Christmas Eve

Here I sit at work again, doing a whole lot of nothing at work. I would have hoped and expected so, since hopefully most people are thinking about their families and not their course work on Christmas Eve!
This picture by Liz Lemon Swindle hangs in our home above my favorite nativity by Willow Tree. I love collecting nativities, setting up many of them in each room of my home and just sitting there looking at them. I think they are beautiful and add that perfect Christmas touch to our home. Mike even bought me a really inexpensive nativity to put in the bathroom when I was having a bad day! He knew what would cheer me up! :)
But, sometimes I think I might not have the right attitude about the nativities. Do I like them because they remind me of Jesus, or just because they are beautiful? I tried to imagine my Willow Tree nativity without the Mary and Baby Jesus figurine. It would still be beautiful, but I decided I wouldn't want it if He wasn't there. Christmas wouldn't be fun if there was no Christ. That sounds funny, but what I mean is that we may not always be thinking of Christ when we are shopping, decorating, or giving gifts, but if we never thought of Him it would make Christmas empty. We need those moments when we stop to think and our thoughts turn to Him- the true reason for the season. It makes everything wonderful and peaceful even through all the crazy madness of traffic jams, crowded stores and empty pockets!
It makes me feel better that He really still is the reason for the season, but I'm just incapable of multi-tasking and I don't think of Him all the time. :)

Hello World!

We have not blogged for a very long time! We have a good excuse though--BYU. Need I say more? Well, we are done for the semester and rejoicing! It has been a long semester and I'll admit that we were crawling for the finish line. Now we just have one more semester and we are FINISHED!!! I love BYU, don't get me wrong, but when school is done, school is done! :) We think we got pretty good grades, but who knows and well, we are at the end of the line now, so we just need C's right? :) When all is said and done, no one is going to look at our grades right? Hmm... hopefully...

I am excited to announce that I will be Student Teaching in Spanish Oaks Elementary in the 6th grade next semester. It will be so much fun to teach in my hometown!
Speaking of teaching I recently did my practicum/cohort experience teaching at Meadow Elementary in Lehi. I helped in the 5th grade and had a blast! I love those kids!

I am really at a loss for what to Blog about. Our life has been school and now it's Christmas break. We will be staying home for Christmas and enjoying the break!

We did go to Arizona for Thanksgiving. That was really great. We drove there and were able to stay in a relative's winter home with most of the family. I'll post some pictures when I get home. As it is, I'm at work and doing nothing. I work at BYU Independent Study and we are moving buildings today so I am sitting here at the front desk waiting for anyone who may happen to come in, not knowing we are closed, to take a test. We are so nice to be here for our moving day, especially since today is the last day of Finals at BYU and everyone is wanting to finish their classes for this semester! :)

Peace out... or war in... either way.

Marriage

"Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam..."

Our thoughts on marriage. . . (in regards to California’s upcoming vote). We think marriage is and ought to be defined as a union between a man and a woman. When we try to consider it something else, we are eroding and eventually destroying the meaning and significance of it. Marriage between a man and a woman is the way that God established it. Adam and Eve were the first to be married. Marriage between a man and a woman has continued down until now.

One more thought is that the only way that children can be created is between man and woman. There is no other way to create them. (If we quit having kids, the human race would cease to exist :)

Some may think that we are intolerant for saying such things, but we have the right as Americans to support what we believe in. We believe in marriage between a man and a woman and therefore we support Proposition 8 and hope that you will also.

We love all people, but will not support or condone the actions against God's will.

Here is a clip from members of our Church's leadership. They state it much better than we can. We also support what they say.

Ballaz!

This is our amazing softball team. We made it 3 games of the Tournament! (we won 1) :)

Smalls impersonating Alex

Alex and I are part of a coed Softball team called Ballaz. (We don't know what it means either.) Alex usually plays left field and caught her first pop fly! We ended up winning that game. It was our second win of the season. She got the final out of the game . The whole team was very proud of her! Her catch was a lot like Smalls's catch on the movie Sandlot.

You only need to watch the first 30 seconds to get the effect.



On another note, we also had a team poster that hung in our dugout that inspired us to win. I have added it to the blog. It is courtesy of Nate Geslison. (I hope I don't get shot for violation of copyright.)


Thank you Nate and despair.com

My new haircut!

I don't know if this represents my haircut well, but I wanted to do something different. So I went to the BYU Barbershop and got myself some new styles!

