Festive Festivities (and a Couch)

These last couple of weeks have been very busy for us. Friday, July 23 was my sister's wedding. It was a grand occasion and matched her personality perfectly with pink, black, glitter, and lights. Josh and I were both too googly and out of it to really hear and understand the things that were said in our ceremony, and so Lucy and Preston's wedding ceremony gave us a chance absorb the advice being given. Josh and I have been anticipating Lucy's wedding almost indecently, knowing that July 23rd would be the day we would trade in our camping chairs and become the proud recipients of a couch with a removable back! "Ideal for basement dwellers and other such low-lifes." JK.
The wedding happened to be part of our DeGraffenried Family Reunion, and as such, there were many many children with loud, exuberant, small children voices. Considering Josh is from a family of two children, he did fairly well for his first family reunion where he could not move from one room into another without being knocked off his feet from three different directions. The 24th of July was spent Kanosh style with a parade, talent show, free dinner, and much vegetating on the park lawn. Other than the impending doom of my cousin Pam leaving on her mission hanging over our heads (kidding Pam, I am happy for you), seeing the family was great. I love them so much, and I know Josh gets more fond of them with every visit.
My youngest sister Sarah has been spending the week at our house, entertaining us with her philosophies on dolls, movies, cereal choices, and hair styles. We get a bang out of her prudish ways, and wish we could justify spending this kind of money every week. Monday we went to one of the out door, children centered Shakespeare plays (The Green Show). Tuesday was-disappointment-at-not-being-tall-enough-to-go-down-the-slide-at-the-pool day, and yesterday we had dinner at Wendy's and saw "Despicable Me" at the theatre (a wonderful movie!). As soon as dad comes down and checks Sarah out, my old roomie, Jessica, is coming down for the weekend. Wow. What a week!
Well, that's it for the Kirkmans. Tune in next week for glory days before "the end" (aka- school starting).

Meat Loaf and other incidents...

Our house officially became our home when I made meatloaf on Sunday. This may seem silly, but I have never actually cooked a meal in my life, and until I got married, I had absolutely no intention of ever doing so. But after our food gift cards ran out, and we began to notice the toll eating out was taking on our tiny budget, I began to look back with more fondness than ever on my own mother's mouth watering, home cooked meals. Now meat loaf is nothing extravagant but compared with the sad history I have of cooking, it was a grand achievement. Basically, this is how it went down: I put the simple ingredients into the bowl, and instead of letting my hands get dirty like a proper husband would, Josh mixed the meat with his own hands. (There is something about raw, red meat that makes me gag when I touch it.) A bit crispy around the edges, but over all, my first cooking experience did not turn out too badly.
My next trial at cooking came last night. I had this grand vision of the noodle salad my mom makes when we went to Lin's at six p.m. and bought about ten different vegetables, but by the time nine-forty rolled around, both Josh and I were ready to eat the mess regardless of how it tasted. Our troubles began when I discovered that we had no cutting board; rather than slice up our landlord's counter tops, I found a cereal box and began using that. When it got soggy, we moved on to the plastic lid of an old can. It took eons to peel and cut the veggies while Josh slaved over uncooperative bacon. Later, when I went to drain the water from the noodles, I found we had no sieve thing. Using my hands to prevent the noodles from going down the garbage disposal did not work so well. Half of them ended up in the sink/disposal anyway. We were both ravaged at this point and decided to scoop the noodles out of the disposal and eat them despite the slimy texture.
Note to self: boxed foods are acceptable for the newly wed.

The Family Business

Josh finally found a job! It is only part time, but it will help out for sure. As luck would have it, he is going to be a janitor for the Eccles dorms on campus. The funny thing about this is that not only will he be a janitor, but I have also had the honor of being a seasoned janitor myself, with my chemical handler's training completed and everything. According to my supervisor, if there were no janitor's on this beautiful campus, the population of secretaries complaining about their unsanitary desks would sky rocket, resulting in an estrangement between not only the administration of our university and the faculty, but also between students and alumni. Together, my husband and I will become part of those illustrious few who are heroic in their pursuit of the non-hazardous floors and child safe toilet facilities. (Note: This is to be read with sarcasm. I am grateful for my job, but in no way is it this glorified.)
Josh and I are very happy with this pleasant turn of events. We hope that he will be able to find another part time position so that we can both work forty hours a week and pay for school.

Spider Catching

As expected from a newly married person, I am going to have a lot of praise and such about my new husband (hopefully it will continue;-).

On Monday night we came back from our holiday weekend very weary. We had spent time with both my family and Josh's, doing festive 4th of July things (eating way too much in my case), and so when I saw a huge brown spider above our bed, I had a come-apart of sorts. Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I am deathly afraid of spiders. In fact, I would rather sleep with snakes wrapped around my feet than spiders nibbling on my toes. Anyway, Josh came to my rescue but to no avail. The spider leaped from his position on the wall and was instantly lost in our bed sheets. After an episode of intense frustration and worry, I decided we would sleep on the living room floor in our sleeping bags rather than brave the spider infested bed. Since our living room furniture consists of camping chairs, it made for a rather nice, wilderness-y set-up. I drifted off to sleep around eleven and woke up alone at one a.m. to the sound of a dresser drawer being shut. When I went to find the source of the commotion, I found Josh beginning to remake our bed. All he said was, "I found the spider and killed it." While I had been drifting, he had spent a good portion of the night rearranging the bedroom, hunting down our arachnid enemy. At that moment I knew I had married the best, most persistent spider catcher in the world.

Newly Wedded

On June 18th, 2010 Josh and I got married. I swore I wouldn't become one of those bloggers that journals as soon as they get married, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that in order for my family to know anything about what is going on, we would need a blog.
So as of right now, this is how things are going down. I am still working in the SUU Writing Center as a tutor and in the SUU Centrum as a janitor- both of which are good jobs that work with my hours as a student. Although I am not taking summer classes, I will be starting again in the Fall for my fifth, (and final) year of college to earn my Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing. Most people chuckle when I tell them what my degree is in (go ahead, chuckle), but I figure as long as I have that piece of paper telling companies that I have a degree, I should be able to get some sort of a job.
Josh is very diligently searching for work right now, but unfortunately, Cedar City is not the most economically thriving place on earth; however, we keep praying something will turn up and given some time, I am sure it will. He will also be starting school in the Fall to finish his Bachelor's of Science in Architecture and plans on going on to get his Masters.