Life According to my Phone

School and life has taken over and blogging has not been included. So here are a few RANDOM photos from my phone that have described our lives recently. :) 

I got out of Nursery and got put back in Primary but this time with Michael! We teach the most ADORABLE KIDS EVER!!! 

This is how we spent some of conference. (it is so hard for us to stay awake) maybe we should eliminate the blankets and couch :) We only slept for maybe 5 minutes each though. 

We have very healthy smoothies almost everyday. Some days are better than others :) 

First Michael got a very much needed hair cut

We have had to figure out how to work our not so nice oven and this was after 2 minutes of them being in the oven. Yes I slaved over homemade rolls for 2 days and all of them were ruined. :(

Our yard is still infested with squirrels. yes they have made a little hole for them to get into our garbage and make a mess.

We go on date nights across the street on med campus and take pictures in front of our favorite front building. SLU hospital. We think it is so cool looking! 

isn't he so handsome?!?!?! 

I think this will only be the pda photo you will EVER see, we both aren't very into them so I thought our one should make it on the blog.
We NEVER go out to eat (occasional pizza when we stumble upon coupons) but when we do, it's probably at our favorite restaurants 1. Texas Roadhouse (mainly for those rolls) 2. Old spaghetti Factory

We finally made it to IKEA.

There is a SLU track on our street so Michael runs while I fast walk ;) This is him showing off his sweet shirt his dad got him from California and how weak he was from running :)

Hopefully this little post will keep you updated on what we have been doing. Since Michael and I started school, there hasn't been much down time. We have about an hour during the day that we can see each other and then I am off to work till 10:30. Lots going on and it is keeping us VERY busy!! Not much has happened with the house, we have made it live able and thanks to my dad the walls are all painted so we are doing just little stuff \here and there when we have an empty Saturday. 

XOXO Allie and Michael!

Horrible Blogger

I am officially the WORST blogger ever. This was supposed to be a place where we keep our family and friends updated but, life gets busy and so we will play a lot of catching up to do. :) 

As we were driving to Kansas for labor day weekend, I realized that I have not even blogged about our adventurous trips to Mexico!! Okay, guys this is REALLY bad. That trip was 2 months ago. :) 

I can explain, I have started school and have two jobs and I don't really have extra time, like ever. So little by little, the blog will be updated. Also, I got my first smart phone and unfortunately we never really use our main camera anymore, so those pictures are just sitting there wanting to be blogged about. :) 

This week I PROMISE that I will blog about our first week in Mexico while we were in Cancun. Aunt Mel, I want you to hold me up to this. ;) 

Wish me luck! 

XOXO 

Allie 

Pictures

A lot of people have been asking to see pictures of our new place. I understand, but we just want everything to be right. Right now, our home doesn't look like a home, it looks like a construction sight. We don't want people to see the place we call home as a disaster. We want to do good before and after pictures so you can see how much hard work we have put in on the house. Be patient my friends, pictures will come soon. Hopefully this week we will get boxes unpacked and things actually put away so it feels like a home. Hopefully we can have pictures put up by the end of next week. :)
XOXO
Allie

Bigger Picture

Right after I had written the post about all the bad things that are happening in our house, the security lady came into my work and without her even knowing, she showed me the bigger picture of things and taught me how life isn't always as bad as it seems. She came in and was asking about the house and  how things are going. So I continue to tell her all the things and she came back with you gotta go through bad to get to the good. Things will turn out good, they wont stay bad forever. That hit me, it made me realize that yeah, we have some problems but if we just came into this house without any problems, we wouldn't have learned the things we have learned. Michael wouldn't have been able to fix 40 burst pipes, or learn how to put in a new water heater by himself, or learn how to patch up drywall all by himself. She had no idea that what she said impacted me a lot, but it seems to be those times where you aren't really searching or hoping for an answer when you get it. This security lady is the most spiritual person I have ever met. Everything she talks about is how Jesus saved her by his grace. How amazing is that. Through her cruddy times in life, she brings it back to Jesus and how blessed she is. She has been a big influence on Michael and my life. (Except for the fact that she wants to put Michaels hair in dred locks and asks me every time she see's me if she can. ;)
Another lady that has made a big impact on me is the shuttle driver that drives around Slu's campus. It's kind of crazy that two ladies who I have met completely randomly have impacted me so much. This bus drivers name is Loraine and she is amazing. If she meets you once, she will remember you forever and will remember everything about you. I sometimes would ride the SLU shuttle just to talk to Loraine. She taught me how to be kind, how to always be a listening ear when you need it. Like I said, she remembers everything, knowing Loraine and seeing her talk to others, has made me want to have that trait. To have the trait of listening and honestly caring to remember. Michael absolutely loves Loraine as well. She is like our grandma here in Missouri. I love these two ladies dearly, and I am so grateful for the random moments where I have met these ladies so they could impact mine and Michaels life. :)
These two ladies have made me see the bigger picture in life. Things always aren't as bad as you seem. With going to Mexico it also opened up my eyes that we are very fortunate to have a roof over our head, these problems are blessings!! This house is a blessing and it came straight from God. .How blessed we are.

