Murphy's Law

It never rains, but it pours. There must be some universal law, besides Murphy's, that states when you sell your house, everything in it must break. We thought we'd be pretty safe since the house we're selling is only two years old--apparently not.

First the automatic garage door opener died. It's been working reliably, if a little loudly, for two years now. And suddenly it has to kick the bucket only a couple of weeks before we close on our house. Why couldn't it just hang on until July? The home warranty could have covered it and Brian wouldn't have had to spend hours and hours in a hot, stuffy garage trying to fix the darn thing.

Then our garbage disposal started acting up. When it finally quit draining altogether, I attacked it with the plunger and it seems to be back up and running. We'll see if it manages to hold out... (I really hope our buyer isn't reading this. Ha.)

Most recently, my washing machine decided 6 years of work was good enough and started ka-thunking like it was going to burst apart any second. So, I called a repair guy to come take a look at it. After looking at it for 10 minutes and charging me $70--holy cow they must be rich!--he informed me that the transmission was on its way out and it would be just as cheap to buy a new washer as a new transmission. Nice.

At first I thought, great, one last thing to move! But then I realized that instead of loading the washing machine up with all our other stuff in the storage unit, or sending it off with the guys who deliver a new one (as most people do), we get to make an unexpected trip to the dump. Just one more thing to add to the list of things to do and to the very long list of things to spend money on when we move into our new house.

School News

Deleted in the interest of privacy.

Oh, what do you do in the summertime...

In spite of all the packing and moving, we still manage to squeeze in some summertime fun...

Yesterday, Nathan and Matthew invited some friends (Samantha and Josh Oblad) over to play. After running in sprinklers and jumping in the wading pool, they put the hose in our sandbox and dug a giant lagoon. Wet, dirty, and sunburnt, they were pretty proud of their engineering feat.

I've been running a playgroup in my ward and today was my last day. :( I'm going to miss the friends I've made and the good times we have together.

Today, we met at the swimming pool at the Deseret Peak Complex just outside of Tooele. What a great pool! Everyone had a blast and it was wonderful to spend some time with our friends before we move.

Maggie called the pool a bath. "Baa. Baa." She would run in up to her ankles, run back out and wrap a towel around her little shoulders, then drop the towel and run back to the pool. I'm not sure why she thought she needed to dry off every few seconds, but she eventually gave it up.

Every time she went back in the pool, she'd go a tiny bit deeper until she managed to get her knees wet. She wouldn't sit in the water until we'd been there at least an hour. Eventually, she got brave enough to try walking off in waist-deep water (her waist-deep) without holding my hand. When I pulled her from her face float, she didn't cough or sputter--she must have instinctively held her breath. Then she sort of whimpered "wet..." Soon she started to really cry, probably because I was a little shaken up (it really scared me!)

After a break and some snacks in the shade, she went back to her favorite ankle-wading until it was time to go home.

When are you moving?

I suppose I should clarify a few details about our upcoming move. We close on our house in Tooele on Wednesday, June 27. And we have to be out of this house by 5:00 pm on Friday, June 29th.

Although our new home is already built, we have asked the builder to finish the basement and the studio apartment over the garage. Apparently, they have to go back to the city to get a re-permit to finish these spaces and that process could take awhile. So they're telling us 6-8 weeks to completion and closing. That's mid to late August.

In the meantime, we'll be living with Brian's parents. They don't have a lot of extra bedrooms, so it will be a little squishy, but they've been very gracious and kind in offering to share their home with us and our three hooligans. We've had other offers of places to stay, which we really appreciate. But we've decided to stay with Brian's parents because we're all pretty familiar with each other's routines and we feel most comfortable imposing on their hospitality. I'm sure it won't be the easiest 6 weeks for all of us (Brian's poor parents are going to have to adjust to a new decibel level in their home) but we'll make it through.

Thank you to everyone for your concern and congratulations. We'll be so happy when the last box is unpacked in our new home!

Dreamsicle Cake

I couldn't find a recipe for this Dreamsicle Cake from Applebees anywhere on the internet. Since I really wanted to make it for Father's Day yesterday, I came up with my own version. Although it didn't turn out exactly like the dessert from Applebees, it was pretty tasty. Here's the recipe:

Dreamsicle Cake

1 butter recipe yellow cake mix
1 large box orange Jello
2 cups boiling water
1 1/2 cups cold water
20 graham cracker squares, crushed
1/4 cup sugar
6 Tbsp. melted butter or margarine
1 small box white chocolate instant pudding mix
2 cups milk
1 1/2 (8 oz.) packages cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup thawed cool whip
2 (11 oz.) cans mandarin oranges, drained
Cool whip

Mix cake according to package. Bake in two rounds or squares. Set out to cool.
Dissolve orange Jello in boiling water. Stir in cold water. Refrigerate to cool while putting together the rest of the cake, but don't allow to set.
Mix graham crumbs, sugar and butter. Press onto bottom of 13x9 inch pan. Mix pudding and milk according to package. Beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Carefully stir together cream cheese mixture, pudding, and cool whip. Spread over graham cracker crust. Cut half the baked cake into 1/2 inch cubes. Spread cake cubes on cream cheese mixture. Sprinkle mandarin oranges on top. Pour orange Jello over cake and oranges, soaking cake cubes. Refrigerate several hours. Serve with cool whip spread on top.

I freeze the other half of the cake to use again, or feed it to the kids who refuse to eat orange cake. I use low-fat milk, cream cheese, and cool whip. You could use non-fat dairy products to take out some calories, or regular and make it really rich.

It always amazes me how many different desserts you can make with pudding, Jello, and cool whip!

House Update

Deleted in the interest of privacy.

Grasshopper or ant?

As I was researching the talk and three lessons I'm giving this weekend (like Brian asked, why can't I just say no? ...because there's no one else to do it, my conscience replies) I came across this old Ensign article that I immediately identified with. (Click here to read it.)

The funny thing is, I can't decide whether I'm an ant or a grasshopper. I think probably my nature is ant-ish but I admire the grasshoppers and wish I could be more spontaneous like them. Hmm. Or maybe my true nature is the scatterbrained day-dreamer and I just put in a lot of effort to get some kind of actual work done (for example, it takes me hours to do dishes because I go wandering off to pursue some tangent idea or get sidetracked by less-productive things--like blogging when I should be preparing talks).

Everybody vote! Are you an ant or grasshopper?