NEW POSTS!!! LOTS OF THEM!

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Thanksgiving

We went up to Montana for Thanksgiving. On Wednesday the 23, we flew in. As we were beginning our descent, the pilot came over the intercom to tell us the weather in Billings, "it's a balmy negative 12 in Billings today." GAH! It was cold! After we settled in a little bit (dropped our bags off at Denny & Rita's) we went to Jason's favorite, El Burrito, for lunch. Later that night we had Lobster for dinner. The next day was spent preparing for Thanksgiving dinner. I made chocolate mousse pie, Jason made my uncle mark's sweet potatoes, and Denny made everything else. Everything turned out sooo good!

Later that night... Jason and I stayed up for Black Friday sales!We were at WalMart at midnight for some of their great sales! We got everything we were looking for! Then we went back home, toyed with the idea of staying up until our next outing, decided against it, and went to sleep for 2 ish hours. Then it was time to go to Target. We got there and waited in line for maybe 10 minutes, luckily we weren't looking for a tv or anything. We got in, found what we were looking for. Jason got the last hard-drive on the shelf and some lady wanted to get one so she asked if they could scan the barcode to see if they had any left in the back. They didn't and Jason let the lady take the hard-drive. It was really nice of him. We found a couple of movies that were on sale and I got in the electronics line (because the normal line wrapped around the entire store and most of the people in that line had tv's and a lot of stuff), Jason went to see if he could find the Simpson's season that was advertised and when he got back he had found it, and he said he found where the rest of the hard-drives were hiding, so he got one of those too.

After we checked out, we went back home again to sleep and then Jason took me to Jo-Ann's! They were having a killer of a sale! So much stuff was 50-60% off and they had some fleece for $2.99 a yard (normally 10ish a yard) and snuggle flannel for $1.29 a yard!!!! Oh my gosh I stocked up!!!! I got A LOT of fabric! I even went back later that evening to get more!

The next day Jason and I went with Rita to get Sams club cards, and then we picked up a couple of things for the baby shower up there. Rita and I dropped Jason off and headed over to Quita's for the shower. She had just finished putting up the decorations when we arrived and we quickly assembled the food items just in time for the shower.

Adorable diaper cake Quita got for the shower! (The bottle in the background was filled with skittles, can you guess how many?)

Rita working on the food in the kitchen before people arrived. (I LOVED the decorations!)

I had so much fun at the shower! We ate good food, played some really fun games, and then opened presents. Everyone was so generous! This baby already has more clothes than me, and they are so much cuter too!

We had a lot of fun up in Montana! It was great getting to see lots of family, and eat lots of good food we didn't have to cook!

Home-made

I made this way back in August, my first quilt!

I made this either in September or October... My second quilt!

And I made these in October and November.

November 19-21... Don't you want to know what I did?!

We got to fly down to Utah to see my sister Kate as the lead role in her high school play South Pacific. We arrived in Salt Lake on Friday the 19th, Jason's parents drove down from Montana and picked us up from the airport at around 4ish. We drove down to J-Dawgs and had dinner, then hurried to the play. She was soooo good! I was very impressed. It was really weird seeing Kate looking like an adult, and especially weird seeing her kiss a boy!!! It was really weird, I had to cover my eyes!

The fam right after the play.

The sibs right after the play.

The next day was going to be BUSY, so we went to bed around 10 or 11 in order to get up in the morning. We woke up and got ready for the day. Jason and I ran down to Provo bakery and got smiley face sugar cookies and some doughnuts, then headed over to my parents house for breakfast. After breakfast Jason and his parents went out to lunch with Denny's cousin. I spent that time helping prepare for the baby shower. I made cream cheese frosting for the red velvet cupcakes, YUM!

Frosting the cupcakes.

Jason relaxing before the football game.

At around 3 people started showing up. I had such a great time! I really loved getting to see and spend time with friends and family. I had so much fun! I completely forgot to take pictures, luckily Janna took a couple before the shower while we were getting ready. Everyone was so generous and the baby got so many things we weren't able to fit everything our giant suitcase! There was nothing in the suitcase but baby things (mostly clothes)! Luckily we are going to be able to drive down to Utah for Christmas so we will be able to pick the rest up.

