What I did this weekend...

Yes, it's a puzzle. Jealous? Darby and I are such nerds. We love puzzles, but we have a hard time finding ones that we like. We only like ones that have lots of distinct sections, not 200 pieces of sky. We went to Frontier Texas a couple of weeks ago and spotted this one in the gift shop. We've been waiting for a free night to put it together. Usually we work them straight through, but this one took both Friday and Saturday. So that was pretty much our whole weekend. Yeah, we're that cool.

On a different subject, Darby made a 1400 on his GRE!!! He would never announce it to anyone like that, but I figure I'm allowed to brag on my husband. So our grad. school prospects are looking pretty good. Yay!

Discovering Grandpa

I just recently got to know my Grandpa Rod. He is my mom's stepdad and was married to my Grandma Trish before I was born, but I never really knew him until a few years ago. Growing up, we didn't spend much more than one day a year with him and Grandma Trish because my grandma had a somewhat strained relationship with my mom and her sisters. I have to confess, I never really thought much about Grandpa Rod. He seemed nice enough and collected model trains, which was cool, but I didn't mind that I knew so little about my own grandpa.

About six(?) years ago, Grandma Trish and Grandpa Rod moved from Dallas to Eddy, a small town about 15 minutes away from Waco. Our family all wondered how that proximity would change our relationship with them. We started spending more time together, and all of us grew closer to them, but I think the focus was more on Grandma than Grandpa. In January of 2005, Grandma Trish passed away after battling lung cancer. Shortly after that, Grandpa Rod discovered that he had cancer, too. My mom quickly assumed the role of his primary caregiver, driving him to appointments, making sure his house was clean, etc. All this meant that we started seeing a lot more of him. And without my grandma around, things were more pleasant. Sometimes it was awkward, having this grandpa we barely knew, but it was also really nice, since our other two grandpas died when we were all little kids.

Grandpa Rod had fascinating stories about his time in the military and other adventures. He was extremely smart, having worked as an engineer most of his life. Besides his love of trains, he also was an avid star-gazer. His declining hearing made it somewhat difficult to carry on a conversation with him, but I enjoyed listening to him tell stories. Like me, he was a reader and always had a recommendation for me. When I visited him in August, he loaned me Water for Elephants, which a friend of his had just sent him. He really liked talking with Darby, a fellow scientist, and when he found out Darby was wanting to buy some tools, he gladly gave us a bunch of his.

Grandpa Rod died on Saturday morning, the cancer finally taking its toll. My mom and his daughter Tracy were with him. I'm glad God gave me the opportunity to get to know him better before he died. Grandparents are a true blessing, and I have been blessed abundantly.

True Confession...

After I post my blog entries, I always go back and re-read them. A lot. I guess I just find myself fascinating :)

In other news, I have my first modeling gig tonight. That's right. My friend Em works for a bridal boutique, and they have a bunch of older dresses they are trying to sell on eBay. So I get to model them for the pictures. After people see how great the dresses look on me, I bet those babies will sell like hotcakes! Haha!

Home Sweet Home

As promised, here are the pictures of our apartment (finally!) I've been meaning to post some for a while, but I kept waiting until we were done decorating. Well, we're still not totally done, but I decided we're close enough, so here goes:


Half of our living room. It usually doesn't look this dark, but I took the picture in the evening when it was raining. We got the slipcover as a wedding gift, and it fits much better with our stuff than the blue and white stripes did.


The other half of our living room. Sadly, we have nowhere to put our desk, so it has to go in the living room. We're hoping to get a nicer desk at some point, but we got that one for $10, so you can't beat that. We bought the TV stand at Target with our gift cards. It was hard to let go of the old Wal-Mart entertainment center, but we managed :) Please notice the long antenna ears. I meant to put them down for the picture, but I forgot. That is definitely one of the downsides of not having cable; those things are tacky!


This is our little dining area. We can't fit all four chairs, so we keep the other one at the desk and just pull out the table if we have people over. And yes, I actually use my placemats. Aren't you proud?


Darby and I bought these shelves and cabinet at IKEA. Even though Darby nearly killed himself hanging those shelves, we've really enjoyed having the extra storage space near the kitchen.


Part of the kitchen. I LOVE my Kitchen Aid mixer! And Darby and I are pretty happy with the way our mugs look hanging from the cabinet. I like how the kitchen has a bar area that looks into the living room. Even though the kitchen is tiny, I don't feel closed in.


