In Rememberance

Just a short note before I decide to write a long blog about what really happened today. Jeff Kent has retired...I know, sad news. So this is in rememberance of the amazing career he had as a second baseman. I've only been a fan of him for two seasons, which is when I finally became a baseball fan and a Dodger fanatic, but during this time I have come to find out what a great player he is (or I guess was) even at the age of 39 and 40. He was the 2000 NL MVP, five-time All-Star and four-time Silver Slugger. He will retire with a .290 career batting average, 377 home runs, 1,518 RBIs and a .500 slugging percentage. His 351 home runs hit as a second baseman are 74 more than the next closest second baseman, Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg. So he a shoe-in for the Hall of Fame! I know I would vote for him! He is settling in Austin, Texas with his wife and four kids ranging from ages 5 to 12. But all in all, even though he is one of baseballs top 10 hot-heads, he was a good guy (from what I can tell at least) and a good member of the Church. So, even though he's still alive, I just wanted to say farewell Jeff Kent. I will always love you! (but don't tell my husband that!) Also, I'm just glad he retired with the Dodgers :)

Major Change

Ok. So I (Natalie) have made a big decision that I am trying my best not to regret. I changed my major from Psychology to Communication Disorders, which is Speech Pathology and Audiology. A few days before this semester began, I just started getting the feeling and began thinking that I wanted to be a Speech Therapist. So after talking it out with my parents and my hubby, I made the official and final decision to change my major the day after school started. It's a big sacrifice because it puts me back a semester and I HAVE to go to grad school if I want a career in Speech Pathology. I just hope I'm doing the right thing, but I guess only time will tell right? This idea didn't just come out of nowhere, by the way. When I tranferred to BYU, it's what I wanted to do, but I took the intro class and changed my mind. I tend to do that a lot. But unless I want to be in school forever, then I'm stuck with this major. That's ok though. It will be a lot of work but I think it's the best thing for the future. Wish me luck!

BELIEVE

I figure now is as good a time as any to write about our wonderful Christmas vacation! Especially since we are just sitting around waiting to our favorite show of all time to premier for the new season. SCRUBS is the ultimate best and luckily for us, we both LOVE it!! Anyway, we had the wonderful opportunity to go home to California for the week and a half of Christmas vacation that we had. Unfortunately we had to work the first Monday and Tuesday of vacation causing us to wait until Christmas Eve to go home, but it turned out to be fine. We had a great Christmas Day! We stayed at the Jones' home for the first week and the tradition there is to wake up at 7am to start opening presents. That was a little hard to do, but the excitement of Christmas helps a lot. After opening our presents, we headed over to the Simonds' home to spend the day. It was nice because my brother, his wife, and their baby boy were able to make it down as well and we all got to open presents together. We always hav fun opening presents because we take turns to see what everyone got and their reactions. The common themed reaction this year was "It's a sweater!!" and if you haven't seen The Three Amigos...watch it!! We soon headed back to the Jones' home to enjoy a delicious Christmas dinner prepared by Bryan's mom. The rest of the vacation consisted mostly of relaxing and enjoying NOT being in school for a change. Some other highlights of our vacation were going to the San Diego Wild Animal Park and Downtown Disney as well as just plain spending time with our families. It was SO nice being away from Utah and in the 70 degree weather that we experienced in Cali! We didn't have to wear boots, sweaters, long-sleeve shirts, beanies, glove, scarves or anything like it the whole time we were down there and it only rained twice. We can't wait to finally be permanently back there for good! Well, we hope you had a great a vacation as we did and we're sorry that the unfortunate school has to start back up again so soon. Good luck in your studies or your jobs and treat you families (and especially spouses) well for the New Year! Happy 2009!!! This is us in a fake bird's nest at the Wild Animal park.

Happy Holidays!

