Brittney and Ryan Nelson

Goodbye

2012-02-12T05:47:00.001-07:00

Goodbye life, sanity, sleep,weekends,goodbye clean house, laundry, grocery shopping, goodbye gym and good intentions to eat better,goodbye weekends, time off, lazy days, hobbies, reading.Goodbye dear sweet husband making me breakfast in the morning, making a lunch for me to take to school, making dinner or taking me out because we either have no food or no desire to cook.I am in nursing school!!Ryan is leaving for basic training!!I tried to tell myself Ryan being gone would be a good thing because he won't be here to distract me from studying, while that may be true, all the things he does for me, far out way the distraction. I need a good distraction!We will make it, we will survive. It may be just barely and may not be graceful but we'll be here at the end.So if you don't hear from me for awhile that's why. I am alive but my life has become even less blog worthy, and even more less picture worthy. Yes, I feel about as good as I look. Don't ask and don't comment! Ha!

I am freaking out!

2011-12-09T02:32:00.002-07:00

Seriously. This is probably my last month of normalcy for a long time. If you know me you know it is not entirely unusual for me to be freaking out right now. School starts in less than 1 month, January 3rd to be exact. I can't believe it's practically here, I feel like I still have so much to do to get ready! And these last few months have just flown by!!
Thankfully i have Ryan, what would I do without Ryan? he is doing everything he can to help me relax, calm down and get everything done. He is the best ever!! He makes breakfast for me when I get home from work, and dinner when I am taking a nap before work. He even went to the mall for me and got the boots I really wanted when they were on sale because I worked the night before. That is love because Ryan does not like shopping! My list could go on and on and on but seriously he has been so patient and loving and helpful!
This week is really the week my anxiety level went through the roof. I worked Sunday night, fine, Monday fine, we even made dinner. That was our mistake. I woke up about 2 on Tuesday shaking and cold and achy. I thought i might have the flu, but wondered how I could have the flu when already got my flu shot like 2 months ago? Then I remembered that Holly and Brad had been down that weekend and she said they had had the flu earlier that week, but I hardly saw them, and really I hardly ever get sick. Ryan had to get up at 3:30 so I didn't want to wake him up earlier just to tell him I was sick. (if I wasn't sort of editing this as I go along you might be seriously laughing at my creative typing right now!) when Ryan's alarm finally went off, it felt like hours, I told him I was sick and he got me a warm blanket and laid by me for a minute. He ended up calling in sick because I was shaking so bad he thought he was going to have to take me to the hospital! He gave me some medicine and I started feeling better and fell asleep. When I woke up he was sick! Not shaking like me but not feeling good, so I got him some medicine and went back to sleep. So it turns out we made a less than mediocre dinner Monday night with chicken I had left in the fridge a little too long. Ryan only had a little and then made a sandwich, but I was starving so I at the bad dinner...and got really sick.
Lesson learned, pay attention to my food!
But because I was sick I missed my schedule sign up and forgot about it until midnight on wednesdy. I wad planning on working weekends while I am in school, but whe I went to sign up there was not a Friday night to be had! What? Why is everyone all of a sudden working weekends when need them!! Now my schedule is skiwompus!! Which naturally caused me to go into instant panic mode! On top of the fact that I was working at lds hospital which gives me anxiety. It is in the worst location of life!! Seriously. Going downtown at 7 at night is a nightmare, then you have to drive up the avenues. I hate the avenues. Stop on every freaking corner!! I am late nearly every time I work at lds hospital, no matter what time I leave. I despise going to lds hospital. Then getting out of downtown in the morning takes forever. So by the time I get home in the morning I am all worked up. Not to mention all the dumb drivers I get stuck behind. If you can't drive the speed limit it is either a) time to get a new car or b) you shouldn't be driving because your a moron. It is probably safest not to drive, ok be around me in the morning! :)
But Ryan and I did figure out a solution to my problems. Since he will be leaving in february I can move out of the apartment and live on a van. I can get to work and school and have a place to sleep. Perfect.
Ok, it will work out and I am sure it is not as dramatic as I am making it out to be,but sometimes it seems that way to me. That's why I need Ryan to bring me back down to earth.
Wow. If you didn't think I was crazy before you do now. I do. Sorry no pictures again. I might have some at home I can try to post later, we'll see.

Working my butt off (hopefully!)

2011-11-02T02:51:00.002-06:00

These last couple weeks have been crazy!! Last week I was a crazy person. I don't know what got me going but I seriously worked out a ton! One morning I ran for 40 min. Then that night I went to a piyo class with my cousin Sara, I loved it! Then the next dayni had personal training then right after I went to a zumba class, which wasn't my favorite.... Hopefully I can try it again, but piyo was awesome. I think I am paying for everything now though. I slept until 3:30 today! I did work the two nights before bit that is long for me, all this exercising is wearing me out! Let's just hope I don't lose whatever motivational streak I'm on!

I also got to have lunch with my cousin Sara, we definitely needed to catch up! I get so busy being busy I forget there are other people out there! Then we went to piyo together, it is nice to have a workout buddy!

Halloween not my favorite holiday, I celebrated by working. And I made a wreath. That's it. Happy Halloween.

I have been in some kind of crazy mood lately, besides the working out. I decorated my porch and made my Halloween wreath, and I have more projects on my list! I am normally NOT like this! Maybe I should go to the doctor. What doctor to you go to for exercising and doing crafts!! :)

It's nice thinking this is my last shift this week, even though I am working at slbh on Friday and contemplating picking up a day shift on Thursday for some overtime pay! I feel so good right now! Which is why I am blogging, or sharing all my random thoughts at 3 in the morning

I am contemplating working days even though I know itnis crazy!!? It would be really nice to see Ryan more, nice enough that I am contemplating busting my butt for 12 straight hours!! I am thinking that for the next shift sign ups I will work 2 nights and 1 day, ease into it a bit and see if I can really handle it. Plus school starts January 3!! And I need to figure out how to fit that into my schedule! Yikes!!

I don't know if I mentioned this before but I have been blogging from my iPad, in the middle of the night. If there are crazy spelling errors and random letters hanging around that is why, it really isnt easy blogging from an iPad. But I still love it!!

Oh my

2011-10-16T05:25:00.002-06:00

I feel like time is just flying by (except when I am at work!) but seriously things just keep going and going and going. A kiss hello and a kiss good bye has been about the extent of our quality time together, except when there isn't time for that, then it's just a phone call on the way to work or texts at work. So this last week we took some much needed time off and had a mini vacation. We stayed up in deer valley. It was wonderful not to have to be anywhere and do anything. Sometimes I just need to get away from the house so I don't feel the need to clean and do laundry....I couldn't have asked for more than to just be with Ryan, he is the best!
So I picked up a prn job at salt lake behavioral health because "call off season" is supposedly starting at IHC, well it hasnt started yet for me. I have been working like a crazy person!! I hope it will get better when I am not training anymore?
In case you didn't know Ryan signed up for the air force reserves. I still have mixed feelings about this. I hate the part where he will be gone for 6 months for training and whenever he gets deployed, but also feel a strange sense of pride that he is doing it. With boot camp coming up quick we decided we need to get our butts in shape and have been going to the gym again. One more thing on the list of things to do. I don't like going but feel good after that I went! Hopefully I can keep going long enough to see results!
This is my third night on and in a few hours I get to go teach the sunbeams!! Oh my, I'm not sure how this is going to go. Got a phone call from an unknown number as I was walking into work which I didn't answer, turns out they want Ryan and I to say the prayers in sacrament meeting, hopefully they aren't planning on it,I'm just hopping to make it to primary! I swear we just said the prayers last month, that is plenty for me.
I'm just rambling now, nothing has really changed since I last wrote, still no pictures, but that's life I guess. A little hectic but pretty darn good!

What's going on??

2011-08-21T00:56:00.003-06:00

You probably don't care, but sometimes I feel like I have no idea! Really since the middle of July I feel like we have been going non stop. After Vegas, work was killer,then the first weekend in august we went to washington for Ryan's 10 year high school reunion and a wedding reception. We actually made it this time! I have to say the reunion wasn't what I thought it would be, apparently the dinner Friday night was cancelled because nobody prepaid the $75. So we didn't miss much Friday. When we got there Saturday afternoon we met up with Ryan's friends, and went swimming in the canal. Well I didn't because I am a baby, but everyone else did. Ryan got to show off his moves! We did have fun. Then it was off to the bar..for a not very good expensive dinner,seeing a bunch of drunk people apparently Ryan didn't care to catch up with, which was fine with me! Especially the creepy drunk/high guy who Ryan played soccer with at one time,but was never really friends with,he kept coming over and just staring! Yikes!! I was glad we didn't stay very long. But glad we got to see the people we really came to see. Sunday was Ryan's friend Toby and his wife Tandra's wedding reception. They got married in Hawaii in may and we weren't able to go so it was Fun to see them all dressed up and see the wedding video. We came back tuesday afternoon, both worked. Thursday I went up to bear lake for the harvey family reunion. It was lots of fun! We went boating an played in the water all day. I tried wake boarding but just can't get up! I guess tubing is more my thing! I can hold on to that tube like a champion, even though my legs are flying in the air and slapping the water! Good times. It was so fun to see all my family, play, eat and catch up. I did pay for it though,I hurt so bad!
We also got a new car the beginning of august. A white Hyundai sonata. I like it. It has navigation, which has come in handy a couple of times,but I really like the back up camera, the Bluetooth, and my sunroof!
Anyway, so I got home from the family reunion Saturday afternoon. Sunday I taught sunbeams, then we went up to park city with Ryan's family for the week. I worked Sunday and Monday night. We hung out in park city for the week, Ryan got to go golfing almost everyday with his dad, Bryce and John. Now I am back at work. I'm not complaining,we have been doing some fun things, but sometimes all the fun things, combined with work can wear you out!
I think my tomato plants are officially dead. So sad. They were doing so well until we went to Vegas, we asked the neighbors to water them for 3 days, when we left they were green and thriving. When we got back they were brown and dead. They said they watered them every night, but obviously they didn't! I might still be a little upset about this. I tried to revive them,I cut all the dead branches off, but they just aren't the same. We only get really small tomatoes. Maybe next year?
Sometimes I feel like I am just running through life trying to figure out what's going on. I look at other peole with their houses, kids, and careers, and wonder why we haven't figured it out yet? But lately I have been thinking who cares what everyone else has, I am not them. I have a good life. I have wonderful family who love and support us. And and AMAZING husband who works so hard. Even though I always wish I could see him more, I am so glad to have a husband who knows how to work and is willing to work. There is nobody else i would rather try to figure out what I am going to be when I grow up with than Ryan! He always believed in me, encouraged me to go back to school, and knew I would get into a nursing program even when I lost hope. Thanks Ryan, I love you!

We've been busy

2011-07-22T02:39:00.002-06:00

I've decided I don't really like blogging. We don't too much that is exciting and picture worthy, so I never have anything to write about. I do like the idea some of my friends have of just writing for themselves so I am going to try that. If I feel like writing I'll write, if I have pictures to share I'll share them,if I have exciting news to share I'll share it. You are welcome to keep reading, but I am not promising anything exciting.

It seems like this past week and a half have been pretty busy. Busy but good. Ryan has been busy at work which is always good! And sometimes not since he sold the 4 runner out from under me!! Someone Ryan works with really wanted to buy it, and Ryan is so nice he sold it to him!! I hope the weather stays nice for awhile so Ryan can keep riding the bike to work!!
The 13th was my birthday, my 27th birthday. Not something I like to admit, but it came weather I wanted it ot or not. And it was s great day! I got a little pampering done with my mom, and my family came up for dinner. Michelle made brownies and homemade ice cream, yummy!! Ryan wad also very sneaky and managed to not tell me what he got me for my birthday or have me open my present early, I like surprises. Ryan brought me breakfast in bed then I got my iPad!! Awesome!! He is the very best!
Saturday we were supposed to go to Louisiana to see Holly and Bracket and little Bentlee, but we were flying standby and got booted off the plane! Everything looked soo good. There were 12 open seats, we were in first class, the door closed. Then the door opened and they told us the plane was "too heavy" ya right! So we didn't make it to Louisiana, I was pretty bummed, not to mention exhaustd from only getting 4 hours of sleep that morning! When we got home Ryan opened my nursing school letter, I didn't want to see te rejection. He didn't say anything,so I looked and didn't quiet understand a first what was going on. I didn't see sorry on the page....I wondered if Ryan was playing a joke on me. No. I GOT ACCEPTED TO NURSING SCHOOL!!!!! It is a miracle. I was soo happy, I still can't believe it and read the letter everyday just to make sure.
That night we went and saw Harry Potter, it was definitely good, but not quite what I was expecting. I think I will probably have to go see it again.

Since we didn't make it to Louisiana and Ryan had time off, we decided we had to go somewhere,so we drove to Vegas. We layed by the pool, saw a cirque du soliel show, had dinner at the Bellagio buffet and had a great time relaxing together, not getting up early, or having anything tonworry about. It was nice. Then we came home and i had to work...now I am trying to stay awake!!

4 1/2 more hours, I can make it!

A Good Week!

2011-06-06T16:54:00.004-06:00

Last week was a very good week! :)

Well I guess it started out kind of scary. Michelle went to the hospital with toxemia. They were hoping she would be able to be on bed rest for a couple of weeks and keep little Jaydia cooking until at least 34 weeks, but that didn't happen. Wednesday they took Michelle down to UVRMC and Jaydia Michelle Smith was born. She is the first niece/grandchild on my side of the family, and we were all very excited. Jaydia was 8 weeks early but is doing AMAZINGLY well. She had to be on a ventilator to help her breathe because she couldn't get all the CO2 out. Then she had a small billi lamp on since she was borderline jaundice. Now she is off the ventilator and cpap machine and breathing on her own!! She does still have a feeding tube and needs to learn to suck, swallow and breathe, and when she does that she can go home. They say 3-4 weeks! That is amazing. Michelle is doing well. She was discharged on Sunday from the hospital. We are so excited to Christian, Michelle and Jaydia!

Ryan's sister Holly had her little baby boy on Friday night! How exciting! Except they are so far away! Wish they were closer so we could go visit! But we are so excited for them as well! Congratulations guys! He is darling!

Leslie is so freaking excited to finally be an aunt! She thinks Jaydia is the "best thing ever!" Of course we all do!

Just can't help being excited that the babies are finally here and everyone is doing well!

Blog Blah

2011-04-20T17:07:00.004-06:00

I haven't felt like blogging much for awhile. Lots of reasons, from everyone else's cute cleverly written blogs and pictures, to annoyed with what people say, and a bad attitude.

We moved. I hate moving. working only 3 nights a week can make things easier. I packed up the apartment while Ryan was working. Because of his crazy schedule we ended up moving on a Sunday. My family came up and some great neighbors helped. Thank you everyone!

I hate moving. We moved into our new condo. No one above or below us! we are above the garages though (people don't seem to use them too much) View of a large building. :( Closer to work for both Ryan and I.

Instant problems. Night #1. Ryan showers and the drain backs up. Toilet water backs up into shower. we can't shower or use toilet. Landlord comes next day and plumbers.

