Kindness of Strangers

I seem to sometimes just have guys help me out in the times I really can use it. It happened again today. I woke up early to go shovel the four or five inches of snow off the driveway before Brian got home. I started on the worst part....the end of the driveway with all the slush from the snowplows. When a guy (named Sam I found out later) offered to help. He went and got his own shovel and shoveled at least half of the driveway for me. It was very appreciated which is why the Alaska guy who went to Hawaii for Thanksgiving found a small place on my blog. I love having kindness of strangers bless me!!

Thanksgiving

This year we did something totally different than last year. We ended up staying with just one family instead of trying to juggle all of them. It definitely made for a more relaxing Thanksgiving and allowed us more bonding time. We did this year with my parents and next year will be with Brian's family. The whole break began on Wednesday for us when we headed down to Park City to pick up a quick deal that can be used later by getting a $50 gift card for $25. It was a steal of a deal. We hit one store where I brought most of my Christmas presents. I will post about it later. :)

Then we headed to the airport to pick up my brother in law Daren who was flying in from Arizona. He was a little cultured shocked since he had such a huge change in temperature over just one hour. We then headed home to relax with my family and just enjoy the evening since our day had been pretty rushed. Thanksgiving we woke up and helped get everything ready for everyone to arrive. Plus my sisters and I headed out in our pj's to the store to get some donuts for everyone's breakfast. (had to keep it light) Once everything was ready we were able to relax and wait for the crowd of my siblings to arrive. We ended up having dinner start about thirty minutes late but hey....that's how it goes with big groups right. After dinner we all just relaxed and lounged for about an hour until my sister decided it was time to annouce what they were told they were having.

It's a girl in case you couldn't figure it out.
We then got ready to go say hi to Brian's mom and grandpa. But first headed to go shot my sister's boyfriend's hand guns. Brian ended up hurting his ear and I am not sure if it is even still working properly. We should have definitely used earplugs. Lesson learned for the next time I guess.

Brian's Aunt Sharon was in town and we had a lot of fun catching up with her since we were unable to the last time she was in town. Grandpa Romer had fun just listening and asking questions here and there as we all visited. It was much needed and we hope to get down and visit them all more this coming month since school will be out soon. :)
We then headed up to Wellsville to create a our game plan for Black Friday shopping. A game plan never really emerged but we began shopping at midnight with Walmart and Old Navy. Then headed to our apartment to rest a little before heading back out at 4:30 am. We all got most of our Christmas shopping done. Brian and I have just a few odds and ends to get but our tree looks really full with all the gifts surrounding it.
Plus we found out how fun it is to coupon shop on Black Friday especially when you find a surprising rebate at home later to just add to it.
All in all Thanksgiving and this weekend have been a blast. We just relaxed and set up Christmas. I will be posting a picture of our tree soon. (Hopefully!)

At the game Saturday night.

BLIZZARD

Well the weather people were right......

definitely a blizzard!! Brian and I get free entertainment with all the stupid people trying to drive up the road outside our apartment. Great fun for us!!
Also this is the only picture I have from this weekend and it is from Friday

Not my favorite but hey a picture none the less.

Snow

Snow, Snow, and more Snow!! Wow has a lot of snow come in the past days up here and I feel like I have been out in it almost everyday so far. In fact today I got up early to get the driveway shoveled before Brian got home from work. We then headed up to our early morning classes in a blizzard only to have me then come home as Brian headed to another class and me to go to work. I had to shovel yet again. I definitely got my workout today....or at least a part of it. The sad part is the score for shoveling the driveway.....me = 2 managers = 0. Sad!! I was even late to work today because of it. Hopefully this isn't an indication of how it will be all winter but I have a feeling it will be.


Really quick overview of our weekend:
Friday we both went to classes and then got to go hang out with Brian's family for his birthday. We went to Rumbi and had a fun time just relaxing and talking together. Saturday I got up early and got to go workout with Jan. It was way fun. We then went and ran some errands together while the boys got to watch football. We meet up at the Aggie Football game where it began to pour on us. Very cold day as I stood in the rain then finally snow to watch the Aggie's never show up. (Boo!!) We then went home and relaxed on our couch just enjoying the warmth and getting some homework done. Sunday we went to church and then relaxed at home and had some fun conversations with Jan and Spencer and our friend's the Brady's. It was a fun very busy but relaxing weekend.

Bring on THANKSGIVING WEEK(I'll make sure to take pictures since I didn't this weekend, strange I know)......only two more classes for me. Wish it was just one like Brian though. But everyone can pray for a snow day so I won't have class tomorrow. That would be perfect. :)
(just a ramble post I know but sometimes you just have to get things out)

Happy Birthday......

.....to Brian!!!

I LOVE YOU!!!

I am so lucky to have Brian in my life and today is his Big day. He turns 25 today!!
So in honor of that I am posting a few pictures of the two of us. We are going to celebrate more tomorrow and Saturday!!

We sure have had some good times together and I can't wait to have even more with him.

Surprise!!

