Bushed!!

Darwin and I have the opportunity at our apartment complex to help out with maintenance and getting vacant apartments ready for new people to move in; and as an exchange we get money taken off our rent, which is super nice (especially because I'm currently not working it's a way for me to pitch in financially). This is the first month we've helped out and I can honestly tell you...it's hard work! I'm starting to feel the pain :) I'm learning all kinds of new things about fix-up jobs, things that I've never done before. Yesterday I learned how to change the pads in a swamp cooler and the maintenance that goes along with it. I've learned how to properly fill the holes in a wall, and how to rip out the caulking in a bathtub and how to re-caulk it, along with other things. It's partly nice that I've been able to put in so many hours since the semester ended, but my body is definitely letting me know how much I have been working. I'm used to sitting at a keyboard, doing secretarial kind of work and homework type jobs. Physical labor is a new thing for me, but I'm totally enjoying it! It's soo much better than sitting at home doing nothing. Watch out! Because before you know it, I'll be starting my own maintenance company! Haha...Just kidding!

Well learned, well educated.

I'm not trying to be cocky, I'm just totally excited that I was able to pull off my 4.0 gpa this semester! Yay!! This is a huge achievement for me, especially with my high school history and barely graduating because of being so sick. I've always tried to do my best though and my grades were posted this morning as proof. Hooray! I called Darwin on his way to work to tell him the good news and told him we should celebrate. His reply was, "Okay, let's buy some couches!" And I totally agreed, so we did:

Actually, we bought the couches last Thursday and they came on Tuesday. We absolutely love them already! Super comfy and MUCH better than the last set we had, which were given to us from Dar's parents because they didn't want them anymore, and we needed some...who knows how old they were but they were great to have while we had them, especially because they were free. Dar was actually a little attached to the old ones and a little sad to give them up, until he came home from work on Tuesday and sat down on our new couch. When I asked him if he still missed the old ones he said, "What old couches?" :). It was time for us to get new ones. So, that is my reward for doing so well in school. My overall gpa is a 3.67 now, and if I can get another 4.0 in the fall it should go up to a 3.8 gpa which would be AWESOME!!

New addition to the "family"

Despite my protesting, Darwin got a ball python yesterday (for free) from a BYU Professor who is in charge of one of the field trips Dar is going on this summer. Luckily we aren't allowed to have pets at our apartment (except for our 1 beta fish) so the snake is a school pet :) Dar is pretty excited about it and didn't sleep well last night because he was worried the snake would get out during it's one night stay at our place. And, sure enough...the snake tried to escape!! All of this was going on while I was sleeping peacefully, and Darwin was getting up periodically to check on the snake. The snake currently does not have a name, but that shouldn't last much longer. Darwin is having his junior high students put names in a suggestion box and then the students get to vote on the top names so I'll keep you posted on the name for his currently nameless snake. The woman he got the snake from actually breeds them, which is her plan for retirement. When we went to her house yesterday to pick the snake up, she took us down to her basement into a little pantry-like area, but it was full of shelves with containers that each had a snake in it. She's got over 80 snakes in her basement!!! No thank you! Anyway, she was telling Dar about the great money it brings in and she was trying to talk him into getting started with breeding snakes as well. I told him it MAY be a possibility when the kids we don't have yet are grown up and all moved out of the house, and then he looked at me with pouty eyes like he wanted to get involved with it now. Haha. Fat chance. First of all, we are still in an apartment that doesn't allow pets. Second, I don't like snakes and refuse to touch them. Third, he'd be doing all the work himself and he's already swamped with other things. And finally...you need money to start out with something like that. Sorry honey, you're going to have to wait on your life long dream of breeding snakes for a living :)

Bring on the summer!!

I'm extremely excited that I am finished with this semester. I took my last two finals today, and I am aiming for a 4.0 this semester, so I'll let you know in a couple of weeks when my grades come in if I got the 4.0...(fingers crossed). I actually had a really fun semester and I didn't really plan on getting a 4.0, it has just kind of worked out that way, and I'm pretty confident that I'll get it or close to it. I mean I always try to do my best, but the only other time I got a 4.0 was my first semester of college and I was only taking 2 classes at the time. The closest I got in high school was a 3.95 so it would be nice to beat my record. The classes I was taking this semester were Psychology, American Civilizations (which is the class I liked least), English, Ceramics, and Astronomy, a total of 15 credits. Ceramics was really fun but it was actually more difficult than I imagined it to be. My professor made it look so easy, but it definitely takes some skill! Below is a picture of all the work I did in ceramics this semester.

