Undecisive

Last night I had a dream about twins. Don't over-analyze, I'm not pregnant.

Sometimes I get really bored and have alot of thoughts to write down, and there's just not enough room on facebook. Plus, I don't really know that alot of people read our blog, so I guess I can blabber on as much as I wanna. Right now my current dilemma is: Blonde or Brown?

I keep looking at past pictures of myself and I get to the Blonde hair and think "Oh my gosh! I love blonde! I wanna be blonde again!" then I get to the dark brown pictures and think "no way! Dark brown is hot!" And then I think "well, maybe I should cut my hair? It looks cute short!" but wait! "It looks awesome long too!" Such a dilemma! I don't know what to do. Anyway. Those are my thoughts right now. Blonde or Brown. Should I be daring or safe? Long or short? Ahhhh!

Ear Infection? Yeouch!!!

Yep, that's right, I, Karissa Dodds, am experiencing my very first ear infection. And let me tell ya, it's hurts like a freakin.....!!!! yeah. Anyway, I started by getting sick with what I thought was a cold, then Thursday night my ear, very quickly, got completely clogged and started feeling excruciatingly painful. I had no idea ear infections hurt so bad! The last time I remember pain this bad was when I broke my foot when I was 12. Man, poor little babies who get it all the time. I guess I know what to do when our kids get sick now...

Scott's been great through this whole thing. I have a vivid imagination and when I get really sick I start thinking of every possible worse case scenario. He's awesome at calming me down and telling me I'll get better and not to be worried. So far so good :-) It has been a bummer going through the first week of school. At least I already know everyone in my classes so they don't think I'm some weirdo.

My New Years resolutions now are:
-Eat more healthy (not so much sugar)
-Invest in and TAKE vitamins DAILY
-Exercise and drink lots of water
-Do whatever I can to alleviate stress
-And everything else I hope to accomplish...the list is long

My immune system seems pretty shot and I need to boost it up so I don't fall over dead with illness student teaching next semester, or even this semester for a couple months. Yikes! Hope everyone is more healthy than I am!

Scott is for sure. ...he doesn't get sick. Lucky.

School

Well, school has started and the week is almost over. I guess half over today but it seems like more than half over. I got two homework assignments the first day of class, due the third day of class and it just took me 2 1/2 hours to finish them. Man, this semester could be tough. I'm excited though. Feb 25-April 11 I'll be spending three days a week teaching in an elementary classroom, then two days sitting in classes on campus. Then next semester I student teach and GRADUATE! Ahhh! It's crazy. :-)

Anyway, aside from school, it's been a little stressful around here. Our car is having problems again. We had it taken to the shop while we were out of town, and they "fixed" it for a nice chunk of change. 4 days later it wouldn't even start. We had to have it towed to the shop again and "fixed" again for another chunk of change. It's been pretty crummy. It hasn't helped that it snowed a foot in a day, school is in Provo and we live in Orem, all the stress getting ready for school, living in a new place, working etc. Not too mention it's been a little crazy around here getting those neighbors moved in the other side and fix-ups done too. Jim and Kim have been great though, I think they've made alot of progress! Hopefully they don't continue to find too many more things needing to be fixed, they've already found a ton! :-)

So yeah, on top of all of that, I've gotten pretty sick. Again. Congested nose, sneezing, really sore and constricted-feeling throat, and awful cough. Plus a headache and lovely womanly pains. Oh the joys. Hopefully it's just a nice cold from the Kansas-Utah weather change, and I get over it quickly. Other than that, life is great. Peace!

Highlights of Christmas Break

Yeah, we're cool. We know. Especially with penguins...

Crazy, creepy nativity scene with weird angel. Yeah, they all moved.

The mechanical toys in the garage. They made strange, creepy "scary movie" noises

A small glimpse of the penguin house

Our cute dog Cosmo in his cute shirt from Shayla. He's not really our dog....karissa's parents.

Us with Cosmo in front of the penguin house

Here are our Christmas Break Highlights:

-Finishing finals, selling our apt and moving into a duplex all in a week
-Receiving a breadmaker from Karissa's parents!
-Receiving a food storage starter kit from Scott's parents!
-Flying to Kansas to spend over a week with Karissa's family
-Sleeping in a little Christmas morning (7:30am)
-Playing Guitar Hero World Tour on Wii non-stop (family gift)
-Making Christmas goodies to give to other people...then forgetting to take them, so eating them ourselves instead
-Enjoying 65 degree weather for a day!
-Waking up to an almost tornado that night...(70-80 mph straightline wind)
-Cheesecake Factory!
-Choosing wedding pictures, finally
-Staying up late and sleeping in late
-Watching Twilight
-Watching The Dark Knight
-Playing Skip-Bo with the fam during breakfast, lunch and dinner too
-Not having to work!
-Finding amazing shoes at DSW after Christmas
-Enjoying two, over 50 degree days
-I guess you could actually say we've almost experienced all four seasons in a week: cold, snow, ice, wind, sun, 65 degrees and humid, 50 degrees and sunny, a big thunderstorm, rain and a snowstorm. Yep, that happens in Kansas
-Seeing the Penguin House (a house overloaded with the air-pumped penguin things that are lit up...yeah, they call the path around their house "Happy Feet")
-Seeing the "Falmouth House". Essentially crazy people who put up hundreds of moving machine toy things and too many decorations. A bit creepy actually...


