Poor blog....

We had too much fun over Christmas break and did too much relaxing.;) My little blog got forgotten and neglected for my husband. During this time of year, my husband goes into depression mode. He loves Christmas and when it is over he kind of feels like all happiness is taken away from the world.

Saturday I finally talked him into taking down the Christmas tree so we could bring our new rocker/recliner home. We took down the tree and all of the decorations and set up our Christmas presents. (A BEAUTIFUL new television and blu-ray player) Our living room feels like a new place and we're very excited for our Bachelor/Castle night with the new TV.

School has started again and we're not quite sure how we feel about it. Spring semester always seems harder than fall semester. I have four online classes this semester and two are from the same professor, and I think he has forgotten that he has online classes. I'm debating if I should e-mail him and tell him to get on the ball because I'm paying for these classes, or just wait because I love not having a million things to do when I get home from work.

Justin is finishing his instrument rating this semester. (Cover your eyes and fly an airplane? Yeah... that sounds like great training.... boo. It makes me nervous) He is also taking the dreaded math. He's got 4 semesters of it to finish and I'm feeling bad for him.

That's the update thus far. Hope my husband begins to feel better about 2010 and I can get back to updating our blog.:)

November

Well November definitely flew by for us. Its going to be nice to have some time to spend together after we finish finals this week. Who knew only working full time could be such a wonderful vacation?:) Anyways, here's our month of November in review:)

For Thanksgiving we headed down to San Diego with my Dad's side of the family to celebrate my grandparent's 50th Wedding anniversary. It was a blast to see cousins who we hadn't seen in a while, and to just get to play and relax. (If you want to see any pictures of that portion of the trip you can visit my mom's blog here)

We forgot to take out the camera for most of the trip. But we definitely did not forget it at the Midway. It was an aircraft carrier that we visited on Wednesday in San Diego before we headed up to the house in Oceanside.


It was heaven for my husband, I don't think I'd seen him this excited and happy since.... oh wait, when we went to disneyland for his birthday two weeks before. November was a good month for him;) They had lots of airplanes that you could sit in and play with all of the controls.... I think Justin sat in all of them:)

Me and Justin on the top deck of the carrier by an airplane..... his favorite picture of us. He could tell you what kind of a plane it was, and a lot of different things about it, but I can't:)

Just before we left for Thanksgiving we decorated our house for Christmas. I got really lucky and married a wonderful man who loves Christmas and Christmas decorating as much as I do, I still need to get a picture of our outside lights, but these are our inside decorations. This are my cute little bookshelf decorations.
.... and our tree that we had room for in our living room this year. We bought a big tree last year and had to sit about a foot away from the television to fit it into our living room, this year everything fits and it is so beautiful:)
After we had finished moving around furniture and decorating.... it definitely puts us in the Christmas Spirit to have our house like this:)

Just before thanksgiving I also finished my Phlebotomy class. I'm still waiting to hear back on how I did on the national certification test, but I'm feeling pretty confident about it. :)

At the beginning of November we got to go to Disneyland for Justin's birthday. Thanks to a wonderful Aunt Diana and Uncle Derek who made this possible and let us hang with them at their house, we had a very wonderful trip:) The hat in this picture is a birthday cake hat. It has candles hanging off of it and lights up. Justin loved it. My cousin Haley and my Uncle Derek picked it out.... very fitting I think;)
I had to DRAG Justin out of Disneyland and California Adventure to get him to come check out Downtown Disney shopping with me. He ended up loving it after he found a store with a bunch of model airplanes and a LEGO store. He realized that this was really one of the happiest places on earth... even when your wife drags you shopping.

This is us in front of Main Street USA! We definitely are Disney people and love going there as often as we can. I love being married to a guy who begs me to plan trips to Disneyland rather than dreading it every time I want to go. Justin definitely had a very happy 24th birthday:)

We're getting excited to head into December here. We're jumping in head first with finals this week, going home in about two and a half weeks, and just taking it easy after we get home from work for Christmas Break! We love you all and hope you are having a very Merry Christmas Season!

This Saturday the love of my life turns 24. We're headed to Disneyland and to visit my Aunt and Uncle to celebrate. Justin had never been to Disneyland and absolutely loved it. I'm so glad that I have a husband who loves to go do fun things with me.

I married my best friend in the entire world, and it shows. There are so many things that I love about him. The best thing I have ever done in my life is marry this boy. Marrying your best friend is something that I strongly suggest:)

He is such a stud that I am so grateful that I caught him. When we were younger we used to refer to him and his brothers as the "Skinner boys" because they were the incredibly cute nephews of my neighbors the Skinners. We would all make sure we were looking our best when they would come visit, and sometimes I still can't believe how lucky I am to have married a "Skinner boy."

He is the kindest and greatest husband I could have ever asked for. He love to surprise me with a clean house, and he knows exactly how to make me happy and how to de-stress me, and that is no small feat. He puts up with all of my craziness, knows everything about me, and loves me anyways.

He is my rock. It takes a lot of guts and a lot of strength to marry a girl with my health issues, and to put on a happy face about it and assure me constantly that everything will be OK. He is always the tough one during hospital visits and keeps us realizing that life can still be happy, even at the hospital.


