Oklahoma: Part II

 Thought I might take this opportunity to show you some pics of our new pad! We have all of our things put away, and I think it looks quite nice. It's funny though... I think this apartment is about 3 times bigger than we needed. That's alright though, I love our little set up.

So this one is our bedroom. We decided it wouldn't be worth it to put the bed in there since our TV is in the living room. All we have in there is a few suitcases, and all of our clothes in the closet. 

And it's a walk-in closet! Turned out to work very nicely. 

This is our living room! we borrowed that massive air mattress from Todd's parents, then Summer and Chris loaned us their super big, memory foam mattress topper which is the most comfy thing ever! So we designated the air mattress as our couch and the mattress topper as our bed. It also gives us a very nice back rest when we're sitting watching tv or something. Also notice our cute little TV stand! We found it at Goodwill for only $10! We did have the tv on our ironing board, but it was still too low to the ground for us to see it well. 

We also needed some decoration, so we just taped a ton of pictures to the wall. I'm most proud of the black and white ones above our couch, and the cute little picture frame below the window.

 Here is our bathroom! we love it :)

 The lovely kitchen! I love the dark wood and the countertops. It's really too bad that we're only here for 3 months, because I do really like this apartment a lot!

Kitchen again. Notice, we have a pantry! 

And I think this is as full as it will ever get!

Look how much room there is! Hehe, oh well!

Well, there you have it! That is our apartment in 9 pictures. I probably could have shown less, but I wanted to show you every aspect.

In other news, I've been job hunting my little heart out up here... and officially have been hired by one tutoring company, and had my interview yesterday for the other one. I think it went really well, but they want someone who can fill the position permanently. So we'll see, I should find out at the end of the week if I got the job or not. If I don't get it, I will probably just substitute teach... even though I'm leaning more and more against that... only since the pay is so awful. We will see though. I just want to start working soon, because I feel like our money is dwindling fast! 

So Todd is on his first day of the internship today! It's going really well, and he really likes the people that he's with. He says they're super patient, and really nice. It's such a relief! I'm glad he's already having a good experience :). 

That's about all of the updates for now... just living it up in Oklahoma!

The Trip

Alright ladies and gentlemen, the day has finally come... we are in Oklahoma!! We witnessed a couple miracles along the way that allowed us to make it here in one piece.
So we were able to fit everything that we were taking in the back of the car with us, so nothing had to go on the trailer with the bike. That was nice. So we strapped up the bike and headed out. Everything started off just fine. Todd started driving, and then we switched when we got gas. Then I drove for about 3 hours up a canyon in Colorado through a storm. It was windy, there was lighting, and it was raining pretty hard. Not to mention, the freeway was fairly busy, and our little car was STRUGGLING so hard to get up the hills (too much weight). It was hard to keep it going above 45 when we were going uphill. We finally made it to the top of the canyon, and stopped for some gas. We hadn't gone very far, but we burned so much fuel trying to get up the hills. We checked on the bike just to make sure it was still strapped on tight, only to find out that one of the straps was totally loose! It was still hooked to the bike, but wasn't even hooked to the trailer anymore. Not to mention, the other 3 straps were super loose. We were incredibly lucky in two ways. The most obvious is that the bike was still standing! We don't know how, but it only moved like an inch backwards, and that was it. The second lucky thing was that we didn't lose the strap. It could have easily popped off the bike, and would have been gone forever. If we didn't have a fourth strap, I don't know what we would have done to get the bike the rest of the way. Miracles.

Now this second miracle, I think, is even more incredible, and I am absolutely convinced the Lord was looking out for us. This is also a perfect example of how the Lord blesses us, and watches over us through his children. So we had just crossed the Kansas-Oklahoma border, and entered into a toll section of the freeway. To enter, you had to stop and get a little ticket stub from a person in a booth. To exit, you did the same thing, gave them your ticket, and they tell you how much you owe. When we were leaving, we pulled up to the booth, and the man working in it asked us if we knew our trailer wheel was wobbling like crazy. Apparently, even when we were slowly pulling up to the booth it looked like it was about to pop off. We thanked him kindly, and pulled into a parking lot right next to where we were and checked it out. Turns out, every single one of the lug nuts on the wheel was about one turn away from popping right off.  It was an easy fix, all we had to do was tighten them right up, and we just so happened to have the right tool handy. It was so lucky though, because we're both convinced that if we had gone any further going 75 on the freeway, that it would have popped right off, and the trailer would have been ruined, the bike probably would have been ruined, and we might have caused a huge accident. We just feel so much of the Lord's love when he looks out for us like that, and it's moments like these that make you realize that you can't deny His love and His power.

So, I I'm not sure what we were expecting, but our first impressions of Oklahoma were that it's super flat, and a little run down. I don't know if we've seen like a new-ish development or part of the city. Everything seems kind of older and out-of-date. Other impressions... people here have SO much state pride! They are all about how absolutely wonderful Oklahoma is. I'm not saying that they're wrong... I just have yet to be convinced :). We know one thing for sure, the freeway system here is so different than anywhere else we've ever lived. I think we've gotten lost every time we've taken the freeway anywhere.

