Oh Christmas Tree

 Here's our Christmas tree all decorated for Christmas- which I must admit I like a lot better than decorated for Halloween (above).

It's December!

I can hardly believe that it's already December!  It's crazy how fast the time goes between Thanksgiving and Christmas- it'll be here before we know it!  I made Andrew help me put up the Christmas tree the first time it snowed...which happened to be a week before Halloween.  He objected, but in the end I won, and I have enjoyed it every day since.  Actually for the first little while I decorated it for Halloween with pumpkin/bat/ghost garland and a witch had at the top, and then I switched to Christmas the day before Thanksgiving.  Both of our parents bought specific ornaments for us growing up, so I have at least one from every year of my childhood, and Andrew has about the same amount I do.  I love turning off all the other lights in the house and drinking hot chocolate by the tree.

Today we went to my sisters house for dinner with her boyfriend and our younger brother.  She made tacos, and it was a lot of fun to be with them.  However, the way over was a little stressful!  We were driving down University Avenue, and close to the stop light at 800N the traffic suddenly stopped.  Andrew slammed on the brakes and we were able to stop in time, but the people behind us weren't so lucky.  I've never really been in a car accident before (besides the time I ran the family mini van into the back of our garage...), and I must admit I really didn't like it.  I'm not sure how the girl behind us lucked out so much, but there was almost no damage whatsoever- all the damage to our car was a little bit of paint scratched on the under-ish side of our bumper.  Hers car didn't fare quite as well, but still just has superficial problems.  She must have said her prayers this morning!  And us too!  The jolt felt pretty big, and we weren't even going very fast.  I sure hope I'm never in a serious accident!


That's about the extent of the excitement here in Provo- it's by far enough for me!  Life is so great, and even better now that it's officially the Christmas season!

2 days in a row!

I can't believe it, but here I am blogging for the 2nd day in a row!  I'm so proud of myself :)

Today was kind of a crazy day.  In fact, when I think about it, we kind of have crazy lives!  We wake up about 6:30 every morning and get ready for the day.  I drop off Andrew at BYU and head up to American Fork, where I work at a Law Firm called Myler Disability.  I read medical records all day and determine if I think our clients have good cases for Social Security Disability.  I actually really like my job.  I work with great people and learn so much.

Most of our clients really are crazy, and reading their medical records from therapists can be nuts.  My heart definitely goes out to some of them.  Reading about their childhoods, sometimes it's amazing to me that they turned out as normal as they did.  There is so much evil out there- I was completely oblivious before, and now I'm only mostly oblivious, and I can't believe it.  It makes me realize just how blessed and fortunate I am!  I was born into a great, loving family with amazing parents who taught me everything I needed to know and gave me everything they could.  Now I'm married to the man I am convinced is the nicest person in the world who treats me like a queen.  I am so blessed!!!  So many people go through types of abuse I can't even imagine and never know that their Savior loves them with a perfect love and that there is hope for a better existence when they pass from this world.  I wish I could share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them, but unfortunately I can't in a work setting like that.  I really am the most blessed girl there is!

Some of the clients I feel a little less bad for- they've attempted murder, robbed homes, and done drugs I had never even heard of before.  I guess they probably did it because they have a mental problem, but I still have a hard time feeling quite as bad for them.  Maybe someday I'll be a better person....

Well after work I was headed home to pick up Andrew when I got a phone call stating we actually were supposed to work today- not tomorrow! I sped to the Branbury Clubhouse, where we work as RAs, and was luckily only about 15 minutes late.  Our boss is really nice and understanding, so it all turned out alright.  However, poor Andrew had to walk home in the freezing cold because I couldn't pick him up!

We'll work here until just after 11, head home and get ready for bed, then do it all again tomorrow!  We're so fortunate to be able to work here, as it pays for our rent, but sometimes the lack of sleep catches up with us.  I am so lucky to have Andrew as my husband- he's really helpful in getting me out of bed nicely and making lunches for us when I can't keep my eyes open to do it myself.  He even makes dinner some nights!  Well we're actually working on some training materials for the apartment complex tonight, so I should probably help Andrew...

New Goal: write in blog again!

I've been so terrible about blogging, for like the past year!  But I'm determined to get into it now.  Things are going great for me and Andrew.  I am so lucky to be married to Andrew!  It's been over a year and a half now, and the time has FLOWN by.  I can't believe it!

