Food for Thought

I am taking a little break from the current and crushing stress of a group project for my senior seminar to write a little post and relish in the fact that we are almost completely moved out!!! I say almost because there is a little bit left to be done, but...we have never been closer. I'm sitting here in the library reflecting back on the last two weeks and all its craziness and just thinking about how weird life is...it's weird to me that we can be so settled in our lovely apartment, then pick up everything we own and move, and within a short time so much is different, but life still continues, and then really I guess, a lot is still the same. Like Mckay's mustache, still the same. still there. maybe a little worse than last week but still there. I thought I would let it last through March, you know, "Mustache March", something I'm sure Mckay made up himself. But with April 1st just around the corner I'm not so sure I want to see it go, maybe I find his ugly mustache calming, and endearing, a source of stability in the midst of all this chaos. wow I'm tired. What a day. Can you tell I've been at the library for the last 3 hours?

ANYWAYS...on to the real reason I'm writing this post...this packing/moving/cleaning process has spanned the last two weeks and we have found ourselves back and forth between Provo and Orem almost daily. I'm not sure really why but dishes and silverware were one of the first things to get packed so we've often found ourselves in Provo, starving and with no way of eating. I cannot even guess how many Betos sausage breakfast burritos we have consumed but let me tell you its been A.LOT. Nothing like a burrito the size of your forearm and a pepsi to fill you up. We also took the opportunity to try a couple of restaurants in downtown Provo we haven't been to yet. 2 really. Diego's Taco Shop and Sammy's. so here's our review:

Diegos: (45 West 300 North)

Tasty. They have refried black beans, which we had never sampled, or knew existed, but felt good eating them, cuz somehow we feel refried black beans are healthier than normal refried beans. I got a Chile Relleno, which had raisins and olives in it, I never expected that but was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. I'm picky about my enchilada sauce, like really picky, and theirs made me happy. Mckay had some burrito with green sauce, which was also delicious. The inside of the restaurant was fun, there's a whole wall of flat screen tv's so we got to witness the horrors of dog fighting courtesy of Animal Planet, something I wouldnt want to watch ever, let alone while eating Mexican. Besides that fact we really enjoyed it!

Sammy's: (27 North 100 West)

oh boy did I love this place. Not only was it a perfect warm sunny day but the food was really good! I admit me and Mr. Rytting do enjoy a good burger and this place did not dissappoint. I cant remember what burger we got, but the main thing is they had sweet potato fries. Those did us in. And they have shakes, lots and lots of shakes, we were too full to try one but they have "pie shakes", we will definitely be going back for one of those. They even have HAPPY HOUR, where shakes are half off. Not a bad idea.

**photo's courtesy of the iphone.

We love finding and trying new places to eat, and it was fun trying one's so close to our home. We're always on the lookout for some place new to try so if anyone has recommendations please fill us in :)

On tHe MoVE

OUR life is in a current state of TRANSITION. or so Mckay calls it. I call it chaos. The Rytting's have moved, or are moving.... was moving earlier today, not so much right this second. I'm tired. Saturday we started the move out of our sweet and much beloved apartment in Provo where we have spent the last 2 years and have moved up to North Orem to live with Mckay's family. At this exact second our material lives are spread between Provo, our storage unit, and our new home. Like I said, Chaos. There was a time I couldn't find my deoderant... Anyways we don't have to be moved out until the 4th of April and with work and school we knew we would have to space it out over a couple of days, maybe weeks but wow would I love for this to be over already! There's nothing like moving to realize how much crap two people can accumulate. I think we've filled at least 6 bags designated for the DI.


So why the sudden move? There's a mountain of reasons most of which involve $$$.

Reason 1:

Ol' reliable Debbie is not so reliable anymore. Despite her pretty looks our sweet car has been a serious financial troublemaker. I've stopped looking at her as our getaway car for so many fun trips and now see her as a bottomless black pit that we keep throwing money into. We have spent literally THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of dollars over the last few years trying to maintain her, so needless to say we need a new car. Now money that was spent on rent will go towards a new car.

