Series of Unfortunate Events.... I guess something called life?!

I have learned a lot about the 4 letter word called LIFE this week. 95% of the things that happened I didn't like, but as my parents say that's life. Life throws things at you that you really don't like, but you put on your big girl pants and you deal with it. :) Never did I think a couple of years ago, that I would be dealing with the things that we have had to at 19 years old, but I made the best decision to get married young and I guess having to deal with this kind of stuff comes with that. :)
I think we both have really realized that car troubles are no fun. We had to get a very expensive gas pump about a month ago, and poor Michael got in a car accident on Monday and insurance is not being very helpful and not easy to work with. Then he went mountain biking that night with one of his friends, and I get a call from his friend saying that Michaels nice mountain bike had broke and they were walking the bike back (it was about dark by then). This was not Michaels day. But even though they are hard to see, we were blessed with Michaels accident. It is amazing how our car looks so great and how the other car doesn't look so great. It's amazing how we could be paying hospital bills and car bills, but we are just paying the car bills. Michael came home that night, with no broken bones, whiplash scratches nothing. This in itself is a miracle, I had a very very strong feeling after he told me that we had special angels up there in heaven watching out for Michael. The other man was so sweet and so forgiving and apologetic. He told Michael that he was in the same accident a while back and his head went through the windshield so we are blessed.We were very grateful that the bike was in the back of the car and broke something in the back instead of on the bike rack that he had on, because it doesn't hold bikes well and that could have flung off when the car spun and hit another car!

It was a company van that he was driving and they were wanting to get a new van anyways.

I drove to the grocery store on Tuesday and two men tried to take the car off of my hands to go and repair it. When I said my husband would take care of it, they then said some very inappropriate things to me and for the rest of the day I felt so violated and hurt. Not so much that they hurt my feelings, but shocked that such inappropriate things were said to a young lady from two men. But that made me for the respectful husband that I have.

We are very grateful for technology and the easiness it brings, but it also brings a lot of problems. I get a text on Tuesday from michael saying that is Macbook cord broke. So if he has it just in the right spot it works, then today, he informed me that his phone had broke. Man!! What is with us this week and breaking things! 

On Thursday I was taking out blankets to do the laundry and I drop the liquid dish soap. The cap then decides to BREAK off and create a big puddle with a stream of about 6 feet. So if anyone needs to know how to get soap out of your carpet, you give me a call. (even though it still isn't out all the way after an hour and a half of scrubbing) 

Also I thought that SUU tuition was expensive, but while looking for nursing schools, I realized that school outside of Utah is so stinkin expensive. But, you gotta do what you gotta do!

Well, even though this week has not been our week, we still have a lot to be grateful for, and with all the things come with a thing we call life, we grow from it and become stronger people. Excuse this post for being whiney and kind of pitiful, but just thought that we would share that life isn't all pretty flowers, it was some thorns that come along, but overall life is beautiful and great. 

YIPEE that it's the weekend and that in a week we will (hopefully) be driving to Kansas to spend some good quality family time. 

XOXO Sauceda's from St. Louis  

Happy Happy Birthday Michael Dear!

I totally forgot that I had not blogged about Michaels Birthday a couple weeks ago!!!
Well, 25 years ago, the most handsome man was born into this world in Anaheim California. According to his Granny and mom, he was the cutest baby there could ever be. :) I mean look at him now and just think in baby form. :) That's all I really know about his younger years, so I will just get into the day. He had a big paper due that day and so after he got ready, that's what he was doing.  He was going to be at school all day, so he was working and I decided to work that day as well. I know not much of a birthday, but the night was full of fun. His present from me was Phantom of the Opera tickets at Fox Theater. This was something that Michael had really been wanting to do, so I decided itw as a good Birthday Present.

Writing away

Yeah I realized that my hands are back words, but Michael didn't want to take a picture again so just act like it's 25

Yeah we got the frosting the next day

Side note: We really had decided to celebrate his birthday the next day
So for the Friday night, we were just going to get a pizza and then go to Phantom, but I had heard him say how he has wanted to go to Qdoba so much and we never really have had a reason to go, so I surprised him taking him there instead. His reaction was, oh, I'm not hungry lets just go get a pizza (pizza is my favorite not his). I was so bummed but he got some chips and salsa (his favorite food) and he was a happy camper. He had chips and salsa and I  got my pizza :)

eating his chips and salsa in dominos

Then  we were off to Phantom.  We were on the floor right under the balcony, so we had good seat to see up close to the stage, but not really good seats to see up into the ceiling and stuff. That is one good thing about the balcony seats. The play was so good and I didn't even fall asleep (which meant it was good) so I thought that was a success.