He loves to take me out on dates. He makes me feel so great about myself, and I love that he wants to be with me all the time. I am so lucky to have a husband who adores me so much.He is up for anything. Anything I feel like doing, he wants to go along. Anything I ask him to do, he is up for. When I am crazy and change my mind about stuff every ten seconds, he thinks all of my ideas sound great and he believes that I can do anything.
He has the greatest sense of humor. We spend most of our time together cracking up. Even when I don't think something is funny, his laugh is enough to get me rolling on the floor laughing. He has such a happy-go-lucky disposition that I consider myself incredibly lucky to get to be around him all the time.
He is easily the most handsome man that I have ever seen in my life. I love to be able to look at him and know that I totally scored. I lucked out being able to find a man so good looking and wonderful who loves me too.
He is incredibly driven and smart. I am so excited that he is getting to do what he loves every day and excelling at it. He knows what he wants to do the rest of his life and he is going after it. It won't be long before he'll be flying the skies and be the best pilot the world has ever seen.

I love you sweetheart. I hope you have a very very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Becoming a Vampire....

Surprisingly, this post has nothing to do with the Twilight series, although I will say that I am getting pretty excited to see the new movie. Nope, this has to do with something that I will be taking a course for in November.

It all starts with my Doctor's appointment (in which we found out that I am Cancer free.... Hooray for 3 and 1/2 years!!) when I had the greatest phlebotomist of all time draw my labs. She was wonderful, she got a vein on the first poke, and even though she went into my hand, it hardly bruised at all! (Usually my entire hand is black and blue when they do that)



Now, I had thought to myself before that if there was anything I was interested in in medicine, it would be phlebotomy, don't ask me why.... it's rather creepy I know.... but an interest none the less. But over the past few weeks since the appointment, I have not been able to get it out of my head. I now passionately want to be a really good phlebotomist. I know what kind of a difference it can make in a hospital visit when your phlebotomist is good, and I want to be that kind of person.

So I signed up for the November night course in Ogden. I am super excited and I am really looking forward to having this skill, and hey..... being a vampire wouldn't be that bad right?:) Isn't that what reading Twilight tells us?:)

Oh no!

Our Idaho registration expired on our Carolla yesterday, so now we are officially utah drivers. Both of our cars will soon have Utah license plates, and I was informed yesterday at the DMV that we need Utah licenses. We're trying to embrace our Utah lives, but we're still Idahoans at heart!

Much needed update

Well, I finally have a couple minutes to update. Our lives have gotten even crazier since school started (we had no idea that that was possible!) Justin is working at the airport and going to school, and I am working at the doctor's office and doing online classes. We have early mornings for work and late nights for homework. Oh the joys of being students!

Before school started we got to go up to Moscow for a long weekend, and it was wonderful! We really miss our families when we are away from home. We got family pictures with the Schwartzes (see the post below) and family pictures with my family (more to come, I'm sure) :) There were a couple of pictures of Justin and I that I LOVED. (Thanks Annie!) It's fun because both families got them taken at the same place, so that will make my decorating so much more fun with all of the "matchiness."



This is one of my most favorite pictures that we got taken. I adore it! It's so fun to have such a cute husband!


Our first anniversary was while we were in Moscow. We celebrated just the two of us before we left. We went to the Salt Lake Temple to do sealings and then had lunch at our most favorite restaurant called Tucanos. We have had such a wonderful and eventful first year. I am so grateful to be married to such a wonderful man:)

On our actual anniversary in Moscow we went to Gracie's baptism. It was so fun to have the family all together. My cute husband got me a dozen roses, and we ate out with the fam after the baptism. It was an awesome day.

We ate the top layer of our wedding cake that we had kept frozen. The whole family was completely grossed out that we would even think about eating year old frozen cake, but it wasn't bad. I kept trying to tell them that it is a long standing tradition. I don't think they cared.:)

We got home and started right into school, and had my family come down to Logan and stay with us for a couple of days while they took Lauren to BYU. It was so much fun to have them here and show off our new townhouse a little bit.

And now we've been in school for almost a month! It's crazy to think about for me. The semester is flying by way too fast. I've been doing homework for a couple of hours a night to keep up with my online classes, but I am lucky enough to get Saturdays off of work. Since my hubby usually isn't home for most Saturdays I use it to get lots of homework done and some fun projects.

Once I finish my homework, I like to have projects to do that have nothing to do with school. This has been my most recent one. I've worked on it for the past two Saturdays and it is finally finished and will be moved inside our house this evening!


I found this solid oak coffee table at DI. Yes, it was very beat up but it had a lot of potential. I spent last Saturday sanding it down and staining the top. I put one coat of black on the legs, and that is all I could get done before it got dark. This week, I put two more coats of black on the legs, and put a gloss stain on the top. It looks great and I am so excited to move it into the house!


My next project includes these. I got them this morning at the farmers market in town for $1! I was so excited, they look delicious. I think we may have quite a bit of zucchini bread in our future:)

Schwartz Family Pictures

Someday I'll actually get around to talking about our wonderful anniversary trip, when I get the pictures from the camera loaded up. We had an awesome vacation home, it was great to be able to see our families and not have to WORK! We also got to take pictures with BOTH families, and here are the results of one of them!

The Schwartz Family:)

All of the Schwartz boys..... or "Skinner boys" as we used to call them:)

Me and the Hubby:) I LOVE this new picture!