The Big 2-3!

Its official! I'm 23 as of right now! 23 isn't a really exciting age and I'm sitting at home alone till 2:00 for my birthday but oh well. Guess I'll just relax all day. Happy birthday to me! Sam's birthday is on Tues and we'll be in SLC because he has a job interview on Wed! Happy birthday and job interview to him!! :)

One year older and wiser too,

Whit

Thanksgiving!

So Thanksgiving this year was purely awesome! We went down to St. George on the night of the 21st and spent two days with my family. Then on Wed we left for Jacob Lake, AZ. Sam's mom's side of the family (70+ people) was all getting together there at the lodge. We were there Wed-Sat. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground but other than being cold the weather was lovely. Sam's younger brother brought his Xbox Kinect and everyone got to play it. The dancing game was the biggest hit for the whole family. People of all ages and dancing abilities played and we had great competitions and great laughs (Jairus vs Nick!). We also did karaoke and had a blast!

We ate TONS of WONDERFUL food! On T-day morning we had breakfast then I went into the kitchen and helped anyone that needed help with food prep. I LOVED it! Having access to unlimited food and cooking supplies was a dream come true! We had a wonderful dinner that night and then a few hours later dug into the never ending supply of desserts. So many pies! I made marshmallow brownies and Better Than Sex Cake. They were devoured which made me happy. :)

The next day we did yoga with some family which felt great then went to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It cost $25 to get into the park which was way lame seeing as no one was there. It was really cool to see the Grand Canyon all snow covered and there were very few people there so no lines or jostling about which was nice. Sat morning we got up and packed and then headed back to St. George for another turkey dinner with my family and my two grandmas. That food was just as good and I'm so glad we got to see both of our families. :) I'm proud to say that I didn't gain any weight over Thanksgiving and that I can't wait till next year!

Whit

(Sorry that there aren't any pictures. I'm lame)

We're Alive!

Wow its been forever since I posted! I'll give you all a quick run through of what's happened since my last post:

July: Went to Lake Powell with my family and the Tolman's and had a blast!

August: Got LASIK!!!!!! I LOVE IT! :D I graduated with my Bachelors too!

Sept: Can't think of what we did . . . probably hung out with friends and family and did a lot of nothing.

Oct: Sam had some job interviews in SLC. We took my two youngest siblings trick or treating. My little brother was a mime, my little sister was a Spanish princess, Sam was Superman and I was Lois Lane. :)

Nov: Holy crap I can't believe its already November! There's snow on the ground now and I'm none to happy about it. Two of my sisters in law ran the St. George Half Marathon and did awesome and we spent the weekend partying. Way fun

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and I'm SO excited! We're going to Jacob Lake to celebrate with all of Sam's mom's family. Christmas will be here before I know it too and we'll be with my family this year. That reminds me, I need to get my Christmas shopping done and figure out what I'm going to make for Thanksgiving! I hope everyone has a great holiday season!!

You Put the Lime in the Coconut . . .

Its finally here!! The post about our cruise! Sorry to all you faithful readers . . . ha! What I really mean is the handful of friends and family that read this blog occasionally. I'll try to keep the pictures to a modest amount.

Day 1

- Drove to SLC then flew to Atlanta, Georgia then flew to Miami, Florida. Sam took a quick nap in the Atlanta airport.

- Slept in a questionable hotel. "Mmm . . . I'd say one in six" "What?" "Oh I thought you asked me what our chances were of being murdered here tonight." Is what I thought and said outloud to Sam. Haha. Thank you Jim Halpert.

Day 2

- Went to port and boarded the ship. Our ship was the Carnival Valor. We couldn't get over how truly huge the ship was. sam said it was like being on a floating casino. Here's a pic of Miami from our ship while we were waiting to depart.

- It was Mother's Day that day so we called both our mom's and told them Happy Mother's Day.

- We just wandered the ship taking everything in until our room was open.

- We watched out the window as the ship turned around headed out to sea. Pretty crazy that something so big floats and moves.

Day 3

- Day at Sea. We spent the whole day on the ship going to shows, eating and just getting used to the layout of the ship.

- It was formal dinner night so we got dressed up all snazzy. Please note that in the picture I am wearing 6-inch pink heels. The dining room was on the opposite end of the ship from our room so my feet were already killing me by the time we got to dinner.

- Speaking of dinner, we ate in the dining room every night and the food was amazing! We tried escargot, caviar, duck and a bunch more things that we'd never tried before. :)

Day 4

- Our first stop! We got to the Grand Caymans in the morning and got on a ferry to go to the pier. So excited!