The thing in the front looks hideous, I know, but we had to learn a technique called "coiling" and my project turned out ridiculously awful--that one is most likely going in the garbage eventually. So we had to make three things of just about every assignment we were given. I ended up making 5 bowls (because in my attempt to make mugs I couldn't get the handles to work out so I made my "mugs" into bowls), 4 mugs once I finally got the handles down, 3 pots with lids (totally hard to do the lids, by the way!), 3 bottles (I still haven't figured out what the bottles are used for but we had to learn the technique of bringing the clay in), a coil project which is the ugly one in the front, and a slab project which is the tall one in the back with the ugly glaze job. I was actually quite impressed with how well I did in ceramics this semester. I have never taken a ceramics class before, and I realized that I was somehow doing better than a lot of people in the class, who also had not taken a ceramics class before, but I just have to say I am proud of myself. Especially for being the non-artsy, non-crafty person that I am I feel I did pretty well. The basic principle we had to get down was just centering the clay on the wheel, and then once we got that down we had to learn how to pull the clay up which is also much harder than it looks. I think the problem some people had was just not being able to center their clay properly and I think I had it down pretty well after a while so my stuff didn't turn out as lopsided as some peoples work. Either way, it was a super fun class!

Another fun/exciting thing about finishing up this semester is that I finished top of my class in Astronomy, without the help of Darwin, despite what some people think. He's not the only brains in the family :) He only helped me with a couple of questions throughout the semester and I did everything else on my own. Yay me! The cool thing is that I didn't have to take the final and I still would have had the highest grade, but I took the final anyway because I'll be taking another class in the fall. Astronomy was by far my favorite class this semester because I had an awesome professor, and having the highest grade in the class wasn't too shabby either. Some people are surprised that I enjoyed it so much, and because I enjoyed it so much I decided to take another astronomy class from the same professor in the fall called "Life in the Universe" which sounds intriguing, so we'll see how it goes. One thing we had to tease my professor about is that he is one of that certain group of astronomers who demoted Pluto from being a planet to being a "dwarf planet", or as my professor likes to call it "a Kuiper Belt object". My class enjoyed trying to make him feel bad for his decision, but he didn't budge. After taking the class and learning all we did about the solar system, galaxies, and the universe, it is easy to see why Pluto really isn't a planet. There is a spacecraft on its way to Pluto right now and should arrive in about 8 years, so once it gets there we'll know a lot more about what Pluto really is. I learned more in this class that I actually remember than I feel I have learned in any other class in my college career thus far, although getting a degree in astronomy doesn't sound exciting to me. There's WAY too much math involved!! Anyway, I'm sure I'm probably boring you with my blabbing so I'll leave it at that :)

Liam Jaques Perkins

We have a new addition to our family!! Of course it's not from us :) Hopefully you could tell by the heading. My sister, Shannon, and her husband, Jonathan, welcomed a beautiful baby boy yesterday at 4:59pm, 3 1/2 weeks early. He is completely healthy, weighing in at 5 pounds 12 ounces, and 18 inches long. He even has some hair! Yay! Their first child, Hannah, was born completely bald and finally started growing some hair just before she turned a one. The new baby is Liam Jaques (pronounced Jakes) Perkins, and he is absolutely adorable!! I'm completely in love with him already :) My mom was relieved that Shannon and Jonathan finally agreed on a name, and we don't have to call him "Baby Brother" anymore. Everyone in the family called him "Baby Brother" because that's what Hannah had been calling him. Anyway, I'll just let you see the adorable little evidence for yourself...

Liam Jaques Perkins

The Happy Family

It's he adorable?

See? He has a little bit of hair...

The coolest aunt & uncle ever!!

Tornado named Reagan

So, just a funny little tidbit about us Demings. We are both quite anal about the cleanliness and order of our house, and our friends like to tease us about it sometimes. Well, the McSweeney's, whom I mentioned in an earlier post, have the most adorable little girl named Reagan. She's nine months old, and we joke with them that she's not going to know who her real parents are because we're with the McSweeney's so much.


Anyway, we took Jared and Tracee out for dinner on Saturday to celebrate their birthdays (a month late, sorry guys!) and afterwards came back to our place. Well, one of Reagan's new favorite things is to pull out all the DVDs at her grandma's house, and because we have our alphabetized DVDs out in the open, Jared was encouraging Reagan to pull all of ours out so that we'd have to go through and re-alphabetize them to get them back where we prefer to have them (it's soo much easier to find the movie you're looking for when they're alphabetized!!). Below is a mischievous picture of Reagan and the tornado-looking disaster she made in our house, and this is when she was just getting started!