Other than that... Todd has orientation for his internship today! He is nervous about the internship, mostly cause he's worried he won't remember things, but overall he is just excited to finally put everything into practice. I'm excited for him, and I know he is going to be great. The day after we got here, I had two job interviews. One was with a methodist daycare, and the other with a tutoring company. The daycare  was a little sketchy, and just really not something I think I'd like to do, so I'm going to call and tell them no today. The tutoring job, however was perfect and exactly what I want to do. It is part time, but in the afternoons. I could potentially still substitute teach during the day, and tutor in the afternoon. Before I decide to do that though, there is another part-time tutoring position I am looking into. It is a Math Lab Assistant for a community college. Both tutoring jobs together would be full time, and I would get paid much more than I could by substitute teaching. I got the job offer at the one tutoring place, so hopefully they'll want me at this other one. The only thing I am worried about is the fact that we're only here 3 months... I'm not sure if they'll want me because of that. Anyway, I will keep you updated on what happens!

Oh, one more thing! Our apartment is super nice, we really like it! It's a shame that we have zero furniture and/or decorations. Also, we found out when we got here, we have no washer and dryer. They also told us that we couldn't park our trailer here, even though it is so small. AND, despite it being 90-100 degrees every day, they closed the pool for the rest of Fall! So, quite a few frustrations... but we'll get over it.

That's about it everybody, I'll update soon with some pics of our cute little set up, and details about our jobs!

The Trailer

Todd and I are off to Oklahoma today, can you believe it? We're looking forward to it, but basically only because we will get to be with Summer, Chris, and their new baby girl, Scarlett. We're not so much looking forward to the whole, Todd working without pay and me trying to get hired on as a substitute, and then getting paid a ridiculously small amount (did you know subs only get paid $50 a day in OKC? That's like $6.25 an hour for an 8 hour school day!). Anywho, it will be an experience for sure! We love new experiences.

On Friday, Todd and I found out about a Labor Day 3 v 3 ultimate tournament that would be held by BYU. Since your team could be super small (3-6 players, depending on how many subs we wanted) we quickly got a team together. We invited an old friend/coach who lives in Lehi, and he brought a friend. Then we met someone at pickup on Saturday, and he brought another friend. So we ended up with 6 amazing players! We played six 30 minute games throughout the day. We lost our first game, and then fought back to win the rest of our games to qualify for the championship. Then, the team in the championship was the only one we lost to! We claimed redemption immediately, and ended up beating them 7-2. The last point was so exciting because Todd was playing, the other team had the disc and were about to score. They threw it to a wide open receiver, and Todd comes out of nowhere and gets a layout D! Then right after that our team moved it quickly and efficiently to score and win the game! Super exciting finish :). They had some jerseys and discs as prizes for winning, but all of the jerseys were women's (unfortunately for everyone on my team but me). It was cool to win those prizes and stuff, but the cooler part was getting to play some high-level ultimate. Todd and I haven't been able to do that in a looooong time.

Now, to the reason I even started this blog post... THE TRAILER! While I was in Australia, Todd didn't have much to do. To keep himself sane, he devoted his time to our rickety little trailer that we bought to tow the motorcycle to Oklahoma. If you can't tell in this pic, the wood on the deck was soooo old and falling apart. The paint job was also rusty, and extremely old looking.

Todd, with some help from his dad, ripped off the old deck, gave the trailer a nice new paint job, cut the wood to size for a new deck, stained it, and installed it. When I got back from Australia, it looked like a new trailer! Todd was hoping to get some sides up while I was gone, but ran into a roadblock. Do you see, in the picture above that black metal bar on the side that's closer to the car? Well, that bar was completely in the way for putting sides up. Todd found out that if he wanted to have the weld broken, he'd have to redo the whole deck. Not happening. So instead, Todd's dad was so kind as to help us just cut that bar off!

Todd and I came up with a plan for the sides, and went to Home Depot to get all of the wood. We stained it with the leftover stain, and cut the pieces to size. After some trial-and-error with the hardware, and a lot of help from Todd's dad, we got the sides up! The only glitch is that the frame of the trailer is pretty warped, it was when we bought it. Due to this, the deck is uneven, and the sides are not all parallel/perpendicular. If you look from the back, the railings noticeably slope to one side. It doesn't matter too much, it just gives our little trailer a little character. Anyway, here's a pic of the final product! I'm so happy with how it turned out, and now we'll be able to take a few extra things with us to Oklahoma :)

Well, now we're off! Wish us luck on our 20 hour drive, and we'll update again soon about the wondrous Oklahoma!

Oh, and one more thing. I might have mentioned in the last post that we're entering in a contest with Chaco's to win some sweet prizes. You can submit pictures or videos that feature the Chaco's. Todd and I think there would be less videos entered, and the video that won last year was LAME. So, we decided to make a video of our own to enter. Here it is!