NACHOOOO!!!!!

"They think I don't know a buttload of

crap about the Gospel, but I do!"

"Save me a piece of that corn!"

"So anyways, lets get down to the nitty gritty..."

"My life is good. Real good."

Finally Friday!

I look forward to Fridays. I've always loved Fridays and when its Friday, its means we are one day closer to Saturday which is even BETTER than Friday, because it means we are one day closer to Sunday! Did you get all that? Basically I just like the weekend. And I'm really looking forward to just laying around Saturday night and laying around some more on Sunday.

This week we have been running on frozen Pot Pies, chicken nuggets, and some old rice crispy treats I made last Sunday night (just finished the last of them this morning). We have been so busy working and doing training meetings, we haven't had much time to go to the store and it makes me shake my head in shame when I think about how unhealthy we have become. Yes, we do walk around all day long, which is great exercise. And yes, we do stay out in the heat, which makes us sweat like crazy. This means we aren't gaining weight or anything-quite the opposite actually. But this doesn't mean we are fueling our bodies properly and it goes against everything I've learned my entire LIFE! But somehow, despite the subconscious sabotaging-they keep on plugging along... for now.

Evergreen Machine

We have been out here for three months now. It has gone by so fast-just August and September left. We have been out knocking in some of the crappiest weather, all to bring the residents of New Castle County these beautiful babies. Seriously. Have you ever seen better looking trash cans? I think NOT!

The pictures below are from one of the silly things we did during one of our training meetings. Its called "Bear, Hunter, Hooker". Similar to "Rock, Paper, Scissors" but a little more interesting. Its almost impossible to play without laughing. Bear kills the hooker, hooker kills the hunter, and hunter kills the bear. The winner got $$$. Kyle won.

We went a few weeks without hitting our dinner goal, but luckily the last 2 weeks we made it! Its always more fun getting to go out on someone else's tab! Hopefully these next two months just fly by as quickly as the first couple. I'm sure they will. And before we know it, we'll be back in the cold of Idaho.

Heat Wave

So its been really hot lately. The thing that drives me nuts is how much the news is covering this heat wave. Its SUMMER time. It gets HOT. We don't need every news channel on every station at every hour of the day to remind us that we don't want to open our doors or windows or even THINK about leaving the comfort of our air conditioned homes.

Sincerely,

Mikki Young

Day at the pool

Yesterday was our first time trying out the pool at our complex. We told ourselves that if we could hit our sales goal for the day as an office, we would skip our training meeting the next day and go play at the pool and get pizza. Thankfully we hit our goal so we were able to go play a little!

I've never felt so white! I have the weirdest tan lines from wearing capris every day. It was the first time my shoulders have seen the sunlight in over a year, so needless to say, they got a little toasty. We played in the pool for about 2 hours and then stuffed ourselves with pizza. We had a great time and I can't wait till we can have our next pool day.

Our sales team:

Mike, Chelsea, Mikki, Greg, Matthew, Jared, Lindsay, and Kyle

New Addition

This picture is super old, but I'm so excited my little brother is out here finally. He flew in last Monday night at like midnight. He made it through his first week of sales and has done awesome so far. Its already been more fun since he's been here. AND next Friday Matthew will be out here so it will be even better. Greg and I love having our family around!

We have been running into a lot of other door-to-door salesmen lately while we've been out knocking. That makes for a frustrating day. One because they are kind of jerks (I won't mention which ALARM company) - harassing us about licensing and they have even called the police telling them "There's a suspicious-looking person wandering the neighborhood in a bright fluorescent green shirt." The cops don't do anything when they stop us, but its still frustrating to have your day interrupted. The funny thing is that we service a TON of cops in this area with our trash pickup anyway. Whatever. And two, nobody wants to talk to more than one sales person on the door in a single day. On a better note:

Ever heard of Water Ice? Well if you aren't from the east coast that makes sense. I've heard of ice. I've heard of water. I've even heard of ice water. But not "water ice" Now let me introduce you to ....

