Less than one month away!

In less than one month, we are going here(!!!!!):

One of the reasons I am so excited to go is because we are going to go to one of my most favorite pizza places EVER!! Their pizza is just so fresh and thin and saucy and tasty and wonderful. My mouth is watering already.

This is a picture of the one in Brooklyn, but I discovered a few months ago that Las Vegas has one too! And since then, I've dreamed of going down there just for a piece. I just double-checked and guess what!!! THEY HAVE 3 LOCATIONS in Vegas. Oh, March 10 needs to get here sooner. 

We are also staying in a sweet hotel. We got lucky and got rooms at a great deal. They look something like this:

25 days until Vegas.

 Oh man. So excited!!

Over and Done.

Last night David turned to me and said "I know what your next blog post is going to be about."     And he was right. 


When we first got the payment plan for my student loans, they wanted us to make monthly payments for the NEXT 20 YEARS. 

No thank you.

We chose to make up our own payment plan (basically it's the "pay off as soon as you can with as much money as you can afford") and avoid the extra $2000 that the 20 year plan would have cost us. After a short 116 days, all my student loans are PAID OFF!!!!!!!!! 


It feels so nice to know that all the money I make from here on out I get to keep to myself (ourself). It is semi-depressing to think about the money that could be in our bank account and how it would be SO nice to have it right now when I'm craving a vacation out of Provo. 


But, I finished school with it. (And as such, haven't really gone anywhere with my degree......) And now, we are free! It is a strange feeling to have paid it off. No more guilt in splurging on something for yourself and realizing that if you have money like this, you probably should put it towards paying off what you owe. It is strange to not feel that looming at the back of your mind (or at the front, if you are figuring out your bank account and always subtracting what you owe from what you have. Getting rid of that negative sign feels great).


So, I think to celebrate we will go out for dinner tonight. But since we just used up tons of our savings to pay off the rest all at once, we will definitely be using a giftcard! :)

Red Robin, anyone?

Basketball

They won a t-shirt last semester.  So they decided they would try again.

Guess who benefits the most??  THE WIVES! We get to hang out every game and laugh about everything. YAY! (Except for last night, when I volunteered to keep score and then they kicked all the other spectators out to the bleachers above. I got left alone and had to remind the real scorekeeper what the score actually was. Remind me not to volunteer again.)

They have some teammates who have never played basketball before. EVER. (And they are from America, how does that happen?) It was fun to see them play and score! But not fun to see the other team be AWFUL - awful in the sense that they threw elbows and pushed and shoved the whole way. Clint even has a black eye. Stephen had to come off because he was stumbling around dizzy after getting hit in the head.

Which leads me back to the main point. I still think the wives have the most fun.

However, I think the best part is that the team name is "Bryce is having a baby" - created when they thought he was pregnant even though they really aren't. The score sheet last night said "Bryce Baby" for short. I laughed every time.

Jazzy Jazz.

Jazz vs Knicks!
It was a momentous occasion --- our first time sitting in the LOWER BOWL. It was fabulous. They even give out stats sheets after the first half. We never got those sitting in the upper bowl!

I think these are the only pictures we ever really take. And they all look like this. :)

My shoulder looks huge in this one. Weird.

This was our view from where we sat!

2010.

I'm awful at keeping a journal. ( I end up starting them, forgetting about them, finding them, re-reading them, hating them, and then throwing them away.) And I haven't been the greatest about posting anything up here, so blogging doesn't count. I carry my camera everywhere, but I never take pictures with it, even though I should. I just forget.

So I made a list of things in 2010 that I thought were pretty significant for us.

• got engaged!
• Jamie and Christian got married!
• turned 23
• got married! (hands down, the best thing of 2010)
• worked in Ogden (longest commute ever, David was the best for putting up with this all summer)
• moved into first apartment, moved out of first apartment, moved into basement.
• drove a gas guzzling rover, sold the rover, bought a focus!
• went to Park City, Manti (cutest bed and breakfast with the most delicious quiche), went to NY in June, went backpacking, went to Jackson Hole, and almost went to Idaho for Thanksgiving.
• graduated BYU! (N)
• got a job, quit a job, unemployed for 3 days, got a better job! (N)
• went to friends' weddings! 
• got TA job, then got a promotion to CA (D)
• had a fabulous Christmas break!

All of this was interspersed with seeing lots of family multiple times(!!), meeting new friends, many many sports games and lots of netflix. Plus other things I'm definitely forgetting.

