The Beginning of the End....For Me Anyway....

Today was the first day of school. Yes, I know, yuck....yuck....yuck. And yes, it is just as bad as it always is and will be just as hard as it always is. But there is a small upside to starting school this semester.......THIS IS MY LAST SEMESTER OF COLLEGE EVER!

And can I just say that it has been a long, long time coming. This is my 11th, yes, my 11th semester of college and my last. Nope, no grad school for me, no Masters degree, no MACC. Nothing.

And I am 100% okay with that.

Mike has two more, fully loaded (7 classes each) semesters left and then he will graduate at the end of the summer. And then most likely a week or two later we'll be taking off to Law School for Mike.

And no we haven't decided quite yet where we are headed. We don't really know when we'll actually be deciding exactly where we are going. There is a lot that goes into a huge decision like this. But I'll keep you all posted!

Seven Pounds......of tears!

On New Years Eve, our plans got cancelled so we decided to go and see a movie. It was hard to decide between Will Smith, Brad Pitt, or Jim Carrey but we decided to go see "Seven Pounds" with Will Smith, because we both really like him.

WARNING: If you do not like sad movies, do not, I repeat, DO NOT go see this movie. I cried almost the whole time. It was a really good movie, and had a great, selfless message.....kinda. (Depending on how you look at it.) Will Smith does a fantastic job in this movie, but he pretty much does a fantastic job in any movie. So if you need a good cry, and want to see some great acting, this is your movie!

Yuletide Joy!

Mike and I had a wonderful Christmas this year. We spent Christmas Eve with Mike's family to celebrate not only Christmas but also Mike's dad's birthday! We always have a good time hanging out with his family and especially the crazy/fun/cute nieces and nephew.

We slept over at my parents house and had a good Christmas morning watching everybody open gifts and getting to see my two nieces get excited about their gifts that Santa brought them.

(Our strange ninja picture in front of the tree)

Then we were able to go home and celebrate our own small Christmas as a family, just me and Mike.

What a great opportunity Christmas is to spend time with family and the people that you love the most.

Our favorite gifts include the amazing trip that we went on to Panama back in August from Mike's parents, and the new TV that my parents gave us. Not too mention the money that we pooled from our Christmas bonus to get ourselves an elliptical machine!

It was a Christmas to remember always and thanks to all those who helped make it so special!

Holiday Update!

I know, I know, its been so long, and to all of our faithful readers (like my sister and Mike's sister), I truly apologize because you have missed out on what Mike and I have been doing for the past month. So here is a quick run through, (with limited pictures because I am at work...yep, I know, getting paid to update my blog.)

Thanksgiving was great. We were able to spend it with Mike's family and we had a great time. We did get a little bit of a football game in early in the day, and the weather was fantastic, not cold at all. Which helped my team win just a little bit easier! Of course, no help from me. I just run around and pretend to play, which gets me some great exercise!

We just finished with finals last week! Hallelujah! That is one of my many excuses for taking so long to update our blog. Now we are just waiting on our grades to come in....I think we check for them online about 20 times a day. One more semester for me until I graduate and 2 more for Mike and then on to Law School!

With finals finally over, we are able to enjoy what is left of Christmas! It was really hard for me to get into the Christmas spirit this year but I am finally coming along! I still have some shopping to do, of course, and plan on doing that hopefully within the next 2 days, cuz I guess I don't really have a choice. But Mike and I have done a few Christmas activities this year to help us get into the Christmas spirit. We went and saw Kurt Bestor (we go every year!), we went and saw the lights at Temple Square, we built gingerbread houses with some friends, and we were able to go and feed the homeless downtown at Pioneer Park. And this year its supposed to snow on Christmas!! I am so excited for that!

I just have to say how grateful I am for this time of year; the opportunity to be able to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and to be able to spend time with family and friends. I love the hustle and bustle of the Christmas shopping, seeing children at the mall sit on the lap of Santa Claus disclosing their innermost Christmas wishes, going home every day from work and plugging in my Christmas tree and lighting my Hollyberry candle, walking into any grocery store in the valley and seeing the Salvation Army representatives faithfully ringing their bells and wishing everyone a "Merry Christmas", whether or not they donate, seeing the snow fall and knowing that I have a nice warm blanket and dry socks waiting for me at home, turning up the Christmas music at work or in my car and singing along with the carols, watching Elf probably once a day and sending Mike random texts of quotes from it, and just the general happiness that is spread because of the Christmas spirit!

