Home Sweet Wisconsin

Well, it seems that time has gotten away from me again.  I had intended to let Jared write an update or two, as several of our recent life changes stemmed from him. But, summer proved to be a busier time than we had planned, and now I'm sitting in our living room while a cool fall breeze blows in the open windows.  Where to start?

In April, Jared was offered a teaching position at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.  We were beyond elated, and felt so blessed to have the next step on our path revealed to us.  So began the house-hunting and future-planning for our new home in the north.

Jared's final show, Cabaret, was wonderful.  I actually ended up going a total of four times.  We had a great showing of friends and family, many of which make the trek back to Arkansas two short weeks later for Jared's graduation.  I'm so proud of my graduate, but we were both a little sad and amazed at how fast those three years flew by.  Over the summer we spent some time in Colorado with my family, Jared spent three weeks in North Carolina at a fight choreography workshop, and I got a visit from my long time best friend Christie, who so happens to be a stellar housewife. (I frequently came home from work to find a meal waiting!)  During that time our (school) friends one by one moved back home or on to new adventures, until it was our turn to start our next chapter.

The transition wasn't entirely seamless, including driving a Penske truck loaded with all of our worldly possessions, (including a drugged up cat) a week-long hotel stay, and closing on and moving into our first house sans-wife.  (obviously a listing of Jared's adventures)  I followed after two weeks of semi-homelessness, (which involved couch-surfing at the apartment of my gracious friend Tearney) saying goodbye to my friends and co-workers at Arvest, and two 7 hour days of car-tripping it with a snuggly pup in my lap.  Finally, the Hanlins (of both the human and fur baby variety) were all under the same roof again. This time, though, it is one that we own rather than rent.  What a feeling!

I don't think homeownership really hit me until yesterday when I was sitting on our back porch watching Jared mow our yard.  Somehow, watching my husband carry out that mundane chore confirmed this next step into being "real" adults, and at the same time shattered my previous views on adulthood.  It's funny how we set up milestones, and tell ourselves that achieving the next marker will be what finally makes things different. Markers like getting married. Or getting jobs. Homeownership. Or children.  We think one of these "checks" on the list will be the one to completely and immediately change us into adults, but I'm beginning to see that it's really a slow and continual process.  No one thing will magically flip the switch in us from childhood to adulthood. We're already there, but the adults we started off being in college are not the ones we are now, or the ones we'll be later.  Each new step we come to changes us in different ways and magnitudes.  I'm just grateful to be on this journey, and to have a wonderful husband to share it with.  

So while Jared goes to work (I love the sound of that statement!) I'm slowly unpacking and putting together our house.  I'm looking forward to exploring our new town and area of the country.  Hopefully, I'll have more time (and motivation!) to keep you updated.  For now, I've procrastinated on the box-diminishing long enough.

Strawberry Bread Meltdown

Hello again, long time no post.  We have had quite a few things happen since my last post in January, but since they are Jared-centered, I've avoided writing about them myself to give Jared a chance to put things in his own words.  Now that he's done with school (yay!!) hopefully he'll have a chance to do some updates soon.

So with the promise of more meaningful posts to come, I'd like to let you in on what has become known as the strawberry bread meltdown.

Last weekend Jared's family came out for his graduation, which also coincided with Mother's Day.  Since several mothers were going to be with us, I thought it would be nice to bake them some Fresh Strawberry Bread.  Now, there comes a time in every over-achiever's life where the over-achiever...well, over-achieves.  Since there would be four mothers in town, it made sense for me to make four loaves, and have two in the oven at a time.  So around 8 pm one night I set out all of the ingredients, and got to work.  With limited mixing bowls, counter space, and math skills, I decided to make up the batter for one at a time, and then just put them in the oven two at a time.  However, I under shot how long it would take to mix up one batch, and ended up taking about 45 minutes per loaf for prep time.  Since they bake for about 55 minutes, I realized that I might as well bake one while I'm  prepping the next batch.  So I get to the point where I take the first loaf out and put the next loaf in, and I realize that the loaves are way bigger than I had guessed they'd be by looking at the loaf pan initially.  Also at about this point I realize that it's 11 pm, and I forgot to eat dinner.  I happen to have some sort of blood sugar problem, and if I forget to eat or go too long without eating, I start shaking and crying and other annoying stuff like that, as well as completely lose my ability to problem solve. So, when Jared walked in from the show he was helping tech, he found me standing in the middle of a strawberry bread explosion, completely bewildered.  I manage to get out "I forgot to eat dinner" before the water works, and my sweet husband quickly went down the street and picked me up a take out pizza.  I'm so glad to have a guy that understands that sometimes I just don't make sense.  After I had some pizza, I decided to call it quits and just split the two huge loaves into four halves for the mothers.  I definitely got an "F" for presentation, but no matter how it looks, it still tastes as good, right?

