Christmas and Park City

Last week Mark and I had our winter vacation from work and took off to Park City. His best friend, Phil, and his wife came up from St. George to stay with us for a couple of nights. The first night we just hung out, had dinner, and played some games. In the morning, we went to the Park City Mountain Resort to go snowboarding. We had a great time there, but it was quite expensive. After a long day of snowboarding, we went to the hot tub and spent the rest of the time just chillin'. For the second night, another of Mark's friends and his girlfriend came up to play games and hang out. For the third night, everyone else had gone home for work, so Mark and I were left alone. We used that last time there as our 1 year anniversary trip. I won't go into details. ;)

Merry Christmas!!!
Today is Christmas Day. For Christmas Eve, Mark and I spent a wonderful day with my parents. We played a game called Alhambra, ate dinner, and saw National Treasure 2. We also opened presents since we wouldn't be around Christmas Day. Mark and I are very grateful for all of the things we were given this Christmas. I don't want to boast about gifts, so I won't list the things we got.
This morning we woke up to open presents with a couple of Mark's nieces and his nephew. They were so cute and excited to see that Santa came! It made me really excited for when we have our own kids. One thing that I would like to incorporate into our family's Christmas is my families tradition of orderly present opening. First we sort the presents, then Dad decides who opens a present next. That is a tradition I will always cherish.

We wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

New Floor!!!

I'm pretty excited about this. Our new floor is finally in! Here's what it looks like.


And while the kitchen is empty, our living room is full! Note the fridge, pantry thing, kitchen table, etc. The oven is in front of the bathroom. What fun!

Real Quick

I have to leave for work in 5 minutes, so this is going to be short. Saturday night, my mother-in-law invited us to go with her to see Voice Male at the local theatre. We had a great time! Those men have amazing voices and are quite funny, too, though nobody has one-liners as good as my dad's. They sang a lot of Christmas songs, but also gave us a taste of their soon to come out children's album. Those songs were very cute and I suggest buying it for your kids when it comes out. There's even a song that's supposed to put them to bed!
Today we are getting a new kitchen floor in our apartment. We've had carpet up until now and it has been driving me crazy! It's hard to clean, and it just looks bad. We're very excited for our new vinyl floor. Right now, the stove is in the bathroom, and the fridge and table and all other kitchen stuff that couldn't fit on a counter are in the living room. It's great! Hope you all have a great day! I'll take pictures of our beautiful kitchen as soon as I can.

Hairstyles

Thanks to Carrie and her friend for the suggestion, but I don't think it worked out too well. I went to a website that was supposed to help me pick out a hairstyle. Unfortunately, all pictures of me that I thought were even remotely good made me want to just keep my hair the way it is. Here are a few of the best (in my opinion).



So, what do you think? I don't think they look that great, and the other pictures were even worse. I think it's the fault of my huge honking nose!

My Friend Stephie

This weekend my lifetime friend Steph will be moving out of Logan. We have been friends since she was born (I'm older by a month and 8 days), and have been going to the same schools and living within walking distance of each other forever. Even when we moved to college, we were still only a couple of blocks away. Granted, we didn't get together all of the time, but there was comfort in knowing that she was always there if I needed her. On Saturday she moves to Cedar City, 4 hours away from here. I don't know what I'm going to do! We just went out to lunch today and were talking about how much time we have shared together through this far in life. I'm going to miss her! For anyone who has seen Steel Magnolias, well, that's our movie. We are the two old ladies who are always arguing but are the best of friends. It will be weird to have my longest time friend gone away from me. If I were allowed to tell anyone about some of the memories we have together, I could write a hilarious, sad, rude, exciting, and dull book that would include fights, parties, and pretty much everything you can think of. The book would be really long as we have spent almost 21 years of our lives making memories. It would be depressing at some points, yet overly happy at most others. I guess what it comes down to is that I'll miss you, Stepharoonie Potsatoonie.

I Need Ideas

Hey y'all. I'm going to go get my hairs cut in the next couple of days, but I always have the hardest time deciding on how to have them cut. My hair has gotten pretty long over the past year, so I'm attached to it, but it's gotten mangy. Any ideas would be awesome! If you find a picture online, just put the link in the comments and I'll have a look-see. Thanks!

