The move (briefly) and where we'll be living for 2 years

Well, it has been almost a year since I last wrote.  Sorry, no comics for this post.  I wanted to get pics up and I am too busy with the Olympics to write any comics. Soooo, the move went pretty well other than the fact we had all of the animals with us in the cab of the moving van.  Ok, actually they did a great job! Sorry, I couldn't find the pics from the move.  So, without any further ado here is our new place.  :)

Let's start with the kitchen:

We didn't have a ton of cupboard space, so we bought a black shelf and split it in half and

created two counters with shelves underneath.  You will see the other in the next pic.

Oh, lots of light!! So wonderful.  That door leads to stairs that go down to our back door. 

We have a dishwasher and a gas stove.  I am happy.

This is our cute little desk.  Messy. Oh well.

Here is the dining room.  Yeah, we have a dining room.  :)

We need to frame our wedding pic and our temple pic and they will be hung on either side of Christ.

Well, we have a china hutch, but no china.  I have a lot of vases in there right now.

The Sun Room Nook Place:

One day when I am really ambitious, I will sew a cushion for the bench.

We have these two cute little shelf things, but nothing cute to put in them except books.

The Living Room:

Ok ok, so the antenna is really tacky.  It is just for the Olympics.  Our new couch!  We literally couldn't get our old couch out of our apartment.  I am not too sure how we got it in. hmmm This one fit and we can both cuddle on it and it is long enough for people to sleep on.

I am really proud of this purchase!!! $5 for this cute green poof.  Louis thought it was going to be stupid, but he loves the cute foot rest.  I love it too.  You can see the unfinished wall mural (it may not be finished for a while if it is like any other project I or Louis begin.  That is technically our front door, but we never use it because we park on the side street which is quieter.

The Messy Bedrooms:

We took the smaller room because it actually had closet space.  The spare room's closet can't even fit hangers because it is so narrow.  I know, a closet that can't fit hangers, doesn't make much sense.  It is hard to see, but my wonderful mother-in-law bought us an a/c unit.  It is lovely at night.

The spare room/office/gear closet.  It is pretty big so it fits all of our crap.

exhibit 1. all our crap. This excludes all of the tools in the basement.

This is where Louis will be living, along with campus, for the next 2 years.  I hope he survives!

Cute little bathroom:

Well, that is the official tour.  Sorry, no pic yet of the outside, I was too lazy to walk downstairs and take on.  Look it up on Google Earth.  5051 Washington, West Roxbury MA, 02132.  (See how sneaky I was about giving my address to you so you can write to us!)

To end this post: Proof that our cat is the weirdest cat in the world.

Clearly I Missed My True Calling in Life

First: Louis hates it when companies change the first letter in a word to be the same as others in the name.   ex. Kozy Kabins, Krazy Kurls, Kooking with Katie, you know things like that.  I wanted to make fun of cooking shows as much as a could so I started with that.

Second: I think the only reason they put all of the ingredients into separate little bowls is to make the setting cuter and so it all matches.  Ok ok, they may be doing it to avoid product placement, but I seriously doubt that.  Clearly, they aren't doing the dishes afterwards or they would realize how stupid it is to create more work for themselves.

Third: They just try and be way to trendy.  Who cares what type of stylish plates you put the cookies on or if they match the theme of your house for that day???  I couldn't think of any ridiculous foody things to say, but that would fall under this third section.  It is food, we are not analyzing the next great american novel.

Fourth:  I don't think I have a fourth point so I will get on with the story that inspired this post.

A couple of weeks ago the Young Women decided to make dinner and dessert for a couple in our ward that had just had a baby.  I was in charge of making the cookie dough and frosting to bring so we could make a big cookie and then decorate it.  Bad idea.  I never bake.  The cookies never make it past the dough phase in my house.  I was just raised that way.  I made the cookies without too much trouble and began on the frosting.  Let me give you a little background on my mixer.  There is only one speed, not literally, and it is too fast and should never be used.  I have made so many messes because it just flings the food I am trying to mix all over the kitchen.  I thought I would outsmart it that day and I got one of our deeper bowls. Nope, it kicked my trash.  I put the still hard butter into the bowl with powdered sugar and turned it on to level one.  Powdered sugar explosion!! There are eight levels and I can't imagine what 8 looks like.  At this point I am getting a little frustrated, but I can handle it.  I will just use the KitchenAid.  I should have just used it in the first place.  I pour all of the sugar and butter in there and turn it on: to level 4.  Powdered sugar eruption number two.  At this point I can no longer hold it in and I yell in frustration. 