Birthday selfies before Phantom

There's the Birthday Boy!!! 

We got home and he opened his presents.

Poor kid wrapping paper. Plus it is 10x easier to use than wrapping paper

Not much decor, but it is what I could get done in 15 minutes

I love you Michael and I am so glad that we got to celebrate YOU!!!! 

xoxo

Few Of The Things We Have Been Up To Lately!

There hasn't been anything really big or eventful so I will just give you a quick catch up of what has been happening.

Michael:

He has been extremely busy with school, and when I say extremely I am not exaggerating.  He always thinks I am, but he isn't the one home alone all the time.

He is almost done with writing his thesis proposal, which is way good for only being in your second semester of grad school, and that is about 30 pages long. 

He plays racquetball every Wednesday night with a buddy of ours from our ward at the SLU gym. 

Me:

I got a new job, it is at the yogurt shop right across the street from our house, it isn't a chiropractic office, but it takes me 30 seconds to walk there and it is something to bring us income so we are blessed and grateful! 

I am doing my last semester of online school and am taking a stats class and I actually am doing very well in it and enjoy it!! Weird! 

Next semester I am going to go to Harris Stowe University which is a historically black college, so that should be fun.

I just over a 3 day flu which was absolutely no fun. Trying to work during that time is no fun either! 

Michaels friend from back home Micah came to interview at SLU and so of course he had to stay with us. Of course the night he came about an hour before we had to go pick him up, our car broke down. That night at midnight they went back and forth to the gas station (about a block away thankfully) 5 times to try and see if we had just run out of gas and that was the problem, but it wasn't. I felt so bad because Micah had just arrived, and was out till 1 then had his big interview early the next morning. 

Michael and him hung out the rest of the weekend and Michael REALLY enjoyed that. Since we didn't have a car the whole weekend he was here, we walked everywhere. That walk to church was a cold one.  But $600 later, we have a car. 

 Micah is seriously one of the nicest kids and was so into helping us decide on whether or not to buy a house, car problems, advice about saving money etc. So basically we really like Micah (and his wife Elise sounds just as amazing), and are so grateful for the friendship that they give to us! 

It is the end of our spring break week and we did absolutely nothing. We took 2 trips to Forest Park (about 5 minutes away) to the zoo, and then on Sunday to just enjoy the beautiful weather. I worked like crazy with nanny jobs, babysitting familys in the ward and my other job and Michael was at the school with his buddy Wells most of the week. Then it ended with me having the flu the last part of the week, and Michael taking care of me like a champ. so YAY for spring breaks! 

We are planning to go to Kansas to be with Michaels Aunt and Uncle and their kids for Easter and I am so excited! We both decided we needed to take a little trip out of St. Louis and thought that this would be the perfect opportunity. They are seriously the sweetest to invite and host another 2 people, but we are so grateful for loving family! 

If you guys made it this far, give yourself a pat on the back! :) Sorry this wasn't the most eventful post, but I just thought that I would let everyone know what we have been up to lately. :)
Also cool fact, we have had a viewer from India which is pretty awesome!  (we think it might be you Chris Meek if you read our blog) 

XOXO Sauceda's In St. Louis!! 

Valentines day!