Now, I did happen to leave out just how over stocked I was on ingredients.  Jared had volunteered to get the ingredients for me while I was at work that day, and I came home to enough ingredients to make strawberry bread for an army.  So over the past few days, I've been researching recipes to use up the rest of the ingredients before they go bad.  I did make another loaf of bread for me and Jared to enjoy, and even so I think I'll be taking some to work to pawn off on my co-workers. (you're welcome, if any of them actually read this)  I also found a recipe for buttermilk pancakes, and thought this would be a good way to use up some more of the buttermilk and the overabundance of flour I currently have.   This morning Jared and I got to sleep in, as I don't have to be at work until 2 (I work Saturday).  I mixed up a double batch of the pancakes, and added chocolate chip cookies to the batter.    I sprinkled a little bit of coconut flakes, some walnut pieces, and some fresh cut strawberry on top (and of course syrup) and let me tell you, it was amazing!  If anyone wants the recipe for either the strawberry bread or for the buttermilk pancakes, let me know.  Neither are hard, but the bread is a little time consuming (obviously. ha)

So that's what I've been up to as of late. Nothing too exciting.  But, it's nice to be low key.  Keep an eye out for posts from Jared about more exciting things.

Grown-up Vacation...sort of

I know I've been on sort of a blog hiatus. Shame on me.  But really, I end up thinking to myself, "is anything we're doing that interesting?" and then the even better, "do I really want to take the time to write things down?"  So I'm lazy.  I'm ok with that.  But, I feel I owe it to Jared and myself to keep up with what we're doing at this time in our lives, because although it may not seem interesting to us now, one day  when everything is different we'll want to look back on how things were when we were first married and delightfully boring.  With that said, how 'bout that time we went on a big kid vacation because we could.

The idea started last year when everyone at my work was planning time off for the holidays. Being relatively new, I wasn't able to get extra time on either side of Christmas, so Jared and I decided to take some time the first week of January.  We had originally thought about going somewhere within driving distance, thinking it would be cheaper.  We looked at driving to San Antonio and Austin, but even "on the cheap", it was going to add up fast.  On a whim, I looked up what airports Allegiant Airlines flies to, as we had used them before to go to Vegas last year and they were super cheap.  From there we figured Orlando would be the best ratio of cheap to fun, and we decided to book it!  So, on January 1st, we flew out to Orlando (Sanford, to be clearer) and I drove (more on that later) a little Yaris to our hotel on International Drive in Orlando.

In planning a vacation, one (important) variable we were looking for was somewhere warm.  But as our luck would have it, Orlando experienced a freakish cold front (maybe that was an exaggeration...but whatever) which resulted in us layering clothes like crazy, and buying ridiculously expensive mittens at Universal Studios (again, more on that later).  Also, we had to rent a car to get around, and if you're under 25 you have to pay extra to be a driver. So, (being 10 months older than my 24 year old husband) I ended up driving the entire time (not that driving in a traffic-ridden, unfamiliar metropolis grates my nerves or freaks me out at all) Now that you have the background details, I progress.

Our first full day (and the warmest day) in Orlando, Jared and I got up early and headed out to the Magic Kingdom.  (Yes, I'm aware that the idea was to go on a grown-up vacation since we're adults and can, but...we do what we want, ok?)  We very strategically planned out our "game plan" for hitting all the rides we wanted, and our park map was much consulted.  I dragged Jared on the Dumbo ride, and he let me sit up front on Space Mountain (isn't that what love is really about?)  Just so you don't think he's too awesome, he did laugh every time I screamed on Space Mountain. I mean, there has to be support beams, and you can't see them, so shouldn't you hunch down so you don't get your head knocked off? I don't think I'm unreasonable or any sort of ridiculous... We did also experience the tea cups without barfing, which is saying something for my motion-sickness-prone husband.  (Please refer to the video) After almost 12 hours of exhausting park-wandering, we went to downtown Disney and ate dinner at The House of Blues (Jared's choice).  No bands, but the food was good and it was a lot of fun.

Day two was colder, but we again got up early to head to Universal Studios.  We wore jackets, hoodies, and layers, but somehow Florida smote our plans for decent weather, and we had to buy ridiculously expensive mittens to keep our hands from freezing off. Literally.  Or not. But it was cold.  I kept my hood obnoxiously and fully draw-stringed tight to my face all day.  But, we had a lot of fun hitting up all the fun attractions.  We ate dinner at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, and headed back to the hotel to finally be warm and to get some sleep.

Our third day we allowed ourselves to sleep in a little bit, then drove the rental car out to Cocoa Beach to eat lunch out on the deck at Fishlips. (actually in Cape Canaveral) Afterwards we skimmed through the Ron Jon Surf Shop and then walked the beach for a while.  On the way back we hit up an outlet mall, then had dinner at a little gourmet pizza place.  Afterwards we went back to the hotel, packed up, and set our alarms to go off disgustingly early so we could fly home.  

So, that's the gist of our sort of grown-up vacation.  Stay tuned for the next time something we do seems moderately interesting enough for me to write it down.  Although, this last half hour or so has been a lot of fun.  Therapeutic, maybe?