It was really quite funny to watch her, and Darwin pretending to be upset with her. Darwin would make a loud sound, or whistle at her every time she tried to touch the DVDs, but she would just look at him curiously, and go back to her task. Also, if you notice, in both pictures you can see that she has a cell phone in her hand. She loves anyone's cell phone she can get her hands on, and she held on to Darwin's almost the entire time they were here. She is such an adorable, funny little girl, and Reagan...you can come play with our DVDs anytime you want! (Until we have kids of our own, of coarse!)

We Finally Did It!!

So, we're a little slower than most people when it comes to finishing the Harry Potter series, but WE FINALLY DID IT! Last night at 10:40pm we finally finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, the 7th and final book of the series. I know some of you will be happy because you won't have to be so "hush, hush" about it around us anymore. The reason it took us so long is because Darwin had the idea that he wanted to re-read the 4th book again before the 4th movie came out, so we decided to read it together. Actually, Darwin reads it out loud to me, and does different voices for all the characters...he's better than the guy on the cd! We didn't actually get it completely finished before the 4th movie came out, because we mainly read in the car on road trips, but once we finished the 4th book it had been long enough since I read the 5th book that we had to read that one again. We didn't have the 5th book finished before the 6th book came out, and it was kind of a domino affect from there. So, we got behind in our reading, but we at last met our goal. We've been doing some serious Harry Potter reading in the last few weeks, so much that Darwin's neck has been hurting and his spine has been swollen from looking down at the book for so long (he's such a great guy!). But, his physical suffering and our curiosity is now over, after a long wait and great anticipation of completing the book we've so longed to finish. We both agreed that we liked the ending, after hearing from other people that they didn't. J.K. Rowling is an amazing author, and it would be fantabulous if she were to write another series just as good, although we highly doubt it. Anyway, for those of you against reading Harry Potter, I repeat my opinion that you are missing out. I highly recommend reading these amazing books!

10 Steps to a Happier Life

It seems that during our life here on this earth there are many things we are striving to achieve. One of those things is a life filled with happiness. As I was reading in my psychology text book this morning, I found a list of 10 tips on how to be happier. Here they are:

1. Realize that enduring happiness doesn't come from financial success.
2. Take control of your time.
3. Act happy.
4. Seek work and leisure that engage your skills.
5. Join the "movement" movement. (EXERCISE!!)
6. Give your body the sleep it wants. Studies show, and it's pretty much common sense, that we perform better and have more patience when we get enough sleep.
7. Give priority to close relationships. You never know what's going to happen the next day. Never let a moment pass you by to tell someone you love them.
8. Focus beyond self. Self fulfillment is found through serving others.
9. Be grateful. Hmm...for those of us of the LDS Faith, does that ring a bell?
10. Nurture your spiritual self. One of the best steps in my opinion!!

So there you have it. 10 steps from the field of psychology on how to live a happier life...now go and do it!

Tribute to the last weekend in March

Along with just about everyone else, Darwin got sick this weekend, but we've been fortunate enough that he's only been sick over the weekends so far this year and hasn't had to take any days off from school yet. (Fingers are still crossed) Despite his cold, we knew there was going to be a snow storm blowing in and decided to take advantage of the nice weather we had Saturday morning. Jared and Tracee McSweeney, some good friends of ours, invited us to spend the day with them cruising around and do a little shooting as well. We ventured down to the south-west end of Utah Lake for a picnic, but by the time we got there the wind had really picked up and the temperature dropped dramatically! Our plans for a nice picnic were almost crushed until someone came up with the idea to just have a picnic in the back of their car. I wish we had had our camera with us to capture the image of four adults and a baby crammed into the back of a Subaru Outback, crouched down, trying to eat a meal with all the picnic items piled into the middle of us. It was a great scene, and we had a blast.



Anytime you decide to have food outside in Utah, you can undoubtedly expect some company...the California Seagull, the Utah State bird. When we finished picking off all the meat we wanted from the chicken Jared and Tracee had brought, Jared threw the rest of it out on the beach for the seagulls to eat up. We had the most entertaining time for at least half an hour watching the seagulls try to fight the extremely strong winds, and each other, to snatch a piece of that yummy chicken. It's amazing the strength they have, and the determination to get some grub! One of the seagulls swallowed an entire chicken leg bone whole!! We couldn't help but laugh at our pathetic form of entertainment for the day. Good times! It's those simple moments in life that we cherish, right?