1st load of laundry that I don't have to take out of my apartment to do! Move clothes to dryer- nothing. The old dryer isn't working. The old dryer our landlord told us worked when we first saw the place isn't working. Super hard towels. Few nights later appliance man comes after we try resetting the breakers and blowing them, sparks. Laundry at my parents again. Thanks!
Dryer is fixed, not efficient, but works.

Come home notice a large pocket behind the front door up by the ceiling. Full of water. Landlord mad. Maintenance comes and cuts holes in my wall and ceiling. Days. Previous owners smoked can smell stale smoke. gross. wierd maintenance guys sheet rock and mud, come back and paint. Finally done! Please don't come back.

When we moved in I had to deep clean the fridge it was disgusting. Mad. Sanitize tub and bathroom floor after plumbers removed toilet to clean drain. I have done more work on this remodeled place then I have ever had to before. If anything else goes wrong I might move out!

It is coming along. I think everything is clean. I got curtains which my dad spent all day Saturday helping me measure and hang, and measure and hang pictures, IKEA trip. He is the greatest!

Still trying to find a place for a few more things, but all in all it is starting to feel like home.

Ryan graduated in December. we managed to lay low for awhile before the apartments noticed we weren't in school and told us to leave. So we did. Ryan is still working for UPS in the mornings and also selling cars at Murdock Hyundai. He is doing great!! I am not just saying that because I am his wife. he really is. He works long hours, but I am grateful for all he does! He is the best!

I am still at St. Marks working as a CNA on med/surg. Would love to work in the L&D Nursery or NICU, but at least I have a job. This week was pretty brutal but I am done until monday. Nice. Haven't seen Ryan more than a kiss hello or good bye in 2 days. He is supposed to be getting off right now, but has some appointments coming in at 6:30. Dang. that is good and bad. Bad for me because I don't get to see him, but that is how he makes us money! He is great!

I have actually been cooking now that I have some counter space, a full size oven and a dishwasher. That might seem trivial to some of you, unless you live at the Village! I feel so domestic. And I love it. tried some new recipes, received well.

My sister Leslie got a job at Murdock Hyundai as well. Not selling cars. She does not like Hyundai's. Snob. She is the receptionist. So I try to bring her dinner sometimes, even she liked my new recipes! I like being able to see Leslie more it is fun!

Sorry no pics. We cleaned the computer and put everything onto an external hard drive, now nothing is grouped and I am not going to search through all my pics to find the ones I am looking for. Plus we haven't really taken any. Bad pics from this post are from my phone. My 'My touch 4G'. Don't really love it. Miss my iphone, want the new one! but this will work and it is not bad, just not as good!

I am a good wife. I cook, sometimes, I clean, I take dinner to my husband (and sister) at work, and Ryan got a motorcycle. Yes a motorcycle. I never thought I would have a motorcycle but after having the scooter it became more of a possibility. He LOVES his motorcycle. I mean LOVES it! I hope not more than me because I am awesome!

I have to admit it is pretty fun to drive, and my brothers and dad LOVE it too! Spencer never used to text me, now he lets me know the weather all the time and invites us to come down!

Debating on making cookies and taking them to Leslie and Ryan at work , at Leslies request. But that would mean I have to get ready...

Updates

2010-11-30T12:31:00.006-07:00

Well Hawaii was wonderful, of course! I will have to post some pics later. We drove to Hana and camped for 2 nights, it was beautiful. The 2 hour drive was really pretty, but not very relaxing!! The little 2 lane road sometimes narrowed into one lane and became pretty scary! But we survived. We hung out for a little bit at a black sand beach which was cool, but it wasn't a swimming or laying out beach, mostly just come look and go beach. We did find a local beach that was pretty nice and a red sand beach which you had to do a little hiking to get to, but once you were there it was amazing! The rocks created a little bay like area that you could snorkel around in and see some pretty cool fish. It was apparently a well known nudist beach! Could have done without that!! We didn't camp on the beach. The campsite was more like a big open field with a few trees and you could see and hear the waves crashing into the cliffs that separated you from the ocean, it was beautiful! We tried some of the local fare. Chicken plates with rice and macaroni salad. Basic but good. The last 2 nights we went back over to the main part of the island and stayed in a hotel. Besides the fact that there was a shower it was about as nice as camping! But it worked, even though little lizards could get in through the crack where the air conditioning was and that kind of freaked me out! It was a great trip! I love Hawaii. I think I could live there. It is the prefect temperature and you have a beach and you never have to deal with SNOW!!
I can't believe Thanksgiving has already come and gone. I have been looking forward to it and now it is already gone. It makes me not want to look forward to Christmas because I don't want it to be over! (maybe just the cold snowy part!) I started working at St. Marks Hospital as a CNA on in med/surg. Right now I am working Thurs, Fri. and Saturday nights from 7pm-7am. I can handle the hours ok, it is just hard to go! Hopefully once school gets out I can work more during the week. The nice thing is once I am done with school I will have 4 days off! Love it!
We saw Harry Potter, twice, on Imax! LOVED it!
My sister Leslie came home from Ecuador. She was volunteering at an orphanage for 3 months! The boys were pretty upset when she extended her stay a few weeks! It is so sweet that they missed her. We all missed her and it is great to have her home. It was fun to pick her up from the airport and see how excited she was to see us!

We spent Thanksgiving with Ryan's family in Park City. Well everyone else spent the week in Park City, Ryan and I commuted back and forth for school and work! But is was still fun. Even though Saturday before Thanksgiving I had to drive down in a snow storm and it took me 2 hours to get to work when it would have normally taken only 1/2 hour! It was not fun. The Blizzard of the century came and went without much blizzard! and hardly any snow! But Utah went into panic mode and scared everyone to death, over nothing! We have had bigger storms before and after that nobody has said anything about! Hello we live in Utah it snows! (even though I don't like it) It was great to have everyone together for Thanksgiving though! We even managed to get some pretty good family pictures!

And of course Thanksgiving dinner was delicious!

What a great start to the holiday season! Spending a whole week with family who are now scattered all over! And meeting some of them for the very first time! It's now back to the grind. School is almost over, on the final stretch!! I am so excited to be done! Ryan will graduate with his bachelors in communications! My nursing application is due in January. Ryan is still working for UPS but out at the airport and from about 2-8 on mondays and 4am-8am tues-fri. Still crazy hours but somehow they seem better! :) I love him so much he is the BEST! Once we make it through finals we just have to pray I get into the nursing program! So if I don't post very much it is probably because I am either studying or exhausted! But life is good, we are truly blessed!

Happy Holidays!

In case you were wondering...

2010-10-07T23:15:00.001-06:00

This is where we are going for fall break!! AHHH can't wait!!

Summer 2010

2010-09-17T22:51:00.012-06:00

This is Mama's house in Mount Pleasant Utah we went down and helped clean it out because we sold it. The first time I went down with my dad I was ahead of him by about 20 minutes and I hadn't been down in probably 15 years so I drove around and tried to find it, I knew I couldn't miss it because it is ORANGE!! I was right when I saw it I knew. Sara, so you remember mama "teaching us to drive" the riviera? "be careful" she said to you "it jack knifes off the road!" that is all I remember her saying. I didn't want to try to drive after that!

This is my tart flag I made for the 4th of July. Ok so it doesn't look exactly like it did in the magazine but it was delicious!

Here is a picture update of our summer. I was in school and Ryan worked almost non-stop, but we managed to fit in some fun!
Fireworks at sugarhouse park.
One day we were driving up 4th South, past the cemetery and I saw a bunch a deer, little baby ones, they were so cute! We went home grabbed the camera and drove through the cemetery looking for them. Apparently they live there but it was still exciting to see the cute little babies.
If you look close you can see the little baby laying down.

Summer was full of visits from family. It started off with Ryan's brother Greg his wife Michelle and there 2 boys Deagan and Kayden who we met for the first time. Greg got back from 3 weeks in Israel! And we got to see them before they headed back to NY.

Then was the Nelson family reunion. Practically in our backyard at This is the Place State Park. Bryce, Liliya and there kids came down along with Carol, Dale and Melissa. Friday we hit Raging Waters, it was a blast!

They could have stayed all night!! Saturday I went to the Family Reunion with Ryan's family while Ryan slept. Then we went shopping at the outlets in Park City and what do you know swimming again!

We did have a break in between semesters and Ryan also had a week off from UPS so we went up to Jackson and went camping.

We had a friendly deer that kept coming through our campsite hoping we would feed it. I could have reached out and touched him he was so close. The first morning fellow campers came by to let us know there was a bear sighted in the campground, we were the only ones in a tent...we did some hiking, Ryan did some biking and we had pitiful fire. The wood was wet so all it would do was smoke, but I did make some mighty nice marshmallows! Ryan did take me to see Eclipse at the Spud drive-in. How romantic! :)
Holly and Brad also spent a few days with us on there way back from Missouri. Then over labor day weekend Bryce and Liliya ditched the kids to come hang out. We had love having people come stay, so thanks to everyone who took a little time to stop by!
School is going. Ryan's last semester and the first time we have ever gone to a football game, although we did watch them other years. This year we decided to go to a few games. We took my brother Tanner and cousin Chad to the UNLV game. It was a blast and the perfect day for a football game.

We even went and got us some red shirts so we could show our school spirit!! We had so much fun we are going to get tickets to the next game. I hope Caroline is proud of me. I always think of here when I watch football! GO UTES!

Lame

2010-09-10T22:43:00.002-06:00

Not that many of you care. But our hard drive is full so we haven't been able to get pictures off the camera onto the computer so I haven't felt the need to blog. Not that things are super exciting.
School started again, Ryan's last semester! I am so excited! And a few more for me! It has been a pretty busy summer with school and work and family, but it has been great! I think we had almost all of Ryan's family here at one point or another this last month, it has been so much fun to have visitors!
Tomorrow we are going to the U game with Tanner and Chad and we are so excited! It should be a perfect day too. I wanted to go to a game before it starts getting too cold.
Anyway were still around I will post some pictures soon.

Who's driving this CRAZY thing!

2010-06-09T22:18:00.003-06:00

This crazy thing just happens to be my life right now!! I am past the super stressed out point of just coming home and crying because it has been a long day and Ryan is making dinner! I am sleeping better and I am now done with my first 2 tests.
In case you didn't know I am back in school. I decided to go back and get into nursing, and the U has an accelerated program where I can get my bachelors in nursing in a year because I already have a bachelors degree. I just need to finish a few prereqs. This semester I am taking Physiology (yes I did take that the first time around but it has been over 7 years so I now have to retake my anat and phys!) That makes me feel old! and I am also taking into to bio-organic chem. and yes it is just as fun as it sounds! I am still working at Wasatch...and on the weekends because I have nothing better to do I am taking a CNA course it is 5 days ( Sat/Sun...Sat/Sun...Sun) and they are 10 hour days! It is killer! But hopefully it will help get me into school and get a job! Oh I almost forgot on Fridays I volunteer at St. Marks hospital in the NICU for 4 hours.
My family is going to CA for a week and we don't get to go because of school and Ryan can't get work off. I am definitely going to need a break at the end of this semester. And that doesn't' count church callings! I am in the Stake Primary presidency and we are both on the Activities committee...Ryan is still working UPS nights, just got an early morning shift mowing lawns at the golf course and teaches Elders quorm. Ryan has been WONDERFUL though. He did the laundry the other day, cleaned the apt. he makes dinner and lunch. He even helps me study since he has taken organic chemistry he is my tutor. The other night he went through my notes and marked out what chapters to read in my book. I wouldn't survive without him!! Sorry no pictures, studying isn't all that interesting and my house is now a disaster! I guess that is a working students life!

Thanks

2010-05-04T23:03:00.008-06:00

Thanks to everyone who either did not get the census or did not fill it out, you helped give Ryan (another) job! I think Ryan loves part time jobs. He is now working for the 2010 Census. He gets to go around to people in the area who have not returned the census. Conveniently he gets to go to the student housing since no one got the census. I love all of Ryan and his crazyness!
I have the week off so now I feel like I need to stay up late just because I can...so here are some random pics from the last little while.

One nice sunny Sunday we were at my parents house for dinner and the boys here first hitting golf balls at one of the sheds, then throwing them...boys? And my brothers love anything that has to do with throwing balls!

Then we decided to go to the golf course to find more golf balls. Christian and Tanner, who are so very much alike! wanted to scour the hillside, the rest of us didn't so we drove down and met them at the base of the canyon, where there was a little pond on one of the holes. Leslie and Michelle were being so helpful and finding golf balls they even waded into the pond to grab them! Silly girls!

Spencer who is now 16, gets to drive around the awesome Riviera and since we were being nostalgic I decided to wear one of grandma's hats! Pretty sweet!

Tanner turned 14 this year and I have to say we are pretty darn good gift givers not only did we get him the video game he wanted he got glow in the dark silly putty!! (Last year he wanted $8 worth of silly putty, which we did!)

and how often do you see this??

Here are some more cute pictures from our last trip up to Rexburg. I just can't resist, they are too cute!

Again not really too much going on here. Ryan has one more project to finish then his semester is done!! I am sooo happy!

My Sweet Husband

2010-04-19T20:38:00.002-06:00

I just have to say how grateful I am for Ryan. He takes such good care of me. The beginning of April I had a few lipomas out usually they just numb the area with lidocane, make a small incision and pop the little bugger out. But because of the locations of these 3 they put me out. We had to be at hospital at 7:30 in the am. Not Ryan's favorite time of day, but he drove me and hung out for a couple hours at the hospital. Apparently I didn't want to wake up! He picked up my rx and helped me hobble into the apartment. We laid on the couch and Ryan took a nap by me on the floor while I slept on the couch. He is so sweet.
That night was my brother Spencers 16th birthday and I really wanted to be there, so we drove down and Ryan went to dinner with my family while I laid drugged on the couch! He was so sweet to take me down so I could "celebrate" Spencers birthday! I can't believe he is 16. He gets to drive my Grandma's awesome Riviera around and he loves it!
I love Ryan so much he cook and cleaned and didn't even complain when I couldn't shower for 3 days!! That night when he came home from work and got into bed he asked if he could still hold me. It was so sweet if I wasn't so delirious I probably would have cried. I love it when he holds me while I fall asleep. He takes such good care of me I don't know what I would do without him!

One more thing

2010-03-17T12:30:00.003-06:00

We did go up to Rexburg to visit. And had fun playing the Beatles Rockband with Bryce Liliya, Holly, Brad and the kids. I did get some video of Ada dancing. She is so freaking cute!

and sorry most of this one is out of focus. We have so much fun when we come up and love visiting!

