New Apartment!

On Thursday I started moving into my new apartment! It took several days to get my stuff in, but I think now almost everything has been moved in and a good portion of my decorating has been done! Here are some photos:

Left: My kitchen/ bar/dining area. Disregard the moving debris on the table.

Right: Justin relaxes after helping arrange my furniture and hang my wall decorations. Notice the banana leaf! The couch, though pretty, does not really match my intended decor theme, so I plan to recover it in black & brown, with green throw pillows.

It was quite a hassle to get my furniture. The couch was in Justin's grandparents' garage, and we needed a truck to transport it. Thankfully Justin found a friend who is living in Houston, has a truck, and has been bored because he doesn't know anyone. So he helped us move the couch and then we took him out to dinner. Win-win! My kitchen table, chairs, and living room tables were in College Station in my old duplex, currently inhabited by some of Justin's friends, so we drove up there yesterday to get that stuff. When we got back and got the stuff set up after a long day of driving, Justin helped me hang all the stuff on my walls like I wanted it. That evening we watched a movie, drank champagne, and made dinner. It was fun!

My curtains still need to be hung, and I still want to re-cover the couch and put some more pictures up. But once I have done that (or most of that) I will make a vidoe tour of my apartment and post it on my blog!

Also, I am in the market for chair for my bedroom- not a desk chair, but more like a comfy chair for reading and things like that. Does anybody have one such chair that they are trying to get rid of?

They do exist!

I accepted a job with an IT consulting company in December. Since then, my communication with them has been rather sparse. I'm starting in less than 2 weeks, and Mama even joked that the company had folded and noone bothered to tell me- I would show up for work the first day and find a "building for rent" sign. Haha... kind of.

At the beginning of this week I got a call from someone in the HR department about making travel arrangements for my training in Dallas. Yay! They still exist! Then yesterday I recieved an email with even more info. I was so excited! The email gave me a list of stuff I need to do before the first day of work: fill out direct deposit forms, employee info forms, company template resume, etc. Hm... this is not the type of exciting work stuff I had envisioned. In fact, I felt a bit intimidated, particularly by the resume template. It outlined where I was supposed to put all my experience, special certification, and highlighted skills. Let's see...

Experience: Taught calculus to freshmen for several years. Never used computer.

Special Certification: Lifeguard & CPR certified (expired 4-5 years ago).

Highlighted skills: Math; Baking; Good with kids.

I'm not sure if these are the things clients will be looking for in their computer programmers.

After my previous post, I had a request for more photos. So I will conclude this post with a few photos of things that have been going on recently.

Jenn and I went to an Astros game, with some tickets that the Lotts got from someone-or-other.

Justin and I drove up to College Station. Check out his awesome sunglasses! Those are his granddad's.

I took Titus to the Inflatable Zone for his half-birthday (because I celebrate that instead of his actual birthday, which is too close to Christmas).

Justin and I went to my friend Daniel's wedding.

Bustling House

I am entering my final week of living at home before I move into my own apartment!!! (This Thursday, June 26). This week our house be operating at maximum capacity. Actually, that's now quite true- we could squeeze one more sleeper into the crib in my bedroom. But all three guest bedrooms will be full with the Lotts and my Aunt Jill and Uncle Dave, who were in Texas (El Paso) and decided to drop by. There are some stresses to living in a full house, and there will be some things that are quite improved upon by moving into my own apartment. But I do like being around people, so suddenly being in an apartment where I am the only resident may have a bit of loneliness with is as well. Oh well. I'll just have to keep in mind how nice it is to get to have my stuff everywhere.

Yesterday I went to the wedding of two of my high school friends, Daniel and Eloisa. In fact, I have known Daniel since sixth grade and Eloisa since ninth grade. I've been seeing people I know get married for quite some time now, starting with Simon and Katrina and 2001 and gradually getting closer and closer to me in age. But this is the first wedding of people who are actually my peers- they have been my classmates for years now. How strange.

Today was a fun day. After church Justin and I went to a steak & sushi restaraunt, where I rose to the challenge of eating a large blob of wasabi in exchange for a nice date in the near future. After that we went on a brief hunt for some wine glasses I wanted to get my parents and found some similar to the ones we were looking for. Then we came back to our house (Saugier parents' house) and rested/read comics before enjoying a very delicious lunch in the company of our house guests plus Luke and his kiddos (sadly Amber was unable to join us). After that we went to the pool and splashed around for a couple of hours, then came back home and had some enjoyable chat with the parents. Overall a very nice Sunday.

Sno Cones!

Yesterday our church had an open house with free food after church. I sat with Titus, who was eating a sno cone, and he told me all about it: "Aunt Hannah, I'm eating a sno cone. It's blue. You should have a sno cone." I've never really liked sno cones, but Titus seemed so excited about it that I told him I might have one after lunch. "Do you want to have a sno cone?" he asked again, so I told him, "Let me finish my lunch first and then I'll have one," to which he replied, "I'll go ask for a sno cone for you." So he did. He brought me a pink one. After eating a couple of bites I passed it on to Joy.

A bit later, Little Hannah, who was also at our table, fell out of her chair, bonked her head, and became very upset. As she was crying, Titus said to me, "we should get Little Hannah a sno cone." Then Kristen got up to take Hannah to a different room to calm down and Titus shouted to her, "Kristen! Get Hannah a sno cone!!!" Cute. I like the idea that a sno cone can fix anything.

The food at the open house was good- I always like things like that where everyone brings a side dish or chips or dessert. Of course my favorite is always the dessert, and I always have trouble limiting my dessert consumption. Yesterday I had a chocolate cupcake with lots of frosting, a rich chocolate brownie, and a peanut butter- chocolate cookie. YUM. Something that I was surprised to see as a side dish was a ham & melon plate. It reminded me of the type of food that was all over the place in Spain! I took a picture to show Mari.

