Anniversary Lights

At last! We've been married for a full 12 months! For our Anniversary we got to go to Temple Square and look at the lights. It was bitterly cold but also very fun! This was the Friday two days before our actual anniversary. 

Inside the Tabernacle to warm up for a bit.

My fuzzy hood kinda hung out on top of my eyes all night. It was cold, I tell you.

This is my favorite tree!

^Trying out some long exposure photography. You can see the ghost people.

We happened to run into another amateur photographer guy. He had a slightly different Cannon than James and so they switched cameras and took pictures of each other. A little dark, but that's ok.

The next day on Saturday we went to Tucanos thanks to James' dad!!! It was really great and delicious. Especially a certain type of orange fish. :) We had a fun time.

It has been a great year! We lived in 3 different apartments, finished 2 semesters of school, bought a car and even graduated! (Half of us.) Those are the big things. I saw this quote from Elder Scott on a mormon message video: "Marriage provides an ideal setting for overcoming any tendency to be selfish or self-centered. ... Pure love is an incomparable, potent power for good, and the foundation of a successful marriage." A lot of things this year have been hard for both of us, but a lot more have been really happy! I'm super glad that I have James to be my husband, best friend, and good example to me of how to show love. He has helped me so much and always been there for me and I'm glad I could help him too when he needs me. All the small things he does to show he loves me are even more important than all those big things! Here's to a great 2014.

Christmas

Christmas was so great this year. It was our first married Christmas! We didn't really take any pictures, but that's ok. We went to West Jordan to my family's house. It was their first Christmas without Emily. But it was still with Emily, because we got to FaceTime her that morning! And Benjamin that night. I liked talking to the missionaries. I think I talked a lot more with Emily than with Benjamin, but it was still fun to hear Benjamin tell us about how things are going. They are both great at sending letters consistently every week. I think Benjamin has picked up some sort of weird accent.

Anyway, this year James and I had everyone's presents wrapped even before the break started. This is the first year this has ever happened for me, all because of James. He's pretty good at thinking of presents for people. We got the xkcd "What If" book for Josh (and it turns out that my parents got the EXACT SAME BOOK for Spencer!!!!) and a slingshot with ammo for Spencer. He's more into guns, but says he is excited to use it in the spring. (He didn't want to use it in the snow because all the marbles were white.) And a jar of Blackberry Buzz jam for my mom. For my dad we got Miracle Frooties, which magically turn sour things into sweet things.

I am amazed by how many presents we got. It was like getting married again!!! One of my favorites is a very beautiful wood cutting board from Marianne and Seth. It has our name and wedding date carved into it! :) This month I am probably going to try making a stand for it.

We also got a really awesome anniversary date to Tucano's from James' dad! We were so happy about that. He is always so generous and giving us dates.

We also got a nice deep skillet for fried rice, some cooking utensils, a salad spinner, a giant box full of candy from my grandma, and a chalkboard and globe of the moon from my little brothers! It makes me want to have my own classroom.

James got me a bunch of presents. He got me (us) the game Sequence, a Doctor Who ice tray (the only item on my Amazon wish list), and a Math Block from the BYU Bookstore. It's a tiny cube-shaped book full of little math problems. :D He's the sweetest. He also got me my favorite Christmas sweater from Eddie Bauer.

At 10am we got to FaceTime Emily. She is doing great! We talked to her for so long. She seems really happy and spoke some German to us. It was pretty fun to talk to her because it was just 2 screens, her and us. My parents and brothers, me and James, my grandparents, and her best friend Amanda were all in the kitchen talking to her. Pretty different from talking to Benjamin later that night at 6pm. The Moore family lives all over the place. They also have lots of kids. So pretty rambunctious missionary calls. Benjamin seems to be doing well in Russia. It's pretty crazy that it's almost time for him to come home! We're really happy for him.

