free meals for a week + cookies!

Kelley, with all his good intentions, volunteered us to teach marrieds class this past Sunday at church. The week flew by, as usual. We had read the lesson during the week, but Saturday rolled around pretty quickly and it was crunch time. Kelley had to study so I read through the lesson again. It was a pretty short lesson so I was trying to figure out what kind of discussion could take up more time. Finally, Kelley offered to make dinner for the next week if I would take charge of the lesson. He said I had more experience because I teach Relief Society - I don't know so much about that :) However, an added bonus is that he made cookies for class... at 11 pm. As he finished the dough he woke me up (I was asleep on the couch) and reminded me it was Fast Sunday so no cookies to distract the people. Free dinner and cookies.... all for 40 minutes of lesson... what a deal!

Don't worry, Kelley did have input in the lesson, but I still get the meals... and cookies :) Lucky me!

Jasmine

Jasmine (our 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid car) is getting fixed today! She is having some body work done to her to fix the marks that were left after the accident that we were in from December. It will be great to have her looking pretty and new again. Thanks for being patient Jasmine!

The Streak is Over!

Joo Lin and I have been really good lately but the streak is finally over. We had made it TEN consecutive days without eating out for lunch or dinner. I think the longest streak before that was two days.

We ended the streak by getting dinner from Qdoba's, it's a local fresh-mex restaurant, last night. Our motivation behind this insanity is to be healthier, to lose weight, and to save money. Hopefully we can be stronger and go another ten days without eating out. Wish us luck!

Kelley and Joo Lin Rice

Christmas Pictures

I have created a website that Joo Lin and I can share photos with everyone. The first set of pictures is from Christmas 2006 at my mothers house. There will be more to come soon. Maybe even some wedding photos!

The link is Kelley and Joo Lin Photo's

ENJOY!

Kelley's talent

I wanted to share Kelley's beautiful picture with everyone. He took it on his digital camera. This is the first snow of the year in Corvallis, Oregon behind the building where we work overlooking the river. Could be a beautiful postcard, couldn't it?

Piggy Piggy

So, today I was a very bad wife. Amy brought donuts to work and of course I ate one. Later in the morning I was SO tempted to eat another. However, I held out because I knew I should be healthy and just eat the lunch I had brought. I did contemplate saving one for Kelley... I even discussed it with Amy. It was his favorite kind - regular with cinnamon and sugar coating. I decided not to put it aside, though, because I thought I'd be more tempted to eat it if I touched it. I kept close watch on it.... then after lunch it was sitting there... tempting me with its sugary goodness. So I took it and put it on the plate. Again, I thought about saving it for Kelley... and thought... then just took a nibble... and another one... and suddenly it was gone! Unfortunately, (the good wife that I am!) I was honest with Kelley about eating 2 donuts today. One thing led to another and he found out what kind and that I didn't save it for him. Good thing he's such a forgiving husband :) He even cleaned the apartment this afternoon and it would have been the perfect surprise. C'est la vie - ha!

Beaver Snowman

We received more snow in Corvallis the past two days. It has been great! I didn't get a chance to play in it as much as I wanted because OSU decided not to close down for the day but some silly kids had some fun without me and made this snow man. Go Beavs!

Back to School

Today is the first day of school for Winter Term for me. I am taking two Business classes (New Venture Finance and International Business), two Sociology classes (Juvenile Delinquency and Criminology and Penology), an Economics class (Intro to Microeconomics), and one P.A.C. class (Team Handball). It should be a fun and entertaining term. If anyone ever wants to challenge me to a game of handball after this term I will gladly accept.

Burning Down the House

Joo Lin and I had a close call last night. We were attempting to cook dinner, stir fry with rice noodles, and we were waiting for the oil to heat up in the wok. I started to notice a bad smell coming from the wok so I slowly lifted the lid on the wok to notice black smoke rising out of it. I inhaled a good portion of it and lowered the lid back on the wok. Joo Lin looked at me strangely and I lifted the lid up and more smoke came gushing out. I panicked and then Joo Lin tried to get the cover off the wok while I frantically went to open the doors and windows to get the smoke out of our apartment.

After she had gotten the cover off it started to flame up. We looked at each other like we were a deer stuck in headlights. I said to her that I didn't know what to do, so we covered it up again. Then we decided to open it up again, still flames. I told her that I didn't know what to do still and she told me to get the baking soda not the baking powder on it. So I grab the baking soda frantically and proceeded to toss some on the flames. BIG MISTAKE! As it just made the flames bigger. I looked at Joo Lin who was still holding on to the lid, and we decided to put the lid back on it.