-The best highlight has been the blessing of spending time with family we haven't seen in about 4 months. It's been a great vacation and we've had a lot of fun. Tomorrow we leave Kansas and head back to Utah for a short family reunion with Scott's family. Then we get to settle in our new place and try to get ready for school.

We are so grateful for our overwhelming amount of blessings and the love we feel from family and friends each day. Thank you everyone who has been there to love us and support us! We love you all! Happy holidays :-)

We're Moving!

Everything is official. We sold our apartment last night and we are planning on being completely moved out by Dec. 22, which is next Monday. However, amidst the moving, we still have a great load of finals to take and work to not miss. It is definitely going to be a crazy week! We're excited to move into the house and have some more room and other stuff.

Only one week and then we'll be flying to Kansas! I cannot even hardly stand it I'm so excited. It's actually pretty surreal. This is the longest I've gone without seeing my family - 4 months. We've seen Scott's family at least once a month since we've gotten married so I'm glad to finally have my turn. :-) It should be a really fun Christmas at home, and then New Years in Aspen Grove and then we'll come back to a mess. Joy. That's the only thing I'm not excited for at all. We'll have about 3 days or less to try and organize it before school starts. Life is crazy!

One more year until we're graduated and can do (almost) whatever we want :-) Happy happy joy joy!

Too much rambling...

Sometimes I wish I was a really funny person. Like, maybe it'd be cool to write really funny posts that people laugh about. Sometimes I think I'm funny, but I'm not sure if anyone else thinks the same thing. I definitely know I make funny faces. Scott usually tries to imitate them and then we both start laughing. Our most recent face joke is "Oh, that's a really really good frown. Yeah, frown just like that. That's a good good frown." You say it with your face and lips all scrunched up. He does it really well...I laugh every time :-)

Our workout plans are going pretty well. Not doing quite as good as I want, but oh well. I could launch into a huge explanation why, because my week has been more busy than any other week ever, but I think it might be boring to tears. So I won't. Basically, it's really hard to work and go to school.

Ooh, the other night we babysat for a friend of ours. Her girl is 5 years old and has more energy than an energizer battery. After an hour and a half I was begging Scott to take over. He kept telling me "you think she has lots of energy? just you wait til we have kids..." Haha. I guess our kids are gonna be crazier than Becky's...not sure if that's possible. Although, I wouldn't mind. Becky's kids are like, the craziest, most independent, cutest, funniest kids ever. I think they're awesome and she has definitely parented them exactly how she needed to: lots of independence!

I'm excited for school to be over so I can breathe for a couple weeks. I have a feeling it'll be a stressful break. Wait. Not stressful, full of lots of crazy adventures and things that need to get done. Such as sending out thank you cards. Yeah, I started writing them on the plane 3 days after the wedding, but have I sent them? Nope. Plus, I ran out of cards. And stamps. And I still haven't sent the ones I have done. Weird. And I haven't picked out wedding pictures yet. I promised when I got married I'd have stuff like that done right away....it's crazy how things like LIFE get in the way....

We're excited to move in January! We need to sell our contract, but we're excited to be in a bigger place with more room and potential to be nicer. For once I'll be able to do my make-up while Scott does his hair at the same time. :-) I'm bummed about leaving the ward, I loooove it, but we'll hopefully be in another good ward. I've never lived in a place longer than a year since Freshman year. This is the time! I don't think we'll be there longer than a year and a half, but who knows. We'd like to get out of Utah, but it depends on what kind of job Scott gets. One more year of school.

You wanna know something Ironic?

I'm so excited to be done with school because I'm sick of homework, tests, assignments, etc and school in general. BUT, I'm going to school to be a teacher...in school. I'm gonna be in school all my life until I stop teaching forever. Am I crazy? I'm going to school to go to school... At least teaching is super rewarding and awesome! I'm so excited for Practicum next semester :-)

I ramble too much....

The strangest thing

The strangest thing happened today on the way to school. I told Scott I really wanted it to snow, and that I wish it would if it was gonna be colder. And not kidding, 2 minutes later it was snowing. Not a ton, just the pretty little snow that doesn't stick or do much but looks cool. It made me so happy!

Normally, I wouldn't be wishing for snow because normally we'd already be under about 4 inches or so. However, I find myself wishing that since it's December now, and Christmas is soon, I really want to see some snow! Weird, I know. And I want a puppy. Still. I'm anticipating that being my graduation present :-) Now only to convincing Kim and Jim... ;-) hehe

Scott and I made some good goals last night. We decided we want to start eating more healthy and working out. We're both feeling pretty out of shape, which is no fun, and especially no fun as dancers. So hopefully our goals will work. If we reach 90% of what we wrote down in the next 16 weeks, we'll HOPEFULLY have money to buy a Wii. That would be awesome! Anyway, enough rambling. I'm off to work in the schools now. ciao!

k