Februaryness

2010-03-17T12:16:00.002-06:00

February is over, yea! Spring is finally coming! Really not much is going on here. It is finally warming up and I LOVE it! I get to work from home on Wednesdays which I am obviously loving as well.
February 23 we celebrated our 3rd anniversary. It wasn't great. That day at least. I worked Ryan had class until 8:30. We had lunch and dinner together and then Ryan had to work that night. Since we didn't get to celebrate that day we celebrated on Saturday with a trip to the spa. Glorious! The Kura door is a holistic Japanese spa. We started our "lovers retreat" with a 40 minute Japanese bath then an hour massage. After the massage which was wonderful we got to sit in the sauna and steam room for as long as we wanted. Ryan said we needed to do this twice a year! I agree. So it did turn out to be a good anniversary! I love Ryan so much! He works so hard to make sure we are all taken care of I don't know what I would do without him. He is the love of my life!
In February I was also called to be the first counselor in the stake Primary Presidency! Very intimidating but it will be great. The President is awesome and I have to admit I am pretty lucky to be the 1st counselor instead of the 2nd! She has to do all the scout stuff!! I am over Nursery and Baptisms. So far it has been a great experience. I think that is about all the exciting stuff I have for now. Maybe I will post again this month? We will see what happens.

Merry Christmas!

2010-01-22T23:25:00.021-07:00

You know Christmas must have been GOOD if it has taken me a month to get this post out! Actually it was really fun! Ryan worked until about 2:30am Christmas Eve morning, came home picked me up and we drove to Rexburg to carpool with Bryce Liliya and the kids. About 1/2 way to Rexburg at 4 in the morning the car overheats! We are practically in the middle of nowhere and it is 2 degrees outside!! But we managed to fix it quick and never had anymore problems.
Mari, Shad, Bellen, and Ada are really the best nieces and nephew we could ever ask for but I was a little nervous to drive that long in a car with kids, memories. Driving to California with my family growing up, not fun. It was ALL I could think about, fighting over space who is touching who...................... The drive up was awesome! I drove with Liliya and we talked the whole time it was so much fun! And the girls were perfect! We got to Ephrata about 6:00 pm and everyone was there! That is what Christmas is all about. Christmas Eve we did the Nativity program. The kids "acted" it out. Actually they mostly wandered around in their costumes while we read scriptures and sang songs.
John played the guitar while we sang hyms.

Ada as Mary

Belen as and Angel

Some of the Family and the rest of the Nativity

Cute Shad

Sorry this is out of order, but I almost forgot our Christmas tree! We went to Wyoming to cut it down. Bought a tree stand that turned out to be too big for our little tree which ended up falling over one night and instead of putting it back up we just leaned it against the wall! Ghetto!

And a cool picture of our ornament Ryan took.

Back to our Christmas trip. Sorry this post is going to be long, I will try not to take anymore detours!

There were 18 people in one house for Christmas and it was great! Christmas morning the kids were so patient to wait for Ryan and I to get up since we were sleeping on the hid-a-bed in the family room! We didn't sleep in too long! It was so much fun to have the little kids at Christmas, seeing how excited they were about everything! Here is Christmas morning...
Of course we had to have breakfast before we opened presents. I'm not sure if Ada is trying to figure out what Deagan in eating or if she wants some? And the presents before the it all began.

Liliya was the creative genius behind the calendar, it turned out great! As well as the winning emotional gift for Carol.

Bryce Liliya and the kids opening presents, of course there was a little drama.

Shad got Bakugan for Christmas, I think he was excited every time he opened a Bakugan present, even though the one before was bakugan! It was great! He even got a bakugan wii game and was super excited to watch Bryce and Ryan play it for him! Awesome!

Brad got an I Phone. Nice.

They also got a wii!

Ashley got a jumper (Holly seemed to love it!) and Deagan was worn our from all the excitement and presents!

I know I look amazing, but it was early. We got Ea Active for the Wii and Ryan got a sweater...hum... Carol did put the receipt in the sweater.

We played with all our new toys, had a delicious turkey dinner. The boys played football and we enjoyed being together.
Saturday was Melissa's Birthday and Mari asked if we could go iceskating for her birthday, it was Mari's lucky day because we did! Mari and Shad LOVED it! They kept saying it was the best day ever.

We also had fun playing Melissa's dancing game on the Wii. And just so you know Bryce killed everyone!

The kids dancing are adorable, and notice pregnant Michelle going for it as well! Michelle and Ashely are both pregnant and due at the end of March it was fun to see them. Sunday was Bryce's birthday and since we were leaving sunday morning we celebrated Saturday night. Carol made 2 cakes from scratch. A german chocolate and an angel food cake. I am craving the german chocolate cake right now! yummy!! We ate so much good food I am sure I gained at least 5 pounds the short weekend we were there! I am still trying to find the motivation to work it all off, that is what EA active is for right?

Ryan took some family pictures since we were all together. It was a very sunny day though! But we got some pretty good ones!

Sorry so many of us, we don't have very many we haven't taken ourselves.
Here is the whole family!

Even though it was a short trip it was so worth it. The drive was long, but the kids were amazingly good.
I had a little cold before we went up and thought it was getting better, but Saturday after Christmas I started having a hard time breather and it kept getting worse. Finally Ryan told me I needed to go to the doctor. I think I was scaring him. So Monday when we got back I went to the doctor and it turned out I had bronchitis. I felt so bad being around everyone the whole weekend and being sick, but fortunately I don't think anyone else got sick!
These holidays have been some of the best since we have been married. Ryan quit SkyWest before Thanksgiving so we had thanksgiving together with my family. He didn't have a ton of time off for Christmas but he did have Christmas Eve, and Christmas off so we had a nice weekend, then he had New Years off! That was the greatest present of all! New Years day my grandparents take the whole family bowling it is always something we look forward to.

Oh yes and one of our presents was a remote start for our Four Runner and we got it installed yesterday. It is AMAZING. We were kind of nervous it might not work, if we couldn't park close enough, but when we pressed the button and it went green I have to admit I jumped up and down and screamed! I know kind of lame. But it is so exciting!
Sorry about the super long post. That is why I don't do it too often! 3 hours later at 1:30 in the morning I am definitely done.

Thanksgiving and such

2009-12-14T20:36:00.002-07:00

I'm glad i'm not the only one who hasn't posted in awhile! Sometimes I feel like there is just not much to say, which is usually true. In the middle of November Ryan quit his job at SkyWest, which has been unfortunately wonderful! Wonderful because I get to have somewhat normal weekends with my husband, and unfortunate because we can no longer go on fun vacations!
Thanksgiving was wonderful! We made pies...7 pies! We didn't intend to make that many it just happened. We baked 2 pumpkin pies, 2 apple pies, peanut butter and chocolate chip pie, and 2 lemon merangue. They were delicious as was dinner which we had at my grandparents house. We even went shopping on Black Friday. We got up nice and early and got to the stores at noon! HA! I'm not THAT crazy! Christmas shopping done! That afternoon we went to my sister-in-laws cabin up in Wyoming. It was a blast even though there was not snow. But we cut down our first real Christmas tree. Which about 4 days ago fell over because it doesn't quite fit in the stand. It is now leaning against the wall... I guess we are fake tree people? It was really fun though! We played games (Pit, so fun!) watched movies, celebrated my dad's birthday at a "fresh" seafood place in Afton Wyoming...it was really goo though. We even saw a parade! My dad brought up a bunch of guns and we did some skeet shooting. It was Ryan's first time and he did amazing! I didn't do so well and prefer target shooting besides the bitter cold and wind it was fun.
Ryan is almost done with school FRIDAY!! I am so excited! Only one more paper and its only 13 pages! Christmas eve we leave for Rexburg then on to Ephrata for Christmas with Ryan's family who will ALL be there. We are so excited. I LOVE the holidays!

Sorry I didn't feel like incorporating pictures throughout this post so here they all are. I am getting very lazy.

Changes

2009-11-16T21:28:00.007-07:00

We still haven't been very exciting. Last week we decided that it was time for Ryan to leave SkyWest, a very hard decision, but he works 7 days a week so we can't even use the benefits he is working for and we never get to see each other! So we thought we would stick it out until the next bid and just see if things changed. Well they did he actually got a decent shift TH-Sat from like 6-9:30 and his on call day would be Sunday. So we decided to give it a try a little longer. That was Wednesday. Friday Ryan called me from work to tell me his schedule for the next 2 weeks and he had all closing shifts which he can't work because he has to be at UPS, then on Saturdays he was scheduled for a 6 am shift! That was the last straw for me I told him to quit. We had planned to go on one last trip before he quit, then we decided to stay a little longer so we decided we could wait to go on trip so we changed our plans then Ryan decided to quit and we wanted to get away one last time. Since we only had Sat and Sun we decided to go to Ephrata to see his family and Melissa was singing at Cabaret and we heard she did a really good job. She did a GREAT job! We were all so impressed!

It was fun to be able to go see Melissa sing I'm glad we had the opportunity!

This is just a cool picture Ryan took at Cabaret

So Ryan will go in and turn in his badges this week. It is sad to think we won't be able to go away when we want for free. But I would rather see my husband so I am kind of excited he is quitting too. Mixed feelings.

Work was crazy this morning. One of our doctors went to Mexico to do eye exams for 2 weeks, so we had all sorts of projects to do while he was gone. One of them was to get the carpets cleaned. I was gone Thursday and Friday so I figured they cleaned the carpets then. When I walked in the office this morning I just about turned around and went home. There were fans and cords and stuff ALL over the office! We had a FULL day of patients I didn't know what to do. I got in at 8 and our first patient is at 9 how was I ever going to get everything put back together before patients came? If the company going to come and clean up their stuff?? I was so frustrated that this wasn't done before. Then I wondered what kind of crazy floor cleaning company we used, I have never seen so much stuff. Well it turns out we did get the carpets cleaned on Thursday and on Friday we had a pipe break and flood the whole office!! The funny thing is people will leave me notes for just about any non important matter alive but no one said one thing about this, no note no message on the answering machine...I was in total shock when I walked in! It is kind of funny now in a frustrating way but I was so mad this morning! Needless to say it was a long day. Everything was not quite dry. I guess I am lucky I wasn't there when the actual disaster happened!

Life in the Village

2009-09-24T19:48:00.003-06:00

That's what its called where we live. the "village" Our new thing is we stopped drinking pop. AND it was RYAN'S idea!!! One night when he got home at 3:00am he got in bed, we usually talk for 30 seconds, and he said "I have an idea" "...oh..." "I think we should stop drinking pop for 6 months." Then I rolled over to try to look at him. He was serious and we have been. The idea came because someone at work told him they had stopped drinking pop and had lost weight. Both of us have our trouble spots so we decided to give it a try. I have even been going to the gym a few days a week and we both think we are noticing a difference. Yah! Even if its all in our heads, it feels good.
Ryan did really well in his softball game yesterday! I was like a proud mom!! He got a triple and a home run. Even though it didn't go over the fence, the other team had enough errors that he made it all the way home! Way to go! They didn't win but he still played great!
I did make a blog for Ryan's photography class it is http://ryanbegphoto.blogspot.com/ it is really just a lot of pictures but I think it is fun. So check it out if you want. Tuesday we went to Red Butte Gardens to take pictures for his photography class. This assignment was different view points, we did get carried away taking pictures of the pretty plants! It was nice to walk around and enjoy the scenery. Here are a few pics, the rest are on his blog.

Last night at UPS Ryan got hit in the back of the head with a metal disc that came out of a package coming down the belt. He has a pretty good bump, but said he felt fine. I always worry when he gets hurt, but he is going to the Dr. tomorrow.
Last Sunday was a little crazy!! After Sacrament meeting we went to the library to make copies for our nursery class, thought we would try coloring again...and one of the counselors in the Bishopric told us he needed to talk to us "uh oh!" I was right. He asked us to speak, again, the Sunday after conference on one of the Sunday PM talks. The good thing is we got tickets! Then the exec. secretary told us the other counselor needed to talk to us, so we went in and he started extending us a calling...but someone kept knocking at the door, finally he opened it and the other counselor asked who he was talking to and which calling he was extending...turns out he had the wrong couple. Then the counselor who asked us to speak came in and extended us the right calling, activities committed, and told us we would be released from nursery. I was sad. So we went back to nursery and when we came in one of the super cute little girls saw Ryan and threw her hands in the air and yelled "RYAN!!" it was so cute! However we were interrupted again when the counselor pulled us out again to ask us if it was ok if we stayed in the nursery. Of course it is! We love "our" little kids! Crazy huh? Well that is what is going on in the village. Sorry not very many pictures.

Softball

2009-09-12T14:11:00.003-06:00

Ryan is in a softball league right now. They play every wednesday night, and I look forward to going to his games. They are pretty fun to watch. Ryan is the pitcher. They won their last game. It was pretty interesting. The rules in softball are a little different than baseball. Apparently when you pitch the ball has to have a certain arch to it, but at the same time cannot go too high before it comes down to the batter. We did not know this rule before the game...needless to say it got Ryan a little frustrated when his good pitches were being called balls and the other team was getting walked. So the last inning the score was like 16-12 Ryan was pitching and had walked 2 guys not understanding the arch rule. We knew they had a auto out because one of their players was injured and they didn't have a back-up for him, so when it came his time to bat it was an out. Ryan had figured this out and was so frustrated with the ump that he decided to walk the 1 or 2 batters before the auto out, which would be their third out and Ryan's team would win. The other team was getting pretty frustrated with all the wide and high balls, it even took his own team a little while to figure out what he was doing. I knew. That is kind of what the games are like, not very professional but pretty fun to watch! It helps that Ryan is a good player too. He pitches, can bat, catch, and he is pretty fast! I might be a little proud, but its true!!

If you are wondering, yes I am a little bored. Ryan had to work at 12:00 this afternoon until 9:30 tonight!! I have a lot of free time on my hands! So who better to blog about than my dear sweet husband! Who also had the idea one night that we should stop drinking pop and so we have. We will see if it helps us lose a little weight! It can't hurt that for sure. Anyway that is what we have been up to. Pretty exciting!

Camera

2009-09-12T13:12:00.002-06:00

Here is the beast!

Ryan is taking a beginning photography class (which by the way counts for 4 upper division communications credits!!) We do have a nikon cookpics point and shoot camera, but for the things he needed to do in class it was not going to work...first we search and researched prices and cameras all over!! Then we bought the Nikon D90 from Walmart.com. My sister works at Bestbuy and wondered why we didn't get it at best buy since they price match. So Monday we went to Bestbuy the first one we went to couldn't price match it exactly and the didn't have the camera, so we went to another BestBuy hoping they would be nicer and actually have the camera. We talked to the right person. Ryan showed him the paper work and they not only matched Walmarts price, but beat it! Including a better SD card! Needless to say we were really excited! And we have had a lot of fun going out a trying to figure the camera out!! We have been going up at night and taking pictures of the moon. So I figured I would make a blog of Ryan's photography so if you are interested you can see how he is coming in his photography!

Ryan's 27th Birthday

2009-09-05T22:41:00.005-06:00

Ryan turned 27 on September 1st. We had a nice day. After work...we went golfing. I really just read my book and cheered Ryan on. I don't mind golfing like that! The course was pretty, I got to be with Ryan, and the weather was nice. Great day.

I did put once, and I did make it! We had a nice steak dinner. Ryan got a pair of ski pants
A black diamond jacket, Pearl Jam tickets and a Nikon D90 (also for his photography class)! I think he did good.
Happy Birthday Ryan, I love you so much!

