would you rather?

Eat a live cockroach every day for a month?

OR not shower or wash at all for an entire month?

Currently...

Jason Calcote would like you to know that the 2520 house is currently composed of...

How well do you know the 2520 house? Guess who works where... I will give you a hint... there are 2 new roommates, and I'm one of them!

So comment and guess!

the 3 things stephanie is afraid of.......

1. thunderstorms. particularly when the sky turns yellow.

2. dating and child-rearing.

3. flying.

what are you afraid of?

Vancouver. Twenty-ten.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time around 2520 knows that as a house we are incredibly committed to celebrating the Olympic games when they come around every 2 years. And when I say committed, I mean committed. We love them. Why, you may ask? I believe it is a combination of factors, the greatest of which has to be the drama. We all know how much 2520 loves drama. The drama of victory, of defeat, and of the specially prepared personal interest stories about each athlete that air between events (Steph's favorite). Mesmerizing. I could go on and on, but really, the question I want to pose to the world wide web is this: if each individual at 2520 were to participate in an Olympic event, which one would they be in and why? I would let you, our faithful readers, answer this question, but I think it'll be a lot more fun if I do. So here goes!

Steph: Clearly this bundle of energy with her penchant for performance and flair would be a natural at ice dancing. Flashy, sequined outfits, choreographed partner dancing, plastered smiles, catchy music to sing along to..........

Lacy: Calm. Collected. Focused. Sailing through the air, with soft landings on the powdery snow. I picture Lacy excelling at ski jumping, not only for her intense powers of concentration, but also because her legs are very flexible, allowing her to bend them at strange ski-jumping angles.

Brittany: With her trendy outdoor North Face snow outfits, nose ring and bleach-blonde hair, it was easy to see Brittany out on the slopes, with her feet strapped to a snowboard, leaping up over the edges of the half-pipe. Sweet 720 spinny move Britt!

Andrea: I had to think long and hard about Andrea, and nothing seemed to fit, until I realized that she needed to participate in a team sport. And not just any team sport. Ice hockey. What could be better than making the well dramatized movie "Miracle" a reality by actually pursuing her own "Miracle on Ice"?? Andrea, I'm sure you'd do great with Herb Brooks as your coach. He's so touchy, feely, you know?

Sarah: Last but not least, myself. Steph and I spent an evening last week watching short-track speed skating, and I knew I had found my event of choice. Intense, cut-throat, head-to-head competition. Pressure to perform. Speed. Skaters with large quadriceps. Clearly, I fit the bill. Key word there would be "competitive."

Well, friends, enjoy these weeks of splendid amateur athletics! And just think, the Olympics end, then March Madness is just around the corner. Yesssss! Until next time.........

Uh, YUCK.

Yesterday, I went into work and found this on my desk (photo compliments of Jon B...and his iphone):



Actually, the mouse sitting in my granola is compliments of him as well. This little, yucky, rubbery mouse has made it's rounds at DG...well...mostly between my desk, Seth's desk and Jon's office.

But I'm pretty sure I'm done eating that granola.

Speaking of pranks, we found the noise-maker you left in our house, Trent. You will be lucky if you get ever see it again :)

chicken potpie with ham...and turkey.

Last week we decided to make chicken potpie from the Martha Stewart website. There were a few bumps along the way: Cooking it a week late. Not knowing what fennel bulbs or fennel seeds are. Not having the proper pans. But we managed. And had some great help from Bryan, Sarah & Stefan. We made a few changes, such as adding turkey, a few extra vegetables and not making them in the individual pans. But it was actually really good! Here's 2 pictures:

Week #2 of our Cooking Endevour

Since the plan is to attempt cooking the meal for week 3 in a couple hours, we better show you what we cooked last week for our new recipe of the week. We had some, okay, quite a bit of help from some friends. So the credit goes not only to Steph and myself but also to: Anna, Rachel, Stefan, Celinda (and a couple tips from Sarah). Well, Tristan also helped by eating some of the lettuce wraps. We googled a recipe for lettuce wraps and the first to come up was from PF Changs. It was slightly time consuming (with the special sauce and all) but not super hard. I mean, we made them.

Here are some pictures:

Here's the recipe if you want to try them!

Cooking - Week 1

So, in our effort to cook more and try new recipes, Steph and I made Swedish Meatballs on Monday night. In all honesty, they were not entirely a new for us. We'd made Norwegian Meatballs in the past and they seem to be pretty much the same. Technically though, it's was new. And since we're both Swedish, it was fun. Steph's always known she was Swedish and I just found out on Christmas Eve that I'm part Swedish...I never knew.