After the shower I got to open my birthday present (my mom didn't want to mail it so I had to wait until we went to Utah to open it)

My diploma! All framed and pretty!

Even though the shower was over, the party kept going until later in the evening. My cousin even showed up with pregnancy massage cushions from her massage school and I got a massage! It was so nice! Those cushions are so comfortable!!!!

Getting a massage in the middle of the living room.

After all the partying was done, it was time to go to sleep and from the time we woke up the next morning until we had to leave for the airport, I spent my time trying to fit all of the gifts into our giant suitcase.

We

get to see family and friends this weekend! Oh, and my sister Kate is the LEAD in her school play, which we get to see while in Utah!

A bit of rambling on Project Runway...

If you haven't seen the finale to Project Runway, you might not want to read this... I do mention who won.

After I took Jason to school and dropped a check off at the bank, I was listening to the radio. It was a different station than I normally listen to. There are some very stupid songs on the radio these days so last night as one of those stupid songs began to play, I got a little frustrated and changed to a random preset. LUCKY ME I didn't change it back to one of the two stations I normally listen to. On my way home from the bank the radio people announced they had a special guest with them, MONDO, from Project Runway! I am trying to find the audio clip but I don't think they have it online yet. It was very fun to listen to. I personally thought he should have won. Anyways... My favorite thing he said on the radio was in response to one of the hosts asking what she should wear to a holiday party, the other host said he suggested she wear a potato sack... Mondo said something along the line of, "If you want to go with a potato sack, look into Gretchen's line." Hehehehe! Oh so true! I just thought I would put this up here before I forget. Oh and Mondo was selling his line on mylifetime.com or something and it sold out the next day. He also gave kudos to Gretchen because she sold one... One of the hosts asked how many he sold, all 10! Take that Michael Kors and Nina Garcia, looks like you made the wrong choice!

Home-made... well, sort of...

My birthday was a couple of weeks ago... Oops. Jason had class from 8 in the morning until 5pm on my birthday. The Saturday before my birthday we went to the Old Spaghetti Factory. YUM! I LOVE their bread and spimoni! I was so close to buying some for my home freezer and decided I would be better off without having easy access to it. Anyways... On my actual birthday we went and ate Thai food. It was so good. We also got to pick up our car from the shop on my birthday. It looks so nice. I'm glad they did such a good job, and the paint looks great.

A little more than a week after my birthday, this showed up on my doorstep. I got to assemble it (one of my favorite things about getting desks and whatnot). There were a couple of pieces that were broken so I had to call and get unbroken pieces sent to me. Luckily the pieces were for the drawer and the back (those showed up a couple of days later) and they weren't necessary to assemble it right then.

The bottom piece unfolds into a desktop and the extra space behind it is storage. I wanted to put both my serger and sewing machine down there but they were just a little bit too big sitting side by side. We went to Home Depot and got some supplies and ended up making a little shelf to sit my sewing machine on so both machines will fit in the bottom part.

Now Jason can use the computer desk and I have my own desk to sew and make things.

kitchen and living room

I took some pictures of our apartment a couple of weeks ago. It's not that I have been too busy to post the pictures, I've just been too lazy to. It's kind of sad, now that I have all the time in the world I haven't done much blogging. There hasn't been much going on either, so I haven't really had anything to post about.

Here is our kitchen, behind that door is our washer and dryer.
This is our new couch and rocking chair. We were in need of a new couch and the chair was a wonderful added bonus! We also bought the exercise bike (and like to watch tv while using it).

It's been a while...

We had family come to town for Jason's white coat ceremony clear back in August! The ceremony was pretty neat. The school gave each of the new medical students a white coat, which they were presented with. The students also received new stethoscopes from alumni at the ceremony. It was pretty cool that they got stethoscopes as their gift. We had a lot of fun and were glad we got to have family here for the occasion.