Our bedroom. The shelves are another IKEA purchase. Also, notice the dirty clothes peeking out of the hamper...I guess I should do some laundry :)


Our bed. I absolutely love our bedding! We made the headboard out of plywood, batting, and fabric. I think we're going to recover the middle panel, though. We tried to tie in the fabric from the curtains and pillows, but I think it looks a little out of place.


The awesome curtains Darby's mom made for us. They look much better in real life than they do in the picture. And when they are loose, they block out tons of light, so we can sleep late on Saturdays. Yay!

I tried to get a picture of the bathroom, but there was no where I could stand and get a good picture. It is blue and brown, just like the rest of the house. We reeealllly like blue and brown!

Well, hopefully that gives you some idea of where we live. It's not much, but we really enjoy it. Of course, if you really want to see what it looks like, you could always come visit us. But, you'll have to find somewhere else to sleep, because obviously we don't have room :)

Isn't it ironic?

Yesterday at work we had an all-staff meeting. It was supposed to last from 2 to 4:30, but it ended at 4. The president of the university told us that we could all go home, and that hourly-paid employees could still enter that they worked until 5. I was so excited. I NEVER get to go home early. So I went back to the office, gathered up my stuff, and shut down my computer. As I'm walking out the door, a co-worker walks in. I had been helping him with his department's website and there was a page we had to get up that day. He was supposed to give me the corrections earlier in the day, but he and I had both forgotten. So I ended up having to stay, not just until 5, until 5:20! Grrrrr.... Actually, I wasn't that mad; he was very grateful and apologetic. But I just found it funny that usually I have nothing to do at work and have to wait around until 5, but the one day I could leave before 5, I had too much to do. Crazy.

**Disclaimer: I do know that this story doesn't fit the strict definition of irony; however, it does fit Alanis Morisette's definition, hence the title.

Bored?

Go to this site and make a word cloud of your blog. The program scans your blog for the most commonly used words and creates a word cloud for you. The more common the word, the larger it appears on the cloud. Here's mine:


Sorry it's not very big. I couldn't make it any bigger without it getting blurry. I like how a lot of my friends' names are on it and the words books and reading. I also like that yay made the list. Yay! :)

One Month...

At this time last month, I was standing in the bride's room, waiting eagerly for 2 p.m. It's hard to believe we've only been married a month. Don't get me wrong, it's been a great month, better than I could have imagined. But, in some ways, it seems like the wedding was so long ago. Has it really only been five weeks since we counted down the days, willing them to go faster? Now that we are married, all the years we waited and worried seem like a different life. I've never been happier, never more at peace.

The best thing about living together (besides the unspoken given) is having the opportunity to express our love and care for each other in numerous small ways every day. Even after 6 years of dating, Darby still has a few sweet surprises up his sleeve! In honor of our first "monthiversary" on the 7th of August, I've come up with a list of 7 new things I love about Darby:

1. Every morning while I'm in the shower, he makes the bed and ties back the curtains.
2. He is crazy-good at loading the dishwasher.
3. He is always up for a game of Dr. Mario, even though I beat him (nearly) every time :)
4. He cooks fun things, like English muffin pizzas and hamburgers, for me.
5. He willingly puts together anything we buy and hangs up all our pictures and decorations.
6. He forces me to go lie on the couch while he does the dishes after dinner.
7. He still sleeps in the same bed as me, despite my nighttime "episodes" (talking to the closet door, jumping at the sound of a page turning, accusing him of murder, you know, the usual).

D, I love you much more than I could have even imagined a month ago. Life is good.

Tagged!

John tagged me to share 8 random facts about myself, so here goes:

1. I get nauseated when I have to do repetitive tasks, especially ones that involve fine motor skills. Cross-stitch? Forget it!

2. I am obsessed with adjusting the volume on the television, especially during movies. I hate how music on movies will be really loud, but then characters will talk in a whisper and you can barely hear it. Darby sometimes takes the remote away from me because he gets so annoyed with my constant adjusting.

3. Any time I go up stairs, I automatically count them in my head. I've tried to stop, but I can't. Even if I force myself to think about something else, I seem to always know how many stairs there were once I get to the top.

4. I have ADD when it comes to projects. I find it really hard to complete one task before starting another. When I had several papers due in college, I would pull them all up and switch from one to another every fifteen minutes or so. I know it's not the most efficient way to work, but it works for me.

5. I am a serious blog stalker. I love finding blogs of people who I kind of knew in school or even people who I didn't know at all. Recently, I stumbled across the blogs of some of my second (or third?) cousins. I will follow their lives for months or even years. I am a sucker for people who post a lot of pictures of their kids. I never posts comments, though; I'm usually too embarrassed to let them know I've been reading their blog. Does this mean I have no life? Maybe, but I don't care.