Update

2009-08-25T22:23:00.005-06:00

So we haven't been too exciting lately. Summer is over. Ryan started his senior year on monday!!! 2 more semesters! I am SO excited!! Two weekends ago we went to Ephrata to visit his family. It was really nice to get away. We were going to fly into Seattle because there is a flight from Seattle to Moses Lake which is like 20 mins from Ephrata, but the flights didn't look great and we had to check Ryan's golf clubs so we decided to fly into Pasco and drive 2 hours each way, because the flights looked more open. All this so we would make sure we got the golf clubs. We got in and Ryan got the rental car and I went and got the bags, or bag. Our clothes made it (fortunately!) but...the golf clubs did not. Oh well, we still went golfing and it was fun. Ryan's mom cooked delicious food, lots of fresh fruits and veggies from the garden! It was yummy. Last weekend I took my 2 younger brothers to seven peaks, it was supposed to be 100 degrees and basically the last weekend before school starts. We had fun. I think the boys had more fun playing on the triple tube on the grass though!

Ryan has been playing softball with a group of guys from SkyWest over the summer and their league officially starts tomorrow. But they had a couple scrimmage games and they actually did pretty good, considering a few on the team played outfield with a mitt on one hand and a beer in the other?? There is always a big cooler full of beer. I wonder if they would play better without it? Ryan is a good player though, and I might be a little bias, but anyone who watched would admit it as well. He can hit well, run fast, throw, and he is the best pitcher they have. I only had my phone with me for this scrimmage game so the pic's suck, but I will take some better ones later.

Here he is at bat. He even got an in-field home run!! I am so proud of him. It is fun to go to the games!

Tomorrow my little sister starts college and UVU!! I can't believe she is done with high school and moving up. I am so proud of her and very excited for her! I have a great sister I love her so much!

Ryan will turn 27 on Tuesday!! Guess I better figure something out something great to do for my wonderful husband. Well thats about it for now.

Wicked Birthday

2009-07-21T19:15:00.004-06:00

So I turned 25 last monday! Not sure how I feel about admitting that yet, but I'm working on it. I had a wonderful birthday though. That weekend we flew to San Francisco and saw WICKED!!! I loved it! I think Ryan even liked it although he may not readily admit it. I would go see it again and recommend it to anyone! San Fran was a little cold however but still fun. My family came up Monday night for a BBQ and that was nice. I love having a birthday in the summer there are no cold restrictions!

The next part of our eventful week goes something like this...
Tuesday Ryan called me at work and told me to meet him when I was done so I could see the 4 runner he was test driving. So I met him and we drove back to the dealer, it was a nice 4 runner, older but in great condition. We talked to the dealer about price and what not and decided we just didn't want to do it right now. However the next evening I had a message on my phone from the dealer, he was dropping the price down...well this got Ryan really excited. The next day he went to the bank, got a loan, picked me up from work and we bought the 4 runner! A little less spontaneous than our STI purchase, at least we slept for 2 nights! So now we own a black 4 runner.

This isn't the best picture all I had was my phone with me to take a picture of the event. So, that is what we have been up to.

Look who finally made it back from vacation!!

2009-06-26T18:20:00.004-06:00

Hope they had a good time!!

And here are some pictures of us at dinner before Leslie's Graduation!! I can't believe she is already graduated! She is a great sister!

Vacation?

2009-06-19T17:07:00.004-06:00

I thought I would post some pictures of our wonderful long waited for, very much anticipated vacation.

Sunday we flew to LAX the flights looked good, we even checked 2 bags! We got in about 9:30 am and our flight to Lihue Kauai wasn't until like 1:50 pm. So we waited. At boarding time we went to our gate and to our horror we were long longer number 4 and 5 on the standby list just hoping we got first class, we were number 25!! Yes all the standby's from the other Hawaii flights like Honolulu (which you can never get to and should never expect to as a standby unless you are #1 on the list) and Maui and Kona had rolled over to our flight when they couldn't get on theirs! A great start to our wonderful vacation, we tried flights from LAX ALL day and couldn't get out, even back to SLC. It sucked. It really was disappointing. So we rented a car and drove an hour to my cousin Matt's house-Thanks for letting us stay, it is nice to sleep in a bed instead of the airport floor! we spent a ton of money eating at the ridiculously priced airport restaurants even though we ate at McDonalds twice! At Matt's house we checked the flights for tomorrow (MON) after all this was originally when we were going to leave so we figured it would still be ok. And flights did look pretty good, it looked like most the the stanby's should get on their flights leaving not too many rolling over onto ours. We get the the airport and all the self check-in terminals are being tested and not open so there is one giant line to get to the 2 customer service agents checking in Delta passengers! What a joke, is this really LAX how can a huge airport really operate this way!! Luckily they checked in people who had no carry-ons, which was us, ours were already in Hawaii! Ryan checked in and found out our flight had been delayed until 5:40 that night!! Giving other unsuccessful Hawaii stand-bys the change to steal our seats! So we looking at flights to SLC and knowing we would never make it out if we stayed to get on our flight. Everything was oversold!! We flew United to St. George, and from St. George we flew back home to SL. I was so upset and disappointed. If we had known we would get stranded in stupid LAX we would have gone somewhere else, but we didn't and that pretty much ruined our vacation. Flights to most sunny beach destinations were now unattainable! We thought we could go to Texas to the biggest water park, but the cost of a car rental there was so insanely high we could not bring our selves to pay that much for a day and a half! So we ended up going to San Jose CA to go to Raging Waters, supposedly one of the bigger water parks in the US. It was fun but nothing compares to Hawaii, especially when you have been planning your whole 5 days off for the year for months now and didn't get to go anywhere cool! (no offense San Jose) so that was our fairly crappy week rolled into a nut shell. Oh and to top it off somewhere in the mix of getting like 50 different boarding cards because we tried to many unsuccessful flights to get our of LAX, we lost our boarding card that had our baggage tag on it...and we are Non-rev...we still don't have our luggage...it might be a month. Other employees don't like to help employees. I have not figured that one out yet. So I guess we have next year to look forward to. For now I will just sit here an sulk about our lost vacation.

Parking Ticket

2009-05-07T21:19:00.005-06:00

The campus police are kind of Nazi's! Because we have 2 cars we have a close parking space (permit B) which is still not that close. And a far parking space (permit C) which is even farther away. I am probably just being a baby because I am always running late for work and the extra distance to the car doesn't help. Anyway On Tanners birthday (March 26) I had made cupcakes and gone to the store, when I got back from the store I decided to park in the B permit parking with my C permit car just to unload the groceries and load the cakes. Carrying groceries in is my least favorite chore-we are juice drinkers and it is heavy! So when I came back out to load the cupcakes and leave I had a warning. I was a little annoyed. Then Last Week I parked in this spot.

ok I was parked where the gold car was parked. And the sign is a little unclear. It could mean visitor parking or C permit parking so I parked there since I have a C permit and it is the closest parking spot not taken up by broken down cars!!

It was just a crapy morning. I was running late, and work was stressing me out...and then I got a ticket! I was SOO mad! I took pictures so I could go in a fight my case.

If you notice the sign is NOT on the line, it is in the parking spot so I concluded I could park there, and other C permit people figured the same thing because they are always parking there too. So I went in and protested the ticket and got it dropped! I was so proud of myself.
Today is officially a great day because Ryan is done with the semester. He took his last final this afternoon. I am so happy. Even though next week officially starts a crappy schedule... at least I will get to see him after work. I have been going to my water aerobics class on Tues, Zumba on Wed, and Turbo Kick on Thurs, that keeps me pretty busy.

What the...?

2009-04-15T17:59:00.006-06:00

Today is April 15 it is a bad day because it is tax day and that sucks for us. And it is a worse day because this morning when I left for work it was slushing! We even had some pretty big flakes during the day, which I did not get a picture of and here is what it currently looks like outside of my apartment.

I would be fine if it were raining after all April showers bring May flowers right? But when was the last time your shower snowed? It doesn't and it shouldn't be now. Other than the huge worms all over the sidewalk that is really the only thing wrong with today. I really have nothing to do so I am blogging (maybe not the best idea, sorry!)
Yesterday my dad came up to get his glasses fixed and we went to dinner after wards and he brought me flowers just for being a great daughter (favorite!)

Another happy thing. I have a full fridge!

That might seem really random to you but sometimes I don't go to the store for weeks! It is kind of sad to admit that. If you were thinking we must eat out a lot, you were right, but I am trying to be better however it is very hard! I even got delicious strawberries! I was going to make strawberry shortcake but we are eating the angel food cake I made and the strawberries taste so good by themselves they might be gone before we make dessert!

Speaking of desserts we had Easter with my family and I was in charge of dessert. I made 3 homemade pies. That is right homemade, even the crusts!!! I made Key Lime (my favorite) Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip and lemon meringue. They all turned out delicious and I was so proud of myself! I wish I would have taken pictures. They were yummy! Easter was a little different this year, we don't really have any little kids who do the egg hunt so my Aunt Linda put the dollar bills in eggs and hid them for our "little boys" Tanner and Chad who are 13, Spencer 15 Matt and Andy 16 and 19(?). Cute!

Because all of our money went to paying Taxes Ryan had to do a medical research study just to earn some extra money. Poor boy has to go in every morning this week to dose which is extremely hard for him. The information packet says "Rifampin may cause side effects such as urine, stools, saliva, sputum, sweat, and tears to turn red-orange; this effect is harmless." But will still shock you when it happens! Ryan called me the other day at work to tell me how surprised he was the his urine was red-orange! We think it is pretty funny, hopefully not too much information. But I love his dedication! The things we will do to make some cash! Anyway I have nothing more to ramble on about so you are done now. yea!

Here they come

2009-04-06T19:27:00.007-06:00

It has been a pretty busy month! (March) Ryan's sister Holly got married on the 14th.

/s200/hollybrad.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321755359296741890" />

We had our sweet whistler trip (next post) We got our scooter fixed
It now runs better than we got it! Poor Ryan had to drive it home in the rain. Greg and Michelle came and stayed with us before they went back east to check out graduate schools, RS birthday, I have tried a new class at the gym, Zumba it was so much fun! Holly and Brad came into town before they flew out to their reception in Missouri and we had lunch. Tanner's birthday was on the 26.

I made wax cake cupcakes and german chocolate cake. And I have to say we got him the best present.

Yes 8 dollars worth of silly putty from Kohlers. He was very specific on what he wanted how much and from where. I thought I had to get it out of those vending machines at the front of the store so I went to the back and got $10 in quarters. Turns out you don't. That was fun! The next day my parents left for their much needed and deserved week long Caribbean Cruise! I am so jealous! But glad they had a great time! I can't think of anybody who deserved it more!
That weekend we checked into the Condo in Park City! We commuted back and forth to work each day but had fun hanging out with Ryan's family. Holly and Brad brought Bryce and Liliya's kids down and we swam and swam and stayed up all night! But I have the cutest nieces and nephews!

They loved the rockband Drums especially Deagan! I didn't get a lot of pictures because I let my parents take my camera. so that's about it for Park City. I almost forgot. Ryan was also gone the whole weekend...he got into a clinical study and had to be in the clinic all weekend, but we can definitely use the money and have no problem donating our bodies to science for money! It's for a good cause!
Besides watching conference (trying) swimming with the kids, playing,and shopping Sunday was Spencer's birthday. After I picked Ryan up from the clinic we watched the morning session and then headed down to my parents house. Where we finished conference, and we might have snuck a nap in there too.Then we made some pretty good Chinese food even though we forgot our bamboo steamer everything turned out wonderful. Ryan is a good cook.

I feel tired just posting all of this! We have wonderful families who we love very much! And even though I hate not seeing Ryan on the weekends I am grateful for all he does to support us! Hopefully this next month won't be quite as crazy...we will see.

Whistler?

2009-04-06T18:54:00.007-06:00

No not Whistler. We had been planning our annual Whistler Trip for months and everyone was really excited. Friday morning I got up and got ready got Ryan up and we headed to the airport at our usual just in time pace! We got checked in and through security and as we were walking up to the gate we heard this announcement "...need 8 volunteers to..." thinking bad words...yes the flight was oversold and we were disappointed but not totally discouraged. There was another flight to Vancouver that night at 9. So we went home rode the scooter around since it was like 70 degrees! Went back to the airport, cheked in, checked our bags, through security. There was only 1 paying passenger who did not make the flight, then us. So we went home pretty discouraged but thinking at least Ryan's 4 friends in Washington can go up. Wrong again! You can't get into Canada with a DUI. That night we figured only 1 paying passenger didn't make the flight we could still try in the morning. Got up Saturday morning got showered...looked at the flights there were 10 HK's (paying passengers who rolled over and were waiting for a seat assignment) HOW??? Fine now we give up. However I have been planning on getting away for so long I can't just stay home. So I look and look for other places to go, it is Spring Break...but we can go to Cabo, so we do. HALLELUJAH!! Yes we went to Mexico for 1 day but if you think that is crazy you must have forgotten that we went to Belgium for 1 day (much longer flight!) We flew in rented a car

sweet ride! Drove around ate at a bland Mexican restaurant went to the beach drove to another town where we could camp on the beach. The road was not the safest 2 lane highway you have ever been on at night...but we made it and ate dinner at a yummy hotel restaurant! Got directions to the camping beach.

We camped in Hawaii, we are in Mexico should be similar at night...no it was freezing! so we camped in the car (refer to picture above of small white nissan!) Surprisingly we slept pretty good. The hotels in Cabo were all pretty cool looking but high above our price range, you forgot we are already paying for our condo in whistler as we sleep on the beach in Mexico!

We did get to hang out at the public beach for a few hours before we headed back home. It was a nice beach not too crowded and once you got in the water it wasn't so bad.

Unfortunately this is the best picture of us.
Even though it was a short trip we had fun and it was just nice to get out of here! Coming home was not so pleasant. It was 86 in Cabo and raining and cold when we got to Utah...dang.

FInally!

2009-03-05T21:47:00.006-07:00

So I have had no motivation to blog lately. Probably a lot has to do with the fact that when I am done with work my feet hurt and I have to stand at the computer....not fun. So sorry it has been so long. We really haven't been too interesting. Just busy.

we moved out of our small small basement apartment in Sugarhouse on January 23 and into Student Housing!! Actually we really like it. We now have 2 bedrooms with actual closets, the bathroom isn't in the bedroom and the shower head is a normal height although we do still have the old man stool, just couldn't get rid of it! The livingroom is pretty decent but the kitchen is worse. There are hardly any cupboards and NO counter space!! And no dishwasher...but don't worry we are costco members and bought a supply of paper products to eliminate most dish washing! (Ryan has such a good wife!) Here are a couple pics of the livingroom and kitchen the bedroom is pretty plain.

The carpet in the livingroom was so gross we went to Home Depot and bought some and laid it down, it looks pretty good.

Valentines day I had to work and was surprised by a pretty bouquet of flowers!!

After work I think we watched a movie and just hung out. For dinner we made Chinese since we didn't have a reservation anywere. It was very nice and romantic we even had candles!

Also on February 23 we celebrated our 2 year anniversary!! It was on a Monday and I originally had the day off but we hired a new girl (finally!) and I had to train her so I went in for a couple hours. we had an early lunch together because we thought Ryan had to work at Skywest at 5:30 but he convinced his supervisor to let him off so we had most of the evening together. 2 years that is crazy!!

