I just wanted to post a few pictures from Christmas time.
We went up to Temple Square with Jason's siblings and had fun with that. Jason was learning how to manipulate our new camera and had fun playing with the lighting.
The City Creek Center lights were very pretty.
Temple Square is always gorgeous
Jason got artistic
We spent Christmas Eve with my family and did the usual enactment of the Nativity dressed up in Middle East costumes.
We have completely slacked off on the blog updating this summer. Anyway, a quick update of what is going on in our lives...
We are expecting a baby boy due on December 26th! I luckily did not get the awful morning sickness that my mom and sister both get (throwing up several times a day up through month 4). I did feel queasy and didn't feel like eating much, but I only threw up once after Jason made me a smoothie. The smoothie wasn't bad or anything, but it is fun to tease him about it anyway. :) I am feeling good these days (I'm currently in week 24). Just a little tired. Anyway, we are pretty excited trying to prepare to become parents and think of a name and all that fun stuff.
I was never very good at deciphering ultrasound pics, but this one is pretty clear
Jason worked hard this summer working for catering and also being a TA for a psychology class. He also studied hard and took the MCAT in August. We are now trying to figure out if we should wait a year to apply since it is so late or go for it this cycle still. Jason also just started Fall Semester at BYU and is taking some exciting and difficult classes. One of his classes is Anatomy--hence the fake bones that are sitting next to me on the couch that he brought home to review. I think one of them is the Coccyx. This week he gets to start working with the actual cadavers, so he is excited for that.
Studying the body can have the effect of making you contemplate life or pretend to
I graduated in August and am now teaching at a private ESL (English as a Second Language) school in Provo. Things are going great so far. I am learning a lot and am having fun teaching English to students (ages 14-60+) from all over the world. It's very exciting to see them progress.
Here are some pictures of the fun things we've done the last few weeks.
Sanpete County Fair in Manti at the Andelin Family Reunion. Do you see the temple in the background?
First football game of the season against Washington State.
For Labor Day we went up to my uncle's ranch with a bunch of family members and rode horses & 4-wheelers, hiked, and had a great time. I think it was Jason's 3rd or 4th time riding horses. He did a good job. This is him on Dixie.
Me on Lily. Jason took this picture while on his horse. I think that's why my head is slightly cut off. :)
So, for Memorial Day Weekend we flew to California. Jason's dad got called as bishop in the Singles Ward in their stake, so we wanted to be there for his setting apart. We also got to spend some time at Disneyland for my first time and have lots of fun just relaxing and spending time with family.
We woke up at 4 A.M. MDT on Friday morning to get to the airport in time to fly to CA. We got to CA pretty early as well then headed straight to Disneyland. Jason's mom dropped us off and we spent the morning going on rides and having fun. Star Tours was my very first ride and it did not disappoint. It was a lot of fun. Some of my other favorites were Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, and Splash Mountain. Jason's mom joined us after lunch and we did the required Tea Cups ride which actually turned out to be a lot of fun. I think we were spinning it by hand the entire time which made us stumble off the ride very dizzy at the end. We met up with Jason's dad shortly thereafter and headed to California Adventure.
First picture at Disneyland!
Jason loved these robots in Star Tours
Jason told me "This is the closest you'll ever get to having a CA driver's license"
Autopia!!!
Self portrait
Fantasy Land
Jungle Cruise
Splash Mountain
Pirates!
Trying on Captain Sparrow's hat. It looks better on him. :)
French quarter. New Orleans.
Trying to pull the sword from the stone.
Tea cups!
So excited for California Screamin'!
At California Adventure we walked around for a bit looking at the different sites and then Jason's parents stood in line at the Toy Story Midway Mania ride while Jason and I went to ride California Screamin'. The line was long, but the ride was worth the wait. I haven't been on a roller coaster that intense for a loooong time. You know the kind where you get that tingly feeling in your stomach because you are going so fast and so high? It was awesome. We joined Jason's parents in line for the Toy Story ride and it was lots of fun. I even beat Jason in points on one of the games. For dinner we ate at Ariel's Grotto. Very good food. They had this delicious cheese that made me miss France. We then went to save our spots for the World of Color show that started at 9. Jason's dad insisted on being in the very front, right against the railing, and a few feet from the water. They were great front-row seats and it was a beautiful show, but we were all pretty wet and cold by the end. The show was definitely worth it though. Jason took a couple videos of it, hopefully they turned out okay because I'm posting some of them on here for your viewing pleasure. We went on one last ride, Soarin' over California, before splitting up. Jason's parents headed home and we headed back to Disneyland for one more ride, Buzz Lightyear. It was fun, but we were pretty worn out and cold after that so we headed home and went straight to bed.
Toy Story Midway Mania. Sweet 3D glasses huh?