Reason #2: School. We are finally seeing the light at the end of a very long tunnel that is the Chemical Engineering Degree. This major is so intense poor husband hardly has anytime to work, now he has to worry about publishing and research on top of school work and later this summer he will be applying to grad schools. So now there's less financial stress and we can start saving for grad school..... being an adult is hard sometimes.

So thats whats new in Ryttingland. We are so grateful to be able to stay with family, its going to help out so much. Hopefully it lasts....we moved in with Mckay's family the first year we were married and I only lasted 2 1/2 months, I just love having our own little place to take care of.

Other than the move the only new bit of news is Mckay's mustache, which I really should get a picture of. That too might not last. I'm tempted to shave it off while he sleeps...

March so far...

The morning after Adam came home we woke up to find this outside:

inches and inches of snow that was so unbelievably pretty but my goodness am I sick of this stuff! We Ryttings are getting so antsy for Spring.

With the family all together, except brother in Australia, we made our way up last weekend to Pei Wei, where we definitely did some damage. I think we ordered about 12 dishes and I'm proud to say we cleared each one of them.

After Pei Wei we headed up to the Jazz game....

Last minute tickets meant we watched the game from here:

Which is fine, but I'll be honest we were so high I was getting dizzy. Nothing some banana split dip n' dots couldn't fix. :) by the way what are dip n'dots? I hadn't had them in years and they are such a curious thing. strange but kind of tasty.

This Friday our sweet brother Chrissy turned 18. To celebrate we headed up to a family favorite in Midway.

If you love Mexican food you have to try this place it's authentic and oh so tasty. We've come here so many times and I have never had anything I didn't like. They have a salsa bar, a major perk. If you ever decide to give it a try feel free to invite us along :)

Happy Birthday Chris! (we missed you Mairin!)

I made some minor changes to our blog in celebration of the upcoming holiday. basically just changed the color scheme. but Happy St. Patty's Day :)

brother.

brother is home from the Netherlands. We are so excited.

shhhh.....it's a qUiEt BooK...

I've been crafting lately. I'm currently on a self imposed break because the laundry wasnt getting put away, dishes weren't being unloaded, ect. etc. I started this project 110% aware of the fact that we currently don't have kids to even play with it when it's done. And even if we did have a kid it would still be a while until they could start to understand the activities in the book. But regardless of this I have been working on this quiet book almost daily. I don't know what it its, maybe it's that I spend all my Sundays in Nursery-land, and lots of time towards running our little ward nursery, but all I seem to want to do lately are kids crafts. I was seeing ideas for Quiet Books all over the craft-blog world so in December I finally attempted one of my own. I'm justifying my kid crafting while currently "kid-less" by knowing that I'm sure I would never be able to find time to start, let alone finish this when we eventually do have children. And anyways its fun. It's something to do while we're watching a movie or Mckay's playing the boring Nintendo :)

There are a million different kinds of quiet books to make, and I plan on making more but for this one I'm optimistically planning on an alphabet book, each letter has a page with some sort of activity to go along with it. Here's how far I've gotten:

A: Apples- the apples will eventually be buttoned to the tree, this will help our kids to learn the basic motor skill of unbuttoning. so...unbutton the apples, put them in the basket.

B-Balloons, each balloon has a double that is sewn to the page, the balloons velcro on , so the kids will learn to match colors.

C-Catepillar, the individual circles are velcroed to the page, this will help them learn to count. take all the circles off and have them put them back in order. basic basic.
D-Dominos. I had a hard time deciding what to do for D but finally decided to do dominos because Mckay played with them when he was little. This will help with learning numbers and colors when they have to match the ends of the dominos, these are also velcro-ed to the page.
E-elephant. This was unfinished when i took the picture. just imagine a big box that says "elephant food" in the right hand corner filled with hand sewn peanuts and heads of lettuce. This is another page to help with counting...."feed the elephant 3 peanuts and 2 salads..." easy

F-farm. This page is quite possibly my favorite so far. My mom is over achievement days and she was talking to me one day about wanting to make finger puppets. I found a shop on etsy where she makes felt finger puppets. $5 dollars for each... no thanks, so I made some myself, very far from perfect but still so fun to make :)

eventually the pages will have letters on them. I don't know much about sewing, so I've just been hand stitching everything and sort of making things up as I go. 6 pages down....20 to go... hopefully it gets finished :)