New Apartment Adventures

well, i've joined the bandwagon and gotten a blog. i figured it would be a nice way for family and friends to keep up with brad and i's crazy life so far from home. we just moved into a cozy little basement apartment and are SO happy about it. NO MORE MOLD!!! our last apartment was ravaged with mold in nearly every corner. there was even a MUSHROOM growing out of our living room carpet-- no joke. after months of dealing with an apathetic management, losing my shoes, winter coat, and my husband's baseball glove, constantly smelling bleach from cleaning the mold and fearing to put anything next to a wall... we finally escaped and have a cozy little place that has already been an adventure.

Friday: our first night here there was a mighty utah rain storm in the middle of the night. our bed was tiny and felt like sleeping on an air mattress full of wet sand. at 5am after getting no sleep at all, we decided that the couches would be more comfortable. that's when brad discovered our leaking window that had drenched the brand new carpet. later that day, once it was at a respectable hour to call someone, we called the landlord and notified him of the problem. the next 36 hours we had fans on to help dry the carpet the had to be pulled up and a placstic tarp was put over the window. we discovered that the culprit was a rotted weatherstripping in the window seal and water was bouncing off the ground and through the screen of the window (we're in a basement and the windows are at ground level). fun stuff.

Monday: just when we thought we had weathered the storm of our first days in our new home, the power went out, only to find out that it was because the electric company had shut it off because the previous owners had asked them to turn it off since they were moving. no biggie, so we called the electric company to get it turned on, but they inform us that policy states they can't turn the power on until the next day. meanwhile, we live in a dark basement, our freezer foods begin melting and our milk starts getting warm, our phones and laptops are dead, and the flashlights are dying. plus, we have no way to cook dinner-- no microwave or stove and no non-cook meals in our house. then i devise and ingenious plan! the electricity in the laundry room still works because we share it with the upstairs apartment and studio apartment next to us. it has a spare electrical outlet, so we unplug our microwave and take it to the laundry room and use it to defrost our ground turkey. then we take it back to our kitchen and bring in my KitchenAid to mix the ground meat with an egg and bread crumbs and cheese to make hamburgers. once that is finished we take it back to the kitchen and bring in our George Foreman grill to cook the homemade hamburgers-- all this done on top or the washer and dryer while we are doing laundry! it tasted great and we made a fun memory.

now we are preparing for our trip to southern Utah to visit Arches, Bryce, and Zions National Parks. i've never been and brad knows the area well because he served part of his mission down there. and the best part will be-- mongolian BBQ in st. george!!! feel free to be totally jealous.