6. Even though they are probably the worst things in the world for you to eat, I really like Sonic's extra-long chili cheese coneys.

7. I am a homebody. It seems like everyone I know is constantly going to Dallas or Austin on the weekends to see friends or just to shop. Call me boring, but I'd much rather stay in Abilene. I love just staying at home and working around the house, reading or scrapbooking. Plus, I really dislike staying at other people's houses. They could be the best hosts in the world, and I would still prefer to stay in a hotel. I'm just not a go with the flow type of person, so I like to set my own schedule. This kind of makes me seem like a grouchy old woman; I really do love spending time with friends and family, just not every weekend.

8. Although I'm an avid book reader, I secretly prefer magazines. There's just something about the glossy pages and snappy writing that I find irresistible. I'm not allowing myself to subscribe to any magazines, so that I'll spend more time reading books. But I love reading the subscriptions we have at work or sitting down at Barnes and Noble with a stack of celebrity gossip magazines.

Well, that's probably much more information than anyone wanted to know, but when you're tagged, you've gotta do it, right? John already tagged some of the people I would have, but I'll tag Brittany and Carolyn because they both really need to update (Brittany more than Carolyn!)

Happy belated birthday to me and Darby!

D and I decided back in December that we would get each other a Nintendo Wii for our birthdays. However, when we started looking for one in June, everywhere was sold out. We figured we'd just have to wait it out. On Saturday, we were at the mall, and we decided to go to Best Buy on the small chance that they might have one. Of course they didn't, but while we were looking at the games, an employee told us that they would be getting a shipment of 10 in on Sunday. They open at 11 on Sundays, so Darb and I went over right after church and grabbed one! (It was so tempting to skip church to get there right at 11, but we decided to be a little more mature than that).

Darby was so sweet and bought me a game I had been eying (that spelling looks weird, but Blogger says it's right). It's called "Cooking Mama Cook-Off." If you're not familiar with the Wii, the controller looks like a remote control; it's wireless, and you can move it in any direction and the movement registers on screen. So, in Cooking Mama, you use the controller to stir, chop, peel, etc. You can compete against another person or just against the clock to make recipes from different countries. It is so fun! Here's some screen shots, in case my description wasn't clear:

This is chopping an onion: You shake the controller up and down to chop.


This is piping out cream puffs. You press the B button to squeeze the dough out, but you have to stop before it goes over the guidelines.

It's a pretty silly game, made even sillier by the slightly broken English comments. (It's a Japanese game). You make recipes from all different countries, so for France, you make cream puffs, for Italy, lasagna, etc. Guess what you make for the U.S.? Popcorn and hot dogs! Wow, I guess we're not know worldwide for our gourmet cuisine =) Anyway, I love the game, even though Darby beats me every time. That's okay, we still know who's the better cook in the real world!

The wait is over...

My wedding pictures are up online! Actually, it wasn't a very long wait, but I'm an impatient person. Emerald is a saint for not getting angry at my constant pestering. To view the pictures go to Em's blog. She did a great job (as usual). It is such a blessing to have talented friends! It was so special to have someone I know and love take the pictures, not just a random photographer. If you are in the Abilene area, I highly recommend Emerald. She can do family portraits, engagements, weddings, whatever!

Speaking of talented friends, I need to mention my friend Kalyn. She just moved to Frisco this week :( But it's exciting because her husband got a good job, and she is starting an art school from her home. It's called Ms. Kalyn's art school, and you can see her website here. So, if you're in the Frisco or McKinney area and are interested in art or piano lessons or know someone who is, check out Ms. Kalyn's art school!

Now, if only I had a talent that could make me some money! =)

It's official!

2 weeks after the wedding, I am officially Kayla Anderson Hewitt. We got our signed marriage license back in the mail today, and I went to the Social Security office at lunch to get my name changed. I still have to go to the DPS, bank, etc, but I'm going to go ahead and call the change official. I debated whether or not I should keep my middle name. It was my grandma's name, so I wanted to keep it, but I also wanted to keep Anderson. I didn't like the thought of being Kayla Jean Anderson Hewitt - too bulky. In the end, I decided to drop Jean. Grandma Jean dropped her middle name when she got married, so I guess I can still remember her that way. Plus, it's not like I'll forget that my middle name was Jean for 22 years. And this is nice, because if I forget and sign my name Kayla Anderson, I can just add Hewitt to the end!

TGIF!

Only 30 more minutes of work! Yay! This week has gone soo slowly. It's so hard to get back into the swing of things after a break.

