Birthday!

Stephen is 23! Happy birthday, husband! I've had a lot of fun planning for his birthday. Yesterday, while he was in class, I put streamers on the wall, spelling out his name and age. This was a tradition in my home growing up. We would write our our name and our age in streamers on the wall and take a picture in front of it with our friends. He got home before I was done, so I made him wait out on the stairs for a few minutes while I finished. Stephen said people passed him and asked if he was locked out. He told them he was and that he was waiting for his wife. I promise I didn't keep him outside for more than five minutes. I made him close his eyes and positioned him so he would see the wall when he opened his eyes. Stephen isn't one to react much when things happen, but when he saw the wall, he said "oh wow!" and sounded genuinely surprised. That was a lot of fun for me.

Seeing his name on the wall put him in the birthday boy mood, and he asked for his presents a day early. We decided (or he convinced me) to spend the weekend celebrating his birthday, not just Saturday. So I wrapped up a few gifts I had for him. This included Rhythm Heaven Fever (a really cute wii game), Pinochle (a card game his family loves), a flashlight (because we realized we needed one), and some money for League of Legends (an online game we love playing together). We're going to the store today to get him some new church shirts too. This kid hasn't gotten himself some new white shirts since his mission, and believe me, he needs to.

This morning, we went out to Denny's for his free birthday meal. That was fun. We're going to Brick Oven tonight because we have a gift card there (thanks Tiff!). I've made him Grasshopper Pie for his substitution-cake. I'm planning on making a picnic and taking him to Provo Canyon since it's such a beautiful day, but this is a surprise to him. Shhh! We're also going to go do temple sealings today too. We've been married for four weeks as of today. Can you believe it? I've been so blessed being married to Stephen. There have been many times I've wondered how I ever made it through life without him. Seriously, he's the best thing in my life, second to the Gospel. He's thanked me a lot for making his birthday special, and I tell him "of course!" I love finding out ways I can make him happy.

In other non-birthday news, I got my first bountiful basket this morning. There were a lot of Summer-y items in it. I was surprised because I was anticipating a Fall harvest more so than melons and pineapple. But I'm excited to have so much fresh food. It's going to be a race between me and the produce to see if I can use it all before it goes bad. I want to buy a basket every other week, and looking at what I got today, that's probably reasonable. Also, does anyone have any suggestions on what I should do with ten tomatoes? I will put some on sandwiches, and I might make homemade tomato soup. Ah well. I joke with Stephen that this is like a food network reality cooking show, like Chopped or Iron Chef. I've been given the basket of ingredients, and now I just need to be creative and not get sick of tomatoes! I'm excited and up for the challenge.

Well, Stephen is inviting me to join him in Rhythm Heaven Fever, and I think I'm going to go spend some time with the birthday boy! May there be many more celebrations in our future!

Schedule Summary and Studying Woes

School and work have kept Stephen and me busy. We've been married for two and a half weeks now and are starting to find a routine. Mostly, we both get up early in the morning and I leave first for work or school. He and I work hard all day be it in our jobs or in class. We return home in the evening—on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Friday, I get off of work at 2:30, so I have some time in the afternoon that I've been using to run errands or sleep. Stephen gets home from work around 6. When we have class, he's done at 4 and I'm done at 5. So while we both have full days, our evenings are spent together. I'm grateful for this. After a long day, it's nice to come home to my husband who greets me with a smile rather than returning to my apartment with my roommate's dishes in the sink (perks of being married--Stephen surprises me sometimes and does my dishes).

Once we are home, we spent most of our time doing homework. I make dinner while Stephen studies, and then he cleans up while I study. I have about 100 pages of reading assigned for each day of class, and with three programming classes, Stephen also has plenty to do. We both then study for the rest of the evening, taking breaks to play games, do chores, or talk. Because we get up early, we try to go to bed by ten, but lately, homework has been keeping us up. Stephen still surprises me while we're studying to just get up and come to where I am and hug me for a minute before going back to work. He just wants to make sure I feel loved, even when we're distracted. I really appreciate how Stephen goes out of his way to make me happy. He brought me flowers last week just to make my day better.

Our schedules won't be changing much for the rest of the year, so I'm assuming our daily routine won't have much variance from what it's like now. I'm not complaining though. It's hard to have such full days, but it's nice to look back and see what I've accomplished. My body is adjusting to the new demands. I bike to work and school, and work consists of physical labor for six or seven hours a day. I'm sore a lot, but I have hope that I'll get stronger as I get used to it. Stephen is very understanding and helps me as much as he can. Last week, I came home from work after I stayed late to find him doing the dishes because he figured I had done enough cleaning that day.