Another One Bites the Butt

Have you ever had those times where you wanted to do something nice for someone else and it turns around and bites you in the butt? I have. In fact, today was one of those times. This morning I took Mark up to the school for a final, got a parking spot, then went and worked out with my friend. After working out, I decided I'd stop by the house of one of the ladies in my ward to wish her luck on her finals. I was at her house visiting for only 5-10 minutes, and when I walked out to my car to go home I saw the orange envelope on my car that said "PARKING TICKET". What a bummer! I was only there for 5 minutes to do some good for someone else and I get a $15 parking ticket! Granted, I did park in the driveway covering the sidewalk because it was a spur of the moment thing, but still.. Of all the times of day that the Parking Ticket Nazi had to be roaming about on my street, it had to be in the 5 minutes I was visiting someone. And to think I was only a block away from my own house.

Winter Fun

Last week (when we had snow on the ground) we went sledding. Old Main Hill is the hot spot in Logan for sledding, so naturally we ended up there. It was about 8:00 pm. It was dark-ish. The snow had turned into ice from all of the sledders, and there were still plenty of sledders around us. The walk up the hill is rough, so once I got to the top I stayed there until the last time going down for the other two. (We brought one of our friends.) This is a crappy picture of them because my camera was on night setting and I couldn't hold it still for long enough.

Mark and Nate were having a great time speeding down the hill on different forms of transportation including plastic tobaggons, a big blow up tube, and the "Snow Thrasher" (a board that you stand on but are not attached to with a string to hold on to on the front). Before we knew it, here is what showed up:


Luckily, it wasn't for us. Someone had been hurt before we got there, so we got to watch the action.
This is a sweet picture of the building after which the hill is named, Old Main.

I should go into photography. This post was a little late in coming, I know. It's been almost a week since it happened, but that's what happens when I want to put pictures on my blog that aren't already on my computer. Today when I took Mark to his 7:30 class it was so warm I almost took the motorcycle out for a ride. Needless to say, we probably won't be sledding again for a while.

Go Ahead and LAUGH!!

This one I like to call the librarian picture.


This is the true American picture - obese.

This one is the cyclops picture.

This one reminds me of my dad because I am so twisted, just like him.

Does this picture freak anyone else out?

I took these pictures on a MAC sometime over 6 months ago. Only a few people have seen them, and while I was exploring my jump drive today I re-found them. They gave me a laugh so I can't help but share it. To top it all off, I'll show the regular setting and a way cool setting.

Regular setting.

Dang cool setting.

After seeing all that, why on earth wouldn't you want to go out and buy a new Mac?!

Biology

I just wanted to inform everybody that I got 35 out of 40 on today's biology test. It had to do with fungi and gene mutations and other things of that sort. In honor of my score, I have posted a picture of an insect with a gene mutation. This little dude was supposed to have antennae growing out the front of his face, but because of the gene mutation, he now has extra legs in the antenna's place.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know it took me a while to get this post up, but I was such a procrastinator over the break that at the beginning of this week I had to spend all of my time catching up with school. Anyhow, we had a great time over the break. We spend most of the time down in St. George (where it's "warm") with 3 of Mark's 5 brothers and their families. There was a lot of game playing, competitions, and relaxation time. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the cutest little girls on the planet, but I will tell you a little story. These 4 little girls are obsessed with the Disney Princesses, so they kept asking me which princess I was. I said I didn't know because I didn't have a princess dress. (Each of the girls has their own princess dress that they wore every day over their clothes.) Little Emma said, "It's okay, Jess, you can be a princess without a dress." My brother-in-law said to me, "Yeah, Cinderella was dressed in rags so you can be her." It was pretty funny.
On the way down and on the way back from St. George we stopped in Salt Lake to visit my family. We played a fun game called Killer Bunnies one night. I think they liked it, but I couldn't quite tell. That same night my mom provided a masseuse for all of the girls, which was absolutely divine. The other day we were there was family picture day. We had a wonderful dinner with the grandparents then had our pictures taken. There are a few X-rated ones of my brother breast-feeding a manican so I didn't post those, but here are my favorites of each shot.

Phew

This semester Mark and I have been taking an online arts class. For it to be worth 2 credits, we had to attend 20 "art-ish" events and write one paper per event within a week of the performance. Some weeks we were gone 4 of 6 available evenings. Well, I have just written my last paper for the class after having attended my last event on Saturday night. What a relief. Since we have now finished (completely) the two classes we were taking online, I now have only 3 classes to attend and think about for the rest of the semester. Quite by luck, of those 3 classes I only have 2 final exams and 1 final project. My life should be much less stressful without those petty little classes.

