Baudville is my favorite catalogue

A little background:

Over the summer, Melissa and I spent a lot of time together. 10:30-2:30 every day, to be exact. As time passed, we developed lots of inside jokes and it generally made life much more pleasant. These include, but are not limited to, certain people that we knew would never ever reply to an email no matter what, "(a country that must not be named for fear of someone figuring out what we are talking about. Melissa knows)", blaming each other every day for not remembering to get the mail, and Hefty Lefty. Those are all that I can think of right now, Melissa feel free to add.

One of the best things, though, was this terrible catalogue called "Baudville." Here is a handy link to their site if you would like to purchase anything to motivate your employees, roommates, or spouse. It has really classy stuff like coffee mugs that say "you're the hail to our brainstorm" and the like. Out office must have ordered something out of it a long time ago and forever more we got a copy of the catalogue once a week. We would flip through it and make fun of the stuff and once Melissa even cut out some of the motivational sayings and taped them around our computer, for a little pick-me-up around the office (like eight people then asked us what they were for, and when we said "for motivation" they looked at us like we were cray-cray).

So since it was my birthday last week, Melissa told me that she had a gift for me but it might be a little late. I was wondering what it was, since she is a world-renowned gift-giver (seriously, though) and she didn't even have to do anything for me in the first place. But she arrived to the office on Monday with this:

My very own Baudville gift! And complete with treats inside and cute tissue paper! It truly was a birthday miracle. Love that Melissa.

My Day of Birth

So it's official, I am a 23-year-old. If I was not already married I would have been kicked off my parents insurance yesterday, but seeing as I already was I don't think that there is anything particularly significant about this year in life...except I am going to make it awesome, obviously. I feel kind of old though....I think I thought that I would be done with school and have kids by now? But I think maybe I just want a child that I can take trick-or-treating and to water parks under the guise of having a child.

The festivities started at midnight on Friday. Well, technically they started Thursday because I went out with my roommates (ok, my old roommates obviously but I still call them that) for a classic Sonic ice cream event because it was Jac's birthday too so we always celebrate together! Maybe someday I will blog about our most awesome 21st birthday party ever in which it was pitch black out and we had like two little candles lighting a whole pavilion. (It was seriously the best though). But anyway, in my family we have a very strict gift-opening regimen where you do NOT open presents until the evening of your birthday when everyone is assembled but Dave's parents were visiting and once it struck midnight on Friday they were like "well, it's official. You can open your presents now!" and I was all like "what?" but I did it and it was so freeing! I think I will buck tradition like this every year!

Dave's parents were so sweet to get me presents and they got me a really cute cardigan and this cute magnet board that I think I will hang in our kitchen. I loved both items and it was super sweet of them to do! Please also ignore how haggard I look (and I have no idea what happened to my hair) that was such a busy Friday and it was like midnight. Also, I really like how you can see Dave's dad laying on our couch in the top picture :)

Dave had told me that he ordered my gift online but it hadn't come yet, so I was joking when I said "I think Dave has prepared something to share now." I mean, I was just hoping for a light song and dance routine but it turns out he had my gift after all. I was super curious about what he was getting me because like two months ago he had told me that he knew what he wanted to get me for my birthday. Usually Dave kind of stresses over gifts so I was all kinds of wondering what this miraculous idea was. Turns out it was this:

He bought me new scriptures with my full name on them! I forgot that I had mentioned in passing once that my mom had scriptures with her maiden name on them until I was in high school, and apparently this disturbed Davito so he wanted to make sure that I was properly identified :) (he is also very upset that Facebook won't let me change my name. But I promise that I am happily married and introduce myself as Claire Mizukawa. In case you were losing sleep over it or something). It was really sweet of him and I really love them.  I am excited because I want to use these when we read together and we can start marking them with stuff we talk about which will be cool.

The next day (or that same day, technically) we went to Texas Roadhouse for lunch (I had a free birthday appetizer, I couldn't resist!) and then to Salt Lake with my sisters so that we could go to the Relief Society General Meeting with my grandma (Dave watched football with G-pa Farr and I think it was a bonding experience for them). That was obviously awesome and then we went back to their house for cake and ice cream and more presents. Sorry I failed at taking any pictures of that whatsoever, but it's my birthday so I will do what I want, yo.

I felt oh so loved and I got some awesome gifts (new running shoes and a rap written by Anne Hopkin?!) so all in all it was a great day! I really love my family and friends and really appreciated all of the sweet texts and messages wishing me a happy bithday!

Edited to add: Some friends from our ward just stopped by and brought me fresh peaches because they heard it was my birthday yesterday, so the fun just never ends!

Current Trend

When you're a fifth-year college student, a lot of this happens:

Help me stay strong, friends!

Book ramblings

Remember how I was going to make Book Review Friday a thing? Well, that lasted one week, obviously. Sorry to everyone. Lately I have been reading tons and tons of YA books for my Young Adult Lit class and I have to say that it is so fun! I seriously save that homework till the end every day because it is so enjoyable. I am so glad that I get to be a teacher and read these fun books with kids....instead of some of the weird stuff I have had to read in college. I just pray that I have a department chair that doesn't mandate something terrible. Like the Poisonwood Bible like everyone had to read when I was a senior. bleh.

Anyway, for fun right now I am reading "One Day" which is the book that that movie with Anne Hathaway was based on. So far it is enjoyable....it's really light so it's the perfect chick lit for a mid-semester fun read. Although I have to admit that I usually only make it through like 3 pages before conking out at night, but I have I enjoyed those 9 pages so far. Warning though, they are college students. European ones.

