Short, but important post

Hello all,

So here's the deal. I really like these short video's by this organization called GOOD. This video was made before the last election and it really tells you what the next President was up against. So, for the love of pete cut Obama some slack he's got a big mess to try to tackle.

We'll try to post some of our happenings soon....

Branching Out!

Well folks, we (Andrew and I) are happy to announce that our blog has gone international! We now have readers outside the U.S. which makes us feel pretty darn special! Hello international readers! We appreciate you all (even those state-side friends) reading our blog and hopefully we will continue to provide good blog-reads for you in the future!

Thank you Amazon!

Today is a MAJOR case of the mondays.....but you know what makes it so much better? Ordering a movie from Amazon that I have been waiting on to go on sale for MONTHS! Thank you Amazon! You made my day....

ANOTHER thing that makes monday's more manageble is ordering a movie for Andrew for easter that is also on sale! But that won't be revealed until he opens his Easter basket in a few weeks! Bwahahaha!

May 1st here we come!

So I know there were rumors about us getting a photo booth for the reception. Well we are here to tell you folks that the rumors are TRUE! This week we met with a nice couple in Provo that rents photo booths for MUCH CHEAPER (is that a word?) than their competitors in the area. They are great and we are SO EXCITED for this addition to our reception! As you can tell we had fun and we know that our guests will as well!

Other updates from life... this was our week of birthdays (can you tell from our recent posts?) We were lucky to be able to celebrate our friend's/family's birthdays with them! On friday we went to Brick Oven to get dinner for Andrew's mom who was a little under the weather. Even if you are under the weather on your birthday, we are under the strong impression that you CANNOT go without your favorite food! While we were at Brick Oven we were able to order the food for our luncheon. It feels good to get that out of the way! We then opened presents with Andrew's mom and dad and then we went to dinner by ourselves. We still have many of our gift certificates to our favorite joint, staple if you will, Bajio. In following with my two birds, one stone way of doing things we ate at the Riverwoods location so that we could stop by Color Me Mine and pick out colors for our pottery to be painted at our luncheon. We decided that multiple shades of the same color would satisfy our guests creative natures while at the same time providing us everyday dish ware that matches to some extent! 

Andrew had to go to reserves so we parted early that night (not my favorite thing) and he got on the road. On saturday I was able to get a lot of errands run that I have been neglecting the past few weeks and I cleaned my room! This is quite the weekly occurrence. It is crazy how bad it gets in just one week, oh well, at least I clean frequently! I was able to go to a friend's wedding reception that night. It was really nice and it just made me all the more excited for our wedding day! Right now we are at 7 weeks and we are close to being able to count down the days! That will be exciting!

In other news Andrew will be doing a language refresher class in Ogden the second, third, and fourth weeks of April. This is compounded by the fact that he will be gone the first week of April for Nationals.  While all of these are good things I can't help but be sad about him not being around as much as I'd like. Oh well, at least it will give me more time to concentrate on school (always a good thing!). He'll come down on the weekends but naturally I want to see him much more than that! Oh well, we made 1 year apart work, we can make 4 more weeks work!

OH and today I had the privilege to shake Elder Dallin H. Oaks' hand! He was speaking at my stake conference (I'm now in Andrew's ward= his parent's ward). Since he's my great friend Krystle's favorite apostle (we all have one, don't we?) she came along with me! It was really nice to say hi and shake his hand. He gave a really stellar talk and I was really glad I could go with my friend!

It was great to have that spiritual recharge before the start of a new week! It was very much needed and will hopefully make my continual "case of the Monday's" more manageable!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Just wanted to wish my mom a belated birthday! She's been my mom for a good 29 years so far, and a great friend to me. I hope that she liked her zebra birthday card that we gave her and that she finds some good books to read with her gift certificate! We love you mom!

Happy Birthday Cindy!

Today is our dear friend, Cindy's birthday! This post is kindof late since we've been partying it up with her tonight! We want her to know that we love her dearly and consider her part of the family! We are excited for many more birthdays and many more fun adventures! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! WE LOVE YOU!

Our Friend Fel!