Andrew will graduate with his combined Bachelors/Masters in April (in Statistics at BYU), and then we are off to more schooling!  That's what we've been eating, breathing, and dreaming lately.  However, he officially finished his applications last week- now it's just a waiting game.  He applied to 9 different schools all over the place, and I am dying to find out where we'll be for the new few years!  The options are:
Ohio State (Columbus)
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
Harvard (Boston)
Duke (North Carolina)- my top choice!
NC State (also North Carolina)
University of Washington (Seattle)
UC Santa Cruz (California)
Purdue (Indiana)
Texas A&M (College Station)

But we'll see what happens.  North Carolina is close to my family, and the weather there looks fantastic!  However, after spending 5 years in Provo, I am ready for a change.  It snowed A LOT last night, and I HATE the cold, driving on icy roads, scraping windows, and falling on my bum (which is inevitable).  However, it does look beautiful I must admit.

We had a great Thanksgiving.  My brother and sister, Kim and Kory, are both in Provo this year, so we were able to spend a lot of time with them.  In fact, they even slept at our tiny apartment and went to Idaho to for the Smith (Andrew's mom's) Family Thanksgiving dinner in little Preston, Idaho.  The roads were a little iffy, but we made it, and it was super yummy!

Kim and I had a blast Black Friday shopping!  There was a mall in Draper, about 30 minutes away, that opened at midnight Thanksgiving night.  Of course Kim and I were there 20 minutes before standing in line in our pajamas, which paid off with a $10 gift card to the mall to the first 200 shoppers that showed up in their PJs!  We LOVED the atmosphere of it all.  I've never seen so many shoppers in the mall at one time, and they were all crazy!  There was tons of pushing, shoving, and yelling- and we loved it all!  We didn't buy much, but what we did were all great deals, and we made it home about 3am.  We then slept in and were back out shopping Friday afternoon- it was a lot of fun to shop with all the crazies and spend time with my sister.

My brother Kory and Andrew spent a lot of quality time together this weekend too.  Kory introduced Andrew to the movie Batman Begins, which Andrew really enjoyed, while Kim and I shopped Thursday night.  We ate dinner together about every night, watched movies, played games, and just relaxed.  I'm not ready to go back to work tomorrow, but not too long until Christmas!

Our tree is up and sparkling and I love it!  I love everything about Christmas, especially the spirit of Christmas.  Everyone seems just a little nicer, the music is heavenly, and there is so much excitement everywhere!  Christmas is less than a month away and we are definitely in Christmas mode!  Well, I should probably get ready for bed and for another week...

Happy Ending to 2009

Andrew and I had a great end of 2009!  It was our first Christmas together, which was really fun.  I got a work bonus which allowed us to get decent gifts for each other, and it was mostly just fun spending the holiday together.  Christmas day we went and spent the day with Andrew's family, so we decided to have our own Christmas together on the 24th.  We slept under the Christmas tree and Santa came during the night.  When I was growing up, Santa always came and brought surprise paper.  So Andrew went out and bought some paper in which he wrapped my gifts and surprised me, which was sweet was fun.  We planned to go to see Disney Christmas Carol, but unfortunately it was already sold out (but since then we've heard it really wasn't that great, so that's ok).

In the late afternoon we went up to Kaysville to hang out with Andrew's family.  We watched Christmas movies, played games and had a yummy plethora of food all weekend.  It was good to spend time with his family.  Monday I started back at work.  This was my first year without a 2 week Christmas break.  I was flabbergasted at first that not everyone gets a lot of time off for the holidays, but I survived.  Andrew worked and kept very busy with PhD application stuff at home, so it's probably good that I wasn't there to bother him.  However, I must say that it is really nice for neither of us to have homework!

We have also spent a lot of time working at the apartment complex where we live.  All the other RAs went home for the holiday's, so we certainly got a lot of hours in, which was great.  It was pretty quiet, so we played games, read, and watched a movie or two.  We're actually here again tonight, then things should quiet down for awhile- we'll mostly be doing just weekends.  We're sad to see 2009 go because it was such a great year, but 2010 is certainly off to a great start!  This is bound to be the best year yet!

