Ch Ch Ch Changes (And Some Other Stuff...)

I'll start with the other stuff.

A couple of weeks ago, one of Devin's best friends from high school said that one of their best friends from college/mission was going to be in Vegas for the weekend so they wanted us to drive down with them the next day. We thought it would be fun so we drove down Saturday morning, did a little gambling (my first time ever...), walked down the strip, hung out and had a good time. Then came back Sunday morning. It was just a short trip because we couldn't miss work on Monday. It was fun to go down, but I don't think I could ever live there!

On our way back we stopped by the St. George temple. I'm not sure that I've ever seen that temple before but it sure is pretty!

Change is not always a good thing, but sometimes it is a GREAT thing!

We've had the same couches since we've been married. These were couches that Devin and his roommates used, and quite honestly, without the couch covers looked pretty bad. Without the covers, the thought sometimes crossed your mind of what diseases you were going to get if you sat down on them. (I couldn't find any pictures of the couches without the covers...) But since we weren't ever in a position where we could buy new couches, they worked for us.

We said our goodbyes (which for me did not take very long) and took the couches over to Savers (thanks for letting us borrow your truck mom and dad and thanks to Mark for your help!). We were lucky that they decided to take them and drove away before they could change their minds.

John was nice enough to let us borrow his truck and then to come and help us get our new couch. It was pretty entertaining to watch him and Devin try to fit the box into our apartment. Let me start by saying that we don't have a lot of room to maneuver by our front door. The couch came in 3 boxes - 2 for the couch that were each about the same size and one for the ottoman. The couch boxes pretty much filled up the doorway. Once they got the first box inside the doorway they tried to turn it to get it down the stairs and it just wasn't working so they had to tear the box away from the couch. This is what they ended up with.

They learned from their mistake on the second box and that one went a lot smoother. We did some rearranging and got everything set up and we love our new couch!! It's so nice to have it and I am grateful that Devin is good at arranging stuff and setting it up because he made it look so good! Now we just need to do a little decorating. Our walls are looking pretty bare (I still haven't done anything with those frames...). But that's one of my goals as soon as work settles down a bit.

The layout of our apartment is very similar to the layout of Tricia and Gordon's townhome. We both have a closet that goes underneath our stairs. One day when we were at their place they showed us their new food storage closet that they had built under their stairs. I was jealous! It looked so good. We don't have very much cupboard space in our kitchen so we got some shelves from IKEA and had all of our food behind our table in our kitchen. We could never make it look very pretty, so we decided to copy them (thanks for the idea!).

This is what we started with: An empty closet (which used to be a VERY messy storage space) and a messy kitchen.

Then we added these shelves (another purchase from IKEA).

And then all of the food.

And here's how our kitchen looks now. Quite an improvement right?

And on a total side note I just have to show you some of what we've been up to at work.

We have 15,000 posters to roll up and stuff into mailing tubes. This is what we had total after about 16 hours of working on it. And this is pretty far under a third of the total. Mark's had "fun" working on this with us. They do look pretty cool all stacked against the wall though! Hopefully we'll be able to get them done soon.