- We wandered around a bit then joined our group on a bus ride to Dolphin Cove. We got to swim with dolpins!! We were supposed to swim with sting rays too but that part got cancelled because the wind was too bad at the sting ray bar so we just upgraded to swim with the dolphins. They wouldn't let us take any pictures when we were in the water because they wanted us to buy the pictures that their photographers took. So we only have a few pictures of the dolphins playing on the rubber pad on one of the docks before we swam with them. I seriously giggled like a little girl the whole time! I LOVED IT! We got to pet her and hold her and she pulled us through the water and gave us kisses. I was in heaven!

Day 5

- We arrived at our next stop in the morning which was Roatan, Honduras. It was beautiful! We rented a "clam shell" shade spot with two beach chairs and then went and snorkeled for a good hour or more. It was basically a day of relaxing on the beach.

- We got SO sunburned!!! We'd put sunscreen on and everything but I guess the sun is way stronger close to the equator so needless to say our little lobster bodies were fried. Still had fun though. We bought a fresh coconut and got to drink the milk then the guy cracked it open for us and we got to eat the meat. So good!

Day 6

- Arrived in Belize! This was our favorite stop becasue we got to actually drive through the country on a little tour and see what the country is really like as opposed to the tourist trap areas we usually saw.

- We went cave tubing here which was perfect because we'd gotten so sunburned the day before that we needed the shade. We walked through the jungle on our way to the caves which was beautiful! We wore helmets with head lamps and life vests as we sat in our tubes and floated through these huge caves that have been naturally carved by the river we were in.

- We got to see a cashew fruit and tree. Totally not what you expect. The nut grows out of the bottom of the fruit which is really soft like a tomato. They make cashew wine out of the fruit and it takes an entire cashew tree to fill one can of cashews.

- When we got back to the pier we decided to walk around the streets behind the pier and go through the street vendor shops. That was a little crazy but I'm glad we did it. Sam got offered drugs twice. Haha. One guy out right showed him a bag of weed and asked if he wanted it. Another guy said, "We also have a 'pharmacy'." Haha. Oh and this is Sam's sunburn. Some lady attacked him and started rubbing the inside of a cactus palm on his skin claiming it helps sunburn. She than asked for $5. He got felt up for $5. Haha

Day 7

- We got to Cozumel, Mexico this day. We had to cancel our SCUBA excursion because we were too sunburned and didn't want all that gear strapped onto our tender flesh. Haha. So we did a cooking class instead. It was actually really fun. The chef was funny and taught us how to decorate our plates and make an appetizer, main course and dessert.

- We were sad we couldn't swim because the water was absolutely beautiful but we got to people watch and take pictures instead. Sam also bought the Nacho Libre mask. Haha

Day 8

- Last day at Sea. It was another fun filled day of lounging around the ship on our way back to the USA. We played Roulette in the casino a few times during the week and Sam won $75. I lost all my money both times I played so I let Sam play. He lost $40 the next night and was not pleased about it. Haha

Day 9

- We made it back to Miami in one piece having had a wonderful time. The shuttle picked us up and took us to the Fort Lauderdale airport . . . . . our flight was out of the Miami airport. We had to get a cab to take us to the Miami airport and $75 later we were pissed. Luckily we just thought back on all the fun we had on the cruise and didn't let the cab ride ruin everything.

- We had a layover in Minnesota, another in Denver then it was into SLC. We slept for most of the plane rides. We also were wondering where the city of Denver actually was. There was nothing around the airport. Haha

So it was a wonderful trip! We celebrated our 2nd Wedding Anniversary while we were on the ship as well as my graduating from college. The steward crew would turn down our bed every night and make us a towel animal. I was always excited to get back from dinner to see what they had made. We bought a few souveniers and bought my brother a birthday gift. Cruises are the way to go! We highly recommend them!

Happy Belated Mother's Day

As luck would have it Sam and I got married the day before Mother's Day so this means our anniversary is right close to or right on Mother's Day every year. We've been gone for Mother's Day for the past 3 years to celebrate our wedding and our anniversaries. This year we were on a cruise so I just wanted to give a shout out to my mom and mother in law. My mom has taught me so much that has made the transition into marriage so easy. Cooking and sewing/quilting are some of my favorite things to do now. She's a really hard worker and is always there for all of us kids. I love how much our friendship has grown over the last few years. Just wanted to let her know I love her lots! Marle, my mother in law, is one of the sweetest people I know. She too is an amazing mother and it astounds me that she gave birth to and raised 9 kids. She's such an awesome, caring person. Wanted to let her know I love her too! Yay Mother's Day!