2 New Additions To Our Family

Fish!  I got two fish last week :)  They are salt water tropical fish, and I love them.  One is called a sunshine something or other, and the other is some sort of guppy, I think.  But really one is orange/yellow (Shaniqua) and the other has leopard print on it (named Leonardo).  Today was Andrew's first real day without school, so he took me to work this morning and we transported them to the office I work at in American Fork.  What a great husband!  They are so funny to watch- Leonardo chases Shaniqua around all day, and she basically spends the day running from him.  It's nice to add a little life to my little, blah cubical.  It's a good substitute for children for the time being :)

Life changes!

Life is so good.  Next week marks our 8 month anniversary, and we couldn't be happier.  Life and love just keeps getting better!

We were lucky enough to go home to Ohio for Thanksgiving.  Like I mentioned before, a company in Cleveland paid for Andrew to come out first class, so my parents helped us buy me a ticket, and we got to spend almost a week with my parents and brother.  It was really nice to see them and spend Thanksgiving at my grandparents' house like I did in the good 'ol days.  My grandma is an amazing cook, and she does almost everything on her own- incredible!  It will be hard to not be with them for the first time since I was born on Christmas, but I'm glad I get to spend it with my husband.  I keep saying I don't get to go home for Christmas, but he really is my home.

Andrew spent the last day we were there interviewing- actually it was 4, 30 minute interviews as well as an hour lunch with two other employees who were seeing if he would fit in at the company.  Obviously he did pretty well, because he received an offer last week!  And after getting the inside scoop from an employee there who is friends with my family, they didn't even technically have an opening, they just loved him! 

At first we didn't know what to think or what to do- it's kind of a tough situation we've found ourselves in.  Andrew technically has one year left at BYU before finishing his Master's degree, but a lot of PhD schools in statistics will accept people without having a Master's. 

We've been thinking for awhile about applying now to start school this fall, but had basically come to the conclusion that we'd just wait.  However, with this offer, we have thought a lot about doing this for the summer and living with my family and then going straight to school somewhere else.  After fasting, praying, and a lot of long conversations, we have decided we're going to do it and take a leap of faith.  You see, if he doesn't get into PhD school for the fall, we'll be sticking around at BYU for another year and applying again.  That's all fine and dandy, but there is too much for us to lose here if we both leave.  So when we put those pieces together, we have decided that if we'll be in Provo for another year, we're going to have to send Andrew to Ohio, and I'll have to stay here and hold down fort.

Let's just say I am praying fervently that he gets in.  Twelve weeks without him sounds like an awful long time!  But if I leave, we lose our position as RA's at our apartment complex (buh-bye free rent), and I'll lose my job and insurance.  That's expensive for a 12 week get-away!!  We both feel really good about it, so Andrew called this morning and accepted the offer.  I know it will all work out because it always does, but hopefully it works out how I want it to :)

Work for me is going pretty well.  This week I was sworn at about 10 million times, though!  I was called words that I have never heard come out of a girl's mouth by one lady who was particularly upset about her Social Security Disability case.  At first I took offense to being yelled and sworn at, but after realizing these people's backgrounds by talking to them and what has happened to them in their lives as well as reading their medical records and hearing about how terrible they must feel all the time, added to a lot of mental disabilities, I have decided to not take it personally.  It makes the job a lot better.

After the worst phone call, I talked to the sweetest lady.  She sounded like a bigger, elderly black lady (or that could be complete assumptions), and she had a fun accent- I think she was from the South if I remember right.  She told me what an angel was and asked if I could come to her hearing with her and go out to lunch with her.  She seemed to think we could be best friends, and I really enjoyed talking to her.  It's people like her who really appreciate the help and tell me they are so glad I am nice to them and appreciate my friendship that make the job worth it after the meanie-heads scream.

School has been keeping Andrew really busy, especially with finals this week, but he is done for the semester!  However, after talking to him this morning being excited for him and his break, he informed me that he plans to work 60 hour weeks.  WHAT??  Haha, crazy kid!

We also have TONS of Branbury shifts because all the other RAs are out of town.  It should be pretty quiet, though.   I'm in the clubhouse now, and other than a few people at the hot top, it's empty.  Andrew just went to the work-out room and is running, then we're going to watch a movie on his laptop.  We have tomorrow off, but then we work Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 5-10.  It's good for us, though!  Keeps us out of trouble.