So here is a little fact about me for people that don't know, I love holidays! Any holiday (except for St. Patricks Day) you give me I will dress according to the holiday and I love being festive! Holidays are simply the best! I think that I got my excitement from my mom for holidays :)
This was my first valentines day with an actual valentine and how special that my one and only valentine is my sweet, dang attractive hunk of a husband!! Lots of saying happy valentines day, lots of kisses and hugs were exchanged!! I think this may be one of my new favorite holidays!
Well that morning I was bound to make everything heart shaped or pink/red. So we had pancakes (I attempted to make them heart shaped), we had eggs in heart shaped cookie cutters (okay maybe I just put food in heart shaped stuff) and michael had a banana (way to small for a heart shaped cookie cutter). We listened to Phantom of the Opera the whole day to get ready for this friday when we go see it at Fox Theater for Michaels Birthday! In the afternoon, I went and got a shot for my new job and then came home and had heart shaped grilled cheese (my personal favorite), pink lemonade and  red jello. I was seriously giddy this whole day because everything was just so valentines and so cute!
My sweet husband didn't know you would probably have to make a dinner reservation so we were thinking of what to have. That led us to pizza (also my personal favorite) Michael got us pizza from my favorite pizza place Papa Johns just because he knew I love pizza especially from there. Pizza may be my favorite food so this was the perfect day! We then ended the night with the Lego Movie and root beer floats. I of course fell asleep 20 minutes into it. I woke up a couple of times when Michael would burst out in laughing, so I am guessing he enjoyed it. My favorite part of the whole day was getting my homemade hand written hard from Michael. It was covered in big and little hand cut hearts and it is seriously so precious.
Yay for being married on Valentines Day!
Also thanks to my mom and dad for sending a stinkin cute card and for always remembering us over here in Missouri!

Michaels parents sent us a box of DELICIOUS truffles.

Littlecrafts I made

Heart attached the kitchen.

Not quite sure what is going on with the N

Cute little heart garland on each one of our pillars 

MY MOMMY CAME!!

My mom had been planning to come out and visit me in the summertime since she wasn't able to come and help us move in, so that is what I  was been counting down to until then. Well a couple of weeks ago she said what if I come in a week?? Hey I was TOTALLY okay with that. I have not been working for the past month and a half so I was all for the company. She came on a Thursday evening and stayed until Sunday afternoon. It was the best weekend ever!! I love when my mom comes to visit, even when I was living an hour away in Cedar City, I loved when my mom and dad would come and pick me up to go up north or just to visit. Now living 3 states away, that is a little harder for her just to come make day trips. :) So I had to soak all this time up.

Friday morning, we woke up early and went to the temple. The St.Louis temple is GORGEOUS!!! Michael and I are so fortunate to have a temple so close wherever we both have lived. With that, I think we take it for granted, so I am making a commitment here and now on this blog, to attend more!!! 

We got done with our session, then my mom had the idea for us to do sealings. It was the first time since Michael and I had done sealings since we had been married so it was a cool experience. We were the only couple that did them so we had special treatment from the workers. I am so grateful for the temple and for the knowledge that Michael and I and our future family will be together forever because we got sealed in the House of the Lord. 

Anyways, so we got done with those, had lunch then went and had a tour of Michaels school. Michael was in class so it was just my mom and I.  I swear, my mom is a magnet for nice people. There were so many people coming up to us and asking if we needed help getting around, needed help taking pictures, asking if we felt safe etc. It finally got weird when a school campus police on a segway came up to us and asked us if we were okay? Then my mom and I got a little worried thinking should we not be here, is it unsafe to be here? (It was the middle of the day on a university campus with campus police everywhere, I am pretty sure we were safe) The campus police then talked to us for about 5 minutes about how we should always be on the look out and to be safe anywhere we are. So we headed home kind of confused on how come so many people were talking to us that day. We told Michael about it and he suggested that people probably thought that a young girl and her mom were doing a tore of the campus for a possible university for me!!! We had quite a good laugh. :)

Michaels office area. 

We are the top level.

Thanks to my sister Lindsay for the awesome wreath (the red part got broken in the traveling process :( )

We live on the long outstretch part of the building, so we have 6 of those massive windows :)

Cinderella was playing at the Fox Theater when she was here and so she had the grand idea of looking to see if there were any cheap tickets available. She found a  discount where students with an i.d. card could go 2 hours before the show started and buy discounted tickets! So we sent Michael over there and had us buy some! Unfortunately there was a limit of 2 so it was a girls night. The show was AMAZING!! When the show was over, my mom was very adamant to have Michael come and meet us at the Theater so to walk us home. (Yes Fox Theater is about a 2 minute walk/ 1 block away from our house). There were kids everywhere where we were walking!!! Lets just say that my mom is used to little towns in Utah where nothing happens!! :)

Then Saturday came went shopping, showed my mom more of the random things such as our grocery store that we go to, where our friends live etc. Michael had always wanted to go to the Catholic Basillica that is on our street and so we decided this would be a perfect time to go. That is amazing inside! For anyone that is going to come visit St. Louis or live here, go see that. It is free and it is all mosaic so there was not one painting in there. There are millions of little gold pieces to create a masterpiece! We went to the train station downtown and shopped around there, there was a big black man (they always seem to be the funniest) who saw my old flip phone and was having a hay day over it. He thought it was the coolest thing ever. He probably went on for about 5 minutes just raving about it.