This place is so so GOOD! This was our first experience with what everyone in Delaware calls water ice. Its like a thick slurpee but better. And they have delicious flavors: Swedish fish, juicy pear, strawberry margarita, key lime, the list goes on and on. You can even mix them with custard to make them creamier. When we hit our daily goals for sales Rita's is our reward. It's the perfect end to a hot, humid day. Well, that and a cold shower.

This Week

Well this is our new Delaware ride. For now. . . Hopefully it will last us at LEAST until the end of the summer! We left our 4-Runner in Utah (trying to sell it) and flew out here. It was so weird not having a whole car full of stuff. We thought our apartments from previous summers seemed empty, but they are nothing compared to this summer. We have hardly anything out here with us. Its been interesting trying to improvise without things I would normally have. Even something so simple as having the lid to a pot to help steam vegetables.

Anyway, we bought the car from this Asian guy who has been going to school out here and apparently decided to upgrade to a much newer car. This is a 96 Acura. It leaks oil which makes it smell awful, like something is burning (oil) but like I said, hopefully it will last the duration of the summer. And it is finally registered, thanks to Bryce back in Idaho!
The tan lines have begun! We haven't even had that many days of full sunshine, but already I can see a definite sock line. Much different from the flip flop line I'm used to from the summer. Yesterday was super sunny and I actually got burned on my forehead and arms a bit. I tried to drink lots of water but couldn't keep up with the heat of the sun. It won. I got so hot and had an awful headache. Next time I'm wearing sun screen and a HAT!
We've hit our dinner goals two weeks in a row! As an office we set a goal at the beginning of the week and when we hit it on Saturday we go out to eat courtesy of the owners. We went to Roadhouse last week and Red Robin yesterday. It is super fun since the rest of the week we don't do anything except work, come home, eat gross food (frozen burritos, frozen pizza, or something else equally unappetizing), and sleep.

Greg has been doing awesome. Yesterday was his first double digit day. He was so, so happy! Hopefully there will be many more days like it for him :) Days like that help boost his confidence and then there's no slowing him down!

MOTHER'S DAY!

It seems like the last mothers' day I can remember getting to actually spend with my mom was quite a few years ago. We were at my sister's house, and all of us had pitched in to get her this cute little decorative table. So it would have to have been at least 4 years ago. SAD. And this year is yet another that I will spend away from my dear Mum. But she has been on my mind.

So one of the small benefits I've received from being married the last 4 years is at church every Mother's Day they count me as one of the "mothers". I remember getting a big Symphony bar in Minnesota, a begonia in Kentucky, sadly I can't remember what they gave us in St Louis or last year in our ward in Idaho, but this year...

Pepperidge Farms Milano cookies! So delicious! Thank you Wilminton 2nd Ward!

Honey Smacks

So weird, random little fact about Honey Smacks-or at least the generic version. They make your pee smell just like them! Its weird and a little gross. You should get a bag and test it out haha!

We've been here for one week as of yesterday. I was surprised that it had already been a whole week and then at the same time sort of shocked that it had only been a week. I didn't realize how homesick I would get. I really miss Idaho. But I'm trying hard not to think about it, so I won't dwell on it. I want to make a paper chain with all the days left in the summer and write little uplifting things on some links and then incentives on some others to make things a little more fun.

I've decided that sales is definitely one of the toughest jobs ever. But its been going pretty well so far. In fact, we've surprised the owners with how well we've done this first week as beginners, well, Tim and I anyway. Greg is not a beginner. As of right now, we have 2 girls selling and 2 guys. In a few weeks we'll have a couple more sales people. I'm excited for my little brother Jared to get out here after his graduation. And Greg's brother Matthew will come out sometime in June for a few weeks to earn extra $$$ for his wedding! Super excited for him! And super excited for money. Just have to stay focused on goals...

The New Place

This apartment has the tiniest little kitchen, which is funny because the rest of the place is huge and they really could have made the kitchen just a little bigger, but whatever.