Here's some pictures from our cooking endeavor:

Haircuts.

So...I'm watching Julie & Julia again. A couple months ago, or whenever it was in the theater, I saw it with my friend, Karen. Of course it made me want to blog and cook more but sadly, it's not been super successful. But Steph and I do have a little dream (for the winter) to try out a new recipe once a week. It's a good plan, I think, but it hasn't exactly started yet. But winter didn't really officially start until Dec 21st, so we're not too far behind. Right? Maybe we will blog our results. Maybe.

In other news: short hair is a new rule for 2520 residents. Steph and I were the only ones with long hair but we just got tons cut off. Steph, 10 inches and mine...well, we didn't measure, so I'll just say 8...

Steph before (you don't need to pay any attention to Sarah...she has pretty much the same hairstyle):


Ta-da:

Me with my hair:

Me after (and with the tea-pot my roommates gave me as a birthday gift):

And...of course...Katie Steller...who cut all our hair off....

storm dodging & trunks.

We (Sarah & Andrea) dodged a huge blizzard in order to pick up Ellie from O'Hare in Chicago, Illinois, USA, World, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy. Sarah didn't talk about the storm dodging at all but I insisted we bring it up. She only casually mentioned it, oh about 50 times verbally and 35 on gchat, before she made it her legal middle name (Sarah Storm-Dodger Kron).

Even though the storm dodging was the major part of our trip, take a look at the video to see what else happened. Storm Dodger Kron decided the little sidekick (aka Andrea Froehlich) should hide in the trunk in order to surprise the Brazilian Bombshell because she "didn't know" AF was coming. Let's see what happens...

Eager Anticipation

Steph and I are at home counting down the minutes. Why? you might ask. Because...Ellie Lundquist is back in the US!! That's right...our Brazilian beauty is back home for Christmas!! She flew into Chicago on Wednesday and is now on her way to 2520 with Sarah and Andrea. Now, if we could just get the hands on the clock to move a little quicker...the anticipation is killing us. Hurry up guys!

homeschooler learns to dance

Marathon and Bedrest?

As some of you may know, I (Lacy) have been on crutches for the last 2 weeks. It was exactly 2 weeks ago today that I learned I have a stress fracture in my left hip. The real kicker is that it's been fractured since June! Here's the story...My sister, Linsey, was living with us this summer. She was training for a half marathon and all her running inspired me. So, she and I decided to run a 10K together. Red flag #1, we made the decision to run the night before the race, so I did NO training. I ran the race and, to my surprise, I survived the whole 6.2 miles without stopping. Then comes red flag #2. Two days after the race, when my sore muscles began to loosen up, my left hip started to hurt. Every step was painful, to the point of needing to limp (very sneakily, of course, so as to avoid any extra attention). I assumed it was an over use injury so I laid off exercise for a month and a half. My hip felt a lot better after all the rest, so I started easing back into working out. But each workout was followed by a day or two of hip pain, red flag #3. I suffered through intermittent workouts with no change until finally, 3 1/2 months later, I made a doctor's appointment. I had an MRI, which is how the fracture was diagnosed. Since I did rest my hip for a while after the run and the fracture was not yet healed, drastic measures needed to be taken: crutches for 4-6 weeks. Since I am on crutches, I am unable to perform my work duties as a nurse, which leads to the point of this post. It is a fairly common practice for the folks on our unit (Sarah and I work on the same floor) to get a card signed by co-workers if someone has had a birthday, surgery, injury, ect. This weekend there was a card sitting at the main desk for me. Attached was a post-it note that read, and I quote: "Lacy was injured after running in a marathon. She's on bedrest for 30 days...please sign card." Sarah, being the joy-giver that she is, brought the post-it note home for me to read. My first reaction was, "WHAT!?" 1) I would hardly call a 10K a marathon, it's a quarter of the distance! 2) I'm not even close to being on bedrest. 3) What kind of a running injury would result in bedrest? All I can think of is getting struck by a car or fracturing BOTH hips!Where did this information come from? How funny! It's like a version of the childhood game Telephone. I can't wait until I get the card and I can read the comments...I know it will be entertaining.

go math!

Math is my friend. Well, not really....but here's a problem for YOU!

You finally get an allowance! You put $2 away in January, $4 away in February, and $8 away in March, and $16 away in April and followed this savings pattern through to December. How much money do you have in 12 months?

Alright, friends.....have at it! :)

This is NOT our home.

Tonight, I went to Missions in the Main Hall at Bethlehem. I was really tired this afternoon and I thought about skipping. Glad I didn't. I sat on the floor along with probably a couple hundred other people and was blown away by Pastor John's message on missions. If it was recorded, I strongly encourage you to listen to it. Much better than what I'm writing. But here's my take on it...