Before:

After:

I got some bangs and cut off about 4 inches. I know it's not too different, but I'm not that daring! I wanted something new, so Jessica helped me know what would be best. After about 1 hour at the barbershop the girl cutting my hair and I decided we had decided well and I was finished. Funny how hard it is to cut a few inches off! (ok, I just realized these after pictures look awful, I'm going to have to take some better ones when my new cut looks better!)

This is Mike and I because we are so cute! :)

One last view...

Here is one last view of our tiny apartment. We just had to show this to really let you see how spacious it was! It looks a lot bigger now that it's empty!

This is our hall and the last door was our bathroom! The doors on right and left are two other apartments. Ours is just behind us on the left.



This is our half bathroom. The box on the right is the water heater, takes up about 2/3 of the room. We felt a little like we were always traveling... with our airplane sized sink!




This was our room. There is about 3 more feet behind the camera, and this is what we had for our bedroom, livingroom, dining room, and any other room you can think of besides the kitchen and bathroom!

Last Memories of Oregon

Many of you may have heard by now that we have turned down the offer to work in Oregon after we finish school this year. That was really hard for us, but that was what felt right and (to Mom's rejoicing!) we are now looking for jobs here in Utah.
But here is one last look at our Oregon experience. :)

This is Alex and her kids at the park! We had a drummer teacher come to let the kids try many percussion instruments and have fun with rhythm. Aren't they so cute! :)

Alex and our good friend Ashley. Ashely's husband, Todd, was an Intern at Moss Adams with Mike. We had a lot of fun with Todd and Ashley. They were also in our ward!

Mike made me a special dinner with all the foods I like but he doesn't :) Way to take one for the team!



Where is all of this stuff going to fit?!? In the car! And if it doesn't fit there we'll do like the rest of Eugene...



...put it outside for free! It's gone by the next day! Bye bye microwave!

These are the beautiful flowers that Mike had waiting for me in the hotel room in Portland when I got back from Utah. The heart is a big sugar cookie that I made into a fruit pizza for Mike when he got back from the audit in Portland!

Good bye Oregon! :) :(

Utah trip!

Well, as you may have known, I (Alex) just got back from a trip to Utah to visit my family and witness the sealing of my sister Jessica to her husband and baby! It was so exciting to see them become an eternal family! And of course, my sister Chelsy has done an amazing job of posting the wonderful trip. So in my laziness I'll refer you to her blog and you can see her more detailed posting on July 30 :) Thanks Chel :)

Youtube Stars in the making???

Recently at work a coworker said he saw Alex and me on youtube.com. I thought that was a little weird. So I looked it up and found out that if you do a search for Provo, Utah, we are the second listing. We have over 5,000 views. We are thinking about dropping out of school and quitting work to be Youtube Stars. . . Or maybe we won't, but we will keep you updated. Today is a short post, because Alex usually does most of the posting.

Mike

Here is a link of the World Famous video:

4th of July!

Here we are after camping. It smelled of campfire out of the car and since we the only place available was a KOA we took advantage of their showers that morning! We are enjoying some cold Smores!



This is the back of Mike's head looking out over a cliff in a national park on the Oregon Coast. We were talking to a couple who tracks the birds here and they let us look through their telescope at a young Perigron Falcon sitting on a tree. As we were learning all about falcons the lady looked up and said "There is an eagle!" and just 30 feet above us flew a full sized bald eagle!! Happy Fourth of July to us! That was amazing! I had just barely put away my camera, otherwise I would show you all pictures!



This is in the same national park. One of the many Oregon Lighthouses, I guess they are famous for. It was neat to see inside. Also in this park was a tree called "Octopus Tree". It has 6 trunks that all jut out the base like octopus legs!



This is Mike after being attacked by the vicious-hand-eating emu. It likes the food, so it will get it however it pleases! I am feeding the pushy goats. They scare the sheep away, but they are fun because they will jump up or down from the fence at your command!

Saturday Market

They have a large assortment of fresh fruit, veggies, and all sorts of other food. Not only that, they also have a large section of prepared food. On top of that, they have a lot of clothing, trinkets, and other things. Of course, all of these things are organic, even the clothes. They have non-dyed organic cotton. All of the fruits and vegetables look really nice, but they are all insanely expensive because they are organic. There is also a lady who reads tarot cards. I have never seen this in real life. They don’t have stuff like this in public in Utah. That is all for today.

