Life is Good

To all of our faithful followers who diligently read our blog every week, sorry for not posting last week. Who am I kidding? We don't have any of those. :) Hopefully I can catch up a little bit with this post.

Jason's grandma passed away a week ago and that made for an emotional weekend. I first met Jason's "Mimi" (as she was called by her grandchildren) in June when Jason and I were in CA to welcome Brian, Jason's brother, home from his mission. We went over to visit her one day and my first impression of her was just how sweet she was. She was so attentive to me--asking me about my family and my life in her quiet voice--and made me feel so welcome in her home. I saw her again on Christmas Eve when we had a nice family dinner together at Jason's parents' house and she was so kind in wanting to hear all about the cruise that Jason and I had been on and looking at all the pictures (the other family members I'm sure were sick of hearing about it). The last time I saw her was at our Open House in California and it was such a blessing to have her sweet presence there. I'm so grateful we were able to take some pictures with her on that occasion and so grateful for the opportunity I had to meet this wonderful woman even though I only saw her on a few occasions. We were not able to attend the funeral in California because we were both super busy with school and work and MCAT prep, so we were sad to miss that, but our thoughts were with everyone who was there.

Mine and Jason's 3 month anniversary was last Saturday on Saint Patrick's Day and much to my surprise I woke up to roses. Jason is such a thoughtful and sweet husband and so good at remembering special dates. At least for now. We'll see how he does in the years to come. :) Saturday was also a good day because I made bread for the first time since being married and it turned out well. I made some yesterday as well, so I'm having fun using my new Kitchenaid. Saturday is always such a cleanup/cooking/laundry day for us because we just don't have much time during the week to stay on top of it all with both of us being in school and working. We can't have visitors over during the week because the house is pretty messy, but we get it all clean "so we can be ready for Sunday." :)

Hmm, movie update. We watched "So I Married an Axe Murderer." It was my first time seeing it and I was surprised by how many quotes I had heard from that movie without ever knowing what they were from. Jason was surprised by how much I was freaking out at the end of the movie while he was laughing. Axes are freaky! But it was a funny and enjoyable movie. We are excited for Hunger Games and will hopefully be able to go see that this week. We read the first two books together and then I got impatient and read the third book on my own. :) But he read it too and we both really liked the books, so we are excited to see the movie.

Today at church, after Sunday School, one of the dad's in the class took a car away from his 18-month-old son to give it back to the child to whom it belonged. His son was devastated and collapsed on the floor and started sobbing. Well, Jason went up to the kid and held out his arms to him and the boy reached up to him through his tears. Jason picked him up and started consoling him and his parents were so surprised that he had reached out to Jason like that. I guess Jason is practicing to be a dad or at least trying to steal other people's children's loyalties. :) On the topic of children...there was a baby blessing earlier that day in Sacrament Meeting and I was just commenting on how cute the baby was. Jason retorted, "Easy, honey. Babies are fun until they get poopy diapers and start crying." Later in the meeting, several babies started crying and Jason looked at me giving me the "I told you so" look, but was surprised when I said, "I still want one." He thought that was pretty funny and requested that I tell the story here on the blog, so there you go.

We are having fun getting to know more people in our ward and slowly finishing organizing our apartment. I keep telling Jason, "Once I'm done with classes, I'll do ____" so I might be pretty busy this summer. :) It's our favorite thing now to talk about what we will do in the summer when we don't have school and homework to worry about. Life is good. Have a great week!

Sharing our Likes

We had a great first this week! Michelle ate sushi, and she ate a lot of it! It has been a fun tradition of mine, with some old roommates (Kent and Andrew who started me on this tradition), to go get all you can eat sushi up in American Fork. Granted it's not super high quality of fish, but they have fun sushi rolls to eat and they are pretty tasty. It is always a treat to be taken care of by a Japanese man named Randy, with Mexicans rolling the sushi behind the bar, and music in background that ranges from Avril Lavigne, to Taylor Swift, then Techno. It's quite the experience, let me tell you. But we had a contest this time, to see who could eat the most pieces of sushi. Brian did the best eating some 40+ pieces of sushi, I ate a fair amount at 35 and Michelle did 22 pieces. What was funny was that Andrew had only eaten 20 so when Michelle ate the same amount he was forced to eat more. He wasn't too happy to do it seeing as he is a lightweight when it comes to eating sushi. Other fun features of sushi night are that Kent will post the best comments of the night on Twitter and that they have paper place settings for the occasional drawing or doodling, which includes pencil, wasabi, ginger, and soy sauce. You need to get creative at these places.

That's "Asian Michelle eating Sushi" drawn by MOI

Another highlight that we had this week was the attendance at the Provo Temple and JCW's after. The temple was a sweet time as Brian and I were able to sit next to each other and we both were thinking about the health and well being of our Mimi, who is sick and in the hospital now. Michelle and I decided that we still love each other after 2 months and 4 weeks being married, always a plus :-). JCW's has some good eats. Great Guacamole bacon burger, Michelle can't stop eating the fries. I have figured out a way to prevent her from eating mine and that is to put Malt vinegar on it with extra salt.  It keeps her sticky fingers off my fries.