I love Christmas and can't wait to spend a little time with Mike, a little time with my family, and a little time with Mike's family! Can't wait to see you all!

Merry Christmas!

Halloween Weekend!

Mike and I had a pretty fun filled and busy weekend. Of course, Halloween was on Friday night. Mike and I didn't really have any costumes or anything so Mike grabbed a skeleton mask and I grabbed some paint and we ended up with.....well we don't really know what we ended up with. You be the judge. We spent the night eating and playing karaoke revolution. Pretty much the greatest game ever!

I couldn't stand it anymore.....yes, we put up our Christmas tree!

The holidays are the greatest time of the year and I like to make them last as long as possible. We haven't decorated it yet because I want to buy some new ornaments. But its up!

Sunday we had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Calvary Baptist Church for an assignment for one of Mike's classes! Wow, that church is fantastic! So energetic and loud and fun! The choir, of course, was wonderful. And we got the opportunity to see some people get baptized and talk to some of the members. It was definitely a new experience but a great one!

And today Mike and I hit our official one and a half year mark! Not really a super significant anniversary but I was excited! Other than that, life is pretty normal and staying super busy!

More Fall/Halloween Fun!

This weekend we had the privilege of hanging out with our good friends. The plan was to go to Gardner Village and see the witches....little did we know that it was Witches Night Out when we got there and there were hundreds of women there dressed up as witches. It was extremely crowded which made it hard to walk around and enjoy yourself. Yet, it was extremely entertaining seeing some of these strange women walk around and pretend they're witches. We decided that probably 50% of the women there actually were witches and were just excited that they could finally go out in public. Aside from the noise and the crowds, we had a pretty good time. Afterwards we went and grabbed some dinner and came back to our house and carved some pumpkins.....traditional Halloween activity that I will never grow out of!

Saturday night was a lot of fun too. Mike and I went with my family to dinner and then to see "Into the Woods" at Hale Center. It was really good! The set was fantastic; Hale always seems to do a phenomenal job with their sets! And the cast was really good also. I had seen the show before and sang a lot of the music in high school, so I was familiar with it. Mike wasn't too familiar with it but I think he enjoyed it mostly.....except for how long it was. All day Sunday I was singing songs from "Into the Woods"........good stuff!

Pumpkin Patch and Pizza!

A couple of weekends ago Mike and I took our trip to the pumpkin patch to pick out this year's winners! I explained to him that picking out a pumpkin was like picking out a wedding dress...there are a lot to look at but once you see it, you know that its the one. I know, I know, my thoughts are deep. It was absolutely freezing so we got to the point of finding 2 pumpkins that looked pretty good and getting the heck out of there. Both of our pumpkins were pretty heavy, and we didn't get a wheelbarrow, so Mike used his super strength and hauled them around. Such good times! Afterwards we went and had pizza buffet! All the pizza, salad, breadsticks and diet coke (my drink of choice) that you can stuff in you for like $7 or $8! Love it! More fun fall activities to come this weekend....and I'll try to be better about posting about them!

Welcome!

We are so excited to have another baby to welcome to the family! No, not us, Mike's brother and his wife just gave birth to a baby boy on October 9, 2008! Unfortunately they live in Houston so we are going off of pictures but he is absolutely adorable and we are all so thrilled to have a new nephew! With our busy schedules, we hope that we will be able to make it down to Houston before he is walking!

We also found out that my oldest sister is pregnant with her third baby! Her due date is May 9 and we are so excited. Its about time we get another baby in my family! They live close so it will help to fill the need I have to cuddle all these babies being born into our families!

A little behind...

I have gotten pretty behind on updating our blog so this is just a quick overview of what Mike and I are up to. School started up again for the Fall semester. Its taking up pretty much all of our time. Morning classes, night classes, day classes and both of us trying to work full time in between. We seem to be handling it all okay I guess. I had four midterms last week and somehow pulled an A on three of them...I haven't gotten the score back for the fourth one yet, but I am not expecting an A. Somehow Mike seems to pull A's too, all while taking the LSAT prep course and work. He is doing really well. He takes the LSAT this coming Saturday morning so we are really looking forward to having that over with and crossing our fingers that everything goes well.