We became buddies after this

That night we were going to go to the Old Spaghetti Factory downtown, but we called and there was a 2 1/2 hour wait, so my mom being the superwomen that she is, made us a Sunday dinner right then and there. I swear, things taste so much better if you aren't the one to make it. :)  Then we played a 3 hour game of Risk!!

We don't look alike or anything ;)

For Sunday, our church is at 10 so we were able to go to 2 1/2 hours of it and she loved it!! Our ward is so amazing because the ward is half young college families, or old foggies that have lived there for ever. So, it has a lot of strength and faith that come from it. My mom was in tears by the end of the prayer in Sacrament meeting. :) 

It was time to say goodbye and I wanted to just go right with her back to Utah, but unfortunately that is not an option. :( But I cannot wait until my mom comes again to visit!! 

Nashville!

About a week after we got home from Utah, we decided to take a trip to Nashville Tennessee. We have a goal to go to as many places as we can when we live here in St. Louis because there are so many places 4-5 hours away from us. So on Monday we just said hey lets go to nashville! But not Tuesday we had to feed the missionaries so we decided to head out Wednesday morning. It may have been our best decision so far. :) It was so fun and I love going on trips and not having any plans and no obligations, you just go and do what you want and come home when you want. Nasvhille was about 5 hours away but for some reason it seemed FOREVER! On our way there, I saw a little sign on the side of the road for a gigantic statue of superman. This was a trip of spontaneity, so we got off in this little podunk town and figured out we were in Metropolis Illinois! It was seriously probably my favorite part of the whole trip.

The hotel that we got, was seriously the coolest. We had an option between a Lava Lamp or a Goldfish for our room. Michael wanted a goldfish but I know our history with goldfish and I didn't want to risk it, so we went with a Lava Lamp. The first one didn't work, so we got a second one and that one only lit up and the goo stuff would only go up once in a while.
We got there and that night we wanted something that Tennessee was known for, so barbecue it was. It was by far the best barbecue sandwich that I had ever had. We just happened to get there on discount night for those so maybe that factored into why it tasted so good. :) I saw on the GPS that there was a krispy kreme close, so I convinced Michael to go there and get doughnuts for the morning. Well.... that trip lasted an hour and a half. I am kidding you not. Long story short, the first place we went was a factory for them, then the second one we went to (got very lost in between these two) was a house (so unless they sell doughnuts out of their house, this wasn't it) then we drove for another 40 minutes to one and FINALLY we found one.We went back to the hotel and watched t.v.! This is a rare thing since we don't have a t.v. at home and so this was a real treat (I know how bad does that sound)
We got up the next day and decided to hit the town! We decided that Nashville would be a lot more fun if I was over 21 and if we drank. A lot of the bars where live music plays you have to be 21 and obviously I am a good year and half away from that. :) But it was fun to see where famous people had played and to go into the cowboy boot stores, there are definitely a lot of those there.

Don't mind Michaels hat... he insists on wearing my beanies. :)

We went to a pasta place right by our parking garage and it was beyond good. We got there 15 minutes before lunch time ended so it was perfect! We decided we were done, because all of the museums and tour places all costed about $20 a person. We went took a nap, went and got pizza (that was another hour trip thanks to the gps) but the funny story about that is that we were lost so we decided to just go into a parking long and figure out where we were supposed to go. So we pull into some place and we see that it is an LDS church!!! What are the odds!! We then went and worked out in the hotel gym and we watched American Idol. Whats funny about that is that it was the time when they were in Nashville!

The morning we were going home, we decided to hit up the Grand Ol Opry. We didn't want to pay 40 bucks to go in so we went to the mall across the street and took pictures. That filled our needs.

Next up will be pictures from my moms trip here!! Thanks for reading!

Love the Saucedas in St. Louis!