Please Anyone?

Okay so as I mentioned in my spring break post I am having issues posting a slide show that I made in slide.com. I know I have used it before but I can't figure out a way to put it in the post I have already made. When I copy and paste the code into the blog it gives me errors and won't work. I then tried to make the same slideshow in photobucket, but it refuses to let me show the descriptions that I gave to explain the pics. I am super frustrated. I have now probably spent a good two hours trying to get the slideshow right and continue to fail miserably. For those of you who have have this whole slideshow thing down please share your secrets. Any advice would be much appreciated. Ahh!

Spring Break In California

We're BACK!!! Well we have been back for about a week I just haven't had a single second to update the blog. We had such a blast in Southern California. It was a quick trip but exactly what we needed to take a break from our hectic lives and prepare ourselves for the last month of the semester. It was so nice to actually fly somewhere. I am so use to driving to Cali that I didn't know what I was missing out on. I am not gonna lie I was a little bit...ok a lot scared of gonig on a plane. It had been nine years since my last plane ride and my fingernail marks in Phi's hands are proof of that. After getting over the initial fear I loved it and hope to fly again soon! Here are some of the things we did while we were in the sunny OC!

Went to Knott's Berry farm..reluctantly because of my fear of heights...apparently I have a lot of fears. However I was also able to conquer some of my fears and ride some rides that I would have never thought was possible for me to do. The best part of going to Knott's was the perfect weather that was not too hot or too cold and literally walking on to every single ride...seriously.

This is what I was doing on this coaster. Hanging coasters freak me out!





This is probably the one ride that I would have refused to go on. Lucky for me it was closed, but Phi was way bummed.


An Indian friend I made there!

I have to give a shout out to H & M! I have wanted to go here my whole life and finally got the chance on this trip. Everytime I go to Cali I am reminded of what crappy shopping Utah has to offer. California on the other hand has everything. We stumbled upon this shopping center that was like three times the size of a regular mall and also had a breezeway connecting to a whole other side that was just as big. I could have spent my whole vacation here. Seriously I was in shopper's heaven!

Huntington Beach was incred, but a little too cold for me to even think about going in the water. Nephi couldn't resist and braved the waves while I laid on the beach.

We rented beach cruisers and rode along the coast. Nephi had a sweet orange bike

And I had an awesome pink bike with a basket for my pink purse and a pink bell. It was probaly the highlight of my trip to just ride up and down the coast careful!

We ate at this way yummy restraunt called Claim Jumper and I was blown away by the size of Phi's ribs. Seriously these pics don't do it justice. Even Nephi was overwhelmed by the amount of ribs and only finished about half they were seriously out of control!

I just had to put this pic on here. Let's just say Inn'n'Out was the highlight of the trip for Phi. He would have eaten there every meal if I let him. We both love it and look forward to it each time we go to Cali...and are super excited they are building one in Orem and Draper soon!

The beautiful Newport Beach temple...I love that it is pink. It was fun to see it again, I was able to go through this when they had the open house it is such a beautiful temple.

One last trip to Newport beach before we headed to the airport. I have this thing for pier's!

We also went to Hollywood and did all of the touristy stuff. Because there was so much to see and we didn't really know what we were doing, we decided to go on a tour and have someone show us all the sights! It was well worth it we saw a lot of stars homes and glitz and glam of Hollywood and Beverly Hills. I spent forev putting together a slideshow of the pics I took, but I can't get it to show up so I will have to work on that tomorrow. All in all we had an awesome trip and would love to go back there soon

SO CAL Here We Come!!!!

We are going to California for Spring Break! It was a spontaneous trip that we just planned today. We have both been wanting to get away and desperately needed a vaca so we just decided to go for it. We will be flying out Thursday and coming home Sunday. It's not a super long trip, but it will still be a lot of fun. We are staying in Santa Ana which is like ten minutes from Huntington Beach and Disneyland. I don't know if we will actually go to Disneyland, but at least we have the option. I am not spontaneous so for me to do this is way out of the norm but I am way excited! Not to mention that I have not been on a plane in like nine years and am a little bit nervous. It won't be super hot and I probably won't want to get in the water, but it will be in the 70's which is heaven compared to here and I still love being at the beach, it is just so peaceful and relaxing. And of course Nephi would go just for Inn n Out. My goal is to not eat there every day like I know he wants!

A Typical Sunday...Yeah Right!