Last week, as we were about to leave for school, we found that the battery on our motorcycle had died. At first I thought it wouldn't start because it was low on gas and it was quite cold outside. Each morning, to avoid conflict with parking our car, we ride the motorcycle to school (freezing our faces off) and park right by our classes where there are always available motorcycle parking spaces. So, not having this bike caused some problems for a little while. Finally, today, we got the battery charged. Unfortunately, we didn't get it charged until after the nice, beautiful, warm day had turned into a cold, windy day. So, through text messaging, my mother and I wrote this poem:

Jess:
It's a beautiful day for a ride
Unfortunately the battery died
Mom:
A new battery will cost more than a nickel
But without it you will be in a pickle
Jess:
I don't want a pickle
I just wanna ride on my motor-sicle
Mom:
And I don't wanna die
Just wanna ride on my motorcy
-cull

If only I could post the song by Arlo Guthrie where we got half of our lyrics...

A.K.A.

I stole this idea from my awesome aunt. Reading hers made me laugh and I had to try it out for myself.

1. My rock star name (first pet and current car): Black Diamond Cavalier
2. My gangsta name (favorite ice cream flavor and favorite cookie): Candycane Pumpkin C. Chip
3. My "fly guy/girl" name (first initial of first name and first three letters of last name: Jand
4. My detective name (favorite color and favorite animal): Green Frog
5. My soap opera name (middle name and city where you were born): Generica West Valley
6. My Star Wars name (first three letters of your last name and first two letters of your first name): Andje (probably pronounced like "Angie" with a d sound in the middle)
7. My superhero name (2nd favorite color and favorite drink with "The" in front): The Pink Water
8. My Nascar name (first names of your grandfathers): Gayle Sydney
9. My stripper name (name of your favorite perfume/cologne and your favorite candy): Very Sexy Snickers
10. My witness-protection name (mother's and father's middle names): Marie E.

Happy Halloween!

To celebrate our Halloween (since we'll likely be working) we went to a "Mystery Dinner" with a couple of our friends. The dinner was put on by our friends' ward, a married student ward, so everyone there was around our age. During dinner, something terrible happened. The lights went out, and when they came back on Frankenstein's body was found behind the piano. First the witch was accused, then count Dracula, the ghost, the mummy the pirate, etc. Each of them had their alibi along with a story giving someone else's motive for killing Frankenstein. Naturally, Death was handling all of the matters trying to sort out who had the most motive, and finally who killed him. By the time dessert rolled around, we were ready to find out who killed him. Right when Death was about to announce who killed Frankenstein, when Frankenstein walked in the room with jumper cables attached to him and he said, "I told you I was a little tired and I needed a jump start."

The menu consisted of some great items. For appetizers we could choose from Witch Skin, Cubed Ghost, or Monkey Brains. The main courses consisted of Head with Many Eyes, Fingers, or Witch of the West. Side dishes to choose from were Fuel, Papa Ya's Surprise, or Green Side Dish. For dessert we could have Snowy Grave or Dirty Bones. Naturally, the beverages were made from the tears of Ghosts, Witches or Ogres. If you want to know what I recognized them as, let me know.

On a sidenote, there is a semi-new Broadway musical called "Urinetown" that talks about the social issues in America. For instance, if everyone could do whatever they want whenever they want with whomever they want, the country would fall to pieces. Anyway, I highly recommend seeing this musical if you ever get the chance. It is absolutely hysterical! (It's playing in Logan Oct. 31 through Nov. 3. Call me for details.)

Happy Halloween!

Argentina

Mark and I finally bought our plane tickets to Argentina. We're a little nervous, but really excited at the same time. We'll be going during spring break in March. Argentina is where Mark served his mission, so we've pretty much got free housing. While there, we'll be visiting some of the members of the Church who knew Mark, and we'll be going sight seeing to some of the most beautiful places in the world. If anyone has some good trip tips, feel free to let me know! I know it's a long way off, but I still like to prepare. Thanks!

Call Me Crash

So, if you've known me for at least 5 years, you know my driving history. Being Fern's daughter, I don't have the greatest driving record. Well, yesterday I thought it'd be fun to revisit old times. Fortunately it wasn't bad enough this time to take pictures, but here's the story anyway. I was at work and was about to take a delivery. One of our kind customers was illegally parked in front of the store. Naturally, as it is hard to miss seeing a brown car, I saw his car, but instantly forgot about it as I had the pressures of school on my mind. Backing up, I felt a familiar feeling of dread when I heard the clashing of metal. "Ugh. Not this, not now," I thought. The customer came out and checked his car to find that I had busted his brake light. Thankfully, that was all that had happened and he didn't feel the need to report me. I went on to get a $3 tip on my delivery.