The Leaking House

Our house leaks. I swear everything that could leak, does. We should have known when we first found the leaky bay window that that was not the start. 40 burst pipes later, a leaky shower head, a leaky washing machine and the latest a leaky fridge. The fridge has its own problems. We thought it worked when we plugged it in because it sounded like any other fridge sounds like when it gets cold.  So we go to the store a couple of days ago,buy groceries stick them in the fridge and realized, hm.... pretty sure a fridge is not supposed to be hot. Not quite sure where our brains were, but we thought it would be a good idea for us to keep the milk and sour cream in the fridge for a couple of days until the garbage man comes so it doesn't stink up the house. Not quite sure why we didn't pour the milk out, but just bare with us. :)
So, yesterday morning, I come down the stairs and this AWFUL fishy smell was coming from somewhere in the middle floor. Well, Michael had just sanded drywall and his mother told us it had an awful smell, so we just assumed that was where the smell was coming from. So we leave to go to church, come back and the smell had gone away. Super weird, but we just went with it. Michael then decided to put the sour cream and milk in a garbage bag and left it by the door to be taken out. He lifts up the bag and something has spilled and leaked on our floor, the fishy smell came back for a second. We got that cleaned up and then I go in the kitchen later that night to clean up, and I see a leak under the fridge. Well that is weird because we cleaned under that fridge so that spill wasn't from the people before us. So Michael pulls back the fridge and instantly the fishy smell comes back. We found the source of the ticking!!!! (that quote is for my family ;) Well, Michael opens up the fridge to see if it is coming from in there, and spoiled milk just comes running out. Oh lovely, so we have this awful rotten milk substance all over the kitchen floor. Then we decide we just need to get the fridge out of the house, so Michael drags it to the door  (another one of us not thinking) and liquid just pours out as he drags it. Why didn't we clean it out before? Who knows. So then we have a long streak from the kitchen to the doorway of spoiled milk. Then we realize the fridge can't fit out the back door so there it sits while we clean up this mess frantically so it doesn't get in the cracks of the baseboards or wood floor. We got it all cleaned up with a lot of bleach and a lot of scrubbing so now the kitchen smells like bleach and the lingering smell of rotten fish. :) It was times like those that in the moment we were thinking nothing right has gone on with this house!!! But I look back on it and can't help but just laugh.
We just bought our first big appliance a brand new stainless steel fridge in hopes that that carries us for the rest of the time while living there and for future renters. Oh the joys of being a house owner and for being an adult and dealing with things instead of letting your parents or apartment maintenance guy  handle them. :)
Hope you enjoyed our Sunday happenings
XOXO Sauceda's from Saint Louis!

The Move

Today was the big day for packing up our apartment. It has been full of mixed emotions. This place was the place where Michael and I shared our first year of marriage. This apartment was our home away from home. It served us as a place where we felt safe from the outside world aka drunks and rioting in the streets. This place holds a lot of memories. It has seen a lot of tears but also a lot of laughter. It has only been one year in this place, but it will be sad to say goodbye. 

We move all of our things over to the new house tomorrow, and we will spend one more night in our apartment before we leave to Utah for a month and a half. 

I have always had a hard time throughout my whole life of the thinking that the grass is always greener on the other side. That is something that I have to work at constantly. There were lots of times where I hated this place. I wanted to move closer to friends, or just away from this place. Because whenever you walked on our carpets your feet were black and sticky, we didn't share walls with anyone but the doors were so thin that you could hear every word  from peoples apartment while walking down the hall(hearing many things we didn't want to hear), we had to pay 1.50 per load so $3.00 for a wash and dry of laundry and the list goes on. But, this place was our home. I worried so much about the things I didn't like that it inhibited me from living in the moment and being happy with where I am at. This place was where I did my first year of cooking, it was in this home where I have learned amazing lessons and learned to live away from family and all friends, our living room held many dance parties and movie nights. Someone in their testimony at church today said, if you go looking for something, you will find it. That really stuck out to me, If I keep looking for the negative things in life and look at what others have and wish I had it, I will find the negativity and my life wont be happy.  

So as Michael and I move on to the next phase of our life as new homeowners, I will strive to look at how much greener my side of the grass is. I will look at the quarky things that our house has and find it unique instead of a burden. I challenge everyone reading this post to find ways in your life that maybe you could look for the positive and be content. I know that when I have done it, I have been a lot happier and get more joy out of life.

XOXO Sauceda's from St. Louis!