Kate and Penny were also here, thanks for taking the pictures.

kind of boring...

I've gotten a lot of things finished the past couple of days. Today I finally got all of the crap worked out with clearplay... Somehow our account got messed up over a year ago and they started charging us double. We tried to get the situation settled when we started getting charged double, but nothing happened so we just cancelled our account thinking it would stop the double charging... IT DIDN'T! Finally, after about a month of talking to multiple clearplay workers and explaining the situation to them and they try to do the same thing the last person did, but nothing happens. They couldn't find out where we were being charged, they just couldn't find it. Anyways.... We finally got it all resolved today. The woman who was working with me today found the problem, fixed it, and gave me two options. They could send us a check in the mail refunding our money, or they could send us a new clearplay hd dvd player and a year of free service. We really have liked having clearplay, it's nice being able to watch movies that we normally wouldn't, without having the junk in them.

We also took our little guy to get fixed on Monday morning. It's supposed to take about a week and a half. We're just hoping they can match the color of the car so it doesn't look ridiculous.

Anyways... I took some pictures of the apartment and I will post them probably tomorrow... but we'll see.

Long tests and accidents

Jason finished his first test last week. It took 5 hours. Oh boy the studying that went into preparing for that test was ridiculous. I know because I helped a little. He memorized about 33 pages of information which was insane! We didn't turn the tv on for 2 days while he was studying, needless to say it was quiet! Anyways... I am glad that test is over! After he finished the test his second year buddies left him a little treat in congratulations for completing what is said to be the most difficult test (because they have no idea what to expect). The school pairs second year students with first year students based on little "get to know you" cards. Jason's buddies are both LDS so instead of getting alcohol, like the majority of the other first year students, he got a gift card to Olive Garden. It was nice to go out to eat. It was really nice when my food came out burnt on the bottom (too burnt to eat) so I had it sent back. Before my new food came out the manager came over and told me my food had been comped because I had to wait for another one to come out. The funny thing is it came out really quickly, both times. We didn't even end up using the gift card because I forgot to bring cash to pay the tip, so we paid with card. Now we have a gift card we get to use another time.

On a different note... Our car got hit the first weekend of August... In our parking lot... While we were inside our apartment... Probably asleep... Luckily the guy who hit it left a note with his first name and phone number. I tried calling it, but no answer, so I tried a couple more times over the next two days. Then I called the police (I had already called my insurance right after we noticed it) and the policeman finally got ahold of the guy and I got his information. I then went and got two estimates done on the damage to see if they wanted to go through insurance or just write me a check... The estimates came to about the same amount, about a $500 difference. Turns out he hit our little car with his company vehicle so I had to work through the company and their insurance, so It took a VERY long time to get things worked out. To be completely honest, after about a month and a half I finally got a check in the mail from their insurance company last week and set up a date to get the car into the shop (in two weeks). It will be nice to have our car back to looking the way it did. I took a couple zillion pictures of it... I will only post one.


Yes, they are going to have to do some intense work on the car. It is going to take about a week (from what the auto body shop guy told me). I'm just really glad I don't have to pay for it. It doesn't look THAT bad, but it ripped into the metal! so it's going to cost a very pretty penny to pay for it. There are some more scratches near the bumper and the bumper is not attached completely anymore... So for the past month and a half we have been driving our other vehicle.

Anyways... I'm not sure if this all makes sense, so asks questions if it doesn't.

3 years!

Jason and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary by going to his cousin's wedding and reception. It was a full day of wedding celebrations. We went to the ceremony which was outside and very beautiful and it made me feel so grateful that we are members of the church, that we were married in the temple, and that we get to be together forever. It was an interesting way to celebrate and it made me very grateful for the gospel.

In between the wedding and the reception we were able to go out to dinner with Jason's parents and his sister to one of his favorite restaurants.
We don't have any pictures of us yet (I'll need to get them) so I'll have to wait to post them.

