Highlights of Christmas Break

Yeah, we're cool. We know. Especially with penguins...

Crazy, creepy nativity scene with weird angel. Yeah, they all moved.

The mechanical toys in the garage. They made strange, creepy "scary movie" noises

A small glimpse of the penguin house

Our cute dog Cosmo in his cute shirt from Shayla. He's not really our dog....karissa's parents.

Us with Cosmo in front of the penguin house

Here are our Christmas Break Highlights:

-Finishing finals, selling our apt and moving into a duplex all in a week
-Receiving a breadmaker from Karissa's parents!
-Receiving a food storage starter kit from Scott's parents!
-Flying to Kansas to spend over a week with Karissa's family
-Sleeping in a little Christmas morning (7:30am)
-Playing Guitar Hero World Tour on Wii non-stop (family gift)
-Making Christmas goodies to give to other people...then forgetting to take them, so eating them ourselves instead
-Enjoying 65 degree weather for a day!
-Waking up to an almost tornado that night...(70-80 mph straightline wind)
-Cheesecake Factory!
-Choosing wedding pictures, finally
-Staying up late and sleeping in late
-Watching Twilight
-Watching The Dark Knight
-Playing Skip-Bo with the fam during breakfast, lunch and dinner too
-Not having to work!
-Finding amazing shoes at DSW after Christmas
-Enjoying two, over 50 degree days
-I guess you could actually say we've almost experienced all four seasons in a week: cold, snow, ice, wind, sun, 65 degrees and humid, 50 degrees and sunny, a big thunderstorm, rain and a snowstorm. Yep, that happens in Kansas
-Seeing the Penguin House (a house overloaded with the air-pumped penguin things that are lit up...yeah, they call the path around their house "Happy Feet")
-Seeing the "Falmouth House". Essentially crazy people who put up hundreds of moving machine toy things and too many decorations. A bit creepy actually...


-The best highlight has been the blessing of spending time with family we haven't seen in about 4 months. It's been a great vacation and we've had a lot of fun. Tomorrow we leave Kansas and head back to Utah for a short family reunion with Scott's family. Then we get to settle in our new place and try to get ready for school.

We are so grateful for our overwhelming amount of blessings and the love we feel from family and friends each day. Thank you everyone who has been there to love us and support us! We love you all! Happy holidays :-)

We're Moving!

Everything is official. We sold our apartment last night and we are planning on being completely moved out by Dec. 22, which is next Monday. However, amidst the moving, we still have a great load of finals to take and work to not miss. It is definitely going to be a crazy week! We're excited to move into the house and have some more room and other stuff.

Only one week and then we'll be flying to Kansas! I cannot even hardly stand it I'm so excited. It's actually pretty surreal. This is the longest I've gone without seeing my family - 4 months. We've seen Scott's family at least once a month since we've gotten married so I'm glad to finally have my turn. :-) It should be a really fun Christmas at home, and then New Years in Aspen Grove and then we'll come back to a mess. Joy. That's the only thing I'm not excited for at all. We'll have about 3 days or less to try and organize it before school starts. Life is crazy!

One more year until we're graduated and can do (almost) whatever we want :-) Happy happy joy joy!

Too much rambling...

Sometimes I wish I was a really funny person. Like, maybe it'd be cool to write really funny posts that people laugh about. Sometimes I think I'm funny, but I'm not sure if anyone else thinks the same thing. I definitely know I make funny faces. Scott usually tries to imitate them and then we both start laughing. Our most recent face joke is "Oh, that's a really really good frown. Yeah, frown just like that. That's a good good frown." You say it with your face and lips all scrunched up. He does it really well...I laugh every time :-)

Our workout plans are going pretty well. Not doing quite as good as I want, but oh well. I could launch into a huge explanation why, because my week has been more busy than any other week ever, but I think it might be boring to tears. So I won't. Basically, it's really hard to work and go to school.

Ooh, the other night we babysat for a friend of ours. Her girl is 5 years old and has more energy than an energizer battery. After an hour and a half I was begging Scott to take over. He kept telling me "you think she has lots of energy? just you wait til we have kids..." Haha. I guess our kids are gonna be crazier than Becky's...not sure if that's possible. Although, I wouldn't mind. Becky's kids are like, the craziest, most independent, cutest, funniest kids ever. I think they're awesome and she has definitely parented them exactly how she needed to: lots of independence!

I'm excited for school to be over so I can breathe for a couple weeks. I have a feeling it'll be a stressful break. Wait. Not stressful, full of lots of crazy adventures and things that need to get done. Such as sending out thank you cards. Yeah, I started writing them on the plane 3 days after the wedding, but have I sent them? Nope. Plus, I ran out of cards. And stamps. And I still haven't sent the ones I have done. Weird. And I haven't picked out wedding pictures yet. I promised when I got married I'd have stuff like that done right away....it's crazy how things like LIFE get in the way....

We're excited to move in January! We need to sell our contract, but we're excited to be in a bigger place with more room and potential to be nicer. For once I'll be able to do my make-up while Scott does his hair at the same time. :-) I'm bummed about leaving the ward, I loooove it, but we'll hopefully be in another good ward. I've never lived in a place longer than a year since Freshman year. This is the time! I don't think we'll be there longer than a year and a half, but who knows. We'd like to get out of Utah, but it depends on what kind of job Scott gets. One more year of school.

You wanna know something Ironic?

I'm so excited to be done with school because I'm sick of homework, tests, assignments, etc and school in general. BUT, I'm going to school to be a teacher...in school. I'm gonna be in school all my life until I stop teaching forever. Am I crazy? I'm going to school to go to school... At least teaching is super rewarding and awesome! I'm so excited for Practicum next semester :-)

I ramble too much....