Disaster Zone



Louis was wise enough not to respond. :)  I wanted to punch another hole in our kitchen wall.  (We did not put the first hole in our wall; the previous tenant did that and used the movable cupboard to hide it.  We hide it with an Ansel Adams.  A bit more refined).  So, I am cursing everything and turned it down to a more reasonable speed.  I put the milk in, but I still managed to spill some onto the floor, which Summer cleaned up without asking.  What a helpful little dog.  She also helped me by licking up most of the sugar that made it to the floor.



 

Notice the sugar on the picture and the top of the plugs.



Well, eventually I made it to mutual and we baked the cookie and decorated it.  Let's just say I will not be doing my children's wedding cakes. 

It was supposed to say Congrats, but then the tip popped out and the green slug was born.  I think I almost peed my pants at this point I was laughing so hard.  The slug stayed and got some eyes and spots.  The tasted got great reviews, but I don't know if we are going to try and market the design.  But hey, our girls will remember this cookie forever!



My name is Katie and I was raised by wolves

          Well, first off this post is dedicated to Anna who helped me have the courage to admit that I was raised by wolves.  Ok, ok, I am probably lying to you about the whole wolf thing.  I was really raised by two loving parents and the only thing true about the above comic is that my dad does love to start fires with a propane blow torch and lighter fluid.  That brings up many stories for other posts.
        
         Anyway, so this past week I was at Girl's Camp, which was a blast.  We had such a great time and we sure created a lot of fun memories.  Everyone was surprised, impressed, disgusted, with my knowledge of the outdoors (well duh, I was a guide for years and worked at the zoo so I think I should know a lot about nature).  One of the girls "figured out" that I was actually a feral child and that I had been raised by wolves and that was why I knew so much about the wilderness.  We had a great time laughing about that one. I wish!  That would be so cool except for the fact that I would never learn how to speak and that I wouldn't really be able to reintegrate myself into society.  This all reminds me of a film class that Kim and I took and we had to watch The Wild Child.  Poor little kid.  Back to camp, we had a blast canoeing, hiking, playing mafia, scampering around, stargazing, being crafty, putting on an excellent performance of Alice in Wonderland YW value style, and just being silly girls. I need to do that once a year I guess. 

        Well, that is it for now, sorry for the long space in between posts. I was lazy.  I will do better.
PS Do you like the new format of one pic per line or is that just annoyingly long?  Are they in order?

Ninjas don't need titles

          Yesterday I went boating with the Tylers.  We wanted to leave at 1:00 so Jessica Baum came to pick me up at 12:40.  I should have known that because I was coming along, that we would be doomed to be a few hours behind schedule.  So we got to the Tyler's house (I always want to refer to the as the Schroaths), but they weren't there yet.  They were at a baby shower.  Jbaum and I were confused as to why Jonathan would be at a baby shower, but who really knows with that kid sometimes.  They eventually got home at about 1:20.  We then were corrected because they were really at a baby blessing.  Ok, Jonathan got off the hook for that one.  We got everything ready to go and Jschro mentioned that we had to swing by Jonathan's mom's house to get some keys to a storage shed so we could get the wakeboard, tube, and skiis.  A seemingly simple task right?  Wrong!

          We get to her house and no one is home.  We tried calling her, but no answer.  We all really wanted to do more than just drive around on the boat so I suggested we look for an open window.  One of the windows in the basement was open.  Perfect, our point of entry.  What I did not mention was that it was about 18" by 18" and level with the ground.  Also, the screen was still in.  Luckily we had MacGyver with us (aka Jonathan) and between the two of us, my driver's license, and his keys, we were able to pop the screen out.  To make the situation more difficult, the window was right above the sink.  Jonathan had to lower me down feet first while I tried not to step on the dishes in the sink.  With his help, I got my footing and I was in!  My first real b and e!  For all of you who are not criminals or do not watch cop shows, that stands for breaking and entering.  Ok, so that probably wasn't the first time I have broken into a house before.

           Back to the story, I unlocked the front door and Jonathan came in.  Thank goodness he think is also trained in something, I don't know what, and he quickly found the keys hidden in the filing cabinet.  We set off to the storage unit to get the necessary boating items.  It took some time and wrong turns to locate the correct storage unit, but we made it.  I ate a really hard peach on the way.  Jschro, I am still grateful for you feeding me.

 

          We finally got to the lake at 3, minus the wakeboard which couldn't be found, and we started with tubing.  Garrett (Jessica Tyler's younger brother) went first because he is the youngest.  When he was done we realized how much air the tube had lost.  We thought that Christmas and boating was ruined.  But, Jschro has amazing lung capacity and she was able to inflate it enough for it to be usable.  Hooray!!  We had a great time boating and no one got too burned or seasick.  Overall, it was a great day!