Other than that. We are doing the same things on a new day.

2009

2009-01-17T20:01:00.003-07:00

New Years Eve we had Lindsey and Stuart over for dinner and games. LIndsey made her yummy French soup and we played the Wii all night! Ryan worked until 9:30 and when he got home we broke out Rockband and played until 2:00 am! It was a blast!

Ryan is really rocking out to "Roxanne".

That weekend we flew up to Rexburg for Ryan's Grandma's funeral. It was a very nice funeral. But is was freezing in Rexburg! And I got sick, that wasn't fun. We ate Thai food and saw Marley and Me, I really liked it and yes I did cry. I would recommend it. After church sunday we tried fly out of IF but the flights were overbooked!! In Idaho Falls!! so we ended up renting a car and driving home, gotta love standby. After we got home we gave our 30 day notice at our apartment and we are now moving into student housing at the U. Better? we hope so, at least it will be bigger (you can't get smaller than where we are at now!) Ryan started school again on the 12th, something I never look forward to, just one more thing in our busy schedules! But I look forward to every minute I get to spend with him!

We haven't really flown anywhere exciting and I am itching to get away!! Somewhere, anywhere! But we don't have time. We are once again hiring at work which means I am back to 6 days a week. Blah. That is our not so eventful life lately.

Gold Star

2008-12-28T22:30:00.001-07:00

I figured out how to put video on my blog!! (finally! and I did it all by myself) just had to share how excited i am!

Christmas 2008

2008-12-28T21:31:00.011-07:00

This Christmas was a little bit different than most have been for us. We had Christmas on Christmas Eve. My mom had to work Christmas day and the hospital and Ryan had to work Christmas night at SkyWest. So we did it a day early so we could all be together. Ryan surprised me Tuesday night. He always calls me when he is done at SkyWest and driving to UPS, we talked like usual. I was baking in the kitchen and I could here the people upstairs I heard them come downstairs and then my door started opening. I was really surprised. They are very nice but we don't really do a lot together so I though how wierd that they would just walk in my house!! I turned around and found Ryan poking his head in the door! That was a very good Christmas surprise! (I hate being alone at night) so we drove down to my parents house for our "Christmas eve." Christmas morning started at about 8, we don't have any little kids anymore. We opened presents with everyone, it was great. Our big present was a Wii, which has been very fun! Ryan's sister got him Rockband for Christmas which we also love, thanks so much Holly!!

Ryan is not one for surprises. When I got the present from Holly I had no idea what it was (i like surprises) so I was really excited! Ryan came home a knew exactly what it was! He ships them all the time at UPS, but he did open the corner just to be sure! We got games for the Wii and clothes from Ryan's parents. It was a good Christmas, Ryan even did get a few surprises like his present from my parents.

Here is Ryan opening his present. It was exciting for me because he didn't know what it was!! And if you know Ryan you know he LOVES to ski, and he especially loves to go to Grand Targhee so these were the perfect gift. Thanks mom and dad!

After we open presents my grandparents come over for a Waffle breakfast and so they come over for our traditional breakfast one day early. It was great!

Here are some pics of us playing mariokart, I didn't get dressed all day, it was great!! and I love to wear Ryan's sweatshirt so I know I am looking lovely!

And here are my parents playing Rockband, they did really well, my dad really liked playing the guitar. And here is our not so musically talented family actually playing rockband.

For dinner Ryan made Chinese, and it was great! We had szechwanbeef, sweet and sour chicken and pork dumplings. It took 2 hours to make everything but it was worth it.

Christmas day we just hung out, Ryan had to work that night and I went up to see my dad's parents with my family which was very nice. Until we had to drive home. It was raining a little earlier and then it suddenly turned to snow and was coming down. we probably got at least 6 in. that night. Ryan usually works until 9:30, he didn't get off until 2:30 in the morning because they shut down the airport and were canceling flights and then trying to get them out, it was ridiculous!

I stayed up until 12 playing Mario Galaxy on the Wii because I kept thinking he would be coming home. Then I watched Sleeping Beauty where I finally fell into a frustrated sleep because my husband was not home. And Friday night Ryan had to work again so I went down and stayed at my parents house because he and his brother Greg were going to try to go to Chili on saturday but because of the snow and flight cancellations it didn't work out, but they will go another time. At my house my mom and I made a cake I found in the Sunset magazine, it took forever but it was really good. It was called "Cranberry obsession snow cake." I was proud of us because we don't really bake fancy things, this was fun!

So that was our Christmas it was a little different but we made it work. The best part really is being with your family!

Christmas Cards

2008-12-16T21:45:00.002-07:00

I am not trying to be a brat by saying I am not sending out Christmas cards. I really had the thought, but one of my biggest fears is creativity!! And I kept putting it off and putting it off. Then we finally got family pics...anyway by the time I am done with work, especially these last few weeks with my new coworker (it has been a nightmare) the last thing I was up to was trying to send out cards. Sorry to be a scrouge! I will try to be better next year. It will be a new years resolution! But I do appreciate all of your Christmas Cards, they make me so happy! And you all are much more creative than I and I admire that. So those are my excuses I hope they work for you. I love you all and hope you are able to get everything done before Christmas--1 more week!!

Family Pictures

2008-12-13T17:12:00.005-07:00

Last Sunday when we went down to my parents house. we got our family pictures taken. Michelle's sister came over and we took pictures by some of the building behind our house and in the field across the street. I think we even had some cute ones!

Funny faces, ok I am pretty good at this one!

some more of the family

my siblings

And here are some of Ryan and I

Hope you enjoy the pictures because I am not sending out Christmas cards!!

Tag I'm It!

2008-12-09T20:39:00.002-07:00

I was "tagged" by Kelltie! By being "tagged" I answer some questions (which I'll do) and then at the end I tag others to do the same thing. It is a fun way of getting to know people.

5 years ago.....
I was in Rexburg, ID. I believe living at the Ridge with Kelltie and Caroline, taking lots of credits, still staying up late having fun doing random things, like Kelltie said probably ticking off our other more mellow roommates!!

5 things on my to do list for today...
RS dinner
Christmas cards?
work
Update blog
Christmas shopping

5 snacks I enjoy...
Pumpkin cookies
almost any chocolate
ice cream
popcorn
candy and any thing else sweet

5 places I've lived...
Holladay, UT
Sandy, UT
Sugarhouse, UT
American Fork, UT
Rexburg, ID

5 jobs I've had...
Clean Dentist office
Nanny
Phlebotomist
Optician
Best wife ever!

5 things I'd do if I won the lottery...
Take a vacation to Greece and more
pay off debt
Savings
Shopping
Laser Hair removal!

5 people I tag...
Michelle Smith
Michelle Nelson
Kalli
Jenae
Shauna

Twilight

2008-11-25T19:15:00.003-07:00

I did make it to see Twilight this weekend! Saturday night Ryan picked up a shift at Skywest from 5-9:30 so we went to the 10:30 show. It was packed with tons of high school girls! I did like it and Ryan even did too! That was the best movie we saw all weekend and believe me I saw some interesting ones! For Ryan's english class he got extra credit if he went to "World Wide Wayne" yes a weekend of John Wayne movies and other countries interpretations of them. Friday we saw "The searchers" I thought it might never end! But fortunately it did. Saturday we only made it to one matinee, we saw a Japanese version of the Three Godfathers, called the Tokyo Godfathers. It was a Japanese cartoon, at least it was more entertaining than the real John Wayne movie!! I even saw Twilight twice this weekend, we went again monday for my little sisters 18th Birthday!!

Tomorrow is my last day of work until next Tuesday! That is glorious! And early Thursday morning we are once again driving up to Rexburg for Thanksgiving with Ryan's family. It will be so nice to get away, and out of my little basement! Thursday night we are even staying in a themed suite! I am very excited!

Much ado about Nothing!

2008-11-17T20:04:00.004-07:00

I really don't have anything exciting to show you. But I really have nothing to do tonight. I have no motivation to do any work and I already went to the gym (abs class, which I needed!) and got a pedicure (I deserve it!) And I did all of that after I worked 8 hours! What an amazing day! Usually I post about our exciting trips, since we haven't gone anywhere lately I have noting to post about so I decided to let you see what we do all the time. I know wow! I am currently wearing sweats drinking hot chocolate with plenty of marshmallows and listening to Taylor Swift radio. Ryan is at Skywest right now. He did pick me up from work on the scooter today! It was a little chilly, but we still enjoy a ride now and again. And he looked pretty hot with is hair windblown in his aviator sunglasses! Last wednesday I had dinner with my cousin Sara and her friends before she moved to California

Friday night we had a visitor! Ryan's sister Holly stayed with us in between fights from Idaho and Washington, we know what it is like to not make flights, but it was fun to have her here. We watched run fat boy run and when Ryan went to work Holly and I stayed up until 12:00, ok so not that late for her, but I am boring and go to bed at like 10:30! It was really fun to talk and get to know her better! Unfortunately our living conditions are not very conductive to visitors we only have one bedroom and one bathroom which is through our bedroom and the door does not close very tightly...and so our guests have to sleep on the living room floor on our camping pads, we do have a love seat, but it is a little short to sleep on. And Ryan comes home at 3 am!! But I like having visitors and anyone is welcome anytime! :)

Saturday we got up early for us, or at least Ryan, at about 8:30 got ready and took Holly to the airport. Then we tried to find some winter coats at DI to take to Alta to get a free pass, but we were a little late they had already given all the passes away by 11:30 am! at 12:30 we met Russ and Erica in Salt Lake and took Alice for a few hours so they could get some things done. She was a little shy at first and we dragged her up to Alta to get our ski passes and then to the Sandy expo center where Ryan's friend Sterling had a pottery booth, his stuff is really good! We walked around for a little while and ate free treats. Alice really liked the chocolate truffles. I gave her one and she held it in her hand for a second then saw I had another one and wanted it. I told her she could have another one when she ate the first one so she shoved it in her mouth and held her hand out for the next one. It was pretty cute! In the car on the way back to meet Russ and Erica she really livened up, probably all the sugar!! I would turn around in the seat and she would make faces at me and laugh. I did record a little we thought she said "butcrack" but I don't really know what she said, it was pretty funny. But since I don't know how to put movies on you don't get to see it.

Saturday night we went down to my house for my Brother Christian's 23rd birthday! We were supposed to have cake and ice cream at 7:00 they didn't arrive until after 9:00-late dinner! So we watched Tremors.

Ryan taught elders quorum on sunday, I obviously wasn't there but I am sure he did a great job!! I recently had 3 cavities filled. He told me they were small and when they asked me if I wanted silver or white fillings I told them silver on the ones you couldn't see (I didn't want to pay more for white fillings if they were on the backside of my back teeth!) Turns out I have 2 silver teeth in the back of my mouth. And it was my first experience having cavities filled without the gas. It was traumatic. I went home and was exhausted and just slept and watched a movie the rest of the day! It wasn't aware it could have such an effect!! I vowed the next time I go to the dentist I have to find someone who uses the gas it is absolutely necessary!! Lets see tomorrow I have water aerobics, Friday Twilight movie comes out I would LOVE to go see and Saturday we are going to a John Wayne film festival for extra credit in Ryan's writing class, see how much I love him! Anyway that is what is going on here. I know it doesn't get much more exciting than this! But it's life.

Just 'Cruisin' around

2008-10-30T19:44:00.012-06:00

This last month has been pretty busy for us. Besides the fact that Ryan works all the time!! and I hardly see him and sleep alone every night!! Whenever we get the chance we take off! I guess it started the end of September, Ryan had one of 2 camping classes, then it was up to Rexburg for some mountain biking, we did stay home and lounge over conference weekend, so nice!! After that we went to MN to see my bestest buddy Kelltie and her cute little growing family and had a great time and last, then we went on a cruise to the bahamas, and last weekend Ryan had his last camping class!! We did work in there too! Whew, I am tired just thinking about all the traveling we have done especially after our cruise! That was a little stressful and a huge reminder why we don't plan things in advance, especially things we have to pay for!
So Ryan found a good deal on a 3 day cruise to the Bahamas who would say no to that. we figured since it wasn't really high season for flying we should be able to get there with minimal problems, WRONG!!! Thursday we were supposed to take the midnight flight to Atlanta, then it got moved to 4:50, and then when I got home from work we weren't going at all! Ryan had switched shifts at work to be able to leave early and so hadn't slept for like 2 days! And then instead of being able to come home and nap before we left he spent hours trying to find us a flight to Miami, and nothing. When I got home he was pretty much passed out in bed, poor guy! I proceeded to look up flights and found a flight to Denver that wasn't great but was better than most places and it left at 9 than at 1 am catch a flight to Atlanta and later Friday morning a flight to Miami and a taxi to the port. Nothing looked good, but by a miracle we made it!
The cruise was fun, we went of Royal Caribbean Majesty of the Seas. We stopped at 2 ports, the first was their own island Cococay and we really like that, it was just a nice beach and nice water and lounging around with a big buffet lunch! The weather was great in the 80's and not too humid.

Getting on the boat, after a long night of traveling!

Our room, was on the inside, small and dark, but good enough.

Here is the beach on CocoCay.

We only had one formal dinner, which was nice because I don't really have a lot of cocktail dresses! Dinner was good the first night I had lamb, the second night duck, and Ryan had es'cargo for his appetizer! And of course I always liked dessert!!

Here are Ryan's snails and him eating them! I even tried one, they really weren't bad, but just the thought of eating snails, I probably wouldn't pay for them at a restaurant!

The guy that cleaned our room left towel creations on our bed, the first time we weren't quite sure what it was?

we called it the creature. But the second day he made a little puppy! It was kind of fun!

The second stop was at Nassau in the Bahamas. It was interesting, the only beaches were hotel owned and there wasn't really a lot of shopping, not that we are huge souvenier shoppers, and there was a lot of poverty. the Hotel Atlantis was huge and looked fun to stay at, they had one aquarium you could walk around and see, but the see the other one and use there beach you had to buy a day pass, which we opted out of and just drove around the island on a ghetto scooter!! There happened to be a parade in the town that day and we almost didn't make it back to the boat! It was a little crazy, but a nice police officer let us be in the parade for a few blocks until we could reach the scooter rental place!

There were lots of fish in the aquarium a big sting ray and a really big manta ray! Neither of us got sea sick even though you could at times feel the boat rocking, the only time it was really bad was the last night heading back to Miami. We stayed up late and ordered room service just because we could so we thought we better take advantage of it! But neither of us could sleep due to the rocking of the boat, it was crazy being really tired I thought I might roll off the bed so I had to hang on to Ryan ;) !! All in all we had fun on the cruise and would do it again sometime.

Getting back was not so fun though! We got up to the main floor of the boat to check out at 7 am, checked out by 7:30 caught a cab and made it to the airport by 7:45. The customer service lady put us on the 10:30 am flight but there was no one in security and our gate was the first one past security so we ran over and they let us get on the 8:10 am flight! Lucky! To Altanta...not my favorite airport we ended up flying to Cincinnati, hanging out for a few hours then flew to Las Vegas. The flights from Vegas to SLC had 80 standby's on the list, we were at the bottom. So we got on a shuttle to St. George stayed with Ryan's friends parents, slept for 3 hours and caught a 6am flight to SLC then I went to work at 10!!! I am pretty sure everything we do has some kind of crazy adventure!! But I guess it keeps life interesting! This weekend we are keeping it simple all I requested was a date on Saturday night!