I know it has been far to long since my last post. I will use the same excuse I always do...I am so freakin busy that I don't have time to think straight let alone upload pics and vent about my life, which is basically what this post is going to be. Today started out as a beautiful Sabbath day in which I fasted and felt the spirit at church. I had hoped that the day would continue on like this, but I was out of luck. Phi went to do fast offerings and not long after he left he comes home and says he needs to take my care cuz his has a flat tire. I was like great I have no clue how to fix a flat tire and I am not sure Phi remembers how either. Well we go out and proceed to put on the spare until tomorrow, but we can't get one of the bolts off cuz it was a cheap replacement and doesn't have any grooves to latch onto. We knew we could not leave it on the street and decided we should try buying that fix a flat stuff we had heard about. So we had to go into Walmart on Sunday which I felt terrible about and hated every second of. Luckily the fix a flat worked, I would highly recommend it, and we were able to get the car home. Doing laundry was a must today and I apologize for all those of you who think laundry on sunday is a no no, but you don't know how difficult it is to find time to do it. I HATE not having my own washer and dryer, which we would have if we had hookups, so I have been trying all weekend to get the laundry done in the shared ones we have at our apartments. Of course every time I have checked, it doesn't matter if it is 6 am or midnight somebodies close have been in there. So today I was very happy to see that I had the chance to put in a load. Now normally when I have more than one load I will have the second load ready to put in as soon as I put the first load into the dryer. Today I made a terrible mistake of not having the second load with me and running inside to get it. In the ten seconds it took me to run into my house, my neighbors had gone in and put in a load...curses!!! Needless to say I feel the spirit of the day go right out the window and now I am venting on my blog. Sorry I am sure nobody cares about this, but at least I find the whole thing somewhat comical...such is my life. On a happier note, we had a great Valentine's Day. Nothing super exciting, but I loved how Nephi brought home flowers and balloons the day before Valentine's Day. It totally surprised me, obviously because I expected something on Valentine's Day, but I really liked getting them early and making a very cliche thing somewhat of a surprise.

This pic I just had to put on here. The story behind it is that what night I made myself some soup for din and after cooking realized that all of the spoons were in the dishwasher which I had already started. You are probably wondering why I could not just get a spoon out of the dishwasher and wash it myself, well our dishwasher basically freaks out if you open in the middle of the cycle and won't start back up so I searched high and low for something I could eat my chicken noodle soup with and this massive spoon was the only thing I could find. It was very difficult to get my lips around and I am pretty sure I spilled more than I ate. Not to mention it was very difficult to eat when Phi was across the table laughing hysterically. I finally just gave up and ate something else. It was pretty funny!
We have discovered that we can buy any old school nintendo game for our Wii that we want. For a small price of $5 we were able to buy the very first Super Mario Bros. for the original Nintendo and it has been so much fun. We have stayed up way too late trying to beat the wholet thing and we are way close. I know we are a little bit pathetic but you have to admit that game is way sweet. It is pretty sad that we get more excited about the old school games than the new Wii games but it's all good! Sorry I know this post was super random but that's about all that has been going on in our lives apart from school, homework, work, homework, internship, homework, fundraising for my internship, and more homework. Two months from tomorrow and I am done with school FOREVER!!! I can hardly stand it and can't wait to be a college grad! If anyone knows of any jobs in social services let me know! You know with the great economy and all it will be so easy to find a job! Not!!!

The Joys of Life!

Sometimes the future can be scary. I am going to be a college graduate in less than four months and am terrified. Don't get me wrong I have never been more excited about anything in my life than finally ending my seemlesssly neverending student status, but I don't know how to not be a student. I have been in school for 17 years. I am going to have a killer time transitioning to not having a three month summer and one month Christmas...how do people work that much?! I think the reason I am so apprehensive about graduating is because I am terrifed to try and secure a career. I am graduating into a horrible economy with little or no money or jobs in social services. Because of the child welfare grant I accepted, I agreed to work for the Department of Child and Family Services in the state of Utah for two years and must try and get that job as soon as I graduate. That would be fine if I knew that when I graduate there will be a job available for me and I can begin working off my two years, but there is no guarantee of a job, in fact there is little chance of there being any jobs, not to mention there are 12 of us all in the same boat going for the same jobs. So either I don't get that job and keep putting off my two year requirement, or I take the job and probably end up commuting out of Cache Valley each day, which I really don't want to do, so yeah you could say I am nervous for the future. I am one of those peole that likes to have everything planned out to a T and know exactly what and when I am doing something. Spontaneity is not my strong suit. Not to mention that the second I graduate my student job is over and I will be out of a job and I really don't want to have a layover of time with no work. Ahhhh!!! I know that this is probably normal for any soon to be graduate to feel, but I still hate it. Oh well, I will just relish in the thought of no longer have tests, papers, 7:30 a.m classes, and professors that drive me nuts. The positives definitely outweigh my fears.