One is a genius, the other's insane

          Dakota is totally obsessed with Merry and Pippin.  It is kind of weird how fixated she is.  Every time we open our bedroom door, she rushes to the doorway and starts to go in.  Now she is a smart dog and she knows she is not allowed in the bedroom unless she is invited, but she has been sneaking in as much as possible.  When we first brought them home, she sat and stared at them  for at least 20 minutes.  She didn't even budge when Louis opened the snack jar.  She is Pavlovian to a T and when that jar opens she normally runs over and starts drooling because she knows she is getting a treat.



Are these the faces of vicious killers?

          If we come home one night to find the cage open, the dogs tied up, and my credit card stolen, then we will be concerned.  Until then, Dakota is just one weird little dog and they are just two cute, little rats.

The Tragic Tale of Penelope



          My proclivity towards keeping poisonous pets all started when we first moved to Boise, ID.  There was a period of a month or so where we were waiting to move into our house.  We didn't want to stay in a hotel that long so we rented a little house that has since been demolished.  We called it the spider house.  There was one room we didn't even go into for fear of being carried off to the forest. Just like in Harry Potter.  We did a lot of cleaning to make the place inhabitable.  As we cleaned, we found a black widow. From then on, we fed every spider we found to her.  It was pretty cool to have a little nature show in our house.  As I recall, when we moved out we left her on the counter.  Surprise new tenants!

        From then on, I have always thought they were so cool.  Last summer we found two black widows.  One was in our kitchen and one was right outside our front door.  Any normal person would kill them and consider the world a better place.  Not Louis and I!  We caught them and put them in a vase in our kitchen.  We would feed them beetles, moths, other spiders, and crickets from the petstore when we couldn't find other bugs. I am surprised that they never ate eachother. 

          We named them Penelope and Persephone.  I worried about the two of them being in the same vase because Penelope was kind of a bully and would steal all of the food.  Persephone was smaller so she couldn't fight back very well.  I eventually separated them.  This way I could make sure they each had enough to eat.  Turns out that Penelope was a truly stupid spider.  I would get things stuck in the web for her and she would kind of try to wrap them up and the she would just forget about them.  Persephone, on the other hand was a master hunter.  I didn't have to get the bugs stuck in her web and she would quickly wrap them up and suck them dry.  She would then cut them down from her web when she was finished eating.  Penelope begin to get thinner and thinner because she wasn't eating.  I tried feeding her small defenseless bugs, but it was all to no avail.  She just couldn't catch anything.  I was getting desperate, so I put them back together, in hopes that Persephone would do all of the work and then Penelope would steal the food.  It didn't work.  One morning, I found Penelope dead, all shriveled up.

          She didn't actually die from a freak bungee jumping accident, but it was stupidity that killed her. Here are the condolences I received from Louis' mom. "Dear Louis and Katie, Even the elephants aresad that your black widow has died.  (There were elephants on the front of the card and they were clearly mourning).  Why does the black widow kill the male after mating? So she doesn't have to hear the snoring.  What do you call the man with a shovel stuck in his head? Doug. Anyhow, I thought I'd send a check because you are grieving.  I was going to donate to the Black Widow Society, but I didn't have the address." What a beautiful, thoughtful note. Penelope would have laughed at the jokes.  We will probably spend the money on a headstone that will remind us of her forever.

    

If You Give A Mouse a Cookie

          This was one of my favorite book as a kid. I love the illustrations and that little mouse is just so cute!  I actually memorized the whole book and acted it out for a project in Mrs. Fearies 10th grade english class.  I think each of us can relate to the little mouse because we all like cookies and we all get distracted.  Ok, maybe not all of us, but certainly all of the Hamson's and Louis.
         
          Anyway, the other day I was actually doing the dishes and then I moved on to the counters and then swept as usual.  Well, I noticed some spots on the floor so I wiped those up. While I was doing that, I noticed that our cupboard was dirty.  Now you would think that I would go through and clean all of them.  You would be wrong.  I just did the one that I was looking at.  After scrubbing the one cupboard I noticed that the wall was a little dirty.  So naturally, I scrubbed the one wall.  That put me by the front door which, surprise, was dirty.  Why would a front door be so dirty you ask?  Well, with three dogs constantly jumping up on it when we ignore them outside, it gets dirty fast.  Thankfully, Louis installed a screen door and it is no longer a problem.  Back to the door.  I cleaned that and saw just how dirty our living room floor was.  Correction:  I saw how hairy the floor was.  I vacuumed.  After vacuuming we basically have four dogs because  of all the hair that I suck up.  Sorry, no pictures, you would be disgusted.  When I finished vacuuming I realized how long it had been since I dusted.  I stopped there and that was the end of my cleaning spree.  It was great while it lasted. 

          So, if you come to my house you could probably follow of line of cleanliness that meanders around the house.

Don't you just want to go and read the book now?