So today is our friend Melanie's birthday! We want to wish her a happy birthday by dedicating a special blog post to her! She is a great person and we are so lucky that she is our friend! She goes by Felanie Melanie which means she likes to keep things fun (we just call her Fel for short!). We have enjoyed beating Super Mario World with her and working to get all the coins and unlocking everything on our wii (canons and guitar hero songs!) Here's to more birthday's for our friend and many more years of friendship!

The Last Two Weeks!

Where do the weeks go? It seems that they just fly by! I need a break from grading, so I've decided to capitalize on this break time to update everyone on our comings and goings.

Lets, see...last weekend we went to the brand new Nickel City with Cindy and Clark. It was SUPER busy but we had a really good time. Andrew and I hit the jackpot a few times on some games so we won more tickets than  normal for us. We ended up getting a pretty awesome ball and some safari animals to grow. Cindy and Clark cashed their tickets in for some bling for cindy's finger and a ton of lemonheads for clark. After Nickelcity we all went back to my place and played some Raving Rabbids t.v. party. For more information about this crazy game, take a look at this video....
http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m13TLXHUWKAAID

On Saturday Andrew went snowboarding and I went to work. After both we got all spiffed up to go to the temple. We needed food so we went on a quest (and quite the quest it was) to find some suitable sustenance before our session. We first tried Brick Oven (packed), then Pizza Pie Cafe (packed), then the Macaroni Grill (packed), we were just about to go get some subway when we decided to try this place called Shoots. It had no wait and a menu that we both could find something that we liked. IT WAS AMAZING! We both were really surprised at how much we enjoyed ourselves and just the dining experience. The food was great, the atmosphere was calming, and the company was the BEST! After we were sufficiently full we went to the temple and did a 8:00 session. It was great. It was just a good experience to have a "Temple Date Night" with each other.

On Sunday we went to church and hunkered down for the night by watching the Hockey Gold Medal game. I finished putting stamps on the wedding invitations (I learned my lesson from the Super Bowl and didn't force Andrew to help). We were sad that USA lost but felt that they put up a really good fight.

This past week we have just been running errands, getting wedding stuff taken care of, and trying to keep up with work/school!

This Friday Andrew took me out to the Macaroni Grill and we had yummy Italian food (our favorite cuisine). After food, we were going to go to Comedy Sports but they were all sold out. Luckily there were other activities for us to go to in downtown Provo. We went to a art gallery to look at their wares and then found a event called "Bowls for Humanity" that benefited the Provo Food Bank. I thought it was a pretty ingenious concept. Basicallly what you do is go buy a pottery bowl that ranged from $1-20 (all money went to the Provo Food Bank) and included in that purchase was a bowl of soup to enjoy for your contribution to the charity.

I picked out a cute little bowl that Andrew bought for me. I think it will serve as a great food-prep tool to sit next to the stove someday... We had already eaten so we didn't get any soup but it was nice to help out the charity a bit. More information found here...
http://www.foodandcare.org/media_room/archives/bowls_for_humanity.php

On Saturday I went glasses shopping with my friend Mark while Andrew was snowboarding. Afterwards Andrew and I went to watch a movie at one of my professor's house for a class that I am in. It was quite interesteing. If you have a few hours in your house and a high-speed internet connection check out Darkon on Hulu movies. It's an interesting documentary...

Finally on Sunday we went to church and hung out with our friends. It was fun to just sit around and play some games before the week began

That brings us back to Monday and back to the grind. Good luck during the week all of our friends! Look forward to St. Patrick's day and don't get pinched! Buy your green garb early!

OH. MY. GROODNESS!

So today my wonderful English friends from a cute little etsy shop called jamball sent me my last bouquet pictures and I was ECSTATIC about the results! This is a picture of the bouquet (without the leaves-- which will be added shortly!) and I think it looks fan-freakin-tastic!

Death and Taxes

While searching YouTube earlier for a clip to present in my class I found these short videos that are quite well-made. Since we are well into the tax season I thought I would share where that money is going (well at least according to 2004 figures). It is intresting to see what the gov spends (or doesen't)...take a gander...