This past Sunday was my friend Nate Rowley's homecoming. Finally my last good friend is home so now everyone is home, unfortunately our lives are much different since high school so we still never get to be together with the old high school gang...maybe someday. I was able to see all of my friends and catch up it was a lot of fun and there was great food. I wanted to take more pics and get a group pic, but the second I started snappin pics my camera died...typical!

BFF's for Life
Camera shy...not these two!

...and my cold sore is so cute don't you think...who doesn't love to have a huge sore right on your lips!

Merry Christmas 2008!

Christmas was so great this year. We spent Christmas Eve with Phi's family and had a lot of fun with them. Then we slept over night at my parents house and had Christmas day with them. Tim and Jessica slept over also, so everyone was together Christmas morning, minus Kevies of course. We got to talk to him and I loved every second of it. He is such a wonderful missionary. He is so focused and is not interested in hearing anything of the world or anything that might be the least bit distracting to him he is such a great servant of the Lord and I am so proud of him and miss him so much. He has hit his 1 year mark and I hope the second year goes just as fast. I am excited to have him home next Christmas it will be so great! After opening gifts I cracked open my cocoa latte machine that Crystal gave us for Christmas and it is so great. It makes a pretty good cup of hot cocoa! We had a nice breakfast and then later on had a wonderful dinner. We went and saw a movie also. I loved spending time with our families and friends. As you can see from the pics, I was in no hurry to get out of my pj's on Christmas! Showin off my rock side with guitar hero world tour. We got a wii for Christmas and it is quite possibly the most fun thing ever!

Finally dressed and ready for a Christmas pic!

The blizzard expected for Christmas day did not show up until that night and Crystal got really excited!
At Sam's Club Crystal just couldn't resist trying out the pillow mound. It was just one of those days where everything was funny and we were acting really immature. If you were there you would have thought it was hilarious. Crystal was laughing so hard she had to run to the bathroom to prevent an accident.

Temple Square

Some of my wonderful fam members

Crystal and Nephi making a new friend!

My new bed and bedding. My parents gave us new bedding to go with our new bed and I was so excited to put it all together that I did not even take the time to iron it, which I know it desperately needs. Oh well, I am just so happy to finally have a cute bedroom set!

Our beautiful tree with the new tree topper addition. A little spazzy and different, but I absoltuely love it! I think the tree turned out great this year and I spent hours on wrapping the presents. I love a nicely wrapped gift!

About all the Christmas decorations I have...not much but enough for us!

This was a few days before Christmas but I just forgot to post. Last Tuesday I had to work and Nephi didn't and he surprised me with a dinner. He made new york steak, that I am not kidding tasted gourmet, and cheesy veggies. He also got marinelli's sparkling cider and a box of chocolate for dessert. The poinsetta was also from him I just love poinsettas. Nephi is such a sweetheart and I am so lucky to have him in my life.

cRAzy DecEmBEr!!

I just love this time of year. I love the feeling in the air and now that we finally have snow it feels like Christmas. We have been crazy busy this month and are so happy to be done with school for a little while. I must admit I have gotten caught up in the shopping craze and seriously need help. It is so hard cuz everytime I go out I see such good deals it really is a buyers market for everything these days! We went to our ward Christmas party last night and it was so great. The primary kids did the nativity and it really brought home the true meaning of Christmas. I have been wanting to get some pictures taken of Nephi and I but have just been so busy with school, work, my internship and endless Christmas parties that I have not gotten around to it. I am not one to pay for photography (I am sure that will change when I have kids) so my friend Brandy took some for us. I think they turned out great. I am hoping to make Christmas cards this year, we will see if that actually happens. I loved having snow in the pictures but I could not have picked a colder day. You can see in some of the pictures the beautiful purple towel that accomodated the pics quite well if you ask me! We were all numb by the end but Nephi was a good sport about it. They may not be professional but I think they are beautiful. I hope everyone is enjoying the season as much as we are!