Here's some of what I hope I can do in 2011. I asked David about his goals and he said he doesn't make any. I will count his dedication to schoolwork as his goal, but other than that, I guess I'm the only ambitious one right now.

• staying ahead of laundry (already failing at that, as I can see the overflowing laundry basket from here...)
• eating healthy, having a good bedtime, living healthily. 
• attempting to be a morning person and be a little more organized and patient (mostly with myself.)
• paying off my student loans (we are so close!)
• trips to Vegas and San Fran and NY
• sewing/being craftier in general.
• breaking my bad habits.
• NOT getting pregnant. (yet.)

Other than that..... we will have to wait and see.

Christmas

I guess it means you've had a good Christmas if you only took one picture the entire time.
This is Nathan, wearing all of the gifts Grandpa Jim gave the family. We especially love the ESPN pants.

Christmas was a wonderful break for us. I was lucky in the fact that I only had to work Monday - Thursday and had a full 3-day break for Christmas. Our break was filled with many games of 55 Alive and Forbidden Island, movies, sports games and lots of story-telling and laughter. It was our "first" Christmas together, but it honestly didn't feel like anything new to me. It felt familiar. 

We were sad not to be in NY, but I was grateful that we weren't one of the ones stranded by all the storms. I had to drive in the ones we got in Utah. Not my most favorite commutes, but I am grateful not to have been in one of the hundreds of accidents that occurred during those couple of days. 

As everyone is sending out their newsletters and beautiful Christmas pictures to friends and family, I feel like I should try to do one too. But I think I will skip the mailing part. It was enough to send out our Christmas thank you's today. (I am horrible at remembering to put things in the mailbox!) So maybe our blogletter will be my next post. 

Today was the first day of school for BYU. I'm graduated, but even I am not looking forward to this semester -- except the fact that by the time it is over, it will be warm and sunny!!

If you are anything like me and grew up loving any and all opportunities to immerse yourself in a world where you become the character of the book you are reading, you should read this book. Other than the fact that it is a "self-help/life lessons" book with really good advice, it is a fascinating look into the lives of the women who wrote their own lives into the heroines of their books. Every chapter made me realize how much I inhaled the books I read and how I learned from the stories in them.

Seriously read it. It's short, so you don't really have a good excuse not to. :)

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It's our 1/2 birthday!

"We" are 6 months old!

The way it is supposed to be.

I'm a world class worrier. One of the best, in fact. 

Last week-ish (maybe a bit more) I was sitting on the floor of a building at BYU. It was light when I got there, dark when I left. And I had that weird feeling in my stomach. The nervous, uneasy feeling not unlike how I used to feel before an exam. I tried to ignore it but of course, I let it get to me. 


Kind of like last night, where I had really strange dreams and woke myself up and tried to ignore it as I hoped sleep would come back over me. 


That type of ignoring doesn't work so well. Mostly it was all about how I was just going to up and quit my job. Without having one lined up, and only having a few interviews and after sending out hundreds (okay, maybe only one hundred) resumes. And I let that worry kind of consume me. I thought about it A LOT. 


Thursday was my last day. Friday I spent sleeping in and looking for stuff for our Halloween costumes, and partying -- Ignoring the fact that I was unemployed. Or at least trying to.


Sunday came and during primary and RS, I thought a lot about how we didn't know what we were going to do for money. As I was thinking about this, the thought came to me that everything was going to be okay because we paid/pay our tithing. I have never had any hesitation about paying tithing. I try to recognize the fact that everything I have in my life is a blessing from the Lord, and I am more than willing to give back to him. PLUS, when I give back to him, he just gives me more and more. Who wouldn't want that?? And I have had that thought come to me a few times before, usually when I was worrying about something - go figure... So I paid our tithing on Sunday.


 And I very very very strongly, strongly, STRONGLY believe I was blessed with a job on Monday. I am so so grateful for my testimony. I am grateful for prayer. I am grateful for the need to turn to the Savior. I am grateful for the experiences I had growing up that led me to develop and strengthen my testimony. It even talks about this in my patriarchal blessing. 


I think a testimony and worry have an inverse relationship. The stronger my testimony (the more faith I have, the more I trust the Lord, the more I put His will before mine), the less I worry. There is such an innate sense of peace when you know that even though you have no idea what is going to happen, the Lord does, and everything is going to work out the way it is supposed to.

Halloween

My family is hilarious.

This picture came up on my newsfeed today and I started dying with laughter when I saw it.

Oh man. So sad I missed out on being part of this....