I think its funny how apartment complexes never have ceiling lights. except in the kitchen and bathrooms. What about the rest of the apartment?! You have to buy a bunch of lamps-makes no sense to me because I would think that lamps would be more of a fire hazard. Luckily we were provided two lamps. One in the bedroom and one in the living room. Of the three other apartments we've lived in throughout the years of summer sales, this one is my favorite, just not the rest of the complex... Does anyone else who's lived in an apartment ever feel weird walking around outside, like everyone can see you and is watching you? Well I guess that's just me being super paranoid and self-conscious but its weird being new! We haven't been able to explore the area too much, but driving to church we saw quite a few really old old houses and lots of GREEN. This place is SO green. And there are these really pretty flowering trees everywhere that I'm going to have to find the name of and see if they can grow out west :)

New"ark" Delaware

Not to be confused with Newark NJ.

Well we made it. I'm sitting in our new apartment in Delaware on a rented camel-colored couch that who knows how many butts have sat on, looking around the room. Its pretty large considering we only have enough furniture to fit in half the room. It seems larger still because we are on the top floor and it has vaulted ceilings.

This apartment complex it huge! There are apartments and town houses all around us. The closest grocery store or Walmart I could find on google was 4 miles away. I hope we find a car soon. We are renting a car for the first few days we will be here and then hopefully we can find something a little more permanent.

I'm trying not to psych myself out. Now that we're here in this new place I feel anxious about everything. Well even before we got on the plane I was feeling anxious. But hopefully we'll get into a good routine and start feeling more relaxed.

I'll post some picture soon!

New Post!

I cannot believe how long its been since I've blogged. February is almost over! Looking back, I saw that January 17th I had tried to create a post and after much time and typing, I had quite the post. Blogger, however, was being finicky and wouldn't let me post it for some reason or another, and the post was saved as a "draft". THEN a few weeks a go-like 2, I created yet another post, only to have Greg tell me to remove it because he was embarrassed. Needless to say, I have had quite a time trying to update the ol' blog without somebody (Greg) or something (Blogger) getting in the way. So here's to attempt number 3. Hope it works.

So we are pretty sure that for the summer we are doing trash sales. This is where we dress up like the homeless, and go door-to-door trying to sell things we've picked out of local dumpsters. Never more truth to "one man's trash is another man's treasure"!

Ok not really. Well we are doing trash sales, but not like that. Basically we switch residents from a big trash removal service to a cheaper, local trash service. It will be a big change from alarms (according to Greg) and we are looking forward to it. We will be living in dun-dun-na-na!.............DELWARE!

As you can see from the lovely map above, that DE or Delaware, is quite a ways away from Idaho.

I'm really excited to get to see this part of the country and visit lots of cool historical sites not only in DE, but neighboring states as well! I've never been to the east coast at all.

Where we will be in DE is 2 hrs from Washington DC and 2 hours from New York and 1 hour from Philadelphia. Wowzers! This is gonna be an adventure! Now to just fit some sort of work schedule into my tourist schedule....

Snow Snow Snow

The snow just keeps on fallin here in the 'Burg. Good for the farmers I guess, but I can't say that I'm all that excited about it.

Greg showed me this website called Grooveshark where you can search for songs or artists and listen to exactly what you want. I've decided its way better than Pandora. Its great because it doesn't have commercials and you get to pick the songs to go in your queue. I have been listening to all my favorite songs from like 8 years ago-a lot of the old country I used to listen to like Dolly Parton, Sammy Kershaw, Chris, Garth, George, Alan, Clint, etc. I think its funny when people tell me they love country music and I think "cool we have something in common" then I find out their favorite country singers are Rascall Flats and Sugarland and I just have to shake my head and think "nevermind...". I don't listen to any of the new country music. In fact, I can't remember the last time I time I even listened to country on the radio. I can't stand the "country" that is played anymore. So now that I've got grooveshark, I can listen to REAL country music =)

We finally made it to our regular ward this Sunday and I'm proud to say that we were ON TIME! That's a big deal for us. AND Greg even got me to stay for a Linger Longer where everyone brings a dish and you try to meet more people in the ward to build unity blah blah blah... This is a big deal because I try really hard not to talk to people if I can help it. But since we don't know anybody in our ward Greg decided we were going to find some friends. There was this delicious dish that had banana pudding, whipped cream, sliced bananas, and Nilla Wafers. Oh man was it good! I'm still thinking about it hours later!

We had a great Christmas, got to see most of our family at some point during the holidays, then made it back home in time for New Years. Greg and I have already been very blessed this New Year!