D and I have a fun weekend planned. Tonight we're going to see Measure for Measure. It's part of the Shakespeare Festival at ACU, and it's FREE. Tomorrow, I'm going to be reading Harry Potter 7, of course! And tomorrow night, we're going over to my friend Shalis's house for homemade pizza and game night. I met Shalis through a book club I'm in, and she seems really sweet. We haven't hung out much, so I'm excited to get to know her better. Should be a busy weekend, especially since we also need to clean up our apartment and do TONS of laundry! Yay for our first real weekend as a married couple!

Honeymoon!

All right, here are some honeymoon pictures as promised. Darby and I had such a great time. Niagara Falls was amazing; everyone should go there at least once in their lives. The first night we were there, they had fireworks! Canada's independence day is in July, also, so they have fireworks all month long. So I got two fireworks shows in one week! Darby and I ate so much good food. I'm still stuffed. My favorite places were Coco's in Niagara Falls, where they have brick oven pizzas, and The Old Spaghetti Factory in Toronto, which is similar to the Spaghetti Warehouse in the West End in Dallas, but better because ice cream is included with every meal! We justified our eating with the fact that we were walking several miles each day, but I still think, in the end, the food won. Darby and I are perfect travel partners, and I'm looking forward to the many, many fun trips we will take in our lifetime. Here's the pics:



This was our hotel room in Niagara. We stayed at the Doubletree, which was amazing. You'll notice there is no picture of our hotel room in Toronto. It didn't merit a picture =)


The Canadian (Horseshoe) Falls. Beautiful.


Me and Darby on the Maid of the Mist boat ride where you go right next to the falls. I'm looking pretty hot! No wonder he married me!


This is the Maid of the Mist boat. From the picture, it looks scary, but it really wasn't.


The butterfly conservatory! Probably my favorite attraction. There were hundreds of butterflies of all different varieties flying everywhere. I took a ton of pictures but had to delete most of them because my memory card was getting full. I just posted my favorite one here.


Me and Darby at the Botanical Gardens in Niagara. This is about the only decent picture I got of the two of us on the trip, although I do wish we had taken our sunglasses off.


Casa Loma in Toronto, a mansion built in the early 1900s by a businessman and his wife. They went bankrupt 10 years later, so the city bought the house. A nice reminder that pride goes before the fall, I guess.

I don't have many pictures from Toronto. My camera started acting a little funny, and I was tired of photo-taking by that point. I really have to force myself to take pictures. I hate having to stop all the fun just to take a picture. Seems to defeat the purpose. Darby came up with the idea of having a vacation photographer. You could just hire someone to come with you on your family vacation and follow you around taking pictures. You wouldn't have to pay them too much as long as you paid for their airfare, hotel room, meals, etc. What do you think, Em? Could you get into that biz? Anyway, my favorite thing in Toronto was probably the zoo. They have a huge zoo with tons of animals. We had a lot of fun, even though most of the animals were sleeping when we walked through. We did get to see a monkey swinging around with a tiny baby monkey hanging on to its stomach! So cute!

Now we're just getting settled in to our apartment in Abilene. We've had some maintenance issues, but we're working them out. Living together is so fun! It's hard to imagine when we didn't live together. It just feels so natural. The honeymoon was great, but I think I like "real" life even better.

The BIG Day!

Well, the next time I blog I'll be married! Crazy! The wedding starts in 6 1/2 hours. I'm not really nervous, just excited. I guess I don't have much else to say besides the standard "Yay! I'm getting married!" I think my brain has been fried from wedding details. But I wanted to update for my Aunt Katina =) I'll be heading to Niagara Falls and Toronto tomorrow for my honeymoon, but I'll be posting pictures of the rehearsal dinner, wedding, and honeymoon when I get back.

Baby face

I know I look younger than I am. Everyone who happens to find out I've graduated from college feels it necessary to inform me that I look like I'm still in high school. I even had a man at an antiques store seem shocked that I was old enough to drive. (That was a couple of years ago, but still...)

However, I did not realize how completely I look like a child until last night. I teach the 3, 4, and 5 year olds on Wednesday nights. Somehow, we got on the topic of growing up. One boy pointed at me and said, "You're a teenager." I said, "Actually, I'm not a teenager; I'm 22." Another girl said, "You're in college then." I said, "No, actually I'm done with college." At this point, the other teacher (who probably isn't more than 5 years older than me) said, "She's a real grown-up." The first little boy then said, "You don't look like a grown-up." And all the other kids nodded in agreement. Sigh. Not even five year olds think I look my age. After class, a middle school girl came by the room to see if we had any food. She looked at me in surprise and said, "Are you the teacher?" When I said that I was, she said, "You don't look old enough to be a teacher."