The strangest thing

The strangest thing happened today on the way to school. I told Scott I really wanted it to snow, and that I wish it would if it was gonna be colder. And not kidding, 2 minutes later it was snowing. Not a ton, just the pretty little snow that doesn't stick or do much but looks cool. It made me so happy!

Normally, I wouldn't be wishing for snow because normally we'd already be under about 4 inches or so. However, I find myself wishing that since it's December now, and Christmas is soon, I really want to see some snow! Weird, I know. And I want a puppy. Still. I'm anticipating that being my graduation present :-) Now only to convincing Kim and Jim... ;-) hehe

Scott and I made some good goals last night. We decided we want to start eating more healthy and working out. We're both feeling pretty out of shape, which is no fun, and especially no fun as dancers. So hopefully our goals will work. If we reach 90% of what we wrote down in the next 16 weeks, we'll HOPEFULLY have money to buy a Wii. That would be awesome! Anyway, enough rambling. I'm off to work in the schools now. ciao!

k

Are Women Cursed with Bad Car Karma?

Today was quite the adventure, however, it started out as a perfectly normal day. We woke up, went to school, Scott went to work and we had plans to meet and go get lunch. Well, as I got in the car after class to head over to his work, about a mile away, I noticed something was terribly wrong with the steering. Then I started feeling something in the tire. Then I heard squeaking. Then I felt metal against asphalt. Then I realized I was driving on a completely flat tire. As soon as I got to his work, Scott came out and we assessed the damage. After deliberating for several minutes, we decided it would be best to try to change the tire.

Wrong.

It was absolutely impossible to get the bolts unscrewed. They we insanely way too tight. So we attempted the next plausible solution: pump up the tire and drive to "Big-O Tires." Scott got his boss and used his truck for the cigarette adapter thing to turn the little pump on. Because, of course, the one in our car is broken.

After about 10 minutes, our little pump started smoking and the tire was still flat. We turned it off and luckily, Scott's boss (Mike) was just turning the corner with a big air pump. We filled the tire and drove carefully to Big-O. They fixed everything in about 20 minutes (while we finally ate our lunch) and we were off. This whole "lunch break" was supposed to be about 30 minutes but it took about an hour and a half...actually, about 2 hours. And now I"m home.

I present the question "Are women cursed with bad car karma?" because this is the second time I've had car troubles when I've been driving BY MYSELF. Of course, our car NEVER has issues with Scott. Just me. Last time it completely died and I had to walk 3 blocks to get home and find a ride to campus. However, Scott was able to quite quickly get it started and running just fine.

Now as I reflect upon this afternoon, a phrase keeps coming to mind "When it rains, it pours". At first I thought that was the case today, but I decided it is actually not. I decided to count my blessings and be grateful for what could have happened but didn't:

1. The tire could have been completely slashed (they're brand new, great tires)
2. The rim could have been completely destroyed.
3. The tire could have exploded, and caused an accident
4. The rim could have sparked and caused more damage
5. We could have had nobody to help us, or worse, I could have been stranded without a phone and way to get ahold of Scott.
6. We could have had to pay lots of money to replace the tire instead of a free patch job included in the previous owners purchase of lifetime tire service.
7. I could have had school, work, and other commitments all day, when in fact I had absolutely nothing scheduled until 5:00 tonight.

So essentially, today it just rained. It didn't pour. And we have alot to be grateful for. I find that each trial Scott and I have (which has been a seemingly large amount since our marriage), we grow closer together and our trust and love builds. So it's a good thing, right?

Yes. But I'm content with this not ever happening again. :-)

Happy Holidays

I'm so excited for the Holidays! I love this time of the year, it's so wonderful. Last night we were eating dinner and Scott asked what it's like at the Gille home for Christmas. So I told him all the little things we do and what it's like. Then he told me all about the Dodds home. It was so cool! I got so excited for Christmas!

And I can't wait for Thanksgiving! I love seeing family, eating super good food and just hanging out. I think it'll be lots of fun. Mostly I think I'm stoked to be able to spend all the Holidays with Scott. And maybe I'm just a little excited for it to get all snowy... :-) But I dunno when that's gonna happen.

Anyway, school has calmed down a little I think, at least I've tried not to get too stressed. And, one of my friends on dance team is pregnant! ah! It was crazy when she told us all. Especially for me and Scott cuz we're married and it could happen. It's so happy though, she was so excited.

Well, that's all folks!

Things I've learned this week

Things I have learned:

1. Procrastination = big problems. (waiting until the last week possible to do a 12 hour project, then you come to find you don't actually have 12 hours worth of time possible to complete the project)
2. Inviting people over = a clean house! (make sure you call before you come...)
3. Dance = money.
4. Christmas = more money.
5. Time to do/finish/work on "insert phrase here" = impossible (especially while going to school, working, dancing and trying to figure out how to be a good wife and homemaker)

I can't think of anything else real clever right now. All I know is I'm exhausted and I'm not entirely sure why. I'm normally tired, but maybe it was just dancesport this weekend. It was alot of fun, and lots of work. Scott made semi-finals in his class Standard. I made semi-finals in Novice Latin, quarter-finals in Pre-Champ Latin, and one round of class Latin. Overall, I felt really good about how we did. I've been dancing with my partner only since September and we just finished our routines about a week before Dancesport, so we did relatively well. Now I just gotta figure out how to pay for and sew on fringe onto my dress as well as purchase an excessive amount of rhinestones. Gotta love ballroom!

I cannot wait until Thanksgiving when I can finally have a bit of a much needed break. (and enjoy good food and family!) Then I'm even more excited for Christmas break to be home again and spend time with my side of the family. Maybe I'll get pictures from our wedding picked out, thank-you cards finished, and pictures printed for our apartment.... who knows.