Good News!

Good News #1!  I got a job.  YES.  It's not full time, it isn't with a school district, but it is enough to support us and I think I will enjoy it.  I will be a nanny for a family with five kids.  They are very active and involved in lots of extra-curricular and last fall brought twins into the family, so they are looking for 'extra hands' basically.  I feel blessed to help mom out with all of her daily mom duties and hopefully she will relax once we get started and see that I can do all the nitty gritty so she can do the fun mom stuff.  She still seems hesitant and I think she feels like she's handing her kids off on a stranger.  Dad described the position as "Alice from the Brady Bunch."  I think it will be a fun year.

Good News #2!  We found an apartment!  It's so close to the campus, we can see the football field.  It's small, only 16 units, and mostly occupied by professors and other upper classmen.  Pretty much, parking doesn't get any better than our parking lot.  Also, it's only two years old, and the landlord just LOWERED rent by 50 dollars.  2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, washer, dryer, open and spacious kitchen.  The landlord has been in the apartment business for almost 30 years, his family owns most the apartments around campus, but this one is his alone and seems to be his little pet project.  Everything is in great condition, and he shows a lot of care for keeping it looking nice.  Also, this isn't his sole income.  He has a job with the state forestry and his wife works for the university, so he's not looking at this like dollar bills.  We both feel he is very genuine in his intentions to keep happy tenants.  We put a deposit in it last night and can move in once he cleans the carpets.  Or, we can wait he said.  Good Guy.

To think, we weren't even planning to move down until next week originally.  Then we got the urge to move sooner and get ourselves down here.  We ended up sitting around a lot, and feeling a little uncertain, but then things just fell into place.  I know my humility was tested, and once again, I have seen that obedience opens the path to many blessings and opportunities.

Good News #3!  HARRY POTTER.  We are among the masses that have been awaiting this final installment.  We also have our first double date tomorrow (good news 3.5) to see the movie.  We wanted to go to the midnight, but passed that to go with some new friends.

Good News #4!  Evan's sister returns from her mission tonight!  He is excited to talk to her I'm sure.  I know he was very disappointed he'd be missing out on her home coming, but that's why we have phones and skype :)

The Andersons are starting to feel at home in Arkansas!

Celebrities

I don't knwo how, but somehow we got on the subject of celebrity look alikes.  So I ran to the computer to see who mine was.  And then Evan wanted to know his.  And then there was this cool morph video you could make.  And now you have, me morphing into Michelle Rodriguez and Evan morphing into Josh Duhamel.  It was fun.  Go check out MyHeritage.com to try it for yourself!



MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities


MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Ancestors - Familytree

Diary of a Pretzel

I love those big soft pretzel you get at the mall, so a while ago I looked up a recipe on my fav recipe website allrecipes.com and tried it out.  Super easy, super delicious!  Wehn we moved to Arkansas, we went to the grocery store, but ddin't get any snack/dessert type items, both because we don't really need them in the house, and because we are trying to keep a tight budget.  By Friday we were ready for a little treat, and we had to use whatever we had on hand, so we did sugar cookies.  Butter, flour, sugar.  They were good.  The next week I found a box of cake mix in our 'food box' so we made some cake.  This week, I got out my pretzel recipe.  I had been moving my yeast around whenever I looked through my spices, and it inspired me.

So, pretzels!

After mixing all the ingredients, (mostly flour, sugar and yeast) and kneading the dough,  it sits for a while to rise.  Then you get this!

 Okay, this is half the dough.  And it isn't as light and fluffy because it sat in the fridge all night.  But it still worked.

 Then I took a strip of dough and rolled it out long. This may look like it's sticking straight out, but if you look at the background it's just the picture on its side.  I haven't figured out how to rotate images on Evan's computer yet.  Mostly because I haven't tried.

Make a loop with a twist at the bottom...

Flip it up and press the ends! TADA- pretzeled.

A little bath in water and baking soda

Then put it on the pan and sprinkle with salt.

Bake it about 8 minutes and they come out golden brown like this!

These were delicious too.  Today I tried putting salt on the pan first to keep it from sticking, which it did, but it also absorbed all the salt from underneath in addition to what was on top, making them almost unbearable.  I think I'll go back to just pan and having to scrape them off.  They taste better even if they are more hassle.

Hopefully I get a job soon- then I won't be enticed to blog about every. Single. Thing. I. Do.  Until then expect to see more amazing entries about the excitement that is Arkansas.

Hiking, in Arkansas

We found ourselves a trail to hike along, thinking we had better get to know the area, and what better FREE way to do it, than to go on a little hike?  So we set out for Woolly Hollow State Park, where they have the Huckleberry Trail.

 The Huckleberry Trail.  Yup.  I took this picture by myself too, set the camera on something, set a timer, and then ran to my place.  This was  captured on the first try!