Just "Cruisin

2008-10-30T19:44:00.001-06:00

Some Random Stuff

2008-10-13T19:55:00.007-06:00

I guess we haven't been too exciting since my last post. Mostly been around here. September 26 was my mom's birthday Ryan had to work but I went down for a nice dinner. It was a really nice night so my dad wanted to eat outside. Spencer built a table for us to eat at while my dad made dinner. They ever strung lights around the backyard, I thought it was very nice and thoughtful! I have a wonderful family and the best mom ever! She is always working hard and taking care of her family, going to games and dance recitals...and calling to check up on me! Mom I love you so much!

The weekend before conference we flew up to Jackson where Ryan's brother Bryce picked us up and they biked the pass while I shuttled them up and down. I did get some reading in and they actually only went twice. But Jackson was really pretty and the weather was beautiful!

Here is my awesome biker!

After the ride we hung out at Bryce and Liliya's and had fun seeing them and the kids. Shad loved wearing the helmet and wanted Ryan to wear his too. I thought it was a cute pic!

Shad was wearing the helmet and riding his bike, the first time we wasn't quite used to the weight and totally crashed, it was kind of funny! But he is tough.

Ryan got some new Line skis for his birthday and this last week we took them in to get his bindings mounted. It was such a happy day! Now he just can't wait for the snow to come, I can.

He is also smiling because he knows he has the best wife in the world!! :) But I have to admit I have a pretty darn good husband too! And attractive!

This last weekend we got to go out to Minnesota to see Kelltie, Paul, and Camryn. Kelltie is so cute and pregnant. It is fun to see her as my best friend and now a wonderful mom! I love you Kelt! we had a great time. Sunday we went to the sculpture gardens and got our pic taken by the giant spoon and cherry! It didn't even rain on us until we were leaving--that worked out well.

unfortunately I didn't get a pic with Kelltie but I am grateful to have such a wonderful friend! Thanks!! So that is what we have been up to lately.

Family

2008-09-17T17:05:00.006-06:00

So nothing new is really happening here. I keep checking peoples blogs who haven't updated forever so I decided I better post something!! This week starts a few months of really crappy. Ryan started his new Sky West shift today. Basically I work all day and Ryan goes to school then he works wed-fri. from 5:30- 9:30 at SkyWest and then he will go straight to UPS for his 10-3 shift. So basically I will get to see him for lunch if he can get up and at 3 in the morning. I am really not too excited for that. And this week is even worse because he has his camping class Fri-Sun. Blah. But on the bright side he now has weekends off! we haven't had that in a long time! Our third new employee at work quite on tues. Just the same as the last flaky girl! I got a long phone message when I went in that morning explaining that in the 2 weeks she was here she started looking for a new job without alerting us to the situation, then didn't give any notice just quit. I think I have fun out of faith that there is actually a person out there who might work hard, at a good job with friendly people and the ability to be very flexible! I just laughed when I heard the message I didn't even stress out, which is amazing for me. So that is our boring lives right now.

But on Aug. 30 my cute sister in-law Ashley got married! And we took our first road trip in who knows how long and sadly it was only a 3.5 hour drive from here to Rexburg, but it was rough! ;) Here are some pictures from the very hot saturday at the beautiful wedding. Ashley and John we are so excited for you guys!!

Here is Ryan and his older brother Bryce, next us.

So Bryce and his wife Liliya have the most adorable kids. They have 4 and we love going up to Rexburg to play! They were really excited to ride in our car to the reception afterward.

So I tried unsuccessfully to load a video but still have not been able to figure it out! I had a cute video of Shad upset because we didn't have enough pictures of him on our camera and he wanted to see "Shadrack" as he was calling himself! It was so cute

I have to say I am always impressed with my sister-in-law Liliya she has so much patience and faith especially when it comes to handling her 4 adorable and very very energetic kids! She is a great example to me!
So I married into a great family!

East Canyon

2008-08-29T17:41:00.008-06:00

Last weekend we went up to East canyon for my work party. I'll just tell you now I am not very good at directions, and sadly enough there were like 2 turns! But I will explain why, Dr. Bateman printed off directions on google maps and it seemed simple enough but the exit we were supposed to take was closed so we had to take the next exit and get back on. Well the directions said to get off exit 134 toward UT-165 and then on the next line it said turn left onto UT-165 and then it had .4 miles. So we got off and went left since it was really the only way you could go, and .4 miles passed and there was no turn off when we came to a left turn we took it and there were no signs saying what road you were on. So we ended up going down emigration canyon a few miles before we decided it was the wrong road. Once we were headed in the I read the directions to Ryan and we both realized that the left hand turn referred to the turn off the exit ( I still don't know why they had to make that one step into 2 confusing steps!!) Ryan was a little frustrated with me! But the rest of the day was a blast! I love being out in the sun doing anything and boating is especially fun, my favorite thing to do it tubing which we did first and I forgot to bring the camera on the boat or we would have had some GREAT pictures and videos. I went 2 times once with Cathy and next with Ryan and I am the kind of person who will hang on for dear life because I don't want to go flying off so I was the tube champ! Sunday and monday however I couldn't move! I could hardly put my shirt on, I hurt so bad! We also tried wakeboarding which neither Ryan or I have ever done, I have water skied before. Ryan went first and did great!

and he is also very good looking!!
But he got up his first try. I knew he would because he is good at things like that.

Here he is wakeboarding. He got out of the wake and even did a few jumps, a few more times and he will be doing flips! I however did not get up...it was really hard and I was probably more sore than I knew at the time, but I did try. I have some videos but I can't get them on. So maybe next time. But that was fun

Sunday we spoke in church about the Power of prayer I think it went well and I am so happy it is over. That was the first time I have had to speak since we have been married. Ryan's talk was great and very powerful.

Monday was very eventful. I went to work like every other day and Ryan started another semester at the U. That afternoon I got a call from him. He said "I might have bought something" I said you might have or you did? He did and it was a surprise so he stopped by. The surprise was for me, it was an I phone!! Sweet! I was excited we have been looking at getting one and they had a good deal at the school so it finally convinced Ryan. I think he was just buttering me up for his next phone call. He called me again later and wanted permission ( he asked this time because it is much bigger) to buy skis! I am so nice and said yes so he got his birthday present early! It was kind of a crazy day! But fun! So now I am all caught up for at least a day. Tomorrow we are driving up to Rexburg for Ryan's sister Ashley's wedding! We are way excited!

Italy--Roma

2008-08-26T20:39:00.021-06:00

Don't worry, we did go to Italy. I just get overwhelmed thinking about getting all my pictures ready to put on the blog. I have to export them all from I Photo to the desktop...anyway its very time consuming. But here we are. Italy was great, if you can imagine! We left SL on saturday morning, flew to Cincinnati and them to Rome. We got into Rome about 11 am sunday morning, lots of traveling! Fortunately we flew business class and got to sleep. Russ and Erica picked us up and we went straight to sightseeing in Rome! It was fantastic!!! Hot and humid, and we walked all over. Most of the touristy sights were within walking distance of each other so that was nice. we went to the Roman Forum which I believe used to be temples for different Roman Gods all in ruins now, but fascinating if you like that kind of stuff. I loved it! Sorry this blog is going to have lots of pictures it is hard to choose which ones to put in hopefully you enjoy I figured at least Caroline will like it! Here are some pic's of the Forum:

The inside of an arch, and some standing columns

Ryan drinking out of a city fountain, more Forum

Russ, Erica, Ryan and I at Forum, some government buildings

Here is a frieze on the arch at the Forum, me at a small fountain people were wading in, and a huge fountain with lots of sculptures it was beautiful!

Here is the pantheon the building with the hole in the middle, we didn't get to go in because it was closed by the time we got there, but here is the view from the outside, and Ryan and Russ inside the Peter and Paul's prison.

Here are some more columns still standing in the forum and now for the Colosseum pictures!

And here is the Vatican City. St. Peters we didn't get to go inside once again it was closed when we got there but the outside was cool. There is a spot you can stand and look at the 4 rows of columns and it looks like there is only one. we didn't get to see the Sistine Chapel either which is in the Vatican, closed, nor the Pope!

On to Elba island, that is right the island where Napoleon was exiled! Here is a view of the island, Napoleon's fortress, and Ryan and I on the boat. Elba is a very popular european vacation spot, I think we were the only American's on the island. We did walk around the fortress but we didn't go inside, expensive!

Our first day on the island we stayed on the beach below our campsite. Oh yes we camped the whole trip. It wasn't too bad actually they had pretty nice showers and the camp sites were flat and no rocks. To get to the beach you had to walk down a little cliff trial to a rocky beach. It literally was a rock beach, no sand but the water was nice.

Here I am at the top of the trial to the beach, some of the water we snorkeled in and a pic of the beautiful sunset.

Our second day on Elba we rented a boat and drove around the island and snorkeled in different places. Ryan even got stung by a little purple jelly fish, I was a little wary to get in the water after that. But he is fine.

It is kind of hard to see in this pic. but Ryan got stung on top of his foot, and it was swollen and red for awhile.

After our long car ride across and up Italy in a small European car which I unfortunately did not get a picture of, we went to Pordenone close to where Erica is from. Actually we got to her house ate at a delicious pizzeria and went to bed. The next morning we went to the airport, but Lufthansa airlines went on strike shortly after we arrived in Italy canceling their Trans-Altantic flight aka flights home for us and putting all their passengers on Delta flights, which means standby passengers such as our selves got the boot! Needless to say we did not make our flight Russ and Erica volunteered to stay and be put on a different flight but they wouldn't let them so we stayed and went back to Erica's house with her family. They were so very kind and hospitable. Erica's family was in town from all over and so her brother and his wife took us shopping in Pordenone. So here we are in the little shopping streets. And some of the buildings even had original paint(?) but most came off when the plague came through and they covered all the buildings with some kind of mortar ruining the old frescoes.

That night we went to a little beach town north of Venice with Erica's family

For dinner we had seafood of course. Erica's dad asked us if we liked fish we said yes and off we went. At the restaurant there was no fish on the menu. Her dad ordered for us a seafood sampler, and a seafood spaghetti plate. The sampler included: octapus, squid, shrimp, some kind of little lobster and some other things I have forgotten now. We tried them all and most of it was pretty good I have to admit although I don't think I would order them again for fear they aren't fresh and cooked well and are too rubbery! Our main course of spaghetti included clams which was my first time (well a first for all of this!) and they were really good, there was some lobster and squid and then there was a sea creature her dad called a scampi--I just couldn't do it. You had to break it open to get the meat, the whole creature was just laying in you spaghetti!!! Ryan was brave and tried it! So if you are in Italy and someone asks if you like fish just be aware that you are most likely not getting "Fish."

The next morning we went to the airport at 5:00 am because they had to take their son to the airport for a 6am flight ours wasn't until 11:00 so we spent a few hours in the Venice Marco Polo airport, sleeping on benches. We actually made that flight. By some miracle they let all the stand-by passengers on, probably to get rid of them some people had been trying to get home for 3 days!! We even got business class on the way back. I have never been so happy to get on a plane! Next to being able to get our of JFK! So we had a great trip!

Sorry this post is sooo long you might have to take a nap in the middle, but it is finally up and i am so happy!

Italy

2008-07-24T23:03:00.002-06:00

So our next adventure begins on Saturday!!! We are going to Italy!!! Russ, Erica and Alice, we are so excited to come play with you guys!! Looking at your blog makes me so jealous! We fly to Cincinnati Saturday morning then that afternoon we fly into Rome!! I will definitely tell you all about it when we get back so that is where we will be for the next week. Actually we are also flying straight to Seattle for Ryan's family reunion, it will be a busy and very fun week!!

Maui Baby!

2008-07-24T22:03:00.003-06:00

Here are a few pictures of us in Hawaii, on Maui, the rest I put into the slide show.

We finally made it to Hawaii!! I guess it was my birthday present and it was great. We almost didn't make it though. Our flight from SLC to LAX was 30 min late and when we got to LA we were pretty bummed. But it turns out there were other (paying) customers going to Maui as well and so they had a van waiting to take us across the terminal to our connection to Maui--it was amazing that we made it.
We got in about 7:30 pm got our rental car and drove to the beach and pitched our little tent. That is right we camped on the beach in Maui for 2 nights! The weather really was perfect not too hot or too humid and the water was nice. Sunday we went to the beach and got fried! my thighs burned and Ryan's back burned. Oh ya we did not go to Hawaii prepared to bare all we were so white, it was a little embarrassing! Oh well. After the beach we showered in our swimsuits at the beach showers, we were not the only beach-goers with that idea. We drove around a little bit then went to dinner at an amazing seafood restaurant! It was a little pricey but after all it was my birthday. But the food was sooo good I had fresh Opa, never had it before... and for dessert we had mango cobbler-it was amazing! If you ever go to Maui you should eat at Buzz's Wharf. Monday we did a little more exploring after breakfast, as we drove up this really narrow winding mountain road we saw some tour vans pulled over close to where we saw a waterfall so we decided to follow their trail. After putting our swimsuits on and a lot of sunscreen we walked down the path and found these beautiful waterfalls and ponds and people swimming in them! They were a bit cold but it was amazing!
Later that day I went on a helicopter tour it was pretty cool and my first time being in a helicopter. We get deals with one of the helicopter companies through Skywest but we once again fly standby and they only had one seat open, since Ryan had been on a few tours in Alaska he let me go. He is so sweet! We were supposed to fly up to a big crater, but it was covered in clouds so we didn't get to see it. We did see lots of waterfalls and an ancient Hawaiian temple where they used to make human sacrifices!
After the helicopter tour since we still had time on our hands, our flight didn't leave until 10:00 pm we decided what the heck we are in Hawaii we have to go to the beach even though we are still quite red. So we did and it was fun! So we had a great trip! On our way back to the airport the guy driving the shuttle asked us about our trip and we told him we camped on the beach and he was surprised and asked us if we had any trouble, apparently people occasionally get robbed out there. But we didn't have any problems and I am glad he told us that after we camped and not before because I would not have done it! It was also nice to have things be so familiar and in english so we could find our way around and askn people questions if we needed to. I slept the whole way home on the airplane I never do that, but it was much needed since we got into SL at 8:00 am and I had to be to work at 11:30 am! And the girl who sat next to us just thought Ryan was so good looking and she was flirting with him and making sure his plans for the future were solid, maybe she hoped he would make lots of money and come sweep her off her feet. Apparently she didn't take much notice of me and the fact that I am his wife. When we were waiting to deplane she asked if we were married and I smiled and said yes very nicely! It was kind of funny!

Vampire

2008-07-03T09:42:00.003-06:00

My sister Leslie has turned into a Vampire!! The first picture is the transformation and the second the deal is done, hopefully she won't eat humans!!

