BV-Days

My very own Birthday was about two weeks ago on the 4th of February and what a wonderful day it was! The night before I told Bryan that I was OK with not being made breakfast in bed (like he usually does) because I thoroughly enjoy my sleep and didn't want to be waken up any earlier than I had to. So instead, he woke up early, walked over to Shirley's bakery around the corner (this was when our car was still broken) and brought me a very yummy cinnamon roll that I was able to take to work with me. I love my husband so much! He takes care of me and knows what I like! Work and school were pretty uneventful (why do we have to go on our birthdays again?). But later that night my brother and sister-in-law came over for some pizza and yummy strawberry cake with cheesecake frosting. I awkwardly opened my presents in front of everyone, but was very happy with everything I received. I was really just happy to enjoy the company of the family that I love. Oh, and my nephew Henry is just so entertaining to watch. Friday the 6th was my sister-in-law, Deborah's birthday! So as a combined treat we went to the oh so mouthwatering Goodwood BBQ. How can you not resist a delicious rack of ribs on your birthday? Then we went over to their house (Johann and Deborah's) for some more yummy cake and Scrabble (which I won by the way, but who's bragging..) It was a good week!




(I stole these pics from Deborah's blog. I hope you don't mind! We still need a battery for our camera!)

On to Valentine's day! We had a fabulous Valentine's day. Thanks to my birthday present from Johann and Deborah (mentioned above) I got to go to Kohl's (my favorite department store) and pick out some lovely decoration to add to our apartment. If you want to see them, you'll have to come over. Sorry! Finally, after much debating on whether we wanted to go to the Olive Garden or Brick Oven for dinner, we chose the less expensive option and went to Brick Oven. There are no regrets! Their caesar salads, garlic bread and pizza are delicious!! Plus, apparently my friend works there that I haven't seen in a really long time, which was really cool. After our yummy, early dinner (we went at 4 so as to avoid the V-day crowd), we went to see Coraline in 3D. Now that was a good movie! However, I will NOT be showing it to my kids until they are much older! We ended the evening with our most favoritest cake in the world: Rainbow Chip cake with Rainbow Chip icing. We can't ever seem to find that stuff anywhere until I discovered that it seems to b the only cake that the Creamery sells! And it is GOOOOOD too! Well, there's our current update and we hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's day as we did!

Hooked on a Feeling

David Hasselhoff's music video "Hooked on a Feeling"...'nough said.

The Magic of Ordinary Days

So I have discovered my new favorite movie, which is "The Magic of Ordinary Days". It is one of those cheesy Hallmark movies, but for some reason I just absolutely loved it the whole time I was watching it. It takes place in 1944 and is about a woman (Keri Russell - one of my favorite actresses) who gets pregnant before she is married, but the father is sent out to war. Her dad doesn't approve of the baby and arranges for her to marry this farmer from the middle of nowhere. She believes this situation will only be temporary, but in time she comes to fall in love with the man she has married. Anyway, someone from YouTube paired some clippings from the movie with this beautiful song that I also now love. (And I won't be offended if no one cares to watch it).

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!