 One of the first things we found was a teeny tiny frog.  It looked like those little rocks, I'm not sure it if is actually in this picture.  Turns out, these teeny tine frogs were EVERYWHERE! 

 Evan on the trail

 Me on the trail!  Notice all the growing stuff?  This was the more clear part of the trail.  The whole things was branches smacking us and bugs flying into us.  Not pleasant for me, who does not like bugs so much.

 

He said this was poison ivy.  Then proceeded to worry about how much he had passed and possibly rubbed up against.  As of yet, neither of us has any signs of it, so I think we are in the clear.

 There's a bench down there.

 One of the few times we had a view of anything besides tree.

 This was my favorite part.  It was open and there was this little bridge running over the creek.  The bridge was super tilty, but we didn't fall in.

 These were everywhere.  Or this one followed us the whole time.

Overall, we rate this hike with two thumbs down.  Evan said it best when he said it was "untamed."  Bugs are gonna be there no matter what, I will take that.  But there was a lot of foliage growing over the trail, and not a lot to see.  We spent so much time watching our footing we didn't really look around that much, but it was all trees and shrubs anyhow.  Also, it is an incomplete loop as it drops you off on the road about a quarter mile from the trailhead.  Oh well, we'll try another one some other day.

As a bonus, we saw this crazy big bug in a hole in the ground.  We have yet to identify it... so if anyone is a bug expert let me know.  We didn't get a picture because someone may have squealed when she saw a grasshopper on her husband's shirt.

What exactly have we been doing in Arkansas?

Well, I finally took my camera out and have pictures!  So what have we been doing?  Aside from applying to jobs and having the freedom to do laundry WHENEVER I WANT we have been very productive.

For example, we have watched the first 2 seasons of  this great show --->

During which I not only revisited the art of the Starburst wrapper chain, but mastered folding said wrappers while sitting cross legged on a balance ball.  No pictures of me balancing, but here are the end results of the chains.









Yesterday was the Fourth of July and we ventured out of the house to find a celebration of Independence, Arkansas style.  There was a pancake breakfast and flag raising ceremony at church in the morning, which was fun, but short lived.  After dinner we drove out to Maumelle (a small town 20 minutes east of us) for a little festival.  There was a parade (which we missed) and awards for those.  Then there was some music, with covers of some great songs. Country music of course, this is the south after all!

Then there was the firewoks show, complete with locals hollerin off their balconies.  Anytime something was really loud we'd hear a "YEEEHAW!"  And as a testament to how flat Arkansas is, ever bang and crash echoed for ever. It sounded like there was gunfire in the next city over.  I don't know how well it is caught on the video, but you can take my word for it.

This morning I cut Evan's hair.  My first haircut.  Scratch that, second.  Once upon a time my dad wanted us to go get family pictures, but didn't really tell us ahead of time and Matt had REALLY long hair, so he asked me to trim his side burns.  I used a pair of kitchen scissors and got to work.  I cut one and then the other then took a look.  one side was higher than the other so I trimmed up the longer side, and ended up going too short.  This went on until he had virtually no side burns.  Poor kid.  Lucky for us, we ended up not getting pictures taken that night and he had time to grow them back.

I waned Evan of this when I started and he said it was hard to screw it up using clippers and a guard.  So I gave it my best try!  He had wayyy too much hair.  I told him it looked like little mice were falling off his head.  So, we'll us a picture from the fireworks show as our before, as I didn't have the thought to do a before picture.  I do have an after though!  I think I did a pretty ok job, don't you?

 It's dark, and hard to tell how long the shag is, it was pretty long though.

 The bathroom floor once we finished

 All swept into a pretty pile

Fills the dustpan nicely

New, clean, and cut!  Look at that enchanting smile!

Arkansas, so far

A little over a week has gone by, and I have not taken a single picture.  Literally, my camera is in my backpack where I put it Tuesday night before we left.  I feel like a slacker- but don't worry.  You aren't missing much. 

We've been spending a lot of time getting the clerical part of moving done- changing our address, registering for classes, looking for jobs, looking for an apartment, getting a bank account, etc.- so we haven't spent a lot of time having fun.  The other day Evan said, "Let's go find Toad Suck Park!"  Yes, that is the real name of the park.

There are signs for it everywhere, so we figured it must be a pretty nice park.  So we set out to find it and hopefully throw the frisbee a little.  Well, we found it.  It's comparable to ... well I don't know.  There's one side with a boat launch, and another side with maybe 15 campsites all crunched in.  It's not horrible, but not what we were expecting.  We found a soccer field near the campsites and threw the frisbee for a while and went back home, not completely satisfied and feeling dubious about ever having fun in Conway. 

There's always Little Rock! 

Also, I promise to start taking pictures.  I know you are dying to see Arkansas!!