Six Pix for Six Years

It's hard to believe that it has been six years already! I love you babe and look forward to the day when I'm posting sixty pix for sixty years! I LOVE YOU! Happy Anniversary! (Special thanks to Val's sister Kristina for taking such amazing pictures!)

Here We go Again

Well, after a long break (mostly due to our lack of internet) we are back and just as boring as ever although we have had a few new developments in the past few months so here's a quick update.  Lots of pictures and few words, so enjoy.

Early Thanksgiving dinner with some of our great friends from Logan.  Sorry, our friend Sean has a condition that doesn't let him close his mouth, it's called childishness! Love ya Sean!

Happy Birthday Milhouse!!!  Thanks for all the Memories.

Congratulations Val!!!!!  After years of hard work and sleepless nights she graduated as a Severe Special Ed Teacher and is off and running with her own class.  She loves what she does and is VERY good at it.  Her ideas and methods are being adopted by the other teachers in the school and her kids love her too.  I have never been so proud of anyone in my life and I am so happy for her.  She cares so much for her students and the impact she is having in their lives is already noticeable.  It's not the highest paying job in the world so my F430 has to wait, but it is incredibly rewarding in so many other ways not to mention how funny the kids are.  If you want a good laugh just ask Val to tell you one of her stories.  Way to go Babe!

Moving Day, at least the first one followed by three subsequent trips up.  Let's just say this experience only confirms my desire to only want to move two more times in my life and one of those is to my grave.  I won't go into great detail, but let's just say if you think you need to get rid of your junk, do it now before you move.  I know it hurts to let go, but your back will hurt a lot more if you don't.  Oh and by the way Shah, get your hands off my junk!

Val's Classroom.  Okay so it's a portable and it isn't all the way finished in this picture, but you get the idea.  She really likes it because it is by itself and she has a lot of room and with the new addition of the microwave and Mini-Fridge (Happy Valentine's Day) it is a perfect little spot for her and her kids.

Another year, another house for ants (Zoolander).  Once again we had a blast doing Gingerbread Houses at Grandma and Grandpa's house.  They are the best to keep this tradition up especially since they have to make so many of them.  We love you guys and appreciate all you have done for us and for giving us this to look forward to every year!

Valentines was pretty low-key this year.  We had an awesome Breakfast-for-Dinner with pink pancakes the night before with the Agrens and then spent Valentine's day with Gen, Shah, Gav and Mallory.  We went to Little America for dinner and hung out downtown for the evening.  The trip to the moon was nice and it was fun just to relax a little.  The Mini-Fridge is the gift I gave to Val, and for all you haters it's what she wanted and it still as good as the day she got it!  How are your flowers looking today?  That's what I thought.

And finally, I have been working hard to increase my vertical leap, and I'm happy to say that I am finally to the point that I can dunk an 8 foot rim with ease.

Something To Think About...

I went bowling with all of my special ed. students on Friday and they taught me a valuable lesson. Each one of them would get all excited after they bowled, it didn’t matter what their score was or the fact that they only knocked down 2 or 3 pins each turn, they were happy. They weren’t competitive, just happy for the opportunity to bowl. If they can be so happy over something so simple, it makes me wish we could all look at the positive side of things.

"Trick or Triit"

As you can see we had a little theme for our pumpkins this year, but aside from that and the title I will spare you from any more "ii" jokes. It was another fairly uneventful Halloween this year. I guess that seems to be the way it goes until you have kids, so I will have to enjoy it while I can, although I have to admit the kids look pretty dang cute in those costumes.

Val and our neighbor Jessie took a couple of kids from the ward around because their mom was at home with a new-born and the dad is in the military, so that was a fun glimpse into the future for her.

I on the other hand stayed home to pass out candy to all 25 of the kids that came by (that is however triple last years turn-out) and as I do every year spent several hours doing my pumpkins. It is always something for me to look forward to and I even bought one of those fake pumpkins to try out this year. I am going to see how it turns out and if I like it I will use those from now on so I can just keep the ones I do and add to the collection each year. Well, hope everyone had a good Halloween this year, and now it's time to start letting out your pants in preparation for the "Real Holidays!"