Our Apartment

Here is our home sweet home... for now anyways! This is our place, we are the big upstairs window and the one to the right of it. Our whole apartment is just behind that window and the little one is our tiny kitchen. The tiny bathroom is next to the kitchen and our full bath is down the hall. :)

You can see two blue buckets on the roof. Those are our tomato plants! We hope to get at least a few tomatoes before we go. One is a cherry tomato, we are crossing our fingers!

This is our street: 10th and Washington. Washington is a one way street. The one way streets are hard to get used to. Mike almost turned right on this street.... that's why I drive the most! :)

Goodbye to Buddy

We said goodbye to Buddy this month (from Oregon). Mom and Chelsy took him to the Humain Society in SLC. They said he was calm about it and only resisted a little when they took him to the room with all the dogs in it. 13 years old and he's not used to being around a lot of dogs!I think he'll like the friend though.
Bye Bye Buddy!


These are pictures took of his last day at home. He had a happy last few days running around Mom's backyard and pooping all over the grass. :)

The following are just cute pictures of him.

Our 1 year Anniversary!

We were lucky to have our anniversary (May 26) fall on Memorial Day this year, so Mike didn't have to work and we could go do something fun! We decided to go to the Oregon coast at Florence to see what there was to see. Of course it was rainy and cold, but this is to be expected. We had a fun time at the beach and hiking out on this rocky peninsula with a little green lighthouse on it and lots of pelicans and seagulls (thus the white "paint" all over the rocks! :)














We also visited a little restaurant/grill for lunch which kept us full all day and was the cheapest prices around. Restaurants here are nearly all around 10-20$ a plate! Pretty crazy. We got a huge meal for just 7$ each :)

There was a little place called "Old Town" in Florence that had little shops and gift places. We toured around there and then headed home. It was a fun day!

We caved in....

Well friends and family, Mike and I have finally caved in. We gave into Facebook and we both signed up now. We felt like we might like to be a little more in touch with everyone! This is weird, it's like we just entered the technology world! :)

Retro Couch-- Free stuff!

Lets just begin by saying we love Craigslist and their free stuff! I (Alex) have been diligently watching Craigslist for free furniture to fill our new tiny apartment. Well, to organize it is more the word, it is VERY full as it is VERY tiny, but we didn't have anything above 1 foot off the ground except boxes and our keyboard, and the whole floor was covered because it only stacks so high! (We moved to a new and clean place that is closer to Mike's work. It's about 1/3 the size of the old one, but so much nicer!) But now, thanks to the kindness and generosity of people who give away their stuff, we have an amazing new couch in Eugene representational colors, and a practically new dresser! And now we live a little more civilized instead of out of boxes and off the floor :)




Isn't this the most amazing pattern you've ever seen??
And it folds out into a bed so we don't have to sleep on the floor with our air bed anymore!

The guy said this dresser was a little wobbly and some drawers didn't work. He thought it could be fixed but said he wasn't very good with tools. Well, to fit in in our car we had to take it all apart. When we got back home and put it together it worked perfectly! At least that guy knew he wasn't good at putting things together! :) We're grateful! This is real wood too!

Apartments and Horses

This is a video of our apartment. We call the apartment "Smokey Joe," because whenever we come in from being outside or walk into our living room in the morning, it smells like smoke. That is kind of a pain. We are hoping to move out on Monday or Tuesday into a much better apartment. Our new apartment will be a studio, with 1.5 baths. That most likely sounds weird to you as it did to me. Why a studio could have 1.5 bathrooms, I don't know. What happened was that the main bathroom is down the hall of the apartment complex. (Not very far down the hall, mind you.) Alex told me that the bathroom most likely doubles the square footage of the apartment. The best news however, is that it does not smell like cigarette smoke. That is something that we are both really thankful and are very willing to pay a little extra for these benefits!!


And now a word from Alex. . .
Well, we've had an interesting trip so far, as you have heard from Mike, but it had it's high points too. We stopped at Uncle Tim and Aunt Kathy's house in Washington on the way up (I've been to Washington now!) and because of our unexpected extended stay they let us ride their horses! This was Mike's first time to ride horses and my fourth? Not sure, but we both loved it! Here is Mike on Snubby and me on Bo. Our horses were very tame and well ridden, Uncle Tim's was a little feisty and tried to get him off every once in awhile!