Usually Unusual Things

As usual, it had been a while since I have blogged. In the past month we've had quite a few unusual things happen. Some good and fun, and some not so good and fun.

First! On November 19th at 4 a.m. I woke up to Bryce who had woken up to an awful smell. To make a long story relatively short, he looked outside, saw a cop car and smoke billowing out of our building. At the words "Annie it's a fire!" I jumped out of bed, got dressed in about 30 seconds (we're talking jeans, t-shirt, boots, snow jacket...I was gonna be ready for anything) grabbed my backpack with laptop, phone, keys, and wallet inside and we headed outside as our apartment began to fill with smoke. By that point police officers were banging on everyone's doors to get them out of the building. I have never seen so many women in bathrobes. As we watched smoke literally pour and pour out of our apartment building, I kept thinking "WHYYYYY don't we have RENTERS INSURANCE!?!?" Luckily (I say that somewhat sarcastically) it was only a car fire in our parking garage. After about an hour and a half we were let back into our apartments, only to find a layer of soot and ash over everything. Not to mention the whole place smelled of lovely burnt rubber. I went back to sleep for about 4 hours.
We later found out that someone had stolen a pickup truck, used it in an "extensive" robbery, and then parked it in our parking garage (which is directly under about 18 apartments with real PEOPLE living inside!) and then BLEW IT UP. SMART, loser. The truck and the car next to it were engulfed in flames, and both were totaled. Luckily (I say this seriously) the gas tank didn't blow, which probably saved the rest of our cars from complete destruction and the building...and potentially our lives (AND, all of my awesome stuff). I took a picture from our balcony of the towing people dragging the truck out of the garage. Take a look!

Our apartment and car have since been cleaned and no longer smell nasty. Victory!

Number 2! Bryce had a 24th Birthday! Now that doesn't happen very often in a lifetime now does it? We had a quiet celebration going out to dinner with Taylor and Ed and then having cake and ice cream. 24 candles produces a lot of smoke...no more fires please!


And then we went to Oregon for Thanksgiving (not too unusual, since we went last year too) and ate a lot of food and shopped a little bit and put the Christmas tree up and played Risk twice (I won both times) and watched college football and made gingerbread houses and other stuff. Here's the house Bryce and I decorated together. We were very proud of our wreaths and M&M roofs thank you very much.


Last weekend Bryce took me on a date to The Festival of Trees at the expo center. He told me where we were going and I said, "What's at the expo center??" But it was really fun! There were lots of families and LOTS of kids. We bought some fudge and walked around looking at the quilts, trees, and other Christmas decor. I took pictures of things that reminded me of people I know.
First, the Donna Quilts.



Then the "Purplicious" spread (Niece Mckenna)

Then, the Ashley and Greg display (My sister-in-law and her husband...she plays the violin, and they're both kind of short)

Taylor Tree (it the Eiffel Tower and he served his mission in Paris)

And the SNOOPY decor! For Bryce, of course...because he loves snoopy??


A few more unusual things have happened over the past couple of days. Yesterday I stayed up pretty late finishing up a group project on campus until nearly 1 a.m. and then finishing up a 5-page paper. So this morning I wasn't feeling all too jazzy, and I hadn't showered for two days, so I was really looking forward to that. To my extreme disappointment, when I went to turn the water on in the shower, all that came out was a tiny tiny trickle. I panicked, and then remembered that we had received a notice that our water was being turned off for about 6 hours today. Well, poop. So like any stinky and resourceful girl would do, I filled a cereal bowl and water bottle with any water left in our pipes (kitchen sink, bathroom sink, and shower), and then washed my hair and face, and brushed my teeth with it. Another victory!

To improve a somewhat stressful day, Bryce called me this afternoon and said that he had just found out he got accepted to Michigan State Law School with a half-tuition scholarship!! YES! We celebrated at Costa Vida, naturally.