1st Year Anniversary

I can't believe that Andrew and I have been married for a year already! It's crazy how fast time goes by when you're having fun. For our one year anniversary we went to a cute little bed and breakfast in Lava Hot Springs, ID. The bed and breakfast was a lot of fun. It was a little outside of the town up in the mountains and they had different themed rooms. We went snowboarding while we were up there, and our marriage survived! Andrew is great at snowboarding, but I have only been once before and I'm not that great. The only life that was open the day we went went all the way to the top of the mountain. It started off a little rough and only went downhill from there. As we were riding the lift to the top it just kept going and going and after a while I started to wonder how I was going to get down the mountain because I'm not that great and it was a really long ways to the bottom. Time came to get off the lift and of course I biffed it hard core. I don't know whose idea it is to have the board connected to only one foot when you jump off the lift, but it really doesn't work for me. I did a slight back summer salt roll over thing off the lift (which hurt). But then I got up and a looked at the endless downhill path of snow. I did make it down the mountain and it only took about an hour and a half. By the time I got down I was done. It was a rough ride down, but by the time we got the bottom Andrew and I were still talking and not even upset with each other which is an improvement from the last time we went snowboarding so I decided to end it on a good note. Andrew went down one more time while I recovered in the car. It only took him about 8 minutes to get down the mountain without me. That should show you how not so great I really am. After snowboarding we went to the hot springs. It was nice and relaxing. A ward of warning for anyone who is going to the hot springs. Don't leave any money or valuables in the locker. We got a few dollars stolen and we weren't the only ones. Someone's got sticky fingers. Overall it was a fun trip. Being married is great! The past year has been a lot of fun! Look at my pretty flowers!

The quiet before the storm

Things have been pretty quiet around our house lately. We are playing the waiting game called law school. Andrew has all of his applications in and we are just waiting to hear back. We have heard back from a few schools. So far we have gotten accepted to Quinnipiac University in Connecticut and we are on the wait list for the University of Oklahoma, but we are still waiting to hear from a lot of other schools. From what I have been told law school is just one big waiting game. Wait for the LSAT score, wait to see where you get accepted, wait for midterm grades, wait for final grades, and around it goes... wait wait wait! For an impatient person this is about to kill me! It has been like the quiet before the storm at our house. In May we are moving temporarily and I graduate and then in August we will be moving to who knows where and Andrew will be starting school and hopefully I will get an internship (that all depends on where we move to. More waiting. Wait to see where we are moving to before I can apply to internships). For those of you who know me waiting isn't in my vocabulary. I like to have things planned out well in advance, but when you don't know where you're moving to in 6 months it makes it hard to plan for things. I started to look at houses/apartments in different areas that we might be moving too, but I gave up on this. It is hard to compare houses that are in California to houses in Hawaii, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada, and Utah. :)

Since the Holidays our lives have been relatively quiet. We've been battling the cold that has been going around. This past week I've been knocked out with it and the week before Andrew had it. You've gotta love the passing of colds, but it's inevitable when you are married and kissing is involved. We were suppose to go snowboarding a few days ago, but I was still sick so Andrew went with a friend. It has been dropping snow like crazy the past few weeks and Andrew and I have been wanting to go snowboarding and we got it all planned out and I got sick. It's alright though, we are going again in two weeks and I AM NOT going to be sick then!

Basically the past few weeks can be summed as we've just been hanging out and enjoying the quiet time.

~ Back to School ~

Christmas break is over and I'm back in school for my last semester. I graduate in May from the University of Utah! I am majoring in Family and Consumer Studies with an emphasis in Child Life Specialty and I am minoring in Nutrition. I know, it's a mouthful, but what it means is I hope to one day be working as a child life specialist. As a child life specialist I want to work in hospitals with children helping them cope and understand their hospital experience. I can't wait to start because I love this profession. I love working with children and connecting with them on their level, and really helping them out. It's so rewarding. I have only worked as a volunteer with a Child Life Specialist, but I've loved every minute of it as well as my Child Life classes.

It looks like i'm not the only going to back to school. Andrew took the LSAT last month and he did AMAZING! so he'll be starting law school in August. I'm way proud of my awesome husband. He worked way hard and he rocked the LSAT! He's applying for law schools right now, and we should hear back by the end of February early March. Some places that Andrew is applying to are San Diego State in California, some schools in Oklahoma, Connecticut, Las Vegas, U of U, and others that I forgot. It's weird not knowing where we're going to live in a few months, but it will all work out and I can't wait to start this new adventure with Andrew!

Holidays

Our stocking hung by the fire in our cute little apartment. Andrew and I stayed home in Salt Lake for Christmas this year. It was fun combining our holiday traditions, and it was a very relaxing Christmas. Christmas eve we drove around and looked at some awesome Christmas lights.