Yesterday evening we had Fathers' Day dinner at Luke and Amber's house. Amber prepared some salmon and side dishes. I marinated some flat iron steak and made dessert. It all turned out very well! The steak was tender and delicious. The salmon was good and flavorful. The green beans and tomatoes that Amber had prepared were a nice complement. The dessert that I made was inspired by something I saw in the dessert case at Kroger. It was called a fruit tart, and appeared to be some sort of pie crust with lots of delicous-looking fruit piled on top, with something unidentifiable between the fruit and the crust. Mama suggested that I make the cheese pie that Daddy really likes and pile the fruit on top of that. I had a bit of trouble finding the recipe, and when I did I realized that I did not have graham cracker crumbs for the crust so I had to improvise. Then it didn't set up quite like I wanted it to so the fruit sunk in a little bit. But it still tasted good and I think everyone enjoyed it. I was quite pleased with it's final appearance with all the fruit on top, so I took a picture. Now if I want to do it again I'll know what fruit I used.

VBS and time with the parents

This week I've been helping with Vacation Bible School at Cornerstone, mostly with the crafts. I've decided that little kids are hilarious. The first day I helped, the preschool and kindergarten kids colored a paper bush and shepherd which they glued to cups for a "lost sheep" game. Since not much of my help was needed for this project, I just walked around and gave encouragement. One little boy's bush was very neatly colored and looked better than most 5-year olds' coloring, so I said, "Hey, that's a really nice bush!" to which the boy said, "you're just saying that." I was caught by surprise; "what did you say?" The kid looked a bit sheepish and said, "Oh... nevermind"

I think that maybe I should run a day-care or summer camp or something like that. I feel bad for kids whose parents have to work and can't give them as much time and attention as I got growing up. Think of all the fun things you could do with a bunch of kids! You could practically make an army!

I noticed a lot of funny signs in Europe. I tried to take pictures of most of them, which I will now post.

Reserved for people in casts, pregnant women, and elderly men. Good thing it's illustrated.

For a disco party, try to find this group.

Update: back from Europe

Apparently we did not do any blogging in Europe like we had planned. Now that I'm back, it seems daunting to try to describe the entire trip at once. So I will hit some highlights, maybe post a few pictures, and add more amusing stories or anecdotes as I feel necessary.



The day before leaving Houston, I signed an apartment lease. I am pleased with it- it's a one-bedroom, 640 sq. ft. apt with a balcony facing the pool, and my lease will start June 26. I am looking forward to moving in, setting up my own place, and being able to entertain guests! So, if you know me well enough to be reading my blog, please feel free to come visit me at my apartment once I am in and we can have tea and go swimming!



Our trip to Europe was fun! Unfortunately, we had several very crappy things happen, but hopefully that will leave us with memories of how Mari and I had to stick together to conquer the crappiness. The low-lights of our trip were when Mari's wallet and Aggie Ring got stolen in Morocco, when Mari got sick in a hostel in London, when a bird pooped on Mari's head in Gibraltar, and when we almost missed our connecting flight back from Frankfurt to Houston. Hopefully we will eventually be able to laugh at all those things.




In the meantime, here are some fun things we got to do in Europe:



See Toledo: We took a day-trip from Madrid to the city of Toledo, which was beautiful. I can't remember how old it is, but it was originally a Moorish city and was later taken over by Spanish Catholics. There were remnants of Moorish architecture, including a very old city wall. It was cool to see how the newer city had just been built into the ancient wall, and there were people who lived and worked around this ancient, historical wall everyday. Neat! We also loved the Cathedral in Toledo- supposedly it is one of the biggest in Spain, and it was very impressive. Sadly, we were not allowed to take pictures inside, but here is a picture of the outside, from which you cannot see how awesome it is.

Touch the Mediterranean: We went to Tarifa, which is supposedly the southernmost city of Europe (but what about the Canary Islands? I guess they mean Europe proper). Tarifa is a beachy town, and the Mediterranean beaches were beautiful. Mari and I discussed where exactly the Mediterranean begins and the Atlantic ends, and I concluded that it's probably not clearly defined, since they're touching... there are probably just areas that are clearly one or the other, but some fuzziness in between. Shortly after this Hannah wisdom, we walked out onto a rocky pier and saw a sign on one side that said "Mar Mediterreano" (Mediterranean Sea) and "Oceano Atlantico" (Atlantic Ocean) on the other. Apparently I was wrong.

Explore Windsor Castle: This was awesome!!! Apparently they fly the UK flag (the "Union Jack") from the tower most of the time, but when the Queen is in residence they fly the Royal Standard. Guess which one was up when we went? That's right- the Royal Standard! But we didn't get to actually see her... sad. We would have found tea with the Queen absolutely delightful! Windsor not only looked like a real authentic castle- it IS a real authentic castle. It is the oldest continually inhabited royal residence in Europe, I think. William the Conqueror first built a wooden fortress there in the 1000s, but then they built a stone one there in the next century, and that is the beginning of the actual castle that is still there today! I'm a little embarassed to say that Mari and I particularly enjoyed the gift shot- how touristy. But what we liked about the gift shop was that the stuff seemed nice, and not cheap and tacky like most tourist shops... it felt like it was actually stuff the Queen would use. And I'm sure it was. I'll bet when Queen Elizabeth needs a new tea cup, she runs down to the shop and buys the exact same teal teacup-and-saucer (with a little picture of Windsor Castle on it!) set that Mari and I got for half-price!


We have lots of other fun stories, but, like I said, it's hard to think of all of them in one sitting, and I'm sure no one wants to devote a three-hour chunk of their day to reading my blog. So I'll just post a few more photos.