I will tell you a book NOT to read: The Jane Austen Book Club. Dumb, dumb, dumb! I put it down a third of the way through. It was just sordid and inappropriate for no reason and the parts that weren't about the characters' scarring high school dating experiences were just boring people sitting around talking about Jane Austen. WHO CARES? I could read JA myself if I wanted to, why do I really want to hear what they have to say about a book that I am not even currently reading? I had strong feelings about the lameness of this book coinciding with its apparent popularity.

I suddenly started panicking that I own none of my favorite childhood books besides HP (and a random copy of Ramona and Beezus that I won), and so naturally I made it a priority to do a bunch of weird odd jobs on Amazon Mechanical Turk and earn Amazon credit and buy some. So yesterday I came home to my very own copies of "The Mitchells: Five for Victory" and "Betsy, Tacy, and Tib" in the mailbox! Heaven help our sons. I have no idea what to make them read. I had this horrible realization at dinner a few days ago that Dave has never read Little Women or The Secret Garden. Never even seen the movies!!! He was rather offended that I seemed so upset by this as he still turned out comparatively normal.

 The only boy books I read as a kid were "Johnny Tremain" (hated it) and "Adam of the Road" (hated it even worse. Seriously, just say "Adam of the Road" and me and my sisters will all start convulsing and gagging. It was one of the more misguided book decisions my mom made. Not all Newberry Award books are meant to be read by real live children). Although if our sons follow the current trends of male students they will never read a book for fun outside of school. Yes, less than 1/3 of 13-year-olds are daily readers. And the numbers are getting worse. They were too busy gaming or something. Don't get me started on this. I am in a Teaching Reading class too and we basically just sit around and decry the American teenager's literacy skills.

Whew. Ok I think that's all I had to say right now.

Last Week's Randoms

So I still cannot find my camera battery charger thing anywhere. I have no idea how things disappear in our tiny apartment but somehow they manage to and so I am relegated to lots of terrible phone pics until then. I thought I would share a few of the highlights:

 We went to my darling friend Laura's birthday party on Friday. She is just the cutest girl and quite the Japanophile (word?) so we had to oblige her with an Asian pic.

Laura's mom was also there and I wish I had a picture with her. She is the cutest little mom (she looks 20) and she was trying to make everyone dance like a real Colombian party.

 I had to get some blood tests at the doctors. My hypochondria struck again. But...I am fine! And I got a hot camo bandaid (picture carefully taken to omit worst hairy part of arms, for your benefit).

Ok this is so random to me. For like a month and a half how our parking spot neighbors (I don't know them so I don't feel to guilty about this) have had this mysterious sheet covering this big lumpy thing in their parking spot. Everyone keeps asking what it is and we had no idea until on Saturday I noticed that the sheet was off for the big reveal!

....little stump things? Not even firewood. My only thought is that maybe she is making some huge number of woodsy craft for Super Saturday or something.

One thing I didn't get a picture of was the delicious French Toast Casserole that I made for Dave's parents on Sunday. It was from Pioneer Woman, the website of wonderfully fattening food. It was really tasty but it was basically just bread pudding parading as breakfast. Works for me! I like to think that it made everyone feel better after the BYU game :( And I was really proud of myself because I was brave enough to try something new for the in-laws and it actually worked this time!

I'm Too Young for This Foolishness

So, lately I have been a little scatterbrained. I wish I could blame it on something cool, like being pregnant, but it is just due to being a little stressed and frazzled. Like three times this week I made really silly scheduling mistakes or put the wrong date on things. It is really embarrassing when you get text messages from the girl you visit teach wondering where you are (I could have SWORN it was next week that we decided on!). But anyway, when the sweet compassionate service committee in my ward left me a nail polish and a little birthday note on my doorstep yesterday I just assumed it was for my birthday this Saturday. However, later that day my aunt left this on my Facebook wall:

I seriously sat and stared at the screen for like three minutes. Wait, is it my birthday today? Is that possible? My mom forgets her own birthday sometimes but I am not old enough to not like my birthday yet am I? I finally got the courage to ask Dave and he confirmed that no, my birthday is definitely later this week. My Aunt Heather was just early. I really would not put it past myself lately to not know when the 24th is though.

The Only Good Thing That Happened Yesterday

Maybe I am being a little dramatic. BUT yesterday was just not a good day. A bit of a shocker, to use the Australian term. It was just a day where everything went wrong. I shall spare you the entire list but here are a few highlights:

*Entire hem of my JCrew gray skirt all of a sudden unraveled. So I walked around campus all afternoon with either a string tail or a completely un-hemmed skirt. Does anyone know how to do an invisible hem?

*Thought I scheduled a meeting with my Primary presidency. Turns out "reply" and "reply all" are two different things (who would have known?) and so I had just the bishopric member there but none of my counselors. They had no idea it was even on for sure.

*For some reason, my sandwich that I brought from home for lunch tasted like garbage. It is the same thing I have every day. It was very curious but served to worsen my foul mood.

Another thing that I did wrong was forget my phone at home. I got to campus and realized that I didn't have it with me, so I emailed Dave from work and asked him to bring it to campus with him. We have a class together (Teachings of the Living Prophets) so I figured I could just get it there. Usually Dave gets to that class really early but yesterday I got there at like 10 'till and he was no where to be seen. I waited and waited and felt like a dork because I had my bag on this seat for him but he finally hurried in right as the bell rang. He was....slightly....damp. Poor thing. He had arrived at campus and realized that he hadn't brought my phone, so he rode all the way back home and back in the like 15 minutes before class started. The worst part was he couldn't find my phone. I felt like the worst wife! I didn't discover until that evening when I got home that it was actually at the bottom of my bag the whole time....I'm an idiot...so it had all been for naught!

I did feel really bad that he had gone all the way home for me though...so I passed him this note in class:

He edited "sweet" to describe his more literal condition at that moment.

I am glad that at least he proved his deep love for me once more through this heroic act :)