things i have been making

so, only a month and a half this time. please someone praise me for my improvement. i thought i would upload some things from my phone because i always feel really insecure if i blog with no pictures. it's like all you have to evaluate me on is my writing... and i don't even want to think about what that would do to your opinion of me. anyway, here are some things that i have been making...

this is rice. i'm not saying i've been "eating" a lot of rice- because here it is, in tuppers. but we have been making it. in all it's varieties. i have a funny relationship with rice. mostly because whenever i plan to use it in a meal- the rice finishes cooking about 35 minutes after we've eaten all of the other parts of the meal. OR i just end up serving it before it's done so it's crunchy. rice...why can't we just get a long.

this is one of the first things i have pinned and then actually made and put in my house (these are just some free print outs-i didn't actually "make" them. but i did put them in frames). At first i just appreciated the puns, but as these have been hanging in my kitchen the past few weeks i have found that i have been more able to be grateful and also to roll with it.

 this is strawberry rhubarb pie. we had pie at our wedding last summer and the other day i just really wanted to have some. so i tried to make this one. long story short, it was a huge disaster. it looked like celery pie. not awesome.

this is my nephew! i didn't make him. but i did make this hat. i even spun the wool. super homemade.

this is a tostada. guys. this is the answer. they are SO good. anytime i can't think of the thing to eat. this is it. i eat several of these guys a week. i would highly recommend you do the same.

this is the baby i have been making for the past 12 weeks. yay! we're due november 26th. things have been going pretty well- i haven't been too sick or anything. just super tired. like a tiredness that i have never known. oh also i have had some crazy food aversions. but i have absolutely no complaints (at least in public- i do actually do quite a bit of complaining). but we are so grateful to get to have a baby and we are so excited!!!!

snappy platypus carousel

(i'm ignoring the fact that i haven't blogged in over 4 months).

so things have been great lately. i won't bother catching you up because if you are reading this- you obviously read my blog, which is, as we all know, a constant outpouring of up to date happenings.
here are a few things-
i've been getting very lucky with birds lately. not in the same way that a boy gets lucky with a lady, mind you. just in the way that humans get lucky when they get to see normal but nonetheless beautiful and amazing things that birds do. alan and i have come to the conclusion that birds have fun. we live next to a little reservoir so we see a lot of birds. i'm pretty certain there is a gang of ducks that has claimed our apartment parking lot as their "turf." there are 8 of them. they get in the middle of the road and perform what seems like a kind of duck flash mob where everyone freezes for a few minutes. i'll creep toward them slowly in the four runner. but they DO NOT move. they just stare you down, as if to say- "uhhh na na na na." and you know that they know all the lyrics to gangster's paradise. please.
today i saw about 100 birds in the same muddy puddle taking legitimate bird bath. it was beautiful.
oh i also saw a very small horse. it was about the size of a medium sized dog.

we recently achieved one of our long time goals. both alan and i are now proud ham radio operators. my call sign is KF7TPG. alan is KF7TPF. isn't it cute that our call signs are sequential? it's like the FCC (federal communications commission) knew we were married. we keep getting letters from people all over the country welcoming us to the ham radio community. the other day we were "monitoring" the "farnsworth peak repeater" (146.62) and we intercepted a transmission of a guy in a plane flying over the grand canyon. that was fun. it's nuts that those radio waves are ALWAYS going through our house. now we have the tools (and appropriate licensing) to hear them.

mmmm what else what else....
OH YEAH gummy vitamins. I've been trying to take a multivitamin but whenever i eat um they make me sick. i tried to stick it out and keep taking them BUT it made alan sad when i felt sick so he hid them. i still don't know where they are. maybe i'll find them when we move some day. but when i find them i will throw them away because now i have GUMMY VITAMINS. i actually wait to take them until after work so i can look forward to them all day. they are candy.
thank you.

my galactic misunderstanding

alan and i have been watching a lot of documentaries about the universe. tonight i had a huge breakthrough. i'm pretty embarrassed about it actually. i kind of have a reputation for being pretty into science. so it is even more embarrassing. here it is...
see how there is a bright light in the middle of the galaxy there? guess what. it is not the sun. The planets in our solar system are not orbiting around that bright light. our sun is just one of the specks of light. that means that there could be billions of other planets JUST in our galaxy. i wish i could express how hard i did not know that. i thought that the milky way was kind of "ours." But really, we are it's. i would also like to apologize if i have ever corrected you about something. you have no reason to ever believe anything i may think or say.

i am amazed at my ignorance. and also how crazy small we are.

halloween and nanowrimo

i'm not usually a big halloween fan. i just like to wear normal clothes ok? alan and i went down to provo for a little halloween party. it was great. being married to alan has really changed my opinion about candy. it's gone from, "candy tastes good but i don't want to eat it because it will make me fat." to, "candy tastes good." halloween is a lot better now.
can you guess what we are? ok i'll tell you. I am wyoming and alan is colorado. we are standing in geographical relation to each other.


Here we are thinking about candy...

Now that October is over we are focusing on the month long celebration of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). The goal is to write 50,000 words by november 30th at midnight. So far I have about 5,000 words. that's 1/10th of a novel! I was going to try to write a real story but i'm more into nonfiction- so i've decided to try to write down all of my memories from when i was little and didn't know how to write. I've always been a journal keeper but it is really interesting to see what my brain remembers all these years later. it's also fun to think about my family so much. When its done it will be like a little slice of Nieman heritage. Brothers and sisters- you should all do this and then we can compile it and publish one of those books that goes back and forth between perspectives. you know...those books that do that?
anyway. happy NaNoWriMo everyone.

wisdom teeth, spinning, and lost

on friday i got my wisdom teeth out. it was awesome. joke. i wonder if wisdom teeth have always been a problem for humans, or if our jaws use to be better equip to accommodate them? anyway. this weekend has been so dumb. i really miss eating real food and not taking massive amounts of medicine. alan has been taking very good care of me, bless his sweet husband heart. i can't wait to feel normal again. anyway, i'll halt with my four wisdom tooth tale already. however, i did take the opportunity to catch up on the last season of LOST. guys. this show is so lame. but i HAD to know how it ended. i'm so glad its over and i will never have to think about it again. also- i would like to say that it was so bad. so are they all dead? did everything actually happen? what the heck.
further, i have started to spin. not on a bike. on a spinning wheel. it is so fun. here are some samples...
special thanks to Mary from Camaj handsupn yarns and to Katy for facilitating this dream. come. true.

fruit

the other day i went over to my friend's house and she had thoughtfully prepared a fruit salad. i'm not super into fruit but i didn't want to be rude... we got to talking about my fruit aversion and i guess i have never actually tried raspberries. soooo this is me trying to have an open minded mouth. i have since eaten four more raspberries and may think about consuming several more in the future.

spaghetti squash oh my gosh

this is my very favorite meal lately. fancy salad with crazins, walnuts, and avocados- featuring the very delicious, nutritious, and non fictitious spaghetti squash. i also have been experimenting with biscuits and rolls. turns out crescent rolls have to rise for a SUPER long time. they ended up being a bed time snack. i should have read the recipe all the way through before starting. every time i got to the next step they had to rise for another hour. also- i have been under the impression that wax paper and parchment paper are essentially the same thing... but apparently wax paper smokes a lot when you bake it. is that normal?
here are the crescent rolls after a smokey kitchen, after a wax paper fiasco, and a long time after dinner. they were pretty good despite the wait.