Weekend Festivities

Well, we have lots to blog about! The last weekend has been filled with blessings, excitement, and a little bit of luck. First of all, we found out on Thursday that we are getting Pell Grants! We are so grateful. When we first got married, we were denied financial aid because it asked for our income info from 2007 . . . when Rob wasn't in school yet and worked full time . . . so our income was too high. But, we petitioned for them to use our 2008 info instead, and once they saw how dirt poor we really were, they approved it! We are so glad, because we were really worried about coming up with another semester of tuition by next week!

Rob finished his last finals of the semester on Thursday, and on Friday morning we went to Salt Lake to spend Easter weekend with my parents. It was such a good weekend. Of course it was filled with tons of delicious food and of course we ate way too much!

My mom's annual bunny cake that we still insist upon as adults

Also this year, we made homemade chocolate/marshmallow eggs! (We used Nestle's crunch bars for the chocolate). They were good!

To top it all off, the Easter Bunny came!!

When we got there on Friday, we spent the afternoon at Cabella's. We love that store! We spent hours looking at all the taxidermied animals and exhibits and even played a shooting game. Rob and I tied. Anyway, the highlight for Rob was the little treasure pictured below. Petro Carbo. Rob has been looking for this stuff for years! He got it for his dad a few years ago and he really liked it . . . but for some reason they have not been able to find it anywhere since. So Rob was shocked to find the stuff, and bought some.

So, on to our shopping spree! Let me first say that this shopping spree had nothing to do with our financial aid happiness. While the financial aid was a huge weight off our shoulders, we immediately budgeted every penny of it to bills, savings, and of course school expenses. So, we weren't planning to do that much shopping in Salt Lake except to spend some last gift cards we had for Target and Costco.

On our way out the door Friday morning, I suddenly remembered something. I had almost an entire year's supply of contact lenses that I got last year, but never used because my eyes were always dry, and then I got Lasik, so the contacts were just stored. I thought, "We'll probably go to Costco in Salt Lake. Maybe we can sell them back." It was an afterthought, but we had time to grab them. We took them to Costco and ended up getting a surprisingly excellent amount of cash! Since this money was unexpected, and every penny of our finances was already budgeted, we decided to have fun with it and treated ourselves to a mini shopping spree! By "shopping spree" we don't mean we blew it all . . . every single thing we bought was something we have been wanting or needing for a long time, and was practical . . . but it felt so good to buy things for ourselves after being so tight with money since we've been married. Anyway, on to our purchases!

#1: Our first tent! It's a 4 man. We love it, and we got a great deal. It was from Costco. The Coleman Rogue 4.

#2: Two new night stands! We have been wanting night stands that match our bed for a long time and these were super cheap at Ikea. (They are actually supposed to be living room end tables, but they are small enough and we think they look fine!)

#3: Can we just say that we love Ikea?! We had time to just browse the store and it's our favorite now. We decided that we'd better get a coffee table too! It was also cheap.
#4: We spent our Target gift cards on tools and flashlights, which we have been needing. Here are a few of them below. One other thing we had kind of been wanting was a spice rack, but we decided instead to spend our remaining Target money on individual spices . . . the ones we will actually use!

#5: With our remaining cash, I got a new pair of jeans (badly needed) and Rob got a new Razor Scooter! He had one at the beginning of this year and he loved having it to ride on campus, but it broke. I told him he could get a new one if we got financial aid . . . although it ended up coming out of the "free" contact money instead!

We really feel good about our purchases. And just when we thought the weekend couldn't get better, the following occurred: Before Easter dinner, my feet were hurting and I was complaining to Rob that I don't have any shoes with arch support and that my only tennis shoes were falling apart. He told me that maybe it would be a good idea to invest in some new ones, but I, of course, was back to tightwad mode. So we ate a delicious turkey dinner and had Katie's friend Cheri and her family over. At the end of dinner, Cheri said, "Hey, Kim (a neighbor and also a friend of Reuben's) has a huge bag of nice used running shoes she is giving to DI. Do you guys need any?" We were shocked. We ran over and tried them on and amazingly, the sizes were perfect and I ended up with 2 great pairs! They are in good condition too! We are so happy. Happy Easter to us!!

Finally, on Sunday evening I "graduated." You see, I graduated in December and they didn't have a ceremony then. They mailed me my diploma and I have the option to walk in the ceremony this month. I decided not to make the trip just to walk, since I have a job now and since my mom won't be in town anyway. So we decided to just take pictures with my diploma. Katie's friend Cheri also just graduated and let me wear her cap and gown to make it more official! So here are my graduation pictures!

My two greatest accomplishments: degree and husband!