We thought this was pretty darn funny!! I brought home some Nike contacts for Leslie to try and first of all she was spazing out trying to get them on! Once she got them on it was hilarious! We set one of the pictures as a background on their computer and I think it scared my dad when he turned on the computer! I think Leslie should wear those contacts when she camps out to see the movie!

Other than that our lives have been pretty boring! Ryan works 7 days a week and I have been working 6 days a week for the past 2 months! We are constantly living in a state of sleep deprivation! But we did hire someone at work and I hope she will work out because I am really looking forward to not working on saturdays! I just have to tell you how proud of myself I am. I have been going to the gym even though my gym partner took off to Spain for a month I went to Abs class and Cardio jam all by myself! And if your wondering Cardio Jam is an hour of intense jumping around and waving your arms and I am starting to feel old because I just don't have enough energy to do everything all out! But I am determined to tone up so I look half decent in a swimsuite by the end of July, that is my motivation, that and Ryan pushing me out the door! Other than that we have not been up to much, we watch a lot of movies...anyway I will hopefully come up with something fun to post about soon!

BRUXELLES

2008-06-06T13:44:00.009-06:00

since we had such a long weekend over memorial day we decided to fly to Brussels Belgium! Actually we didn't have that long, but we are kind of crazy!! We were trying to find someplace to go and were thinking Mexico but all the flights were full so for fun Ryan looked up Europe and what do you know it was pretty open! Sunday morning we flew to Atlanta then on to Belgium. From Atlanta we flew business class!! I couldn't help just laughing as we took our recliner seats and the stewardess handed us menu's! It was amazing!! Ryan had to keep telling me to be quiet so people didn't think it was our first time, but pretty much everyone else in business class was older I am sure they didn't think we always flew business class. The flight was 9 hours so we definitely appreciated the nice seats! We ate lots of good food got to watch tv or movies or listen to music on our own little screens. They even gave us a little pack with socks and an eye mask, lotion, earplugs, toothbruth, toothpaste. I felt spoiled, but I liked it a lot. we got to Brussels at 8 am Monday morning and spent the day walking around looking at cathedrals and other buildings. It is a very dirty city and really you could do it in a few hours it is not a big city for touristy things. We even checked into our hostel at 1 and took a 6 hour nap, we were exhausted and then got up and went out again!! We really lucked out in the hostel there were only 2 other people in our room and guy from Ireland who was nice and could not get over the fact that we went to Europe for a day; and then a girl from France who didn't speak english. They weren't partiers like the other people in the hostel we could hear drinking and laughing. So it was nice. The weather was perfect not hot or cold and it didn't even raid, although it was humid and my hair doesn't do too well in humidity, oh well. Now I will show you some pics.

Here are some pictures of the Cathedral we went into, I don't know what it is called.

I thought the organ was pretty cool and the stained glass windows, very beautiful!
The next pictures are of the Grand' Place-Grote Markt,

I know you have all been waiting for these pictures: the famous Manneken Pis Yes they even dress him up for holidays and things. One story goes that a father was missing his child and made a declaration to the city that when he found him he would build a statue of him, doing whatever it was that he was doing. Thus, a statue of a litle boy peeing was created. The statue is also thought to represent the "irreverent spirit" of Brussels

we also found a statue of a little girl peeing. I am not sure of the significance of this statue. But is was down a remote alley the only reason we found it was because a tour group was there looking at it. But they spoke a different language and the the signs were in either french or dutch
Belgium is famous for its chocolate and you can find shops ALL over the place the other pics are of another old church I thought looked cool, but I like that kind of stuff, and us out on the town.

The way home is always an adventure in itself! We flew out of Belgium at 10 am on Tues morning. So we showed up to the airport and hour early and go to check in and they are all stern with us and tell us we are so late, they are already boarding!! So we checked in fast, ran to security, ran to customs, and had to run down the airport to get on the plane! I was dying! Luckily they didn't give our sweet seats away. The flight was good the way back took 9 1/2 hours. We got into atlanta and were going to fly to cincinnati then to salt lake since atlanta to slc is impossible! When we checked the flight before we left Belgium it looked great. But when we got to the airport in atl. the flight had 100 people on standby! so we had to pay to get on the internet and find an alternate route home, Ryan and to work at UPS at 10 that night!! we found 2 possibilities one of which the gate agent wouldn't even book us on, the other to Albuquerque NM looked good and there was a flight that left for SLC 15 minutes after we landed. Luckily alb is a small airport and the next gate was right next to the one we came in on! and we made it home!! We got home stopped and ate and Ryan changed and went to work. So that concludes our spontaneous day trip to Belgium!

May Days

2008-05-23T22:52:00.004-06:00

Well school is over for the semester which is wonderful! Ryan did really well. He took a wheel pottery class and finally brought home all his finished products. I feel like a proud mom
Ryan also started working for UPS...good and bad. We will be getting health benefits in July yea!! and more money is always a plus but he works the graveyard shift, 10 pm until 3 am!! I really dislike going to bed by myself it is so lonely and cold! Sometimes he gets home between 2-2:30, whenever he comes home I always wake up. If you have seen our apt. you would probably know why it is amazingly small and squeaky! So needless to say we have both been pretty tired of late. But in June Ryan's Sky West shift will be later in the day which will be nice for him, then he can actually get some sleep. Right now he works M-F at UPS 10-3 and W-S 8-12! He is pretty amazing! And getting really nice tan arms that is more then I can say for myself! However I have been going to the gym the last week...after months of inactivity!
I got these shoes and I think they are so much fun I had to show Kelltie!!

Also we went and saw Leatherheads, which I saw with Kelltie in MN and I told Ryan how I thought it was cute and that we should go see it but he didn't want to see a "cute" show. But it was at the dollar theater so we went and he was laughing out loud! It reminded me of being with Kelltie we had a great time! Lots of things are reminding me of you lately Kelltie. Last Saturday I got to get my copy of the Host signed by Stephanie Meyer!! One of the girls at work had an extra ticket and invited me. I got a copy for me and my sister signed and my Twilight book signed. We were even in group 4 which was nice. It was pretty fun to see all the crazy people there! I have to admit I still haven't finished the book yet. But I am working on it. Hopefully we will be going someplace fun this weekend and I can read on the plane. I will update you next week (hopefully) on our exciting adventure but I can't spoil the surprise now. Just realize that we are pretty crazy! Well it is late and I have to work tomorrow :(

Our newest splurge!

2008-04-28T17:57:00.008-06:00

So about 2-3 weeks ago Ryan and I went out to dinner and after since we just happened to be close to the Mac store we just had to go in! Ryan wanted to ask someone a question and I saw some sweet 24 in computers. Of course they put them on display next the tiny 20" computers! I thought they looked pretty cool. Next thing I know Ryan is suggesting we put our computer up for sale on KSL and just see how much we could sell it for. Less than 24 hours later we sold it! And a few days after that we walked out of the Mac store with a brand new 24" IMac and a printer. It is pretty sweet and I also have to say we do use it as our TV as well so it can definitely be justified! It was like Christmas day for Ryan opening the box!
The nice thing about Mac's is set up is super easy, just plug it in and you are ready to go!

So while everyone else is updating us on the milestones of their children's lives I will continue to update you on our random lives. And speaking of your children since most of you have darling little girls. We were at Alice's birthday party and one of the girls got her some really cute clips and said her sister makes them and she makes flowers and animals and she will even custom make whatever you want so I thought I would include the web address if you want to check it out. www.lilcritters.blogspot.com

I guess it you have already read Kelltie's blog you know I went out for a visit! It was so good and so much fun to hang out with Kelt and Camryn we had a blast and yes there are some things that are never going to change!

We still love going to the store to get treats! And seeing Kelltie with her cute hair cut and Caroline with hers inspired me to cut mine too. I don't really have a before pic. but here is what is looks like now.
So I don't really love pictures of me just standing there, but here it is anyway. It might not seem too short but I cut off quite a bit!
Ryan is done with his finals on Wednesday! I am so excited. To celebrate we are going to Ephrata (that is where he wanted to go) We are teaching primary, the 5-7 year olds, and we love it. Today was 80 degrees! and we got to drive the scooter around and didn't even need a coat--it was glorious!!!

Library...and other random updates

2008-04-09T18:13:00.005-06:00

I know i don't post much or often. Our internet at home is quite unreliable and I end up getting very frustrated after attempting to post the same blog 3 times!! Now I am at the library with Ryan he is studying chemistry and I am just filling the time. And the site is not letting me change the background of my blog and it is really bothering me because I am definitely done with winter and the snow! Anyway...Here is a pic of Ryan studying at our little apt. I got him in for an eye exam and with my sweet perks got him a $15 pair of glasses, he looks so smart and cute in them, but he doesn't like his picture taken!

Last week we stayed in Park City with Ryan's family in a condo. Actually we had 2 condo's that was pretty fun, except when it snowed and I had to drive down parleys canyon to go to work 2 days!! I took Tuesday off and the girls (Ryan's mom, 2 sisters and my sister-in-law michelle) got manicures and pedicures. That was pretty fun, i even got some cute flowers on my toes! That is one of my new favorite things, getting pedicures, if you haven't had one I highly recommend it. The rest of the week Ryan and I commuted up and down the canyon for work and school then hung out with Ryan's family in the evenings. Of course we had to take them to Cafe Rio for lunch (that is one of our favorite places!) we swam, ate, played with Bryce and Liliya's kids. Friday night my family came up to meet Ryan's family that was nice we had a great turkey dinner. I have to admit I didn't get much conference watching done. Sat am I had Bellen who is i believe just over a year and a half with me. Sat pm after swimming with Mari and Shad, Ryan and I laid on the upstairs bed (first mistake) and both fell right to sleep, Mari even came and took a nap with us! When the men went to priesthood at the conf. center we took the kids and watched Horton Hears A Who. It was very cute. I recognize the name of the book, but don't ever remember reading it? We went home exhausted saturday night. and sunday morning pretty much slept through the am session. Ryan claims we saw the first half but I only remember up to the first half of the second speaker! and Sat. pm well we were doing well before the people upstairs turned off the internet! We pay them half of the bill every month and just use their wireless, apparently we forgot to pay last month (if you even understood our utilities situation you might understand!) so instead of maybe coming down to ask, he just turned it off! Needless to say Ryan was not too happy! We did get if fixed, though a little late, we watched the end of Pres. Monson's talk. Needless to say I am looking forward to the conf. ensign. Sorry no pic's just a boring read Brittney's babbeling blog! I will work on that!

I guess I do have some pictures to put on. Jan or Feb we flew to Denver and stayed with Friends Scott and Joyce. We skied Copper Mountain. It was my first time skiing! I thought I did pretty darn good! A lot better than my second time at Brighton in UT. Here is Ryan I did take a pic of both of us, but I look like a man in a pink hat--not attractive, even though I usually don't care and I know I am not photogenic I was a little too vain to put that pic up.

It was a beautiful day to Ski ( i don't like cold snowy days!)

Now I promise to end my sting of painfully long updates and next time make it short and sweet and include more pictures! Hope your all doing well, we sure are!

Whistler

2008-04-09T17:59:00.006-06:00

A couple weeks ago we went to Whistler (Canada). We flew into Vancouver and Ryan's brother Greg and his wife picked us up and we drove about an hour and a half along the coast on one side and the mountains on the other, it was such a pretty drive. I didn't take any pictures this time. We went to Whistler for our honeymoon last May. We stayed in a condo right by the lifts, I think they had to walk past one other condo to get there! That was pretty sweet for them. Ryan, his brother Greg and their friend Brent skied. I would have if i was better and it wasn't so expensive maybe another year when I am better!
While they skied Michele and I walked around the shops with her baby Deagan. The rest of they guys (Greg, Alex, and Toby) just hung out. We ate japanese the first night and cooked the rest of the time.

Our condo was pretty sweet, great location, not the newest but that is ok. It had a large living room and kitchen upstairs were 2 bedrooms a bathroom and a sauna! Then there was a loft with 2 twin beds and a door to the hot tub on the roof. It was the hot tub for the entire condo but we were the only ones with private access. And we had a great view of the mountains (blackcombe and whistler) and the little village.

Sunday we drove to Bellingham, WA. and stayed the night at Toby and Greg's and had Thai food for Easter. It was a great weekend! Hopefully we can make it a tradition. That was our spring break, I took the whole week off, we tried to go to Hawaii, but we couldn't make it the flights all over the country the whole week were booked, we couldn't even go to NM! Ok so we did go to Rexburg and our pland to fly into Vancouver worked so I guess we were still pretty lucky!

Our Newest Addition

2008-03-25T17:00:00.009-06:00

I really have been meaning to write for awhile now, but we have been busy and then when I tried to add a new post my internet was not working well. A couple of weeks ago after much careful research by Ryan and a good find on KSL we drove down to American Fork and bought a sweet scooter! I have always wanted one so when Ryan brought it up I knew we would eventually get one. It is not a Vespa ( they are expensive!) It is a Tank and it is purple although they say silver its not, but it is a blast! When it is warmer I will drive it to work. It will be really nice considering we should be getting around 80 mpg! And with gas prices going up that is sweet! The most we have paid to fill it up so far with premium gas I might add, is just under $4. Even though it is still a little chilly and when you ride the get a cold wind in your face and if you are in the back like I am a lot your thighs get really cold, but we still love taking it out.

Valentines Day

2008-02-20T18:52:00.002-07:00

We had a good Valentines day, we both worked and Ryan actually had class from 5-9 in Bountiful which kind of sucked, but he did get off a little early. And Ryan is very sweet! He brought me flowers at work and made everyone jealous! and since we really don't do much for dinner on Thursdays since Ryan has class to late and we go to lunch everyday he decided to take me to a actual sit-down restaurant for lunch. We were going to go to Ichiban sushi but they weren't open for lunch so we went to Fridays! And the weekend before Ryan stood out in front of Kingsbury Hall to see if we could get tickets to Riverdance. About 2 minutes before he called me and told me he got some, I was driving around just about to call him and tell him it was ok we could go home, I was so excited and we even go a close parking spot which was even sweeter because we didn't have to drive over to the stadium and take a shuttle over so we made it right on time! It was an AMAZING show!! It will put a smile on your face the whole time, even Ryan liked it! So I told him that could be my Valentines present. I got Ryan a massage. So it was a good day.

Thanks Ryan I love you with ALL my HEART!!

Post

2008-01-31T17:53:00.000-07:00

I apparently need to make the pictures a lot smaller, sorry and I think if you double click on the pictures it will bring them up so you can see them. I don't quite know how they overlapped?! Anyway I still have to figures out the whole picture thing.