So I grabbed the lid away from her and slowly put it back on. The apartment was covered in black smoke by now, and I decided that I didn't any explosions in the apartment so I took the wok outside and placed it in an empty parking spot that was far away from any cars. I took the lid off and more smoke came out but no flames this time. Joo Lin went and got me a class full of water and while she did this I decided to pour the hot oil onto our grass outside. I then decided to put water onto the grass with the oil, BIG MISTAKE, as it foamed. I thought to myself, that this was cool and then proceed to put some water in the wok which still had some oil in it. It foamed up again. I ran back to the parking spot with the wok in hand and placed it back in the same spot as before.

To finish off this story, you would think that someone with the last name of Rice would know how to cook rice noodles. But we don't.

Beavers Win Bowl Game

On Friday December 29th, the Oregon State Beaver Football team played the Missouri Tigers in the 2006 Sun Bowl in El Paso Texas. We weren't fortunate to attend the game but we were able to watch the game on the new television (42" Plasma) and also in HD (High Definition) .

The game was an emotional roller coaster. Towards the beginning of the fourth quarter, when the Beavers where trailing by 14, Joo Lin would later admit that she thought that I was going to be in a horrible mood for the rest of the day and she was trying to figure out how she was going to deal with me. Luckily the Beavers came back and with less than 30 seconds left in the game they scored a touchdown. We were screaming and jumping up down (luckily the crazy anal neighbor lady was at work) and celebrating the score. All they needed to do was kick the extra point and then the game was going to go into OT. The Tigers would end up calling a timeout, trying to ice Alexis Serna, but when the timeout was over, the Beavers were lined up for the two point conversion. The Beavers were going to attempt to win the game instead of attempting the point after touchdown (PAT). I joked with Joo Lin that they might go for the two instead of tying the game, she asked me what I would do and I told her that I would play it safe and kick the PAT. Matt Moore (QB) hiked the ball, and in slow motion, handed the ball off to Yvenson Bernard (RB).....HE SCORED!!!! THE BEAVERS WIN, THE BEAVERS WIN!!!!! 39-38

We were hooting and hollering, I told Joo Lin that I wanted to run around the apartment complex naked and she advised against it. Smart decision that was.

P.S. We updated the Beaver bathroom (and Joo Lin thinks it looks fabulous!)

Merry Christmas to Kelley

I love that we opened our Christmas gifts to each other early! It was such a fun time. I got Kelley flannel pajama pants, an OSU polo shirt (he’s quite dashing in it), an OSU sweatshirt for the rainy days, a beard trimmer (boring), and.....

(drum roll please)

…. a Bluetooth earpiece. Not necessarily for the intention of using his phone, but rather his Playstation 3. Yes, the wonderful wife that I am, I buy him gaming accessories because he loves it (and he still pays attention to me!).

In his stocking, he got the movie “Benchwarmers.” We think it’s hilarious. The funniest part about it, though, is this: we watched it Christmas Eve with his mom and sister. They missed the beginning so we started it again and Kelley laughed just as much the second time through. What a nut!

Jasmine got hurt :(

Jasmine (our Honda Civic Hybrid) got hurt Saturday, December 16th. We were out and about, making a stop at Costco to pick up a few things. I was driving (boo!), pulled out of the parking space, stopping to wait for a break in the cars so I could pull into the main driveway in the parking lot. A lady (driving a bit erratically, I might add, since she was stopped but then felt the need to cut off a car and pull towards us) suddenly pulled into our parking lane. I noticed that she was extremely close to Jasmine and as a driver facing another driver, which is never a good sign. Suddenly I heard the cars scrape. I yelled (to nobody) "what are you doing?!” Kelley immediately jumped out of the car and there we were with our cars touching.

I hear the other driver's voice say "she is kind of crooked..." but a witness (thank goodness!) saw everything and then gave a statement. The blue car (Jasmine) was completely stopped, the white car pulled too close when there was plenty of room. Therefore, the other driver is at fault. She then admitted it was her fault.

Kelley assessed the situation to get us out of the parking lane as we were blocking traffic. I pulled forward; we both parked in spots, and exchanged information.

We got a couple estimates and it's about $500 worth of damage. We are now trying to get it worked out and repaired. The other driver is giving us grief because she wants to pay out of pocket but only use her shady, out-of-his-garage friend. We think not. Stay posted for the results of the drama.