Ronnie & Amber

A couple weeks after my cousin Emily's wedding, we went up to Montana to go to Jason's cousins wedding. This was my first wedding that wasn't in the Temple and it was really neat. It was somewhat like the movies, but not exactly. They had their own little things which were unique to them which made it a really neat ceremony.

Emily & Jake

My cousin Emily got married in June! Boy am I behind! Jason and I got to drive up to Idaho with my family and attend the wedding. It was my first time in the Boise temple. I knew it was going to be pretty, but I did have some hesitation because we were in Idaho... hehe. But the temple was beautiful inside! Way beyond my expectations. Anyways... here are some of my favorite pictures from the reception.
These are my images. Do not steal them.

Graduation...

As you know, Jason graduated in April and we are in the Denver area waiting for school to start for Jason. I am still finishing my last two classes online. When they are over in August I will have more time for blogging, among other things. Although I haven't officially graduated, I did walk at graduation in April and here are some pictures.


Not the best picture ever, but the best we have.

I am just glad to be so close to being finished. I am looking for jobs out here to have something to do during they day when Jason is at school. I hope I can find something that has to do with my major, but I guess anything I do will have something to do with my major so I don't really have to worry about that.

Anyways... It is time for me to do something else.
I'll finish catching up and then give another update on our apartment.

Moving

It has been very busy for us these past couple of weeks! I have been working on my classes and preparing to move. We leave Friday morning to Aurora, CO. From what I've read, it is about a 7 hour drive from Provo. We are both excited for Jason to start medical school. The area we will be moving to will only be a couple of blocks away from Jason's school, close enough to walk (I hope). The apartment we found is probably the thing I am most excited about. It's a 2bedroom 2bath apartment and it should be a little bigger than the place we are in now. Not that the place we are in now is small, but I am excited to have a little extra space. The thing that sold me on this particular apartment is the fact that it has a DISHWASHER and WASHER/DRYER in the apartment! Since we won't be living close to my parents we won't be able to use their washer/dryer, and I don't think it would be fun to go to the laundry-mat and sit there for a couple of hours waiting for our laundry. Anyways... another good thing about the apartment is that there is a Chipotle pretty much on the other side of our apartment complex. (There is also a pizza place, which I will want to try out)

Things I have yet to post about but will do so after the move (in order of occurrence):

Graduation

Emily's wedding

Ronnie's wedding

Our anniversary

Packing/moving/new apartment

Picture post!

Nasty snow storm that took out a ton of tree branches all over! I had to walk through/around those trees to get to class and back to my car, while branches were breaking and falling all around me. I feel very lucky none fell on me!

I made breakfast one day and wrote Jason's name with the olive oil.
We went to a new place called Cafe Paesan. It's like an italian cafe rio. The food is pretty good, and the interior of the building is really quite pretty. If you want to go check it out, it's in the same area as the Panda Express off State Street and Center in Orem.




And this is Mr. Pidge! Jason and I went to my mom's house and as we were walking up to the door Jason told me there was a bird. It took me a little bit to see it, but there he was, and I took a picture. My mom opened the door and said he had been hanging out in front of the house for a couple of days. He had a little number around his ankle so I believed he belonged to someone, so we called animal control and they sent someone over to pick up Mr. Pidge. We thought something might have been wrong with him, because he didn't fly away, but the animal control person said there was probably a bigger bird around trying to eat him. Anyways, here he is looking at his reflection.

The University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine

After much deliberation, we've decided to attend the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine. We received confirmation yesterday that all tuition and fees will be covered. We only need to worry about living expenses for the next four years.

Finals/Graduation/WICHE

Finals are almost over, I have graduation today, it's snowing, and I'm a little stressed out.

