at the jail (yup! he got out of jail!!!). I didn't think that was possible to have worse hours until he got his shifts working until midnight but it's okay! We are just happy he has a job that pays more, with better insurance to cover more of my expensive medical bills, and to top it off it's a job that he loves!

As for me....I am just busy working, going to school, and trying to help us keep up on everything else until Dan's schedule calms down a little. I keep myself even busier with all my crazy craft projects that I just HAVE to do. They are what keep me sane though! That and watching Gomer Pyle:)

Crazy Thursday

Last Thursday a few interesting things happened.....

1-Dan got a TB test at work. It came back as positive exposure which is REALLY crazy. He was supposed to get a chest xray at work on Friday but the office was closed when he went. Hopefully he will get one today. He sure isn't sick....so I highly doubt he has TB but he may still have at least exposure to it and have to take meds for awhile. They also said it could be an allergic reaction so we will see! Neither of us really think it will amount to anything but it was sure added to our crazy Thursday!

2-I started to go into Anaphylactic Shock. Crazy, I know. I got an allergy shot a few hours before and didn't think anything of it because I have never had an severe problems beyond growing upside down muscles (that is what my dad calls my arms when they swell and sag from my shots...lol). Well...while I was at the store with my mom (thank goodness!) I started to get this really bad rash all over my body. It was growing quite rapidly and my ears and back of my neck got really hot and red. Well I decided to be on the safe side and call my doctor. I never would have guessed that he would tell me I needed to come in right away! While on the way there I started to get really hot and have a little bit trouble breathing...when I got there he had like 6 meds all lined up for me to take. I had to stay for a little while to have my heartbeat, blood pressure, and throat monitored but it quickly went all away thanks to the meds. I was just thrilled we were so close to the office and that my mom was there to help...if not I would have had to use my epi-pen which scares me a little. Anyways, all is fine and well now. They are just going to take my shots a little more slowly and told me to always make sure my epi-pen is with me.

3-Now for the not-so-crazy and not medical related stuff. It's EXCITING stuff too! Dan got a new job! He applied for a job on base at the fitness center to work as a active duty reserves employee. On Thursday he was offered the job and as of today he has officially accepted and will be starting work on Sunday. We are excited for the job because we will get the perks of active duty again without him having to deploy or move regularly (although he can volunteer for these things if he chooses to do so). He is excited to finally get to work in the gym (he had hoped to the whole time he was active duty) and we will have our good medical insurance back which will save us a bit of money! His hours may not be any better than they are at the jail now but he will be much happier I think.

4-We went house hunting and saw lots of houses that we liked! I actually enjoyed it....it wasn't as stressful and upsetting as it was the week before. Guess we are officially over loosing our last house. We actually put an offer on house #3 Friday morning that didn't work out, which is fine:) There were few others from Thursday we still like as well. So here's to hoping that #4 will be the new lucky number!

Dan's Project

While I was busy crafting before work and school started Dan was busy learning how to fix his car. While living in Louisiana he got a few rust spots from the rain on his car. Since his car is getting quite old and is worth less than a thousand dollars we figured it was the perfect car for him to practice on!

He sanded the spots first and then spray painted them.

The project took a lot of work and time but Dan did a really good job and learned a lot!

My Projects

This summer amidst looking for a job, house, and getting ready for school I got to do some fun projects that I don't normally get to do!

I got all ambitious and starting making fun bags to sell. I sold them for a month or so and then school started and I haven't as much since then. Either way, they have been a fun project and I am planning on still selling them on the side as well as my cakes and vinyl too. I enjoyed doing it in Louisiana and know it will be a good thing for me to do here too! Gives me an excuse to craft!

I got to teach the YW in our ward how to make these bags this past Wednesday and it was a LOT of fun! I missed serving in YW's so it was nice to be invited!

My other fun project has been cakes! We had a party for my brother's two friends, Kyle and Jack right before Jack left on his mission (Kyle leaves next week). I couldn't let the opportunity to pass by to make a cake!

I was REALLY happy about how the cake turned out. This is the most success I have had with fondant so far and I had SOOO much fun!

The bottom of the cake says "I hope they call me on a mission!" and there is a little dot by where he was called to serve.

The other cake I had a good time creating was this one for my Grandma's birthday. She LOVES teddy bears.

Both of these cakes are made out of homemade marshmallow fondant. My friend found the recipe for me. I LOVE it because not only does it work well but it tastes YUMMY unlike regular fondant.

I haven't done any cakes since school started but I am hoping to get together with my friend Megan soon. She has gone cake crazy just like me!

24th of July 10K

Okay, so I found some pictures on the home computer from during the time of my blogging absence that I really do want to post.

For the 24th of July Dan and his brother, Andrew, decided to run the 10k in Salt Lake for Pioneer Day. It was really fun to have my mom and Dan's family there to watch the race. Both Andrew and Dan did really well. I have a video below (pardon my excellent recording skills...lol) of Dan finishing and the great time he came in at! Runners from all over the world come to run this race because of the cash rewards...so no, neither of them placed but they still did really good and were among the first group of Utah racers to finish.

Dan after the Race

Sitting in the ice tubs. He said it was WAY cold and it took me awhile to get a picture before he could quickly hop out.

The runners.

The runners with Jordan and Michael

The wives of the runners.


Dan and I. (Notice how close I was to Cami compared
to Dan...i.e. she wasn't sweaty like him!)


Dan's family and my mom (not sure where Dan is...I was taking the picture).

Now one with Dan and I!

We had a really good time and can't wait for the summer again so we can go to more races!