Aaahhhh! What can I do? I've tried wearing make-up; it doesn't make a difference. I was even dressed fairly nicely last night because I was still wearing my work clothes. For some reason, I seem to be stuck with the face of a 16-year-old (and that's on a good day). I know I'll appreciate my youthful look when I'm older, but right now it's getting annoying.

Highlights from my 22nd birthday:

- an early morning birthday call from Carolyn
- being serenaded by my sister's KidQuest campers
- a birthday text message from the brother
- Double Chocolate Decadence cake from McKay's at work (Yummy!)
- 4 cards in the mailbox (I love it when birthday cards come on the actual day).
- eating at Cracker Barrel and Cold Stone with Darby

I also taught my first Wednesday night Bible class at Westgate last night. I was a little nervous, because I think the curriculum is silly, so I was kind of winging it. And when 18 3-and-4-year-olds showed up, I got really nervous. But I had a helper, and the kids were actually pretty well-behaved. It should be a fun summer.

More Showers!

Sunday was my shower at my home church. It was awesome! Darby and I got so much great stuff. My favorite gift was probably the vacuum cleaner. It's an actual, grown-up vacuum, not a stupid stick vac like I had before. I'll actually be able to suck up dirt rather than just kind of spreading it around the floor. We got a lot of our dishes and towels, too, which was awesome. So this week we've been busy putting all our new stuff up. The apartment's getting pretty full, but I'm not complaining =)

Here are some pictures from Sunday:


Me, my bridesmaid Whitney, and my good friend from high school Desiree. I'm so glad they could be there!


My mom, me, and Darby's mom


Me and all the hostesses. 10 in all! Wow!


And here's some belated pictures from my lingerie shower. I've been delinquent in posting them:

Frousins!


Me holding up a not-too-scandalous gift


Em gave me my wedding gift, as well as my lingerie gift. It was pretty funny when I pulled a laser level out of the bag. I was really excited about getting one, because they look so cool on TV.

Happy "negative 1 month" anniversary to me!

I borrowed that terminology from Kalyn =) Do you like my new smiley face? I stole that from my friend Desiree. I used to do them like :) But I think =) is better.

Darby took me to Olive Garden last night to celebrate that we only have one month until our wedding. Yummy! We even got dessert. I love their white chocolate raspberry cheesecake. I must learn how to make it.

I'm rereading Harry Potter 4, 5, and 6 in preparation for the 7th book coming out on July 21. I'm about halfway through book 4 right now. I'm still amazed by how incredible those books are. J.K. Rowling really makes you feel Harry's emotions. It's almost painful to reread them because you know all of the terrible things that are about to happen to him. I cannot wait for the 7th one to come out! Although, after I'm through reading it, I'll probably be thoroughly depressed.

Wow! I haven't updated in a while. The days are just flying by. I can't believe it's only about a month till my wedding!! This is such a fun time, but it's also a crazy time. I'm staying at my sister's house until the wedding, but most of my stuff is at Darby's apartment because I didn't want to move it twice. So, the past few weeks have consisted of going back and forth between the two countless times. It seems like the stuff I need is always in the wrong house. I've never been a forgetful person, but lately I've been so scattered. It's frustrating. But it's also really fun setting up things in the new apartment with Darby. It's actually becoming real. After six years, we're really going to get married. I was talking to him the other night, and I said, "It's hard for me to believe that I am the same person I am going to be when I'm married." Always, when I've pictured being married, I've seen myself as much older and more mature. Even a few months ago, I don't think it had dawned on me that I wasn't going to magically grow up before my wedding day. It's crazy; this is really it; it's really here. I'm definitely ready, but it's a strange feeling. Okay, enough wedding talk. I promise this blog won't turn into a blow-by-blow of wedding details. (Although I probably will post pictures of my upcoming showers and parties).

IKEA!!

Darby and I went home to Waco this weekend. We decided to drive to the IKEA in Round Rock while we were there, since it's only about an hour away from my house. (Yet another reason why Waco is way better than Abilene: NOTHING is only an hour away from Abilene). We got a lot of good stuff: two nightstands, an end table, a cart for our printer, a storage cabinet to go outside our kitchen, and some shelving. Woo-hoo! Darby stayed up until 2 a.m. putting some of it together! We're still not totally done, but the apartment is looking good. I'll post some pictures once we get everything put away. IKEA has got to be the most awesome store ever. I hope there's one near wherever we move for grad. school.