Family in Town!

We have been so lucky to be able to have so much family in town lately! First, my parents and my grandma came to provo for Emily's graduation. We were so happy to be able to see Emily graduate and spend time with family. Doesn't she look great?! Go Emily!



After Emily's graduation my parents went to Mesquite to spend some time at their future retirement home. Last weekend Willie and I, and Joe and Emily, drove down to there to visit and celebrate Ron's birthday with them. It was such a fun trip! We arrived late Friday night. Saturday morning the men went golfing while the girls slept in, had breakfast, and watched The Next Food Network Star.


Ron's brother and his wife flew in for the day and we all had lunch together and visited when the guys got back from golfing. Later that night we did presents, and then went to the Tuachan in St. George to see Tarzan. It was so fun!!! I love going to plays, especially musicals. It was in this really cool outdoor theater and had cool special effects. One of the best was when the stage flooded when Tarzan's parents' ship got destroyed and they were floating through the wilderness. I was also thrilled to hear that they are going to put on The Little Mermaid next year. Yay! I really want to go.

One of the fun things about Tuachan is that after the play you can go meet the actors and take pictures with them. Willie, my mom, and I went around and met some of them.

This guy played Tarzan's best friend, Turk (Terk? I don't know).

These guys were really funny. They were extremely in character, and still acting like apes. They put both of our arms around them. After we took our pictures, I saw one of them chasing a little kid around and grunting.

A couple of days after our Mesquite trip, one of Willie's sister's, Marcie, flew into town for a couple of weeks! It's been so fun hanging out with her. And, she is here for a week and a half more. Yay! We love having family in town!! :)

Changing Time

This month has been full of a lot of changes for Willie and I! A lot of my family and friends know that changes can be stressful for me. I used to be worse than I am now. Old roommates (ahem Jenna) will remember me getting a little sad at the end of each semester just because it meant something was ending and changing. Even classes that I wasn't too fond of...still sad they were ending. Weird, I know. I've gotten better about this throughout the years, and more able to look at change as a positive thing. But, they do still stress me out sometimes. Even when they are good.

That being said, these past few changes have been great ones! First off, Willie and I moved into our own place! Willie's parents were so nice to let us stay at their house for about a month and a half while we figured out where we were going to live. We finally decided (with a little help from Willie's brother and his wife :) ) to move to....Wymount!

Wymount is BYU's student family housing. I was a little hesitant, but I must admit I love it so far. I would love it if for only the fact that Willie and I now have our OWN APARTMENT! It is so exciting and fun!! That's not the only reason I love it, though. I am so excited to be living right by Robbie and Kelli! And, the apartment has a pretty good layout (even if it is lacking in storage space...and ac...and a dishwasher), and the few people that I have met in our ward so far seem nice. I'm pretty happy with our decision. Our apartment is still cluttered with a million boxes that I have banged up my poor feet on bunches of times, and is lacking majorly with some important things (like trash cans, shower curtains, silverware...little things like that). But, Willie's mom has spent a lot of time helping me decorate and unpack, and slowly but surely our little apartment is coming along. Overall, good change!

The second big change in my life is that I quit my job!! That was a pretty nerve-wracking decision for me. After one of Willie's family friends encouraged me at our wedding, I decided that I wanted to take classes this year so that I can hopefully participate in the Alternate Route to Licensure program to get certified to teach in Utah. Besides the fact that I wasn't a huge fan of my job at the time, I got home way late every night and had a huge commute. Taking classes and staying there seemed like it would be pretty hard.

So, I took a leap of faith (after lots of encouragement from my mom, Willie, and the lady in the main office at my work who I cried to about how much I wanted to quit one day...kind of embarrassing), and quit without a job lined up. AH! That was scary for me. But, everything has worked out great. My last day of my job was today, and I start my new job tomorrow at Odyssey Charter School! I worked there my first year out of college, and loved it. I will be working as an instructor in either a first grade or kindergarten classroom. I will be helping out in the classroom, and helping teach different small groups within the classroom. I'm a little nervous (please refer to paragraph one of this post), but am excited to start tomorrow!

I'm so happy with all of the changes that have taken place. It is nice to have things fall into place so well!

Our Honeymoon--Part 1

For our honeymoon we went on a Carnival Cruise to the Mexican Riviera. It was the best! We'd both never been on a cruise, and it was so fun. I know with time we'll forget the details and where all the pictures were taken, so I want to make sure to write it all down. So, here it is.

After our wedding we made a stop at JCW's, then went to the Marriott at Thanksgiving Point. The next morning we ate at I HOP for breakfast, then started our drive down to Mesquite. Even though we had two long driving days, they were so nice because we just got to talk and enjoy being with each other after all of the wedding and school craziness of the past few weeks.
Willie has pretty sensitive eyes, and they were killing him the day after our wedding because he wore his contacts for so long that day. He couldn't even look into the light they were so bad. It was sad. So, we stopped at Walmart and bought 3 different kinds of eye drops for him, and I drove us down to Mesquite. I didn't want to wash off our" Just Married" decorations just yet because they were so cute and fun! Willie was embarrassed though to be driving in the decorated car while I drove us around. It was pretty funny.

Anyway, that night we stayed in my parents' house in Mesquite (they were not there). We rented a red box, and had Japanese take out for dinner. We decided to rent 2010 (or 2012? I don't remember what it was called) for Willie, and ended up with one of those fake movies that red box tricks you with. It was pretty entertaining because it was SO bad.

The next day we began our drive to California bright and early. I was so nervous about missing our cruise! We made it in time though.

This is on one of our first days at sea.

This was our first formal night in the dining room. The food was sooo good. We got an appetizer, entree, and desert every night. YUM.

The waiter brought us a special desert (on top of the warm chocolate melting cake we had both already eaten :) ) with candles in it and sang "Happy Honeymoon" to us to the tune of Happy Birthday.

After the formal dinner, we went to see one of the shows. It was fun, we're glad we went, but we didn't go to any of the other ones.

Groovin' at a party on one of the decks one night.

One of our favorite things to do at night was watch movies at this big screen theater. Normally it was much less crowded with reclining pool chairs that you could stretch out on and watch the movie. We'd get pizza and blankets, and it was so fun!

Something I really liked about our cruise was the towel animals!!! These two were my favorite.

The cleaning lady put Willie's sunglasses on this one.

This guy was probably my favorite. I'm not sure what he is...but I just think it's so funny how he's leaning up against our pillow and sticking his bum out. I think our towel lady had a sense of humor.

Those are some of my favorite memories from our ship!