Stranded in Radiator Springs

Well, Thursday was my last day of classes. We had a party in my institute class with food and everything, so I brought David with me since he's already done with all of his classes. He took the car home and was going to come back for me after all of my classes so that we could go straight to a birthday party for one of David's old mission companions. Well, David leaves and I go to my next class and about 15 minutes into class my phone starts vibrating like crazy and I see that David is calling. I normally wouldn't have answered but when I didn't answer and the phone started vibrating again I thought I should probably answer. I walked out into the hall and answer the phone. That's when David told me that on his way home the car overheated and the engine started smoking. He pulled over and we had a major crack in our radiator where there was a ton of steam and smoke coming out. He went to the first car shop he saw and they quoted him $500 or more to fix it. Well, that sucks.

I told him I thought he should call some other places and get some other quotes because I thought that was too high and I had never heard of the shop he was at, which was a sign to me that they probably have high prices, well, I was right. David spent the next hour or so calling other shops and getting other quotes and found a guy that would replace our radiator for us for about $260. So yeah, that's a major improvement from $500! We took it in first thing yesterday morning and left it with him to fix while that left us without a car for about 4 hours about a mile from our house, so we had some time to kill. Luckily we were in an area with a lot of things to do. We got ourselves some yummy breakfast at Village Inn, I got this french toast that had cream and strawberries and bananas on it and it was amazing! After breakfast we walked over to the mall and relaxed a little bit and looked in a few shops and then we decided to see a matinee at the theater. We saw "The Lorax" which we actually both really enjoyed and had a lot of fun. By the time we were out of the movie our car was done! The car ended up costing $300 with everything, but we're really glad that we got it taken care of, and we're really grateful this happened before we left for Washington DC in a few weeks. The car guy said the rest of the car looked great and that it looks like it runs really well, especially for how old she is. She is 12 years old and has almost 200,000 miles on it! She's a trooper though.

After that we found ourselves a storage unit to store our stuff in over the summer and just ran some errands and had a really fun day together (which was nice since we've hardly seen each other at all for the past few weeks). We sold back our textbooks and used that money to celebrate the end of school and go on a date to a new place we've been wanting to try. We had a nice dinner and got some yummy gelato at a little Italian place we found that's just a few blocks away from where we live called Gloria's Little Italy. We were both actually really impressed with the place and both admitted that we think it's our new favorite restaurant in Provo. The food was really good, they had great service, an accordion player who walks around playing and singing european songs, and the gelato was the real deal like I used to get on my mission everyday during the summer. We had so much fun! We splurged a little bit on dinner, but we haven't been on a date for like 3 weeks, so we don't feel too bad.

I'm taking Monday and Tuesday off work to study and prepare for my finals which are both on Tuesday. We're going to be staying with David's brother and sisters this week in Alpine while his parents are out of town, so that will cut down on my gas too since I work in Orem. I can't wait for my finals to be over so that I can just focus on my phlebotomy class and getting ready to move. It'll be nice not pulling 50 hour weeks anymore like I have been the last several weeks. Yay! I don't want to focus too much on my phlebotomy class though... Last week I had to get stuck 10 times between my two arms! All within about 2 hours.

What a week!

This week has been SO busy! I'm pretty tired. In addition to my usual schedule, I started my phlebotomy class this week, so Monday and Wednesday I didn't get home until after 10 pm. On Thursday night after class I had a mission reunion to go to, which was fun and we got free pizza and to see a lot of our friends. Conveniently a few people from my mission (who served before my time) are actually studying Mechanical Engineering with David and are graduating at the same time as him, so he sees them like everyday and is good friends with them, so it was fun for him because he had friends there too.

I had Friday off work which was really nice but I had two visiting teaching appointments to go to and a baby shower to go to that night. It was fun to see my friends and celebrate that my friend Brooke, an old mission companion, will be having a baby girl in a few months. I'm really excited for her. It was fun too because a Hungarian girl named Lilla that got taught by a few of my mission friends and who got baptized, married a returned missionary in the temple and now lives here in Utah came last night. She is really cute and it made me feel good to talk to her because I realized I haven't lost as much of my Hungarian as I thought. I mean, sometimes it was hard to understand what she was talking about and to respond, but I'm better off than I thought, so that made me feel good.

Today is the first day we actually have to relax without anything to do. David made me breakfast this morning which was really sweet. He made hashbrowns, eggs, sausages, bacon and orange juice. It was delicious and again, really sweet of him.