Jason got a phone call Wednesday afternoon from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The associate dean of admissions, Dr. Norma Wagoner, offered Jason a scholarship of $120,000 over 4 years. The scholarship still doesn't make UC cheaper than the University of Washington ($92,000 vs. $89,000 over the four years). However, the University of Colorado mentioned that Jason was number one on their WICHE ranking (WICHE is the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education). The WICHE funding would reduce his medical school tuition to the same price as resident tuition. With his tuition at the resident price, the scholarship would cover the remainder of the cost. We would go to medical school for free. The only problem is that we don't know for sure if Jason will get WICHE funding. WICHE only funds 6 Montana students each year, so they use a ranking system to determine who will get aid. Last year, only 2 out of the 5 Montana students that went to UC got WICHE funding. While Jason is currently #1 on UC's WICHE ranking, we won't know if he will receive WICHE funding for sure until possibly May 10-12. May 15th is decision day for future medical students in that they need to narrow down their choice to one school.

The difficult part is making the decision on what we're going to do. Jason has wanted to go to the University of Washington since he was in high school. We would also be near his family, since we'd spend two years in Montana and two years in Seattle. We'd have access to Indian Health Service facilities, so free check-ups and dental. The University of Washington School of Medicine is also one of the best in the country. On the other hand, the University of Colorado offers an excellent education and won't require us to move 4 times in 4 years like UW will. Denver is a nice city with all the amenities that we've come to enjoy in Provo. Jason also said that they had the nicest facilities of all the schools he interviewed at, having spent nearly a billion dollars over the last 5 years.

The prospect of a free medical education without payback (both service or monetary) is huge. However, we may not hear about WICHE funding before May 15th. In that case, we'll need to decide if we stick with the dream school of UW or go with the dream situation of leaving medical school at UC debt free.

Just a quickie...

We went to Date Night last night. It was a pretty funny, although definitely not for children. There were sexual references and it said the F word once. It was not the best movie we have seen, but it also was not the worst.

We also went to Gloria's Little Italy restaurant in Provo. It was not the Olive Garden. Not that the Olive Garden isn't good. I enjoy the Olive Garden, but it is a completely different experience. Cheery walls and personal photographs decorating the walls set the mood as a personal family restaurant. The food was delicious, and made from fresh ingredients! I really enjoyed my lasagna and it was so large bigger than a 3x5 card, and about 2 1/2 inches thick. The taste was so different than the lasagna's I usually eat, but just as good. Jason got Chicken Parmigiana and spaghetti, his was just as delicious.

After dinner we went to the Apple store to play with their Ipads. They are literally a giant version of the ipod touch. It was so neat. We had a lot of fun playing with them.

Again with the graduation...

I am registered for my last semester of college. Registration opened for people with 80 credits + on March 24 at 12:00am. I have had my schedule planned out since January, so when registration opened up and I finished registering for my classes the timestamp on my registration confirmation read 12:00am. It probably took me 15 seconds to register because I had all of the CRN's ready to type in. Anyways... I bought some announcements a couple of days ago to send to grandparents, aunts, and uncles. I am planning on emailing the rest of the family an announcement if you want one. (please leave me your email in a comment, I won't post the email address for others to see). I just purchased my cap and gown so I can have something to wear while walking!

April 30!!!

So I applied for graduation a couple of weeks ago and just heard back from them! I will be graduating in the summer and will be walking in April. I am very excited to be finished with school and I see that it is coming so quickly!

Update

Wow! It's been 2 weeks since I last updated. Other than school, work, and midterms we have been staying alive. We did go to the Byu Basketball game, which was sort of a let-down. Oh well, what can you do.

We got bubbles for our nursery kids and boy do they love bubbles! We will start the bubbles and madness ensues. They run around screaming, "Bubbles! Bubbles! Bubbles!" They try to catch the bubbles in their hands and their mouths inevitably open in awe as they watch the bubbles fall to the ground. It's such a simple thing, but it sure keeps their attention.

Anyways... It's about time to get ready for school. I will try to update when I get more time.

Graduation

I just applied for graduation, I can't believe I only have one semester left. I am so excited to be so close. It still feels like it's forever away, but it's not that bad. I just need to focus on passing all of my classes! If I look a little frazzled, or completely out of it, please ignore me until mid-July.