Mike's birthday was last week, the big 23. Sadly enough though, it was more a grown up birthday than anything...meaning that we still went to work and to school. We did take a couple hours in the middle of the day and go to lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. Super good stuff.

Other than that life seems pretty much the same. Sometimes its just easier to stay the same anyway.

Panama...Came and Went

Mike and I got back from Panama this last Tuesday, and as much as I wish I was still on vacation, I am very happy to be home. I'll just give a quick run through of our days, they were pretty much jam-packed full of fun things!

Wednesday August 6, Day 1: Traveled ALL day! Flew into Panama City around 7 PM and stayed in a hotel.

Thursday August 7, Day 2: Woke up early and took another flight out to an island called Achutupu. We got to our hotel had breakfast, layed in the hammocks, layed on the beach, lunch, layed in our hammocks, took a boat ride up a river and hiked a bit in the jungle, layed in our hammocks and had dinner and watched the Kuna Indians dance then bed.

Friday August 8, Day 3: Breakfast, layed in the hammocks, took a boat to another island to tour the Kuna Indian community, lunch, layed in the hammocks, snorkeling, layed in the hammocks, dinner, and watched the Kuna Indians dance and then to bed.

Saturday August 9, Day 4: Woke up early had breakfast and took a flight back to the city. Had our driver for the week, a Church member Mike knew from the mission, Bonet, pick us up from the airport. We went to the Panama Canal, then drove in horrible traffic to Colon, one of Mike's old areas, where we saw Portobelo (an old fort) and the Black Jesus statue. Drove back from Colon, in horrible traffic, went to the big celebration/show for the dedication of the temple that was happening the next day. Mike ran into a lot of the members that he knew from all his different areas and ran into quite a few missionaries he served with. We took a taxi to a restaurant, with one of Mike's old mission friends and his brother and had dinner. We stayed in a hotel in the city for the rest of the trip.

Sunday August 10, Day 5: Breakfast and then got ready for the dedication of the temple. We first went to Casco Viejo, another old fort in Panama City, then walked a little bit of the City then went to the mall to get out of the rain. It rained a lot this day. Hard Panama rain. Then went to the temple dedication. We were in the third session at 2 o'clock. The dedication was awesome, and I got to watch it English, which was fantastic! (It gets kind of frustrating not knowing anything that is being said around you ever.) Afterwards, we ran into Mike's Mission President, who told us about a small reunion they were having that night at one of the church's. We had dinner and then walked, in the pouring rain and getting lost TWICE, from our hotel to the church where the reunion was. I was soaked. Mike was giving me the "full mission experience", so he says. At the reunion, there were five past mission presidents there and probably over 100 past missionaries. The most were from Mike's same mission president. Then we walked home in the pouring rain. So fun.

Monday August 11, Day 6: We had breakfast and then met up with our driver again, Bonet, who took Mike and I and Mike's mission friend and his brother to a road to hike up a mountain with the Panama flag on the top. We saw some huge spiders. Gross. Went back to the hotel and picked up another mission friend and his wife, and went and got "Immigration HotDogs", which are some pretty good hotdogs that have all kinds of weird stuff on them including potato chips and pineapple sauce. Pretty good. Then Mike bought me a beautiful pink rose. Then we drove to Casco Antigua, were we saw some old cathedrals. Bonet took us to his house so we could put the shell on the truck and we met his adorable children. We saved a sloth on the side of the road. Then we drove to El Valle, basically just more jungle. Crossed some fun Indiana Jones bridges and saw a waterfall. Drove back to the city and ate at some Chinese restaurant. We were all exhausted and high on fumes from riding in the back of the truck. Lots of laughing at the dinner table. Then to bed!

Tuesday August 12, Day 7: Up early and traveled all day! We got home at about 10 PM.

Can I just say how grateful I am for carpet, not wearing flip flops in the shower, dry air (as opposed to humid, gross air) and sane driving. God bless America! We had an absolute blast though. Absolutely something every wife should get the opportunity to do with their husband, go back to the place where they served their mission. To be able to see them with these people that they love, and understand such a small portion of what they went through for 2 years, you gain a new respect for them, gain such a stronger bond between one another, and fall in love all over again.