Ok, so I started my phlebotomy class on Monday and it was good. On Wednesday we started practicing on each other, so I had to get stuck 6 different times between my two arms. I kind of look like a drug addict... So luckily it's been a bit more chilly the last few days so I have an excuse to wear long sleeves ha ha. We're supposed to start bringing volunteers now to stick on Wednesdays, but I think I'm going to have a hard time getting anyone to volunteer to let me stick them with needles a bunch of times. We are supposed to get 8 sticks a night, so yeah. I think that since I won't get too many volunteers that means I'll have to find some more of my classmates that will let me stick them... Which of course means that I will have to let them stick me back. Boo!

I am so happy that school is coming to an end and that I only have to keep going like this for 2 more weeks. I think I can last that long. I will be taking the certification test on Wednesday the 9th of May and then hopefully I'll be able to get a job doing that and start making more money. It is a national certification test too, which means that I could be able to get a job in DC over the summer too. That is, if I pass and hear back from them quickly.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot that Sunday was Easter and that that was this week, that feels like forever ago. We didn't do anything special really. David's family was out of town, so I just made a roast in the crock pot with potatoes and carrots. We went to the park and enjoyed the nice weather, we just laid in the grass and talked and enjoyed the sun. Then we went over to Maile and Michael's and watched Frozen Planet with them. I got David an Easter basket which I set out for him before he woke up. There were razor refills in it, some eggs filled with jellybeans and reeses pieces, some fancy rootbeer and stuff like that. He loved it.

Well, we're going to go to the store now, so I gotta go, it'll be good to get out of the house.

Relaxing at the park on Easter

Tulips in the snow

We have been trying to sell our contract for our apartment so that we wouldn't have to keep paying rent over the summer since we're going to be in Maryland. We have had two people come and look at our apartment and the first couple were really nice and seemed to really like it and everything, but a few days later they let David know that they found another apartment that they liked better, so they wouldn't be buying our contract, about a week later another couple came by to check out our place, so we cleaned and everything and they apartment looked great, they came in, looked around, we only here for about 2 to 5 minutes and then left. As soon as they left I told David that I didn't think that they seemed very interested. Well... I was wrong! An hour later they texted David and told him they were going to buy our contract! Yay! We were really excited about it, especially because they were only the second people who came and looked at our apartment. Now we don't have to worry about it anymore which is nice because we are going to have a lot of other things to worry about in the next month before we leave.

We are still going to be shopping for an apartment for next year, we've only applied to one place that we're pretty sure we can get in, but we figured it would be a good idea to keep looking for other places and applying for other places before we leave, just in case we can find a better deal or something. It should be good though, I have a knack for finding good deals on things like apartments.

I just registered for my last semester before "graduating" with my associates. I only had 2 required classes left, so I got to pick some fun ones too. The required ones I'm going to take are math and english, but I'm going to be taking a personal finance class which will be interesting and hopefully I'll get something out of it that I can apply into real life. Also, I get to take some really fun classes that are only 1 credit each, one is a whitewater kayaking class! I have always wanted to go whitewater kayaking, so I'm really excited about it. And one cool thing is that I will go to classes for the first month of the semester, then we will go on a field trip and go kayaking and then the class is over before the end of September. The other fun class I'm going to take is a rock climbing class, yay! Then I'll learn how to rock climb and it'll be so fun! That class also gets over early, it only lasts through the middle of October. So by the middle of the semester I'll have earned 2 credits and learned two fun new skills and I'll only have to worry about the important classes from then on. I'm excited.

I start my phlebotomy class on Monday which will greatly complicate my life, but that's ok, it'll be worth it. The end of the semester is coming up fast and I'm excited for it to be over and to have a break. This summer will be so fun hanging out in DC, getting to play with our nieces and nephew, road tripping it across the country, and going to Big Bear Lake, California with my family for a week! Ok, the original plan was to go to Jackson Hole in Wyoming but that got changed and now we're going to California! In order so that David and I can go, my dad is flying us out and then flying us back so that we can make the drive home. We will then have 8 days to drive home from DC to Utah and move in to a new apartment before school starts. It'll be crazy, but it'll be fun that's for sure.

So, the weather has been SO nice lately right? So below are some pictures of us when we went on a walk to the duck pond right by BYU on one of these nice days. Unfortunately we live in Utah and the weather here gets pretty ridiculous this time of year. Yesterday it was 65 degrees out and today we woke up to a snow covered wonderland. So as an observation from the morning... It's really depressing to see tulips covered in snow. So sad.