Puerto Vallarta

2008-01-31T17:15:00.000-07:00

So last weekend Ryan and I flew down to Puerto Vallarta. My first impression was that I was not going to like it. It took us almost an hour to get through customs in the airport. There we are standing there in our long pants, shoes, and sweatshirts and it was pretty warm in there. Even though the weather there was very nice, upper 70's. In Utah it was freezing! Once we got through customs and picked up our luggage we had to check a bag because one of the girls I work with let us borrow her snorkel equipment. Then it was a mad house...people everywhere wanting you to come listen to time-share presentations and taxis and car rentals seriously it was crazy! I wish we would have taken a picture of it. We walked over the overpass and got a taxi that was a little cheaper than getting one at the airport apparently, we got some advice from people on the plane who couldn't believe we had never been before! We stayed at a cute little hotel close to the beach and it was adult only so we didn't have kids running around which was especially nice since we had the first room right in the lobby! The room was ok, it smelled a little musty but I am sure a lot do being so humid down there and everything, but it was cool. The pool was on the roof and we swam the first night it was cool looking out over the city and seeing the ocean while swimming in a pool and having the tops of trees right there. The middle of the hotel was open and there were huge trees growing up through it, it had a really cool feel. Everything was right there, shops, restaurants, the beach...it was great. When we went down to test out the water it was FREEZING!! I only put my feet in. We still though we might be crazy and try to go snorkeling so we talked to some tour guides but the only place cheap enough to go didn't have a beach and we didn't think we could stay in the water for very long, so we decided to go on a tour of the jungle in dune buggies. That turned out to be an adventure in itself. It was a blast, but the cars were very old and a little scary, maybe that made it more exhilarating! It was a 3 hour tour we drove right on the highway that leads to the jungle, with all the cars, trucks, busses...kind of crazy. Then we took this dirt road through the jungle it was really pretty and we drove through some really small towns it is a very different way of living. We stopped at a little cafe where there was a waterfall which you could see if you bought something (alcohol) we got a snickers and a coke. Everyone down there is always drinking! And the waterfall was not what you expected it was pretty, but not big at all! And the road crossed a small river a couple of times and we were soaked and dirty and cold. We also stopped at a tequila factory and watched everyone else sample shots of "authentic" tequila which no one seemed to like. Too bad we don't drink right? On the way down we had to cross the river again and Ryan decided that since we were already wet and gross we would just go for it. So we sped up and flew through the river. A big wave of water covered us and we could not see anything, or breathe! it was pretty fun though. However we only brought one pair of tennis shoes which we wore on the tour so they were soaking and didn't dry before we had to leave so we flew back to Utah in our T-shirts and flip-flops!! We happened to fly in the day they had a pretty good snow storm so we had to walk though inches of snow to get to our car which was covered! Needless to say we were freezing! We did get our sweatshirts our of our luggage before we went outside. And the people at customs could not believe we didn't bring anything back but we didn't. We had a really great time, I would definitely go back even though the beaches in Aruba I think were much nicer. Sunday night we walked down the I guess main walk where they had bronze sculptures and people making sand sculptures and everyone was out selling things! We had fruit, horchata, flan, chocolate cake, everything was really yummy! We even got to see some dancing which I really liked! And the pictures of me by the pool is what I wore home, ya it was cold. And on the tour since I got soaked my bra got soaked so I had to wear my swimsuit home under my shirt! Ya.

Sorry lots of pictures! I can't believe my internet uploaded them so fast, I was very excited. Anyway that was our fun trip!

Everything else inbetween

2008-01-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

New Years we were pretty boring and went to bed early. But New Year's day we went down to AF and my Grandparents take everyone bowling I always look forward to that. We had a really fun time I even beat Ryan on the second game YES! Just luck though. After we went to lunch at JCW's. I love spending time with family during the holidays it is such a wonderful time of year. We are excited to have Russ and Erica in Salt Lake now it is nice to have friends so close by! This is me and their daughter Alice on Christmas

she is so darling!

Ryan is taking a full load of classes this semester including wheel pottery and classical Mythology. And still working at the airport part-time. We are both doing well I am going to cooking and book club with the RS we are reading Mary and Joseph. I just started it but hear it is really good so I am excited for my new clubs and to get to know more people in the ward. We are once again looking for a new place to live. About a month after we moved into our new apt. the owners told us they were selling the house so we are tying to find something in the ward before we get booted out!

Now I have to make a breast cancer plug. There are quite a few women in my family who have breast cancer several have found lumps very young even in their 20's. I hope you will all take a minute every month to perform self breast exams. It really hit home today for me hearing that another one of my cousins found out she has breast cancer. She has 4 beautiful little girls and will most likely have to go in for radiation and chemo. If you didn't know my mom also was diagnosed with precancerous calcifications. She had a double mastectomy and we found out she carries the BRCA gene (for breast cancer) after that I was tested and I also have the gene. Really breast cancer can be caught early and treated it is just a matter of taking the time to take care of ourselves. We are worth it. Think of all the people in your life who think you are worth it too.

Other than that we are really doing well. Next month will be our 1 year anniversary time goes by so quickly! But I am truly blessed. I love you all! Have a wonderful day.

Christmas

2008-01-18T13:53:00.000-07:00

Well I suppose I have a lot to catch up on. Christmas was great. We had a Harvey Family Christmas party on Dec. 22 at Michelle's (my brother Christian's wife) barn. We had pizza played games and had a great time. Everyone had to wear either red or green and all the food had to be red or green as well. My mom planned the party and it was a success! It was so much fun getting together with everyone! Sunday the 23 our 10 month anniversary we flew to Washington to spend Christmas with Ryan's family. We had a wonderful time there hanging out with Ryan's family eating lots of good food and opening presents. The day after Christmas Ryan's dad drove us to the airport only to find out that our flight had been cancelled! We both had to work the next day and with the flight cancellation we were not going to make it home for a few days...so we rented a car and drove home. It only took us 12 hours! We drove all night through some snowy mountain passes which took us forever because we could only go 30! But we made it home in time to get about 45 minutes of sleep then it was off the work. We drove all night so we could be at work there was no way we weren't going to go. But Ryan only works until 12 and I was so tired I went home at 12 too. But we decided we shouldn't go to sleep or we would continue to throw our sleep schedule off so we drove down to my parents house and opened our presents there. It was a really great christmas all around! Here is a picture of our cute little christmas Tree and all our presents! so fun!
We had Holly for Christmas...I think these are here favorite gift!! Ok we also got her the Twilight series.

Christmas afternoon we went over to Russ's parents house and played Rock Band it was really fun. I liked playing the drums and Ryan did awesome singing, he was the best! It might not be the best pic but it was a fun game.

This is our wonderful drive home! You can't really tell but it is snowing and just before we got to the pass the big sign said chains required and we were in a rental car with regular road tires and no chains that is why we had to go so slow! Better safe than sorry

First Big Snow

2007-12-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

I was really looking forward to this weekend! Work was very stressful and I was ready to sleep in and do what ever I wanted! Ryan went to work Saturday morning then called me at 6:40 to see if I wanted to go skiing apparently it had snowed quite a bit! but I didn't have snow pants so we opted not to. I went back to sleep for awhile (it was so nice). When I got up and looked outside it really had snowed a ton during the night and it continued to snow that morning.
These pictures of the snow really do not do justice to how much snow was really out there. Trying to scrape off the car was just joyful. haha and reminded me why I don't really love the snow. It is very pretty when it covers all the trees...but not on your car! I had to clear the car off as quickly as I could because I got a call from Ryan about 11:30 and he told me he was on his way to the hospital because he broke his thumb! I really don't like these kind of things and I know even though it was just his thumb and not life threatening I don't need to freak out! I did well though I just want to know everything is ok. So I made my first trip in the snow in my manual up to the avenues to the LDS hospital ER. Ok Ryan wasn't our or anything when I got there we just had to wait for them to take X-rays and tell us we could go home. Ryan's thumb as you can see just looks cut but when the doctor finally brought the X-rays in you could definately tell it wa broker he called it a "janitor break" because a janitor walking by could see it! And so we have to go to an orthopedic surgeon on monday and he will probably have to have surgery! Luckily workers comp is paying for this!
That was our fun Saturday! We took it easy the rest of the day and saw Dan in Real Life, it was pretty good. Russ and Erica came up and brought us some movies and icecream we sure appreciate that! They are great! Thanks guys! I guess we will let you know what happens.

Thanksgiving

2007-12-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving was a busy week. Sunday night Ryan and I made our own Thanksgiving dinner. Neither Ryan nor I have ever cooked a turkey so we thought we would try and it turned out pretty well! Wednesday Ryan's brother and his Wife Greg and Michelle came down from Rexburg and so we had Russ and Erica up for dinner too, there were a lot of people in our little apt. Thrusday of course was Thanksgiving and we went down to my grandparents house. I made lion house rolls at enrichment on tuesday so we brought roll and I made some pumpkin rolls as well. They were a hit! I was glad because I don't bake all that often. The meal was delicious and we spent the rest of the afternoon talking with family and watching football. Friday I guess we did a little shopping but I did not get up early and I didn't find anything I really wanted to buy. That night we saw Silverchair downtown it was fun! Besides all our extra activities Ryan and I both worked! So it was a busy week but very fun! We are so blessed to have such wonderful families and friends we love!

Pictures

2007-11-06T20:10:00.001-07:00

I thought since I am still here that I would write a little bit about my pictures since I don't know exactly how to get them on the blog seperately. The pictures on Temple square are of the night we got engaged. Ryan came and picked me up from work, it was my last day!, then we went to go see the lights on Temple Square these were all things I wanted to do) after we walked around and froze we had dinner at the Macaroni Grill. Then we went back down to American Fork, Ryan was staying with my grandparents before we got married so we went there I told him I wanted to wrap some presents. Everything worked out perfectly for Ryan he really didn't have to plan everything we went to all the places you might imagine you would get engaged but didn't. At my grandma's I don't even remember if we wrapped presents or not. We were unofficially engaged before I actually got the ring so we already knew we were getting married. Anyway so we sat and talked then since it was the end of the night (we really didn't pray at the end of everydate) but Ryan said we should have a prayer so I agreed and we knelt down and I said the prayer after he helped me up and stayed on his knees and asked me to marry him! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry I remember having the thought for a second then I decided to laugh! I couldn't stop! It was the perfect proposal!
The beach pictures are from Aruba we went there in July for my birthday!! It was amazing! I would recommend it to everyone! Really my birthday was just a good excuse to take time off from work and take a vacation and since Ryan works for skywest that makes going places really fun! It was a crazy trip down. We were going to leave on the midnight flight so we didn't have to get a hotel we were just going to sleep in the Atlanta airport but looking at flight it looked really full so we decided to hop on a more open flight that left at 7:00 pm and I was working until 6:00 and we are supposed to be at the airport an hour early to check in for standby. So we rushed to the airport and made it. We flew first class to memphis Tennessee! got there about 11:00pm it was a crumby airport not one we felt comfortable sleeping in so we got a "cheap" hotel for a couple of hours because we had to be at the airport by 5:00am! Then we flew to Atlanta and on to Aruba! The weather was beautiful and so was the water it was just as clear and blue as the pictures I was amazed. And the water was not freezing so it was even nice to swim in. We stayed at a little hotel and pretty much had the beach to our selves! Ryan got me a wedding band for my birthday it was just what I wanted. Maybe it would have been a more appropriate anniversary gift but it works for me!
Well since I have written a lot lately maybe I will do more pictures later. This is getting pretty long!

Slide Show

2007-11-06T20:03:00.000-07:00

Ok I have to say I am very proud of myself! But is was easier to make a slide show than it is to put pictures on. Obviously I still haven't figured that one out yet! I did try for awhile yesterday. And I managed to get links on that took some time too I ended up with like 10 of everyone's link! But I feel successful now! I am once again at the library with Ryan he is studying for his Organic Chemistry test!

Check out my Slide Show!

2007-11-06T20:01:00.001-07:00

Tag! I'm it...

2007-11-04T18:29:00.000-07:00

So, I guess I have been tagged... Now I get to play a blog game! (Thanks Kelltie!!) I hope I can come up with some things that people didn't know about me!

Here are the rules: Each player lists 6 habits/facts about themselves. Once you finish posting, you have to tag 6 other people and list them at the end of the post. (the only problem is I don't know 6 other people that have blogs on here!)

1. Habits:
like everone else I have a specific order I follow when I do things as well. In the morning when I am getting ready (if I am not running really late!) I go to the bathroom first (and I always have to go before I go to bed, wierd habit!) then I shower and I try to wait as long as I can before I blow dry my hair because I hate doing it so I get dressed and eat breakfast, then I do my makeup and last my hair. I also have a specific order I eat certain things: like reeces I eat all the chocolate off then the peanut butter inside; Lucky Charms I eat the cereal and one marshmallow with every bit then at the end I have lots of marshmallows to eat, alson peeps I eat the little candy face parts off then the ears and head and then the body...I know there are other things I eat wierd but I can't think of any right now. I don't take the first item off the shelf in the grocery store I have to take the one behind it and if it is a soft thing I have to squeeze it! That is all I can think of.

2. Hobbies:
I love to read, I go to the library with Ryan when he does his homework and I read. I love cuddling with Ryan and watching movies, or just cuddling with him anytime. I have to admit I really don't like just being on the computer that is probably why this blog is so hard for me! Our internet at home is really slow so I mostly blog (haha I really don't think I can say I blog! But I look at everyone elses) at the library.

3. Favorite Things:
Ryan
My family
Coming home from work
reading a good book
being warm!
Summer
Traveling
Getting my hair done (then I don't have to do it!!)
Pedicures ( I don't get them as often as I would like)
holidays
treats!
Candy
anything sweet
not cooking dinner...
which means eating out!

4. Favorite Place:
My favorite place? hum...I love being home. Having my family around, it is so comfortable. To be able to do whatever I want, when I want. Of places we've been I would have to say Aruba! It was amazing! Perfect temperature-really it wasn't too humid or anything and the water was so clear and blue I didn't even mind swimming! We just laid on the beach it was wonderful I would definately go there again.

5. Websites I Frequently Visit:
like I said earlier I really don't enjoy surfing the internet I get sooo bored! If I can't find what I want quick I am done. so where do I go?

www.gmail.com but I really don't get very much email so I don't check it that often I have been checking it more now that I
www.facebook.com
www.usbank.com to check my bank account! See how boring I am!
www.byui.edu I still check that email even though it is pretty much where I have all my junk sent
www.delta.com or somthing like that so we can look up flights. But we haven't gone anywhere in awhile
www.3bgs.blogspot.com because I really don't know anyone else's address and it links me up to everyones.

6. My Guilty Pleasures:

I take all Ryan's change so I can go to the gas station next door to my work to get treats! Then I don't feel like I am really spending money! But I do try to be good. Turning the heat up when Ryan isn't home!! Taking hot showers. Checking my email at work when no one is there! Wearing flip-flops to work when the dr. isn't working! Reading People when no one is looking. All my guilty pleasures are at work! ok, most of them at least that I am telling you! ;)

Oh hey, I am done telling you how boring I am!!! I hope you all enjoyed that but you don't have to tell me if you didn't! I am sure you will be excited about my next blog since I am getting so advanced! Actually I do have a pretty good story to tell, but I will wait for next time since this is like forever long. And I dont have any cute baby pictures to break up my monotomous babbling! Don't get too excited there won't be any anytime soon, unless they are of someone else's child! haha!

too much

2007-10-12T18:48:00.001-06:00

ok so apparently this might be too much for me to handle right now, I don't know how to put picture on this page so I think I need to take some time off and figure it out later!

New things

2007-10-12T18:37:00.000-06:00

I thought since all my friends had a blog I better keep up and get one too! so here goes!