It's harder to pinpoint the things I do for Stephen. That's been something we've tried to do since we started dating. But we know how happy I make him. I can make him laugh very easily. I'm just so darn funny! I support him in his efforts too, and he'll talk out his problems with me in order to understand them better. Sometimes I give him ideas and solutions he hadn't thought of before. So while I don't buy Stephen flowers when he's had a long day, I'm coming to understand how I make his life better. I guess that's what marriage is about—making the other person's life better by being in it.

I like my job. Today, my morning coworker, Ayden, had the day off, so it was just me for the first five hours. Surprising, it was kind of nice to clean everything. I vacuumed every foot of the Cannon Center today; it took me several hours on that alone, but there's a sense of pride by doing it all myself. I also managed to clean all five bathrooms in two hours. The record is 1:45, and I want to beat that; I know as I get more familiar and better, I'll totally be able to get the bathrooms clean in an hour and a half. This afternoon, someone made a disaster in the men's bathroom. I will spare you the details unless you press hard enough, but trust me that little can be more disgusting. Luckily, in the afternoon, my other coworker, Cadedra, was there, and she handled the mess along with my boss, Tina, while I finished vacuuming. Calling work eventful today would be an understatement.

One of my favorite things about my job is I can listen to music while I work nearly undisturbed for hours. However, along with listening to music, I've been listening to conference talks. Today, I got through the Saturday morning and afternoon sessions of April 2013 conference. There are some great talks from that day. For my scripture study, I find that reading or listening to talks is helpful for me—especially when I can listen during work. I recommend it. I'm looking forward to conference next month. It's so nice to hear from prophets and leaders of the Church.

Well, Stephen should be walking in the door any minute. I'm going to make baked potatoes and chili because it rained today. He and I want to get a lot of homework done so we can play games tomorrow night on campus. Marrying Stephen will do wonders for my grades. He's far too diligent sometimes. It's probably an admirable quality worth emulating. But if you know me well enough, being social is a priority over studying. This is why I'm hosting a party on Saturday while Stephen attends a study group all day. We balance each other well in this, don't get me wrong. I get my homework done eventually and he enjoys activities too. But initially, last summer, when I wanted to “hang out” with him, he was studying too diligently. This is why we didn't date last summer. But now that we both have class, we can study together and be both diligent and social (to some degree).

Stephen is home now and I'm starting to get hungry. It's time to bake some potatoes! Also, comment below with your definition of what it means to be married. I'm curious.

Classes, Plungers, Names, and Soup

Today was the first day of school! Yay! I have a lot of fun classes lined up for the semester. It's nice to be focusing on my major and taking courses I'm truly interested in. Stephen also has a full course load with three programming classes. We'll both be working 20 hours a week. I start my custodial job at Helaman Halls tomorrow morning. Stephen is going back to Lucidchart, the company he's been working for all summer. We both have very full days every day. Basically, we'll have a few hours in the evening together, but that time is going to be spent doing homework. However, we knew we would be busy--this is partially why we got married in August rather than November or December--we wanted to spend as much time together as we could during this semester, and being married makes that easier. It's nice to both come home to the same place.

We've had some adventures in getting our home into order. Our toilet particularly had issues, and we learned quickly that every home should own a plunger. Unfortunately, neither of us did, and we had to go to the store to get one. Our apartment is still messy and we're trying to find a home for all our stuff. Now that school and work are picking up again, it'll be harder to make time to just organize our home. But it'll get done eventually I'm sure. I have a long to-do list, but I'm crossing things off, so that's helpful. One of the tasks is to write a blog post, so you reading this is proof of my productivity.

It's strange to have two names right now. I use both Hutchins and Rollins, and it's making things a little confusing, but it's not been too bad yet. Hopefully I can take care of the legal side of changing my name quickly. That's just another thing on my to-do list. I really could use more hours in the day sometimes, but at the same time, I'm exhausted at the end of each night. Stephen does a great job of encouraging me and helping me as he can. I believe he would say the same about me. We're both supportive of each other, and I love him for that.

Life is only going to get crazier from here, I'm sure, but I'm excited for the challenge. Stephen and I are in this together. I told him yesterday that there was no way I could get married without him for as much as he helps me sort marriage things. He said it was a good thing he needed me to get married, or else we would have a problem. But life with him is great. I love being a wife. There's just something about making potato soup for my husband as he works on extra credit (yes, he's doing extra credit work on the first day), and then doing the dishes together so we can both work on homework more. I love being married, but more so, I love being married to Stephen.