Dirty Laundry

I love living in the student housing at the U of U.  It really is great to walk outside and see a ton of kids running around playing and riding their bikes.  Even better is when all the bikes are laying around on the ground at the end of the day when kids have all gone inside for the night.  Highly reminiscent of home in a strangely positive way, and kind of therapeudic when you're really homesick. 

Unfortunately with living in student housing, it means you live the life of a student.  And that includes the "on sight laundry facility".  For 24 apartments there are 2 washers and 3 dryers.  I didn't really have a problem with "sharing" a laundry facility until I got here.  Sure, I've complained about how gross the laundry room was at our old apartment, but never getting a chance to get one load done is reminscent of home in a not-so-positive way.

What makes things worse is that people just leave their stuff in the washers and dryers.  I'm sorry, but don't get upset if you leave your stuff in a shared washer or dryer forever and come back to find it in a pile on top of the washer.  The laundry room hours are from 8am to 10 pm, and I work full time, not enough time left over in my day to finish 4 loads of laundry.  That leaves me one day a week that I am able to do my laundry, and I'd rather not spend the entire day getting it done. 

Today was especially rediculous.  When I got to the laundry room I waited a good 15 minutes before the person came in to put her wet laundry in the dryers.  Then she got all huffy at me because I had the nerve to have to do laundry at the same time as her. How dare I?  So to be "fair to me" she said I can use one of the washers while she uses the other.  The catch, she already had stuff in ALL of the dryers and just left everything in there, so when it was time for me to dry my clothes I had to remove her stuff. I was nice enough to only dump her things out of one dryer. By the time I had finished washing and drying 4 loads of laundry, one at a time, her things were still sitting in the other washer and dryers.  Nothing had been moved since the first time I walked in this morning.  SO FRUSTRATING!  I had a million things to get done today, on my day off, but I had to sacrifice doing a lot of it so that this girl can leave her stuff all over the place, and be a brat about it at the same time.

There needs to be a rule against this type of behavior.  My suggestion:  Laundry Jail.  If you leave your stuff in the washer or dyer for more than 15 minutes after it is done, it goes into Laundry Jail and you have to pay a fine to get it out.  And too bad if it's all wet and smells like mildew, you get to pay to rewash your clothes, too.  This isn't your Mom and Dad's house where you can go out to lunch and run errands between loads of laundry.  You leave it, I WILL move it.  And I won't even feel bad if it gets wrinkled.

Happy Birthday Lily!

Today our little Lily would be two years old.  I feel like now is the perfect time to reflect back on the impact that this little sweetheart has made on our hearts and lives, even though she was here for what seemed like such a short time before she went back to her Heavenly Father.  Lillian Marilyn Morris was born on Septemer 27th, 2009 to her mommy Keri, daddy Nathan, and big brother Jonathan.  She was such a cute little peanut!  Lily continued to grow and smile, and absolutely adored her big brother.  Any time he was in the room with her she just smiled and giggled.

When she was six months old her parents took her to the ER, fearing that she had the Chicken Pox, only to find out something much worse had happened. Lily was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.  She successfully underwent 4 rounds of chemotherapy in preparation for a bone marrow transplant, and in June 2010 achieved full remission!

On September 16th 2010 Lily had her bone marrow transplant from her very special donor.  On October 12th she got to come home from the hospital ahead of schedule.  It was such a miracle to have her home at last.  Unfortunately during a routine bone marrow test several weeks later, her doctors were surprised to find that the cancer had relapsed.

Although the doctors were not able to cure Lily's cancer, her family was able to give her a beautiful life at home where she spent 53 days playing, singing, eating chocolate, dressing up, dancing, crawling, laughing and clapping.  Lily enjoyed every moment and grew and reached new milestones.

On December 4th, 2010 Lily earned her angel wings at 11:10 pm.  Although our hearts are broken and we miss hear dearly, we move forward with the faith that we will see our little Lily again.  I know that she is watching over her family, and safe in the arms of our Heavenly Father, where she will never suffer again.

It is so amazing how one little girl can leave such a lasting impression on so many. All through her life she smiled so big and was always so happy, even though she was battling such a malicious disease. I am so proud to have had Lily in my life, and to call her my neice. She is such a special little girl and I will never forget just how incredible she was.

Happy Birthday Daniel!

Yesterday my amazing husband turned 30!  It's a big milestone, and I wish we got to do something a little more fun than work and school, but we still got to spend a little bit of time together.  And I must say for never having made a cake myself, I think I did a good job.  I put up a couple pictures of his birthday decorations and some pictures of him growing up :) Happy Birthday Daniel, I love you!

Welcome!

Hello friends!  Please forgive me, I am pretty rusty at my blogging skills but I promise that I will make things more interesting as I become more familiar with this.  Dan and I are in the process of moving into the student housing at the University of Utah where we finally have access to the necessities of life (internet, air conditioning, and cable t.v.).  It's been a very interesting move so far.  I have to admit that I was so excited to get the heck out of our old apartment and into a place where I wouldn't actually melt while I was sleeping, but now I am sad to say good-bye to our first home together.  Sniff.  But hey, we're on to bigger and better things :)  I got way too carried away with finally having air conditioning and turned our new place into Narnia.  Seriously I think only my dad, polar bears, and penguins could come in here and be comfortable with how cold it is.  Now I think I can tackle the project of unpacking this place properly!  And I promise I will be more interesting (ish) in my next post.  Night Night!