Looking Forward

I just wanted to jot down a few things that I'm looking forward to in the next few months:
- Graduation: Tomorrow and Saturday are my graduation ceremonies! I picked up my tassel and medallion today. I am graduating Magna Cum Laude. That means my GPA is between 3.6 and 3.8 if I remember right.
- Summer School: This may be confusing but I'm going walk at graduation this weekend then finish the last few credits I need this summer. I'm taking Nutrition, Principles of Effective Parenting and Human Nutrition. Each class is online so I'm really going to have to push myself to study every day. Another reason summer school makes me happy is that I got a grant for it so its free school and since I'm taking 9 credits we still get scholarship housing for the summer so no paying rent till August. :)
- Our Cruise!: We're going on a 7 day Caribbean cruise in 9 days!! Its our wedding anniversary trip and a celebration of my graduation. Neither of us have been on a cruise before so we can hardly wait! We're going to the Grand Cayman Islands, Honduras, Beliz and Cozumel, Mexico. Keep and eye on that countdown in the upper right corner of this page. :D
- Snowbird: We may only be able to stay for a day or two since Sam has a weird work schedule but we always enjoy our time with his family up there. :)
- Finding a Job within My Field: I'm not totally excited for the job search but I'm excited to look for a job where I can use the skills I learned while in college. Not sure where I'm going to apply but odds are we'll be out of Cedar relatively soon. :)
- Reading for Pleasure: I love to read but I feel I've been reading far too many textbooks as of late. Time to get some fun reads in. Hit me with your suggestions.

- Selling Textbooks: I don't know why this gives me such pleasure but it does. I make almost exactly what I paid for my textbooks online as opposed for getting $10 from the bookstore. I haven't been bringing in any money for a few months now so this will feel good to contribute a little something to our bank account. :)

- Being More Housewife-y: I love to cook and bake and do stuff for Sam and now that I'll be out of school pretty much permanently I can do more stuff for him. Lots of fun recipes to try out there. :)

- Cutting My Hair: I'm cutting my hair on Monday. I need suggestions asap! The only thing I'm thinking of doing is cutting to be like Oprah's hairstyle which has lots of big layers but I don't know if it will look good on me. Please send me suggestions! I'm pretty sure I'm taking 6 inches off though!

Any ways, just wanted to make a list of things to remind myself to be happy and to count my blessings. Happy days are ahead!

The Stupid Bowl written by Sam

My dad, is the smartest, strangest, most talented, simplest, yet most complicated man alive. I'm sure of it. Conflicted you say? well, yes. But many famous people shared such conflicting attributes: Einstein, Newton, Howard Hughes... And with such conflicting characteristics also came the occasional bursts of genius. I submit that the following idea that came from my father was that of the genius nature. But you can decide for yourself.

This idea has the potential to change, not only football, but ALL sports around the world FOREVER and likewise has the potential to drastically increase sports sales and fan base. The brilliant theory is this: "The Stupid Bowl". It's like the Super Bowl in which the two best teams of the year are competing for the title of "Best Team of the Year". However, in this case the two worst teams of the year would be fighting to avoid the prize of "Worst Team of the Year". Winners of the stupid bowl are actually the losers.

I believe that the the teams in the Stupid Bowl would fight with double the gusto of the teams in the Super Bowl. I really think that the desire to avoid being the biggest loser is greater than the desire to be the biggest winner. And what a game it would be!

Think about it! Rather than watch two equally gifted teams we could watch two equally stupid teams doing all they can just scrambling to survive, just so that they don't have to be deemed the Stupid Bowl winner, which would actually be the loser. Who wants to watch the Colts and the Saints when we could watch the Lions and the Bills?Imagine all the excitement we have been missing out on with those professionally trained teams. At the Stupid Bowl we would have double the penalties, double the fumbles, interceptions, fights, and double the running the wrong way to the opponents end zone.

And this just begins with football. This would spread to soccer, basketball, table-tennis, figure skating. . . It gets better the more I think about it. Limitless potential!

Who's with me? If anything it would be an opportunity to see some of the strongest, biggest, and most over-paid men red in the face, embarrassed, humbled. Heck I bet we could make em cry! I don't know about you, but I love to see a good millionaire cry.

Dad, you are brilliant!

Mad Scientist

So, I have no idea why I'm doing this but I felt that it would be fun to compile a list of everything I've dissected over the years. Oh the "fun" that we biology majors have. Haha.

8th Grade:
Watched my science teacher dissect a fetal pig

9th Grade:
Dissected a fetal pig pretty much by myself. The girls in my group wouldn't touch it. We got the perfect pig though. Other groups got hairy, oozy piggies and that was ever so gross.

10th Grade:
Didn't dissect anything but my hand in chemistry lab. Shattered a glass tube right in to my palm. It was the first lab of the year. Great way to start things. Got me out of PE for a while. I do believe that was the only time my chemistry teacher was nice to me. Curse her.