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Most of you were probably not aware that the all time classic story of The Wizard of Oz is considered to be the very first American fairy tale. I learned that in my American Civilization class this semester and I am currently working on a report on it. Through my research I discovered that many people view the Wizard of Oz as symbolic of America following the Great Depression and the desolation our country was in following the Stock Market crash in the 1920s. I have heard that speculation as well but through further research found out that The Wizard of Oz was in fact written well before the 1920s and first published in 1900. That was an interesting bit of information to find out after reading about all the symbolism the story holds...turns out it's not true. I guess we learn something new everyday!! I thought I'd share some of the supposed symbolisms with you:

Oz = ounces (representative of the measurement for gold)
Yellow Brick Road = Bricks of ingot bars of gold
Scarecrow = representation of the legal "Straw Man"
Tin Man = representation of the Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN)
Cowardly Lion = representation of the once-fearless American people
Kansas = the heart of America, located almost in the center of the country
Emerald City = The Federal Reserve System
Wizard = the scum-bag, con-artist, of the day trying to make a living by cheating people out of their money/dreams
Toto (in Latin) = in total, all together (the witch wanted to take TOTO, everything)
The witch being destroyed with pure clean water = representation of liquidation

Anyway, that's just a few of them. You can see why people get confused as to the true origin and intent of the story? I just thought I'd try to make some clarification.

Happy Easter!

Our Easter was most definitely uneventful this year, but it was nice to have a mellow, relaxing holiday. The day before Easter we colored eggs with our niece and nephew, Andrew and Emma, which has turned into a tradition because we've done it with them for three years now. It's much more fun to dye eggs with kids than just by ourselves, although we always get something entertaining out of it. Easter Sunday we had dinner with Kiara's family and then a second dinner with Darwin's family and stuffed ourselves on yummy Easter ham and other goodies. Unfortunately now that Easter is over, that means our Spring Breaks are over as well and we're back to work and school as usual. We're counting down the weeks to summer vacation (which comes earlier for Kiara than for Darwin)!!

Slackers

Ok, I know that Darwin and I are slackers on posting on our blog, and I apologize. Quite honestly, our lives aren't the most exciting right now...we just do the same old things every single day, almost. Darwin is well into his first year of teaching at Union Middle School in Sandy, Utah, spending his days with 7th and 9th graders and loving it most of the time. I am currently going to school full time and not working. It's been great to just focus on school and I am proud to say that I have the highest grade in my astronomy class this semester (without any help from Darwin, for those of you who think he's the only one with brains in this family!). I am well on my way to finally finishing up with my associates degree and will be finished in December. Yay!! We are looking forward to Easter this coming Sunday, and once again for General Conference in the next couple of weeks. And, with the end of my Spring semester coming up in about 6 weeks, I am seriously going to try to keep up with our blog, and hopefully over the summer our lives will become more exciting.

Happy October

Believe it or not, October is here!! We are completely stoked for several reasons. With it being the first weekend in October we, as well as many of you, are looking forward to an exciting weekend of listening to a Prophet of God, along with the Apostles and other great Church leaders. I encourage you all to watch General Conference as some significant changes will be taking place. We will be getting a new counselor in the 1st General Presidency due to our dear President Faust's passing. We will also be receiving a new apostle to fill that vacancy as well. But, more important, is we get to listen to the word of God, directly from his servants' mouth. How much greater could things be? What a great time to live in!

Another reason for us to be excited is the changing of the leaves and the cooler temperatures. Autumn is one of our favorite times of year, and who doesn't love hot chocolate season? We were able to enjoy a nice joy ride a few Sunday's back. We drove up to Squaw Peak, at the mouth of Provo Canyon, to admire the beautiful leaves on the mountain. As we were driving, we discovered that the road just kept going, and going, and going. The bad thing was that the paved road turned into a dirt/rocky road that our little Suzuki Forenza probably shouldn't have been traveling on. Everyone we passed (none of them were cars by the way...they were all either trucks or 4-wheelers) looked at us as if we were crazy for taking our little car on the road. But, we had faith in our little car and fortunately, she stuck it out for us, and we made it saftely back out of Hobble Creek Canyon, in Springville. It only took us 3 hours (the drive really only takes about 15-20 minutes on the "normal" roads) but we enjoyed every bit of our little adventure.

And the third reason for us to be excited about October...HALLOWEEN! Although we still don't have many decorations to show our love of the festivities, we are doing the best with what we've got. Someday our collection of decorations will expand, but for now we enjoy the yummy smells, the excitement, and the beauty of the earth during this time of year. We hope you all enjoy this time of year as much as we do.