Tonight Mark and I went to a great performance for our arts class. It was a sort of psychological play that makes you want the bad guy to succeed. In all reality, the play was sick and twisted, and reminded us of Crime and Punishment (a great book for anyone who wants something to read). The basic story was of an author who wrote short stories, many of which were about little children dying. (Obviously not a play you'd want to take your kids to.) At the beginning, he was accused of killing 2 little children by methods written about in his stories. In the end, we find out that it was his mentally retarded brother who carried out these stories to see how far-fetched they were. Naturally, the play goes a lot deeper than that, but there is a general synopsis. As great as it was, I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone because of its violent nature and language. If you want to read up on it, the play is called Pillowman.

Someday I'll get around to taking pictures again. Until then, you'll all have to deal with my meaningless chatter.

A Thought I Had

I want to be a successful mother (...when I am a mother, which is not a clue to anything, fyi). But what is a successful mother? Here are my thoughts.

A successful mother raises successful children.
These children may grow up to be writers, businessmen, or bums.
But what makes them successful are how they live their lives.

I want to raise my daughters to have high morals and values.
I want to raise my sons to treat girls with age-old respect.
My daughters may not be mothers, but I hope they have the love of mothers.
My sons may not be fathers, but I hope they have the wisdom of fathers.

Whether my children grow up with learning disabilities or accelerated learning,
What is important to me is how close to our Father in Heaven they are.
I want to teach my children of their Divine nature.
I want them to know that there is a way to return to our Father, and that the way is achievable.
Most of all, I want them to feel His love and to desire to obey Him.

If I am able to accomplish this alone, I will consider myself successful.
Fern, you are a successful mother. Thank you.


Now, I know you are all thinking that this is my "new mother lament". However, we are not expecting a child anytime soon! (That's just to clarify.)

Moms

I know it's not Mother's Day, but I sure do love my mom. This was shown to me and I absolutely loved it. This is a true portrayal of mom's around the world, mine included. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

William Tell Overture.. For Moms

One Year...

Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of Mark and my first date together. To celebrate, we went to the place of our first date (which we do every 21st anyway), Panda Express, and had dinner. I think it tasted better yesterday than it did a year ago. In just a few months, we'll be celebrating our one-year wedding anniversary! It's kind of crazy to think that if we'd had a honeymoon baby, we'd be having a kid right about now...

The performance I told you about last blog, Alicia in Wonder Tierra, was also last night. I'd have to say that if you have kids it's probably a lot more fun. It's about a Mexican-American girl who doesn't know about her culture. When she trips on pottery in a Mexican store, she takes a trip to the Mayas to find out where she comes from. There's a lot of screaming and running around, and those things didn't quite strike my fancy. It's a good story, though, just not very well played out.

We hope you are all having a great time! I'd love to hear your comments when you read the blog, whether they're about the blogs or not...

Fun, Fun For Everyone!

Last night we babysat a few of the cutest little kids on earth. The first thing they wanted to do was play "hide-and-seek." This was a hard task, and if you have seen our house you know why.. It's not very big. However, the kids are little and there are a lot of places for little kids to hide. To give a few examples: the laundry basket, on top of the entertainment center that holds the t.v., in the cupboard above the closet (Mark actually hid in there once), in the coat closet, and in the chest that holds all of our blankets. Those are just a few of the places these kids hid. Even in our small house, there was one spot where Mark was never found. We all had a blast.

On another note, for one of the classes Mark and I are taking together, we are required to attend a number of performances. The two we've been to so far haven't been the greatest of all performances, so we're a little weary of the future ones. First was Project Bandaloop. They are a very interesting dance group. Their show was good (I thought) but wasn't quite what we expected. We had looked at their website before going and were expecting what they did there. Unfortunately we just got a dance show with a few cool parts. The other performance was done by Nnenna Freelon, who is supposedly a renowned jazz person. In our opinion, she was crazy and not quite fun to go see. Don't get me wrong, I like jazz music. But what she did was some sort of tangent from jazz music.

Tomorrow night we are going to attend "Alicia in Wonder Tierra," which is supposed to be a mix of Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz. I think this one should be more fun than the other two, but I'll let you know how it goes. For those with kids this should be a spectacular event, so if you feel like taking a trip up to Logan with your kids here is the information for it.

As a sidenote, I just found out that hyperlinking is a fantastic thing, as you can see.

Life as we know it

So, we've finished our first week of this semester... And we're still alive.

Actually, school really isn't bad at all. Mark and I each have 3 classes that we attend for lectures 3 times a week. Other than that, we're taking two classes together; one is an online family finance class and the other is a class where we go to arts events around town and get university credit for it. In my opinion, we've got the sweetest setup. Our classes start at 8:30 and finish at 1:30 leaving plenty of time for homework and fun.