This weekend was full of surprises. I know I am blogging late but Monday sort of disappeared on me....in fact I still feel like today is Monday so I am on schedule with that feeling.
The weekend began for Brian and I in a really weird way....our lights wouldn't turn on. I got home from work to have a visit with my visiting teachers and we had no lights!! It was crazy but something happened with the power at our apartment complex where the breakers went a little crazy. Half of our house had electricity and the other half didn't. So we had to come up with our own fun instead of our original planned night. But shopping for food and a new vest worked for me! :)

 Saturday began early for us. We got up and got packed so that we could stay the night down at my parent's house. We then went out to breakfast at Ihop. Any of you who really know Brian know that he doesn't really enjoy breakfast and never goes out to eat for it so this was a treat for me. It was also us celebrating his birthday that is this week so it was really cheap.

After eating breakfast we hurried to Lee's to get some turkeys for my parents. It was a mad house and they had so many samples.....we had to try just a few of them. I then realized I forgot something at home so we had to head back. It was a quick little detour is all though. Finally we headed out of Logan toward Brigham. The first stop was at Brian's mom's house to visit with her and some of the nephews and nieces. It was a fun visit but since Brian had planned a surprise for me and a birthday present for him we had to be on our way pretty fast since we still had three frozen turkeys to drop off. Once we accomplished that we raced down to Salt Lake to be on time for.......

 DISNEY ON ICE!!!

 Now this might not be exciting to a lot of you but I have never been before so Brian surprised me by taking me to see it. I had a lot of fun and it was a great show. They had Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, and Goofy. Plus Lion King, Little Mermaid, Lilo and Stitch, a little bit of Mary Poppins, and Peter Pan. It was a blast and I got to enjoy all the Disney music I love. Thanks again babe!!

 After we finished with Disney on Ice Brian and I went to the Gateway to walk around and waste some time since we had one more thing we had to do before we headed to dinner. We did a little window shopping is all. Got a few ideas for Christmas, dreamed about someday owning things, and just had fun like little kids by going into even Build a Bear.

 We then began to walk to Temple Square. It was fun walking around the stores where the mall use to be, especially the huge Desert Book. Has anyone been to Temple Square recently? Have you seen the digital info screens they have as you walk in? Those were really cool to play with for a while. Brian and I then had to hurry over to the conference center.

 We had to meet up with the family for Jan's surprise........Her proposal!! (Yes I know we lied to you about it but hey everything worked out like it was suppose to)

 The families all met up so that we could hold a banner asking Jan to marry Spencer. It was a lot of fun talking with Spencer's family and freezing while waiting for Jan to take her time getting from one place over to the other place. We did finally get her there though and had a fun time laughing with everyone about the great timing everything was with Spencer's plan.

 Those were the two surprises. One for me and one for Jan. A great fun weekend that ended with sugar cookies and picture swapping at our apartment.


Luckily we got most of our homework done the week before so we could truly enjoy the feel of a weekend.

SLACKER

This is what Brian has been calling me in terms of how our blog looks. It is definitely looking sad. But I have a very good reason for this which is MY LAST TEACHING week. It is a little crazy and I had to prepare everything for it last week which made it a very crazy week of trying to keep on top of everything else.
So this is what has been going on for the past little bit.
Grant turned one and we went to his birthday party. It was fun to see him eating his cake and enjoying opening his gifts. Not very many one year olds enjoy it as much as he did. I didn't take very many pictures since everyone had their camera out so hopefully you can see the pictures in other locations.
We also got to spend Halloween with my family down in Perry. It turned into a long hard working day as I went with my family to my grandma's to pick apples. Then came home and ground up the apples, pressed them, got the apple juice and poured it into bottles. We ended up doing 40 gallons. I thought of taking pictures but we ended up being so busy and trying to go so fast pictures took a backseat and never got done. Maybe next year.
We were then just really busy with homework all last week. Brian had several tests and quizzes. I had a test and quiz plus all of my lesson plan things due and needing to be ready. It was a busy busy week. We also got family pictures done which we will hopefully get back next week or so. I'll try to post some once we get them.
This past weekend was a well deserved break for both of us. We spent a lot of time with Jan, Spencer, and Scott.
Aggie Basketball has begun and Brian and I are excited!!!

 We went to our second game on Friday night, Then we came home and had dinner. Jan and Spencer provided the dessert. It was quite the interesting cake to make but turned out fun. i onlly got the before pictures though.

 Then Saturday night after we all ran our errands and got a little homework done Brian, me, Jan and Spencer headed to the Fun Park to play the arcade games. I have never played some of these games because I have never been to a true arcade. I know sad but it works. So we got some tokens and took turns playing different games and getting some fun pictures.

Racing each other through a high flying game

Playing Bball. Brian won of course but I gave him a game for awhile.

Jan was losing within the first few balls so Brian stepped in to bring her within a reasonable lose.

never played this game before but did pretty darn well. Brian was afraid he'd lose.

Wac-A-Mole next to the lame duck game.

Air hockey battle. It ended in a sad way with Brian barely losing and Spencer hurting his finger.

Deal or No Deal...they didn't like the case opened.

But ended up winning the jackpot on Brian's and mine lucky number (11). It was in 7 too our other lucky number.

Them with their 200 hundred tickets. Lucky night for them.

This video is of Brian doing the extremely hard jump rope game(sorry turned wrong I sometimes forget the way the camera needs to be held to post correctly). Spencer and him were both really close to finishing and conquering it.
It was a fun night and a great stress reliever. We got a giant tennis ball and some frooties with our tickets we won. It was a shared effort but the ball is pretty cool. I'll have to remember to post a picture next time since I need to go to bed so I can get up early to go teach nice and early.
Hope everyone has a great Wednesday!!