Being Productive?

So many people have asked me what I have been doing during my 2-month break from work and school. Besides catching up on sleep (AKA sleeping in), watching So You Think You Can Dance, Project Runway, and watching re-runs that I have already seen 3 or 4 times of Charmed, believe it or not I have spent some time doing productive or semi-productive things like…

Making beads and jewelry that I have sold to friends and family. Here are a few of my favorites…

Watering the garden (As you can tell from the picture the cherry tomatoes have turned red! This is so exciting for us!!!) and the grass, which is time consuming when you have to do it by hand.

Re-programming all my friends and family in my contact list on my new iPhone. Brandt and I love them! We highly suggest getting them, they are totally worth the money!!!

Going golfing for the first time in my life! Brandt says that I am the only person in the world who actually gets sad when the ball doesn’t land in the sand. Call me weird but my favorite part about golfing is hitting the ball out of the sand and chipping – I think that is what it is called. Ok so I need to tell you something that happened while golfing that was hilarious. At the 6th hole on the Logan River golf course there are a bunch of geese and I was scared that I would hit one. Brandt told me not to worry because he has golfed there many times and no one ever actually hits one. Well my first ball that I hit, hit a goose right in the buttocks- it literally scared the poop out of it. I love golfing and I will definitely go again.

A few other things that I have done but I don’t have pictures of are working out every night at 9pm with my friend Jessie, reading “No Doubt About It”, and attempting to cook. I’m not a natural born chef like Brandt is (it took me 3 hours to make lasagna, by the way Kristina thanks for the recipe, it was a hit!) but I figure after 5 years of marriage placing a bowl of Brandt’s favorite cereal in the oven and telling him that dinner’s in the oven is just not going to cut it anymore.

25 Years Old!!!

It was my 25th Birthday on Monday! Some of my favorite things about my birthday were: Spending time with Brandt and our friends, having 2 parties (one on Monday and the other on Tuesday), and being blessed with awesome friends that made me a cake and put sprinklers on it. Some of my favorite gifts were: a cute pink and green apron that says, “Born to shop, forced to cook!” (Thanks Jessie and Sean, you guys know me so well) the only problem is that it is so cute that I don’t want to wear it and get it dirty, the movie “My Fair Lady”, and a gray purse! Thank you to all my family who called to wish me a Happy Birthday. That really helps make the day extra special!

One Of My Many Weaknesses

I am only revealing this weakness to help those with the same weakness to keep this from happening to you and because it is a funny story- at least now it is. I am a fairly organized person but when it comes to mail – not so organized. Brandt and I pay some of our bills online and the rest are on auto-pay so we rarely check our mail. Once a week when I do check the mail I pull out all the fun stuff like wedding announcement or shower invitations and put the rest of the mail in a pile. After the pile accumulates for 1 to 2 months (this is so embarrassing). I have Brandt go through it and throw away the junk and file the important stuff. This last Saturday (July 26th) Brandt was going through the pile and saw “Jury Summons” that was sent on June 24th for Brandt to appear in court from July 9th through the 11th. As you can imagine our worry quickly turned to being freaked-out when we read the following, “If you fail to appear as directed, you will be in contempt of court and may be fined for up to $1,000 AND jailed for up to 30 days.”




Every 2nd Sunday for over a year now I have enjoyed people’s reaction when I tell them that Brandt (who is the Elders Quorum 2nd Counselor in our ward) is in jail. Just to later explain that he has a calling to teach Sunday School and translates Spanish to all the Logan criminals that attend the jail branch. But I never thought that I would be telling people that Brandt was in jail for up to 30 days for not showing up to jury duty, and it was entirely my fault.

After finding this mail in the pile all we could do was wait for Monday to come so that we could call and see what was going on. It turned out that that specific case was settled out of court. Besides lots of prayers, one good thing that came out of this was now I check my mail more and go through EVERYTHING before putting it in the pile and eventually maybe even get rid of the whole "pile" process.