We also changed our work schedule so we work during the day, creating a much better sleep schedule. We go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day. This is a schedule I haven't enjoyed since high school. That completes the way sweet setup we have.

On a sidenote, many of you know that I was planning on graduating Spring Semester 2008. However, while checking to make sure I complete all the requirements to graduate, I found that I don't have the credit hours required and will have to take one more semester of school. I'm totally bummed about it. Being a statistics major, though, I have had to take a lot of math classes and could possibly graduate with a double major, math and statistics, or with a statistics major and math minor. We will see.

We hope that all of you are enjoying your life as much as we are! Love to all.

ROCK ON!!!

The 311 concert was, how can I say? ...AMAZING!! We had such a great time. The Usana Amphitheater was cool because the speakers are huge and very loud. The first band to open for them wasn't any good so I didn't take note of their name. However, the second band to open is called Matisyahu. They're sort of Bob Marley style. I like them but Mark doesn't seem to. Don't they just look cool though?



And here is what we've all been waiting for...



311!! I'm always skeptical about live bands and artists, but these guys were great live. The crowd was going wild! My only dislike about the concert was that the whole place smelled like beer because everyone around us was drinking.


I didn't have these pictures from Aaron and Danielle's wedding last time I posted.

I know, I know. I'm totally lame. It's been 4 days since my own brother's wedding, and I haven't said a thing. Well, now I'm going to speak my mind on the matter.

Aaron has been a wonderful brother. I look at this event not as gaining a sister, but more as losing a brother... Wait.. Other way around. You get it, right? In all reality, I'm really excited to have Danielle in our family. She is a wonderful addition and will be a wonderful sister to have for the rest of my life! (I hope she's reading this.) Not that my original sister isn't great to have around..

On another note, Mark and I are going to the 311 concert on this Thursday.. ROCK ON!!

Tid Bits

We took our first camping trip as a married couple just last week with our friends, the Wamplers. It's a good thing we went with them, too, because they brought just about everything except a toilet and a shower so we weren't lacking anything. Another bonus was that they went up the night before us. While they were bored, they set up our tent and got everything ready for us (see picture 1). We'd sent all our stuff with them in their car so we could ride our motorcycle (see picture 2). That evening we made a delectable dutch oven dinner (cooked in our new dutch oven), barbeque teriyaki chicken with potatoes and Domino's cheesebread on the side (see picture 3).




Now we are a little more prepared for our next camping trip with my mother's family at Bear Lake this coming week.

For the 24th we got stuck at the Cache Valley parade. Our car was parked in such a place that we could not get out due to the parade so we sat outside and watched it. Here is a nice picture of Mark and his mom on the railroad tracks. I've always liked railroad tracks.


And finally, here is a cool picture of Mark playing raquetball. I like to watch him play and I'm finally starting to understand the game. I'd play myself, but I can't keep up with the ball when he's playing, and much less chance if I were playing.

There's only one one one one one....

Lagoon! Yesterday we spent the day at Lagoon. There's a wicked new roller coaster named Wicked. It's a pretty sweet coaster for all those who like coasters. The beginning of the ride shoots you straight up going 50 mph and then you fall the same distance ending around 55 mph. It's crazy! There's also a barrel roll and some fast hardcore turns. It's a family favorite (Mark and I both really like it).


Little brother! Kai (Mark's little brother) was in Logan from St. George for about a week to spend time with us and his mom. There was much game playing, frisbee golf, and game cube. It was actually because of Kai that we went to Lagoon yesterday. That was our final sha-bang with him before he returned to St. George.

Post today! That's about all we've been up to lately. Next time we do something cool, I'll try to have my camera with me to take some pictures. Have a great day!

Oh, Say, Can You See...

We've had a pretty fun week this week. Aaron's fiancee, Danielle, had a bridal shower on Saturday and I was able to attend that. It was pretty fun, much like my own shower six months ago. Here are a couple pictures from that.




July 3rd was our 6 month anniversary. Unfortunately, we'd forgotten about it and signed up to work. We also didn't know that Logan's 4th of July fireworks show was actually on the 3rd and we missed the lame show. So, while we were working I devised a plan to surprise Mark. Here's what we found when we got home.



Our first 4th of July celebration together was quite enjoyable. We went to our friend and his wife's house for dinner, swimming, and our own fireworks show.
Elise told us she wanted to be Martha Stewart for the occasion and this is what we got.


Shane and Elise


Mark


Highlights from our fireworks show