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...