I have kept with the family Saturday tradition of playing classic rock in a black leather interior car. Saturday mornings can have any music or video played as the house gets clean but in the car stereo in the morning and afternoon belongs to "The Doors". Thanks dad.

Now since those are the highlights of the week, I get to share some of the fun videos that Michelle and I like.  We found this the other night and we still don't fully understand what is going on.

The light bulb to houses part still gets me... I get that the baseball is an onion and it is "diced" but a pepper to houses?

This one is a fun one to watch. The only problem that Michelle has with it is that the car is hitting the piano in the same place each time but it plays different notes, my untrained ears can't tell.

Now Michelle mentioned last week that we had to give a talk in Sacrament meeting today, and we may or may not have procrastinated writing those talks till only a few hours before church started. We were assigned the topic "Listen to the Spirit." Michelle drew most of talk from Elder Jay Jensen's talk in a CES fireside in January and I remembered a Mormon Message with then Elder Faust of the Quorum of the Twelve.  Here it is: 

If you watch any video, make sure it is this one and the one by "The Doors". When I looked up the full version of this talk I was very much impressed by the prophetic nature of one the paragraphs in his talk, "The Voice of the Spirit" which was given in 1993.

               " In your generation you will be barraged by multitudes of voices telling you how to live, how to gratify your passions, how to have it all. You will have up to five hundred television channels at your fingertips. There will be all sorts of software, interactive computer modems, databases, and bulletin boards; there will be desktop publishing, satellite receivers, and communications networks that will suffocate you with information. Local cable news networks will cover only local news. Everyone will be under more scrutiny. There will be fewer places of refuge and serenity. You will be bombarded with evil and wickedness like no other generation. As I contemplate this prospect, I am reminded of T. S. Eliot's words, "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" (The Rock [1934], I)." 

 When I heard and read this part of the talk i could only think that this talk was given when Mark Zuckerberg was still in on the playground pulling girls' hair to show that he liked them. This is what competes for our time and sadly I sometimes listen to a social voice that does not satisfy, nor uplift. I guess some reassessing my time is in order. 

Well friends, another Monday comes and I hope you aren't attacked by a case of the MUNDAYs

SORRY ONE MORE, and I promise it's the last.  When I was talking to my dad this week he made me think of a scene from "So I married an Axe Murderer"  

Mute for CONTENT at time :45-46

New Callings, Leap Day and Grocery Shopping

So, by now Jason and I have both been fully integrated in the ward it seems. We both have a calling and are speaking in church next week. I was called as the Relief Society activities leader and a few weeks later Jason received a call as secretary in the Sunday School Presidency. We just got back from dinner at the Sunday School president's house with the rest of the presidency and their wives. The food was delicious and it was fun to get to know some more people in the ward.

In other news, we are both staying busy with school and work. Getting down to the last six weeks of the semester is exciting. Okay, I guess that's almost half left, but still, pretty exiting to be getting close. Then I'll just have a few more internship hours to do and I'll be done!

On Tuesday night we went with Jason's friend Craig and watched Star Wars Episode 1 in 3D which apparently is not the best one, but it was fun for me because it is the one Star Wars movie that I saw in the theater with my family when it first came out.

For Leap Day we decided to make Jason's mom's sugar cookie recipe. We had to get some ingredients so we took a quick trip to Target and stopped by Skipper's to get free chowder with coupons from the Daily Universe. Jason said they didn't taste exactly like his mom's cookies, but that they were pretty good.

Don't let my demon eyes disturb you

I saw something on a friend's blog that looked fun so I decided to do it here even though Leap Day is past.

Last Leap Day: Jason and I did not know each other. I was here at BYU taking some fun classes and living a few blocks south of campus with my cousin and some other friends. I was getting ready to go to Sweden that summer and was having fun. Jason on the other hand was working hard on his mission in Argentina.

Today: We are living in Provo going to BYU having fun learning more about each other and making our little apartment a home. I graduate in June and Jason will finish up in April 2013.

Next Leap Day: I asked Jason where he thought we would be in four years and he said we would probably have one or two kids and that we would be going to medical school someplace other than Utah. He's not a huge fan of Utah. I'm sure we'll be having fun together somewhere and learning lots.

On Friday night Jason had to take a test to I went home for a bit and went to my sisters' high school basketball game. They won and went on to the semi-finals the next day, but sadly lost that game.

Saturday we were pretty boring and ran a few errands, cleaned, and did homework all day. Speaking of running errands...we decided that Jason can't go shopping with me anymore. We always seem to spend at least twice as much on groceries when we go shopping together rather than me going by myself.

Anyway, that's our week. Not super exciting, but we're loving life and having fun. Have a great one!