He talked about how sad it is when we become satisfied with the little things of this earth and when people live as if this is their "final chapter" in life. Heaven is our final chapter and we should not live as if this were heaven. We have the hope of an eternity in heaven...that's why we can give our lives away to missions here on this earth. He said we need to "get it settled" that our reward is not in this life. Total satisfaction is coming. Don't try to seek it out in things of this earth. Give, give, give. Love, love, love.

One of the other things that stood out to me from his message - if we know the central thing, we can be ignorant in 10,000 other ways and we will be relevant to everyone...because "you will never meet a human being who doesn't have a cavernous longing...for God."

Tonight was both encouraging and convicting. Many times I think I live as if this were my final chapter/heaven. I am selfish with my time and find myself seeking satisfaction in little things rather than seeking what my heart is really longing for - God. May I not look to other little piddly things to satisfy my "cavernous craving for God." People, friends, emails, money, marriage, kids, music, shopping, entertainment, attention and the other thousands of things we may be seeking to satisfy never will fill the deep craving of our hearts. It encouraged me that we should be people who are willing to give our lives for others to share the amazing, life-giving message we have.

not only do we have lots of sweets...

The other day I came home from work and looked at the top of our fridge and it looked absolutely horrible. There's a reason why. It's where we keep all our chips, pretzels and bread. One would think that with just 4 people living here, there would not really be that many bags. You'd think, but it's not true at our house. We obviously like large quantities of food items. We counted the total number of chip/pretzel/rice cake bags. Guess how many...



I'll give you a little hint. A couple weeks ago, our fridge had 9 opened jars of salsa. 9. A lot, right? Not compared to the amount of chip/etc bags.

The worst bag we found is this Market Pantry bag of pretzels. I've noticed it many times while looking through the chip/bread basket. This time I decided to look at the expiration date only to find it expired back in December of 2007. Guessing it's been on top of the fridge the entire time we've lived at 2520.


Sorry MP Pretzels, it's time for you to go.

So, guess how many bags we found...

"Peace Like a River"

I'm on page 125 (out of 311) and am still having trouble "really getting into it." I'm surprised because many people say it's excellent. That's why I'm still reading but I hate having to tell myself to keep going rather than not wanting to put it down. I guess it must be drawing me in enough to keep me through 125 pages. It's not horrible by any means, it's just not grabbing my attention like I thought it might. Maybe I'm fictioned-out, after all the novels I read as an English major. But I think it's the style I don't love.

Maybe it's okay if I don't love it now. Maybe the books message will be worth it. Ok, I've decided I'm going to finish it...hopefully soon. Katie's waiting for me so she can read it.

Are you reading any good books?

oh, the perils at 2520.

For a while, some of my roommates (most obviously not Steph) have commented/complained about the abundance of sweets in our kitchen. I agree, there are a lot, but didn't really realize the extent. We currently have:

Frozen cookie dough:

Carmel Fudge Brownie Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, Orange Sherbet, Mango Sorbet & Fudgsicles:

Pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting & Twizzler bits:

Two Carmel Apples with nuts (from Cub...10 for $10):

Special K Bars:

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting:

Mini Kit-Kat and Butterfinger candy bars:

One left-over Carrot Cake cupcake from Jason's birthday:


Oh, we also have 3 pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and a couple bags of candy corn...no picture attached. Feel free to come over and eat a sweet...or 5.

goldfish

today i was google-chatting with anna and we realized that 'goldfish' is a really hard word to type. you should try it. or maybe it's just us. it does become easier with practice. anna says it's the d and f combo. maybe. do you have any hard words?

Regression 2009 Part 1

Want to know what happens when you are sick with H1N1 (Also known as swine flu, for those who don't know. Got that, Steph?) for over a week and you can't read any books because memory and concentration are a bit of a challenge?

Movies. LOTS of movies. Here is a list of what I watched while I was sick:

1. Fellowship of the Ring: extended version

2. The Two Towers: extended version

3. Return of the King: extended version (4 1/2 hours!)

4. Pride and Prejudice/Pride and Predjuice: 6 hour version

5. The Incredibles

6. My Best Friend's Wedding

7. Bourne Identity

8. Bourne Supremacy

9. Tuck Everlasting

10. The Guardian (Andrea got sea sick with this one and almost didn't go to church. You'll have to ask her about it.)

11. A League of Their Own

12. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

There might be more. I was semi-conscious for most of the week and can't remember details. A special thank you to the Tong's for allowing the projector to stay at our house the whole week! Made the movie watching that much better................