Thanksgiving, baking soda, white elephant, and pictures!

Well this post is going to cover a lot so get ready!

First, we had an excellent Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa Bickmores. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving we went into a slight panic mode, because all of northern Utah and the Salt Lake valley were alerting the public about a terrible blizzard that was going to hit that afternoon. We even got an email from BYU that said the following, "The National Weather Service is warning of a winter storm today that 'will far surpass anything that we've seen, probably for the last several years.' The combination of snow, extreme cold, and possibly damaging winds will make travel extremely hazardous. The storm will begin in the north and move south, hitting Salt Lake City later this afternoon." I am not making this up, BYU and a good portion of Utah raised an alert for a winter storm that would be worse than any winter storm we have experienced in the last several years. BYU then proceeded to send us email after email eventually informing us they would be closing campus at 3 pm. With all of this publicity about the storm, Brandon and I decided it would be best to try and beat the storm and head to Cedaredge right away. Brandon had a meeting for work at 2 pm that lasted about 30 minutes and then we were out of there. Later we found out this huge, terrible storm didn't actually reach Provo, so we would have been okay to leave later, but as I always say, "It is better to leave early, then to leave later when there is a potential for terrible weather..." Okay so I don't always say this, but I did want to leave Tuesday, and I got all of Utah to help me convince Brandon that it was a good idea...okay so I didn't really get all of Utah to help me pull this prank, that was just convenient, because it did convince Brandon that we needed to leave earlier...Muahahaha. So we got to Cedaredge a little after 8 pm, ate dinner, chatted with Grandma and Grandpa and headed to bed. We spent the next few days eating delicious food, relaxing, and taking a break from all electronic devices (they don't have Internet or a computer) except for a few football games, and Brandon's laptop. But basically it was a very relaxing few days. 

Second, about 2 months ago I started getting worried about how we were going to be able to clean our oven. We got a list of things we need to have clean from our apartment management and when they gave us the list they said that the oven needed to be as clean as brand new. Now our oven was not this clean when we moved in, and for the first year we didn't think to do a whole lot to make it any cleaner. The idea of using an oven cleaner never really appealed to me...One, because you have to wear gloves and I think the safety precautions listed on the bottle are like 10 times longer than the instructions, which has always kind of scared me. And two because oven cleaner is some pretty scary stuff. So I looked up other methods of cleaning an oven online. As an aside, I found it very funny that about half the stuff I found was for self-cleaning ovens...seriously how much more information can you give on something that cleans itself. The instructions were basically read the owners manual and turn on the self-clean mode. Difficult, I think not. So that might be a slight exaggeration but it did make me chuckle to myself that so many of the web pages were for self-cleaning ovens. Anyways, I found this one web page that listed "Eight easy steps to a clean oven" and I am not kidding they were really easy. I will sum them up for you, are you ready. Fill a spray bottle with 2 heaping teaspoons of baking soda and water. Spray the caked on black grossness that can be found inside of ovens once or twice daily until it starts flaking off or becomes dust. Don't wipe any of the baking soda water off, until it reaches the dust point. If you want a more concise and clear instructions visit this link: http://www.websiterepairguy.com/articles/household_tips/clean_oven.html

So the downfall to this method is that it takes a long time. I started spraying our oven about 2 months ago and just last week I wiped it all off. I still had to do a little scrubbing but everything came off and I did not risk my life in the process. Anyways, I thought I would share this because I thought it was really cool that baking soda and water, which are both very cheap can do so much good in one little oven.

Next I will tell you about our ward's Christmas party which included a white elephant gift exchange. Long story short, I didn't want to participate because you usually get something you are never going to use, but I made the mistake of informing Brandon about the gift exchange and he wanted to participate. We looked and looked for something in our apartment, but since we have already started packing and only really have the necessities left, all we could find was 120 otter pops. So we decided to wrap them up in a cereal box, which turned out to be really heavy. We didn't know that they were going to have everyone stand in a circle and pass the gifts around, but it was funny to hear how many people made comments about how heavy our box was. In the end one of the many pregnant women in our ward got our gift...I hope she likes otter pops. We ended up with a strobe light, funny glasses with mustache and nose attached, and a ceramic Jelly Belly's jelly bean container. Am I going to end up using these...probably not! Oh well, it was fun none the less, and now we have something to give if we are ever invited to another White Elephant gift exchange.

Lastly, the people that were living in our future apartment just moved out at the end of November so we were able to get pictures of our new apartment.

This is the kitchen, I like the floor and the fact that we will have a pantry!

This is a not-so-good picture of the master bedroom.

This is the living room, with wood burning fireplace.

In this picture you can see (from left to right) the door to the balcony, door to the master bedroom, kitchen,door to the hall including the second bath and guest bedroom, and then the coat closet. The front door is off to the right, you can kind of see the entry way where the tile on the floor is.

Dining area, with door do the balcony.

Ours will be the one on the top left.

We are very excited to move into this apartment. I only have 3 more days left of school, and then finals start next Monday. Brandon will work until next Wednesday, and then we will move out next Friday, and into our apartment on Saturday, we can't wait!

If you made it through this post, give yourself a pat on the back. I know it was a lot of information but I had a lot to say so there you have it.