'Tis the Season

About a week ago Kev and I decided to break out the Christmas tree. The room we are living in at my parent's house is super small so we weren't sure if it would fit, however, we decided to give it a try anyway. We got it to fit quite nicely on top of our little dresser. We now have a bit of a hard time opening the top drawer of the dresser, but we do love our little Christmas tree!

The Mystery of the Synapse Flapjack Mishap

I am fascinated by how the human brain works. It is simply amazing to me that a bunch of little neurons, a few chemicals, and some electric signals can produce consciousness and thought.

My brain however, is atypical. I have before been accused of being "spacey", "forgetful", or even "absentminded". My intention today is address these and other misconceptions and to debunk them with pure, hard, scientific AWESOMENESS. The following are a few important parts of the brain, and how you think it should work compared to how it works in my case.

#1) The brain stem.

Typically:

• Controls automatic reactions (breathing, etc.)
• Controls blood pressure
• Controls limb movements and reflexes

In my case:

• Made of silly putty
• Contains memory bank for song lyrics
• Enables super cool dance moves

#2) The Hypothalamus
Typically:

• Controls body temperature
• Controls behavioral response (hunger, thirst, etc.)
• Controls aggression

In my case:

• Controls car key location forgetfulness
• Controls good looks
• Manages growth stunting
• Controls automatic autograph response
  

#3)Cerebrum / Cerebellum
Typically:

• Helps coordinate limb movements
• Takes information from the sensory organs
• Controls memory and thought process
• Controls emotion

In my case:

• Smells of baked beans
• Controls sweet flapjack-making skills
  
• Controls subconscious desire to eat Mexican food
• Helps facilitate guitar strumming movement
  
• Controls memory loss system
• Goes for $250 on eBay

There you have it! Hopefully this helps clarify a thing or two.

-Kevin

My Own Halloween Creation

I have been seeing cute little crafts, like these blocks, everywhere lately. It seems they are the new, trendy way to decorate your house for the holidays. I think they're adorable but they are also rather expensive. So, instead of buying some, my sister, Rusti, and I decided to be crafty and make some of our own.

We started by snagging some leftover wood scraps from Dad's garage. Dad helped us pull out the electric table saw and we cut the wood into all different sizes (Rusti actually did all the cutting because I was a little too scared of the saw). Then we layered the deck outside with newspaper and spray painted the blocks with black and orange paint.

We got some stencils from Wal-mart to use for the letters, I think the entire package only cost about $2, and placed the stencils on the blocks and sponge painted them. While the paint was still wet we poured some sparkles over the letters. After everything was dry we sprayed the blocks with a clear coat of paint so the sparkles wouldn't flake off.


Here is our finished product.

They didn't turn out quite as cute as the blocks I could have purchased, but we had a blast making them! They weren't very hard either, which is always a plus.

In the Middle of the Night

Kevin often talks in his sleep, however, I am never fully awake when it happens so by morning I can't ever remember what he's said (unfortunately). A couple of nights ago we had an incident that I actually remembered in the morning, and is totally hilarious so I thought I would share it with you all. It was about 11:30pm (I had finally gotten to sleep) when I was awakened by Kevin tossing and turning next to me. I looked over to see him kneeling up in bed grabbing out at the air in front of him. I asked him what he was doing and he told me he was trying to catch the caterpillar (what on earth?!). He then tried to explain to me what had happened. He had woken up (I'm pretty sure he wasn't anywhere near being awake) and saw a caterpillar on his pillow right next to his face, the caterpillar had then jumped off the pillow into the air. Kevin was simply trying to catch it so it couldn't crawl back onto his pillow. I tried to explain to him that there was no caterpillar in our bed or floating around in our room, but he still insisted on turning the lamp on and checking in the blankets just to make sure (there was nothing there). Then he got back in bed and fell right back to sleep (though I am thinking he was kind of asleep the whole time). It took me forever to get back to sleep because right when I would be about to drift off I would remember him grabbing out at the air for the caterpillar and I would start laughing uncontrollably. What a silly husband I have!

Our First Post

So, Kevin and I finally decided to get a real blog. We don't have anything super cool I can post on at the moment, I suppose I will just fill everyone in on what our usual day is like. Kevin works in Salt Lake City at the Church Headquarters so he has an hour and a half commute everyday. He leaves for work at 6:15 and takes the bus to and from work arriving home around 5:45. Meanwhile I work-out, run errands, quilt, read, clean, babysit my niece, and so on. I'm hoping posting on here will also become one of those task so be sure to check back regularly. We are excited to finally be part of the blogging world!