One last cool thing about Christmas here in Utah is that for the weeks leading up to Christmas, it didn't snow at all. It was super mild. On Christmas Eve I was talking to my brother and he refused to doubt that it would snow by Christmas. But looking at the sky, I had zero faith in his prophecy because there were seriously no clouds in the sky! NONE!

And then it snowed on Christmas. (It's a Christmas miracle!!!) So it was a white Christmas after all. The rest of the break was really relaxing and fun! And it was so nice to be able to celebrate it with James and my family.

Merry Christmas!

Status: Alumna

Well, I done gone graduated! Class of 2014. Mathematics Education. I made it in 3 and a half years. The official date is December 19, but it was without Pomp and Circumstance. They don't do commencement in December, so I will wait until April to walk, get my cap and gown, take pictures, etc.

But I do have one picture. They sent me my official diploma right away!

The Amazing Christmas Tree

This year I really wanted a Christmas tree. Real trees are the best, but we had about 0 extra square feet to put a tree in our tiny living room. Or, we could have gotten a 1-foot tree. However, I happen to know that at the BYU Bookstore, they sell grand quantities of butcher paper for very cheap. So that is what we did!

I got about 10 feet of paper for $1.20. James had the really good idea of folding squares in half and taping two of the sides to the tree so they would stick out.

Before decorating:

After decorating:

We cut out most of the decorations from extra cardstock that was left over from my Platonic Solids booth at the STEM fair. Incidentally. You may notice we have a bust of Plato hanging on the tree too. A couple of the ornaments were cut out from the old music sheets I bought at DI. James even spray painted one with a miniature can of spray paint we randomly have.

With the last bits of green paper, we decided to thrown in a mistletoe for good measure. :D

And I thought I'd put this picture in here too. I liked having a fall wreath on our door so I made a Christmas one too. (My mom had given me two grapevine wreaths so this is the second one.) James, that kind soul, went with me at the dead of night to BYU campus (again) to collect the supplies. This time it wasn't because I was embarrassed... I was just worried that I might not be strictly "allowed" to cut branches off of their pine trees and steal berries and such. The silver snowflakes are from Jo-Ann, James' arch-nemesis.

We were fabulously decked out for the holidays!

Whovians

As I may have mentioned previously, James and I are pretty into Dr. Who. We've now seen all of the 9th, 10th, and 11th doctors and every episode of the 12th doctor that's currently out. We can attribute this to Emily, my sister. She was the first to get sucked in. Then in was my family. Last of all, my dad. James and I were next. That fateful day when we decided to watch it at our own apartment, on our own screen, of our own will.

Anyway, they always have an episode come out on Christmas. So in honor of the Christmas Special, I decided I will put up a few pictures showing our true loyalty fanaticism to the show.

But first. Just so we all know that this is not the only type of show that we watch, here are some other shows we really like and have gotten into together:

• Sherlock - everyone should watch this. Everyone.
• Futurama - really great but do what we did and skip all the episodes with Zapp Brannigan.
• Hogan's Heroes - yes......really. It's just really fun and decent humor!
• Downton Abbey - ok, minus the "together" part. James doesn't actually watch this. But I do.

Now for Whovian time.

The only thing that draws us into Hot Topic. A fez!

I saw this on Halloween. (This is by the BYU duck pond, by the way.) I was just sitting in the car waiting for James, when suddenly a DALEK hovers right past me. Really though, this person was even walking heel-to-toe very carefully so it really looked like they were gliding smoothly along. I love it when people take their costumes seriously.

These are the doctor's worst enemy throughout all of time and space. (The show was created in the 1960's, and when the newer seasons picked back up they just rolled with it.)

Okay, I guess I had one more picture of Josh that I just had to put up because he was such a great Tenth Doctor. And by the way, that TARDIS (stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space--it's a magic blue police box that's bigger on the inside and can travel through time and space) in the background is the door to Emily's room. Before she left on her mission she completely covered it in blue tape and made the signs and windows. It's pretty amazing.

Also, a most hilarious joke that Josh sent me was this picture of my family's dog, along with the caption, "Dogtor Who."

Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!