Congratulations Cougars

Way to go BYU Cougars! Joo Lin's team killed the ducks! BYU 38 - Oregon 8.

Christmas Comes Early

Christmas came early at the Rice residence this year. After hearing that our plans for our anniversary got canceled we decided to cheer each other up by opening our presents early. It was fun but everyone is saying that we are silly for not waiting. We just couldn't.

I bought Joo Lin a new watch. She loves it. She is randomly telling me the time throughout the day. It's extremely cute when she does it! She also got some cool socks, she loves socks. I also got her the game Apple's to Apple's. She also got that for me but it was for my stocking so I hadn't unwrapped it yet. We both got a good laugh about that. Don't worry, it wasn't a laughing fit.

I will let her tell everyone what she got me. I am trying to have her make more entries in our blog so I will give her the assignment of writing about what she got me. She also has one more writing assignment too, it's about Jasmine :(

Well, I wanted to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday. Merry Christmas everyone!

1st Anniversary

We had our anniversary this past weekend. I had a wonderful weekend lined up for the two of us but we ran into some bad luck. I got a call Saturday morning after running some errands from the Hotel in Seaside and they said that they informed us that they still didn't have power because of the Great Wind/Blackout Storm of 2006. Since they didn't have power, they canceled our reservations. I broke the news to Joo Lin and we decided to stay home and had a relaxing weekend.

I had planned to take Joo Lin up to Astoria for the day and we were going to take part in a "Goonies" tour that I had put together. I found a couple of websites that said where everything was and I was going to go off of that for our tour. We were also going to see places from "Kindergarten Cop", "Short Circuit", "Free Willy", and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III". It would have been awesome!!!

Hopefully when the weather clears up we can take a trip out to Astoria and hang out in the Goon docks together.

Wedding Website

We slacked off on the wedding website but it's up and running again with some new additions. The website will soon have some pictures from the wedding and also some pictures from the honeymoon. So please check it out if you get a free minute. Our family would really appreciate it.

If you forgot where the wedding website was, it can be found at
http://www.kelleyandjoolinforever.com/

The Great Wind / Blackout Storm of December 2006

Oh, the drama! Windy and rainy yesterday, we knew it was coming... total blackness. Around 7:00 pm in our little area of Corvallis, with Kelley in his office and me in the living room, it happened. All power went out. I called for Kelley; he found the flashlight and came to find me. We lit all our candles and... realized we were hungry. So off we went to find food. We thought the other side of Corvallis or Philomath might have somewhere up and running. Nope, everywhere was pitch black. There were limbs, trees, and signs down. Back home Kelley thought of the great idea to use our propane BBQ to cook up some chicken. So, don't worry - we didn't starve :) While we ate chicken, we played the game of Life and had a grand old time.

Sometimes I tend to have laughing fits. Kelley times them, silly guy! Somehow Kelley brought up the idea to take a photo of the "great wind storm / blackout of 2006" and said it would be a black photo. It apparently hit my funny spot because I laughed hysterically. I could picture it in my head and it was the funniest thing ever. Oh, the silly times we have.

Christmas at the Rice's

Joo Lin and I went to a U-cut Christmas Tree farm on Saturday and we picked out and cut down the perfect Christmas tree for our family. It barely stands 5 feet tall, so it is a cute little Christmas tree.

We decorated it with our red and silver ornaments and we added a few touches of our own. We purchased a Disneyland ornament on our honeymoon with the intention of having it on our tree so that we could remember our trip each year.

That was the first ornament that we put on. Also notice that there are presents under the tree. They are all for Joo Lin. I don't think I was good this past year.

December 17th 2006

So it has almost been a year since we got married. How the time flies.

Joo Lin and I have decided that we need to get our blog back up-to-date because we want people to know how we have been and this is the easiest way to accomplish this.

Joo Lin's favorite thing to do these days is read other family's blogs, so that is the motivation behind this.

So please be patient with us and check back often for more updates.

205 days!!

Well, they say the first 205 days are the roughest but if you can make it past those you will make it forever. Ok, maybe i made up that saying but I thought that it would be funny to say.

Joo Lin and I just got back from North Bend. I took her to my ten year reunion and showed her of to all the old friends. I think everyone thought that she was adorable and cute!

I have been told by many that I need to update some photos so I will be posting some in the near future.

Kelley