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11/30/2011

Life

Being in school is making (has made) me crazy.
Sometimes I feel like every single day is the exact same.
I am always on a terror on Sunday nights because I am so stressed to go to school the next day, and start a new week.
Sometimes I feel so tired I could literally lay in bed all week, doing nothing, and feel awesome about it.
I hate doing things I don't want to do, I guess that's what it comes down to. I know this is a pretty normal phenomenon, shocker right, and my motivation is so close to zero it is amazing I am still going to class... On top of this, I feel like I worry more than the average person, I worry about friends and family, and school and church and money and I don't know if it's a woman thing or a Shannon thing, but it just gets so tiring.
I miss my family, I miss warm weather, I miss not being in school, and mostly I miss spending time with my husband! This semester I have seen him, on average, about 15 minutes a day, and that is right before we go to bed. Things are so busy, it's like I've lost sight of my life! I will just blame that on school, I blame everything else on school!
But in the midst of all my complaints, I am so grateful. Grateful school is almost over, grateful for family, and for Christmas, I have amazing parents who made sure we will get out there, and will have the most relaxing Christmas ever!
Mostly I am grateful for Jared. Though marriage is not all sunshine and rainbows (mostly though =] ), my sweet husband is the light of my life. He does things that take my breath away every day.
Last night I was so grumpy I wouldn't have blamed Jared if he yelled at me, or even just left to get away from me! But even with me snapping, and being a girl, and crying over nothing, he was so sweet and understanding. This morning, he knew I had to wake up early for a presentation, so he woke me up 5 minutes before my alarm with breakfast in bed (and this is an even bigger deal because he absolutely never cooks!) It was so sweet I almost cried. He is so patient, and thoughtful, and even working over 14 hours a day on school and work, he makes time to make me feel special, and loved. I'm so glad for the year and a half (really, the anniversary was yesterday!) we've been together. It will be so awesome to see how our lives change out of school in just a few months!
I apologize for the somewhat rant-y update, but I want to look back and see how much I hated school so I can always remember to appreciate graduating and working crazy hard to achieve my goals. I also want to make sure to leave myself reminders of how absolutely wonderful Jared is

11/18/2011

Boise fieldtrip

I am in a class called "Food Service Management". This class is all about how to run a restaurant. Along with learning all these things from a book, we actually opened our own restaurant called "Emma's Kitchen" on campus, and we've been open all semester. This is a very interesting class, though I really have no hopes of opening my own restaurant (unless my dream comes true and we open our own bed and breakfast someday), but I have had my fair share of working in restaurants, thank you Red Robin.
But it is still fun, and last week our class took a field trip to Boise. It was so much fun!
This is us all at "falls brand meat company" in Twin Falls.
This part of the field trip was educational...we started at the front where they were packaging hot dogs and sausage and bacon. We moved back to where they were cutting chops and ribs, and back further to where they were cutting the whole half-pig carcasses up into specific parts, and then to the kill floor. Which is, needless to say, exactly what it sounds like. Not only did I hear little piggies squeal their last squeal, I saw them hanging upside down, bleeding out through their jugulars, then watched as they were skinned, gutted, and cut in half. Poor poor piggies.
For lunch (right after this...none of us were too hungry, especially for pork) we went to "9 beans and a burrito" in Twin falls, which was really good, regardless of our previous experience.
We then headed all the way to Boise, to see the Sysco food show, where lots of food vendors were set up giving samples and trying to sell their food. This part would have been a lot more fun if we hadn't just ate our weights at "9 beans and a burrito". It was still fun though, so many cool products!
Then we went over to the "Boise co-op" or more commonly known as the hippy grocery store. They had all organic foods at fantastic prices. I ground my own peanut butter, got some warm, raw honey, and a bunch of other things all for really cheap, this was my favorite place we visited!
That night, after we had checked into our hotel, we went to "Mai Thai" restaurant for dinner. Holy fancy. We had sushi for appetizers, some with eel sauce, and some with veal, and some fried sushi, it was so good! Then awesome thai food for the main course. I LOVE thai food. I have been trying to cook more thai at home, but I have a long ways to go to get this good. There was flaming duck and drunken noodles, and the best curry I have ever eaten! We just ordered a bunch of entrees and ate family style, so we got to eat everything.
After dinner we went to another grocery store where I got some fancy olive oil and balsamic vinegar, then we headed to the hotel, and went to bed, where accidentally, our room only had one bed, all 3 of us girls (Mallory and Kim) slept in one king bed, and guess what, it was super comfy.
The next day we got up and went to a restaurant supply store, then went over to Sysco foods, where we do all our ordering for Emma's kitchen. It was cool just walking around the big warehouse, it was like costco on steroids.
We then headed back home, stopping for lunch in Twin falls again, at "Kiwi's Fish and chips" (so good!) It was a quick field trip but it was so fun, and I loved hanging out with all these fun girls, oh and Brother Hamblin too.
As for a life update, Jared and I both registered for our LAST SEMESTER and we are excited to get going on it! We aren't sure what we are doing for Thanksgiving, just that we are grateful for a break, and then 2 1/2 weeks until Christmas! Woo hoo!

11/06/2011

November!

I cannot believe we are a week into November already! The only reason that matters to me is that we are only 5 WEEKS away from the end of the semester, and one of those is practically all of Thanksgiving!! Not a moment too soon either, we just had our first real snow yesterday, and the 25 degree weather was already too cold. Thank goodness it's held out until now! We don't have huge plans for thanksgiving, basically just going to chill at home. We only have Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off, so it's not really worth it to go anywhere. But for Christmas we are going to Colorado! I could not be more excited.
We have had (as usual) a crazy few weeks. October flew by, with really nothing of note. Though for the first time in like 3 years we actually carved pumpkins, and it was so fun!! We will never go another year without carving them. We put on the "Monster Mash" pandora station, and I bought us the cute little tools (that worked great by the way, better than the steak knives mom and dad let us use when we were like 7 hahaha), and our pumpkins turned out great!
For Halloween I made a special pumpkin dinner, and we just watched scary movies, and had a nice couple of hours in, a midst doing hours of work.
We also added a little member to our family. Meet Caviar, our blue and gold goldfish, whom I have kept alive for over a week now!
School is going the same. Though in "Emma's Kitchen" the little cafe me and 11 others run on campus, I was the Head Chef this past week, rather than being the server and cashier. I was so nervous the whole day, because it gets crazy back in that kitchen, but I totally nailed it. It was so fun to see something I was able to do, that was really out of my comfort zone.
Jared is still doing work like 18 out of the 24 hours in a day. I can't wait for this semester and his internship to be over just so I can spend time with my husband again!
Oh and we are doing this 21 day challenge, which I have just posted about in my cooking blog, so head over to desperatechefwife.blogspot.com to see how we are doing with that! It's kind of a trip...