11th Grade:
Dissected a cow eye and a sheep heart for AP Biology. Those were probably my favorite ones. Cow's eyes are gigantic.

12th Grade:
I don't think we did any dissections but I did have to job shadow 3 people in fields that I found interesting. I chose a podiatrist, an orthopedic surgeon and a maxiofacial surgeon. At the podiatrist's office I watched him remove ingrown toenail after ingrown toenail. One little 3 year old girl had to be held down by 2 nurses and her mother because she was so afraid of needles they couldn't numb her for the procedure. :( I had to leave for that one. I couldn't stand to hear her scream. At the orthopedic surgeon's office I got to see way more old people butts than I wanted because he was doing post-op check ups on their hip replacements. At the maxiofacial surgeon's office I watched him remove wisdom teeth and heard the teeth crunching out of the jaw bone. I had just gone to the dentist that morning and was still terribly numb from the worst cavity filling experience I've ever had. Not a happy day.

Freshman Year of College:
Made our own yogurt and spliced a glow gene from bacteria in to the DNA of bacteria and it made them glow. No dissections though.

Sophomore Year of College:
No dissections. Just trying to get all my credits done for my Associates.

Junior Year of College:
Dissected a black and white rat we named Oreo. Again, my lab partners wouldn't touch it so I did the whole thing. We dissected a starfish that I seriously couldn't handle. I didn't think it would be gross but oh my goodness I could barely bring myself to touch it. I'm not a fan of things that come from the sea unless they're marine mammals.

Senior Year of College:
So far just a lamprey which is another disgusting thing from the sea. I just dissected it yesterday and it cut like soft string cheese. I'm glad I could ruin that food for all of you. But in this same class the docket is full of dissections. Here's the list: salamander, rat, sheep heart, dogfish (a kind of shark), sheep kidney, and sheep brain. Oh and we have to examine cadavers that another class will be dissection. NOT excited for that. I thought I could get through my whole college experience without having to do cadavers but they got me my last semester. :(

For those of you that are not biology majors I hope you've enjoyed this extensive list of my schooling experiences. I decided not to bore you with the labs that we had to draw phylogenies or draw things in jars, or sticking things in tubes and put them in machines and such. Biology: Not for those that get grossed out easily. And I have to let you all know I cut myself on a microscope the first or second week of class. Leave it to me to find the one sharp corner on a microscope. I definitely deserve a Bachelor's in Biology. Ha

I'm out.

Whit

Happy Belated Holidays!

We had a very eventful and fun holiday season. We spent Christmas Eve with our friends Spencer and Kelli and we went and looked at Christmas lights around town even though the car windows wouldn't de-fog for anything. Haha. We went back to our place and played Rock Band on our Wii for a while. Christmas morning Sam got home from work at 6 a.m. and we jumped right in the car and drove down to my family's house in St. George. We joined everyone in seeing what Santa had brought then we all sat down to my family's traditional Christmas breakfast of green pancakes with strawberry syrup and whipped cream and green eggs and ham. SO yummy. :) After that we all sat around and opened all the gifts under the tree. The gift I received that was my favorite was a telephoto lens for my camera from Sam. He totally surprised me! I really really love it. I think Sam's favorite present was the new albums of Blue October and Pearl Jam that I got him. We both really love the game Wii Sports Resort that we got too. After all the present were opened Sam went upstairs to get some shut eye and I hung out with my family. We played a lot of Wii Sports Resort and I took my sister and her dog to the dog park. When Sam got up we just kept the fun going and spent time with my grandma, step grandpa and my uncle who came over for lunch. We drove home that evening so Sam could go to work.

The next day when Sam woke up we got in the car and drove up to SLC to spend the weekend with Sam's family. We hung out with our friends that night and stayed up way late but we loved every second. I got to drive my father in law's brand new black '99 Corvette over to our friend's house. FUN! The next morning we had breakfast with our friends and watched a bunch of episodes of Modern Family which is hilarious! We went back to Sam's parents house and got ready for family pictures. I'm so excited to get them back. :) We all went back and had Christmas dinner and all the couples did gift exchanges. It was really fun to have all of Sam's family together. They're awesome. The next day we spent the day shopping and found Sam some jeans and me some new tops. We enjoyed dinner at Applebee's together and then headed home.

For New Year's Sam had to work so I went down to my family's house and spent a few days with my family partying as much as married people do. I played Mexican Train with my parents and sisters and got to see a lot of people from the neighborhood I grew up in. One of the best things is I got to go to Costco with my mom. Its the greatest place on earth. :)

We had a great holiday and are very blessed to spend with both our families and can't wait to do it again. Happy Holidays to all!!

Whit