We didn't get to ride on the Mickey Ferris Wheel, but we watched the lights on it for an hour while waiting for World of Color.
This was the dessert bar at Ariel's Grotto. Delicious.
Jane's ride worked. Too bad I can't figure out how to rotate this picture though.
Sunday was a nice relaxing day. We went to Jason's parents' ward in the morning and then after a quick lunch at home we headed back to the church for the Singles' Ward where Jason's dad was sustained as bishop and gave a very nice testimony. We also attended the setting apart just after Sacrament Meeting. It was all very nice. We had family dinner afterwards and had fun visiting with everyone.
In line for the Peter Pan ride
On Monday, we woke up early and headed off to Disneyland to go on the rides we missed on Friday. We went on the Peter Pan ride, Snow White, Pinocchio, It's a Small World, etc. Then we went to California Adventure and got our fast passes for Tower of Terror before we walked around and went on Mickey's Silly Symphony (the swings ride). Our time eventually came for Tower of Terror and when we finally got loaded into our seats in the elevator shaft, our elevator conductor guy told us that there was a malfunction with that shaft so we had to eventually be loaded into the other elevator. While he was figuring things out for us, he put Jason in charge. One guy complained that he hadn't voted for Jason and we all had a good laugh when Jason reported him to the elevator conductor. :) We eventually did get to go on the ride and it was lots of fun. The best part is that you don't know when you are going to drop; the anticipation definitely adds to the excitement. We only stayed until about 2 PM because it was just getting crazy busy.
Had to go on Space Mountain one more time.
Class of 2012! (I graduate in August)
This is us with the optical illusion street behind us that you can't see very well.
Tower of Terror!
After we got back to the house, we all collapsed onto couches and took a nap. That evening we dropped by the Singles' Ward FHE just to see some of Jason's friends and see how his parents were enjoying their first Singles FHE. After that we were able to go to the Williamsons' house and spend some time with Jason's good friend, Ryan and his wife D.J. We also met their little boy, Owen. While we were there, we caught the end of the Dodger's game and it was fun to see how much they enjoy baseball. I didn't grow up watching or playing baseball or softball, so it's been something fun for me to see. We also watched the Bachelorette episode and had fun making fun of the funny things that always happen on that show.
Well, school and work awaited us, so we had to fly home Tuesday morning and return to real life. It was a very enjoyable and relaxing vacation and we're so grateful to Jason's parents for letting us stay with them and showing us such a good time and to other family and friends we were able to spend time with.
P.S. 3 years ago today I entered the MTC. So did Jason's brother, Brian, but I obviously didn't know him back then. :) Crazy how fast time goes by.
So, I told Jason that it was his turn to blog and he said "I'm currently eating" so I guess I will be writing the long overdue update tonight.
Things have been pretty crazy (hence the lack of blog posts) with final projects due at the end of class and finals week. But, we are DONE!!! I made it through my last finals week EVER! And Jason made it through another finals week among many to come. Poor kid. :) Now I just have some internship hours to finish up this Spring term and then I can graduate. I'm pretty excited about that. Speaking of which, I have an interview tomorrow at an internship site, so everyone send good luck my way to help with that. I'm not sure if it's a paid internship either, but I'll find out tomorrow. I will also be working this Spring term at my job on campus and Jason will be taking classes, working, and studying for the MCAT. In addition to all of those good and busy-making things, we are trying to plan some fun things to do this summer. This is our list so far:
Go to Lagoon
Visit lots of the Utah temples
Go camping
Hike Mt. Timpanogos
Go to Zion's National Park
Swim at Seven Peaks lots
Mini-golfing at Trafalga (we each have a Pass of all Passes that we received as a wedding gift)
BYU Baseball games
Disneyland (when we go to CA for a wedding)
See the new Batman movie (and others--P.S. We are finally going to go see Hunger Games on Tuesday. Yay!)
Thanksgiving Point gardens (I haven't been there for years, but I remember it being beautiful)
Sundance moonlit sky lift rides
The Beach (in CA again obviously)
Hang out with family and friends (Lise and Dan will be here for the summer, so that will be fun to see them)
Bike Rides
Well, that's what we can remember of what we had planned so far. If you have any suggestions of fun things to do in Utah, send them our way.
We had a nice Easter. Jason hid some eggs for me as well as an Easter basket which was very cute of him and fun. We went over to my parents' house for dinner and spent the afternoon with family. Here is a picture of us in my parents' backyard that afternoon. It's an Instagram image, so that's why the colors are so weird awesome. Please notice my curled hair; it took a while. My sister, Kathy, would say it doesn't look that great because the curl has fallen out, but whatever. :)
Easter Afternoon
Well, there's a brief update. Life's great, we're happy, things are 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!
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"
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!