For New Years we went to St. George. Ben, Marsha and Cassidy were in town from New York and we had a family party New Years Eve. It was SO MUCH FUN! The theme of the party was 80's rock party. Everyone dressed up in their finest 80's attire and there were even some awesome mohawks. Here is a look at our awesome costumes.

As you can tell, we had a lot of fun!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree...

Andrew and I put up our Christmas tree last weekend. Andrews sister found us a fake tree at a yard sale for a great price. The tree is HUGE! It's 7 feet tall and it almost takes up our whole living room. We started to put it up and we soon realized that we were going to have to rearrange the furniture to fit the tree in our apartment. After many rearrangements with the couches and tree we finally found a way to fit it all. It's a good thing we have vaulted ceilings because otherwise i'm not sure it would fit with the star on top. Here are some fun pictures of us putting the tree together. (PS: It was game day - BYU vs Utah. Notice the Utah shirt. Andrew wore blue for the day so I had to support my school. GO UTES!!!)

Andrew Playing the

tree guitar.

The tree is all put together!

All lit up!

All done!

Thanksgiving and Black Friday!

I love the holiday season! For Thanksgiving Andrew and I got to spend the holiday with both of our families. We had Thanksgiving dinner with Andrews family. There were a lot of people, and it was also a lot of fun! Then we went down to my aunt Karla's house in Provo where my family was and had some pie. My favorite part of Thanksgiving is black Friday. I love the crazy crowds and lets face it, shopping all night, it couldn't get better! Andrew and I wanted to get a blue ray DVD player for Christmas, and the one we wanted was on sale at Walmart at 5:00am. There were also some sales that we wanted to check out at midnight. So we started shopping at midnight. The crowds were so crazy it felt like we were cows being hurded in a barn that was too small. We also went to the mall where Andrews family has a Kiosk and visited with them around 2:00am. We took a nap in the car, and finally at 4:30 we went back to Walmart to scope out the DVD player. Guess what?! We found the DVD player on the shelf where it normally is and when we price scanned it the price was already changed. We could have bought the DVD player at midnight, even though the sale didn't start until 5:00. We had a lot of fun! My mom and sister stayed with us for the weekend and I got to do more black Friday shopping with them all day long Friday! It was so much fun. Plus I got to see my cute niece and nephew who stayed with us as well. The whole weekend was so much fun!

More New York! Visiting Ben, Marsha and Cassidy in New York

While we were in New York we went to Syracuse to visit Ben, Marsha and Cassidy. We went in the middle of Ben's midterms so he was a little busy with school, but we got to spend a lot of time with Marsha and Cassidy. Cassidy has gotten SO BIG! The first day we were there we went to a beautiful water fall. Cassidy insisted that she walk down all the stairs to the bottom of the waterfall by herself.

We timed our visit just right because all of the leaves were starting to change colors and there were a ton of trees everywhere in Syracuse. It was gorgeous!

Syracuse is only about 45 minutes away from all the church sites so we decided to rent a car and drive down to check them out. I went to all of the sites with my family when I was in high school, but this was Andrews first time. It was a really neat experience walking hand in hand around the sacred grove. We also checked out hill camorah, Joseph Smith farm, and the printing press where the Book of Mormon was first printed. The sacred grove was amazing this time of year. The leaves were just starting to change. The day we went it was raining so there were not a lot of other people around.

Basically we had A LOT OF FUN in New York! A BIG THANKS to Ben, Marsha and Cassidy for letting us stay with them! The night before Andrew and I had to leave we all went to dinner at this bbq place. It was crazy loud and we could barely hear each other talk. It was fun, but the best part about it was how much fun Cassidy had. She thrived in the crazy loud environment. :) That little girl is going to grow up to be a partier! When it came time to leave we were sad to go. We had so much fun in New York we really didn't want to go, but who knows, maybe we'll end up back in New York next fall for Andrews schooling. The next moring We went to the airport just to find out our flight (and only flight to get home all weekend) had been canceled. After a pannick attack wondering how we were going to get home before we had to be back to school and work, we found an alternative route to fly home. We went back to JFK then to Washington DC and then to Salt Lake. So our trip ended just like it began, a really long day in the airport and on planes. However the trip home was MUCH BETTER because our buddy passes got bumped to first class!!! All I have to say is first class is the way to go. We enjoyed the pampering and it was a perfect end to a great trip. Also, when we flew in and out of DC we flew in front of the White House. It was cool to see the White House from the sky, maybe one day we'll go back and see it for real.
WE LOVE NEW YORK!