Just writing to wish everyone a VERY Merry Christmas!!! Today is our last day of work and then we get to go home to California tomorrow! Oh the excitement! We just keep praying that the road conditions will be good to us. Today has been bright and sunny so let's just hope that it continues through tomorrow. It has not been fun having to stay in Utah to work and waiting to go to Cali until Christmas Eve, but we're making the best of it. Last Saturday, Bryan's brother, Daniel and his wife Sarah came over and we went to see such pretty lights in Spanish Fork. They do this thing every year called the Festival of Lights and you drive around this cool display of Christmas lights. I recommend it to everyone who is stuck in Utah for the holidays. It is only five bucks per car and 15 minutes away and you get to stay warm with the heater on. We had fun :) Yesterday was nice. Both Bryan and I work on campus at BYU and we received an email around two o'clock saying that the supervisors had permission to shut down their offices due to bad weather conditions. So we got to leave three hours early!! It was nice, BUT, Bryan had scheduled to take his online class midterm and then he was going to request his final, and yesterday was the last day he could do it. So we walked over to the Independent Study building (in the bad weather conditions that they shut down the school with) and of course, we get there and they are closed! So we trudged back to the opposite of campus to get in our car and go home. We were VERY wet by that time. But on the way to the car, the ducks at the pond on the south side of campus were all gathering around these people who were watching them, thinking they had food, but they didn't. So I convinced Bryan to get bread with me and come back to feed the ducks. They are SO cute!! I thoroughly enjoyed feeding them. They all have different personalities too, it's so funny to watch them. We decided that when we have a house with a pond in the backyard, we are going to buy some ducks :) Well, that's the excitement of our lives. I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and that you all get what you wish for. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

A Saturday to Remember

This past Saturday Bryan and I got free tickets to the BYU basketball game at the Energy Solutions Arena, in Salt Lake City so we decided to make a day of it. The first thing we did was go see the Disney movie Bolt in 3-D. It was a really good movie and I recommend it to everyone! Even Bryan loved it too! We cried. The movie started at 1:30 and the game started at 5:00, so after the movie we walked around the Gateway mall for a little bit. It was nice just to walk around and not be tempted to spend any money (since we don't have any). We then headed over to the Arena which was just right across the street from the mall. We had great seats! We were in the 5th row just behind one of the baskets as shown below:

BYU played Utah State and there were TONS of people there from the other school! Each school got half of the Arena so the other team's fans were across the court from us. It was such an exciting game! The scores were close the whole, with BYU constantly in the lead. We, however, came out the winners with a score of 68-63. :) After the game we went to one of our favorite Maxican food places: Albertos! We used to eat Albertos all the time in California, but the only place we have been able to find it in Utah is in Salt Lake. The food was sooo nummy! Finally we ended the day with walking around temple square to see the Christmas lights. Bryan had been waiting for this part all day. Temple Square was extremely crowded, but I have to admit, the lights were beautiful!

It was definitely a good day :)

I also wanted to add that we have a Christmas tree!!!!! I looked online for all the best deals and found one that I really wanted at Walmart! It was only $35 so we decided we can afford it and went down to Walmart to go get it. When we got there, we discovered that the tree was 6.5 feet tall and started to debate whether we needed one so tall or not. We looked at the four foot ones, but they didn't have what I was looking for at that height. Finally, after about a half an hour, Bryan said "That's it. I came here expecting to pay $35 dollars so that is what I'm going to do!" So we bought the (fake) tree that I've always wanted! It's big and came with lights already on it and it's WHITE! Our ornaments are a work-in-progress though, but I love it! I made the snowflake tree-topper all by myself too! I was so proud of myself!

(Pictures are courtesy of Johann and Deborah who let us borrow their camera. Thanks guys!)

The Charleston Elves

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

California

Bryan and I had the fantastic opportunity to go home to California for Thanksgiving. Before I mention anything else though, my younger brothers, Kaleb and Derek, received their mission calls!! Their calls came so quickly and we just happened to be in Cali at the time. It was crazy because Bryan and I were at his cousin's house heating up the jacuzzi and playing pool when I got a call from my sister-in-law asking me when we would be back at my parent's house and she said my brother's mission calls had come. It was funny because nobody had checked the mail all day and finally at night my dad went to check it and he started running down the driveway saying "There here!" I was SO anxious to get home! So without further ado, Kaleb is going to the Washington Seattle Mission which is where my dad is from and Derek is going to the New York Rochester Mission which is where the Sacred Grove and other church sites are!! I am so ecstatic for them!!
Left: Kaleb with a picture of Seattle; Right: Derek with a picture of the Sacred Grove

Moving on now. Bryan says our trip was wonderful... We had Thanksgiving dinner with my family and dessert with Bryan's parents. We didn't do anything too exciting while we were home, but it was just really nice to play games and just sit around with our families and just to be with them since we rarely get to see them, living in Utah. It's so nice to have both of our families in the same city (even though we do live a half an hour apart). Our families were able to get together Saturday evening and we had hamburgers and hot dogs and watched the USC vs Notre Dame game. Now just a couple more weeks of school and then we shall be off to California again for Christmas!!