Relaxation

So with the stresses in our lives we all have our different escapes. Cleaning the house, exercising, writing, puzzles, sports, watching tv, listening to music, reading books. There are a variety of ways. I haven't been too stressed lately but with having a night time job and not being in school currently I spend a lot of time in the apartment during the day. There is only so much watching of Netflix and Hulu one can take. So I have my ways that I relax and one of those ways is putting a puzzle together.

I really enjoy working on puzzles. A couple of weeks back we were at our friends apartment and they just finished a puzzle. Since that point I wanted to work on a puzzle. A week later I went to the local DI and bought 3 puzzles. There is always a risk in buying puzzles from DI because you never know if there might be a piece missing. The total cost of the puzzles was $3.75. That is a steal if I do say so myself.

Now that I have 3 new puzzles I started on one immediately. I started with the ocean one because it has dolphins which happen to be one of my favorite animals. But, also it is a round puzzle which I had never done before. Round puzzles can be a little difficult because some of the pieces aren't actually square or rectangle like usual. They are pieces that are rounded. I would mostly work this puzzle whenever I would feel like working on it or when I needed to escape from stress. Majority of the time I would work on the puzzles after I would get home from work at night. I have been working on the puzzle for the past few weeks. Last night I finally finished the puzzle. I spent about 3 hours on the puzzle last night. There is just something about escaping into the world of solving puzzles. You begin and before you know it, 1 hour has passed, then 2 hours, then 3 hours. It is also really satisfying when you find pieces that fit together and you are just on a roll. That happened last night, one piece after another piece. Of course you come to a point where it seems that you can't find any pieces that fit together. That also happened. Here's the final product.

But it is extremely gratifying and satisfying once the puzzle is completed. It's a great feeling. Now onto the next puzzle. 

Being married to an English major who loves to write stories, it's hard to compete. Now Kylee and I don't really compete when it comes to writing because it is a known fact that she is much better at it than I am. She is always writing. She is also always developing characters for future stories. But I have found out that writing for me is a way to relax as well. I don't write full stories like she does. I tend to lean towards poetry. There is something about putting words onto paper. I wrote a poem back in July one night, but the first draft was not very good. Since then I have edited and rewrote it several times. I have gained a lot of respect for writers because of all the revisions that has to be done just to get it up to a decent quality to share it with others.  It is still in the revising stages but it is almost finished. I'll give you a little sneak peak. 

Here's a couple of lines from it. 

The soothing waterfall

infiltrates the whooshing of the fan.

The water’s pulse

trickles down the rocks,

--N--

We're Back!

    And we’re back!!!!!! I know that it has almost been three months since we last wrote a post. There have been requests that we update you all what is going on in our lives. So here we go. The past few months have been super crazy. I am going to do my best to catch you all up to speed on what has taken place in our lives as of late.

     In December I was still in school finishing up the semester. Once the semester was done with we headed to Mississippi to spend Christmas with Kylee’s family as it was probably the last time we will all be able to get together for a while cause at the time Travis was preparing his mission (He has since left and entered the MTC). We spent a lovely 10 days there. It was very nice to get away from the cold to warmer weather, but it was also nice to get out of the bubble of Rexburg for an extended period of time.

       January came and Kylee started school. She’s taking 15 credits and still working early morning custodial. She is wonder woman because I definitely cannot get up that early and work and then go to school all day. Because she is taking 15 credits and working from 4-7 each morning she is a very busy woman. We don’t get to see much of each other between our schedules. I am still the lead official for futsal (soccer) this semester. I work from 6-11 Tuesday through Friday. Kylee also goes to bed between 7:30-8:30 each night then gets up between 2:45-3:30 depending on if I am driving her to work or not.

      On Saturday Kylee finished all of her homework early so we got to spend the day together. This rarely happens. Up to this point she has always done loads of homework on Saturdays just to catch up or it was due the following Monday. Anyways since she got done with everything, we decided to head out to buy a couple of things that she needed for Choir. We went to DI to look for a gem colored shirt but to no avail. We then decided to take a trip down to Idaho Falls. It had been a while since we had gone shopping there. We ended up finding a shirt at Target, but we also went to other stores while we were down there to look around. Since we were in Idaho Falls, we decided that it would be good to get together with our good friends Kris and Drea since they now live down there. We invited them to go to Buffalo Wild Wings (Bw3). Surprisingly I was the only one that has ever been. I had been craving their wings.

    While there we just talked and caught up and enjoyed the atmosphere. I honestly wish Rexburg had a sports bar of some sort besides Apples Bees. This whole small town isn’t really suited for my type of personality. Anyways after we left BW3s we went our separate ways and Kylee and I headed over to Walmart. We need lactose milk for me and Great Value mac and cheese. The stuff is really good and Kylee is somewhat addicted to it. Being lactose intolerant isn’t all that fun. That is because most sauces and things like that use milk with lactose or cream in them. Both of those make me sick if I eat too much. So we have to cook with my milk just so I don’t get sick. That means we go through milk rather quickly because they don’t have lactose free milk by the gallons. They only have half-gallons and Walmart brand is the cheapest. But anyways we went to the milk section to grab some milk. To my surprise and delight, they had Chocolate Milk!!!!!!!!!!!!

     This is the first time I have ever seen lactose free Chocolate milk. Usually when I want chocolate milk I have to make it myself, which is another reason why I go through milk so quickly. I have been craving chocolate milk a lot lately. Also Kylee and I have been trying to eat healthier and save money while we eat. We would usually go through almost 2 loaves of bread a week. That can add up quickly. So we decided to buy a 25lb bag of flour and make our own bread. Let me tell you, it is so much better than store bought bread. Usually Kylee makes it on Sunday morning because it’s really her only free time and we don’t have church until 1 in the afternoon.  Today I made the bread. Not only do we make our own bread but we also make our own tortillas when we need them. Those are incredibly easy to make and are a lot tastier than store bought ones. We had Chili Verde for dinner tonight with tortillas. Best part about the tortillas is the recipe says it makes eight semi-large tortillas but Ky and I like small ones so instead of eight we can usually get twelve out of one batch. We make six and then freeze the other six for a later time.                            

 This is the bread before it raised. 

 This is the sixth tortilla that was rolled out with the other six about to be put into the freezer bag. 

 

       Overall Ky and I have been really good. We’ve just been super busy like I said. We will try to write more posts often. Right now I’m pretty sure Ky won’t be writing much because she is so busy with school. If you want any of our recipes let us know. We do have some good ones. 

    As of this posting the bread was not finished baking.

-N-