Washington

Last night, on our way home from dinner, Jason missed a phone call from a number he didn't know. When we got home he checked his messages to find out that the missed call was from a Doctor he interviewed with at the University of Washington. The Doctor asked Jason to return his call so he did.

Let me remind everyone Jason just interviewed with the University of Washington on Tuesday morning.

The Doctor wanted to personally let him know that he has been accepted to the Medical School he has really wanted to go to. His letter will be coming shortly!

Jason is so thrilled, which makes me just about as excited as him.

As for now we will most likely be going to the University of Washington. We will spend the first and part of the third year in Bozeman, Montana and most likely the rest of the time in Seattle, Washington. The only way we would consider going anywhere else is it Jason gets accepted to the University of Utah.

.....

Today Jason interviewed at the University of Washington, while I stayed here and went to school. We are grateful that today was Jason's last interview for med school. He has been accepted to 3 schools already, we are just waiting to hear back from a couple more before we make our final decision. (We have until May)

School is going well for the both of us. Jason never ceases to amaze me with how much information he can put in his head. My classes are physically draining but mentally uplifting. I am attempting to get ahead in some of my classes, it is not going too well so far, but I am hoping for the best.

I read The Lovely Bones. It was a very good book. Very interesting and very thought provoking. If only we could read books like these for some of my English classes.

I worked out my class schedule for the summer. I am really excited for my last semester and the classes I will be ending my degree with. The two that I am most excited for are: Modern English Grammars, and Digital Photography compositing.

I am trying to decide if I should walk at graduation. I don't care to, my parents on the other hand want me to. I'd have to do it this April because we will be leaving in the middle of summer and I don't think I would come back to do it. I just don't know.

So cute!

Baby Boxer Handshake @ Yahoo! Video

Snow

I played with my camera over Christmas break and discovered a "snow" function. Last night it snowed quite a bit, our cable even went out for a little bit. Anyways, I took a couple of pictures today of the snow, using the snow function and this
was my favorite.

I also really enjoyed these

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Today I felt like I accomplished quite a bit. We started the day by watching the last episode of Late Night with Conan O'brien. I am going to miss Conan greatly and I really hope that he shows up on a different network soon! After Conan I dropped Jason off at work, came home and cleaned the bathroom and did all of the dishes. There were quite a few! Dishes tend to pile up when one goes to school and work, by the time one gets home one doesn't want to do chores, one wants to watch tv.
Once the dishes were done I got ready for the day and then started watching U.S. Championships: figure skating! I love watching figure skating, which is what I am currently doing as I wait for Jason to tell me he is finished at work.

Update

Quick little update.

Jason and I are back into the swing of things with school and work. This is Jason's last semester and my second to last.

We are both enrolled full time. Jason is taking 14 credits and I am taking 18. I am pretty excited about my classes this semester. They should be fun as long as I make it out alive. I am getting a little sick of school, and it's only 3 weeks into the semester.

I'll try to update every once in a while, but I make no promises.

A little more Christmas

We went over to my parents today after we had lunch to pick up some seasons of Monk and the no 1 ladies detective agency to watch. While we were there my mom told me that my aunt had gotten us (me) a Christmas gift, and to get it from her room. This is what I found.

The one with my name on it is specifically for me. Each of my siblings got a little bag with some stuff in it, as did my parents.

The one box has my bag in it, and the other box is full of papers, stamps, stickers, and different scrapbooking tools.

She also got us a sizzix die cut machine. They are pretty fun to use. We are all excited to use all of the things and have a scrapbooking party. With my Cricut and other scrapbooking tools, and now all of this stuff, we are going to be in scrapbook heaven!

Thank you so much aunt Penni!

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We got home from my parents and heard a knock at the door. I answered it and it was a guy in our ward who lives by us. He said he was walking past our car and saw some money on the ground and was wondering if we had lost any. It was $20 bucks that my siblings paid me back for me buying my mom a gift for her birthday. I was going to use the money to help me buy myself new boots, it must have fallen out of my coat pocket either yesterday or today. I am so grateful for our neighbors and how wonderful and honest they are. We are so blessed to be here right now.