Peace Out Provo

I'll be leaving Provo in the dust come Wednesday morning and who knows when I'll be back to this place again. My mom (bless her sweet heart, she is a saint) will be making the drive to Wisconsin with me. I'm a little sad, I've made some good memories over the last 6 years, but I can't tell you how ready I am to be out of here and with Jared. At this point, I'd move to freakin Antarctica if he were there, it has not been very fun living apart for the past three months. He was able to come for a few days this past weekend though. There was a photoshoot in Sun Valley, Idaho that he was in charge so he went to that for a week and then was able to stay in Provo over the weekend. We were able to hang out with our families for one last time together which was pretty awesome. His sister Heidi just had a baby boy, Hudson, about two weeks ago and we got to meet him. He's the cutest little baby! Whit brought up Big and we got to spend some time with him too so it was a great weekend.

After I defended my thesis and got that beast finished I spent a couple of weeks with my family down in STG. It was kind of weird waking up in the morning and not really having a plan or stuff to do everyday! I got to see some of my friends from high school and family friends, but I mostly just hung with my family, lots of swimming with the nephew. A couple of my good friends, Sarah and Holly, from my math ed. program came down to visit, which was way fun. We have known each other for years and had always talked about making a trip to STG so I could show them around, and we finally did it! We went hiking and swimming and did a session at the temple, such a great couple of days!

We will be able to get into our apartment out in Wisconsin on June 1st, but our stuff probably won't be out there until a few days after that. Seriously, the only way to move is to have professional movers do it. Trek paid for our movers and we didn't have to do a thing. They came in, packed everything, loaded everything and were gone within four hours (granted we hardly have anything considering we have been poor college students our whole marriage!), it was the best! Once we get into our place and get settled I'll post some pictures.

As bad as it sucks to have to leave our family and friends here, I am glad to finally have this in-between time over with. Everybody keeps asking me what I'm going to do out there, if I'm going to teach etc.  At this point I'm definitely not going to be trying to get a job teaching in the public schools out there. It's likely we'll try to start our family here in the next year, so I really don't want to go through all the trouble of getting licensed out there to only barely survive my first year of teaching and then quit. I've applied for some adjunct positions at a few colleges in the area so we'll see if anything comes of that. I'd be fine even just working at a school in some other capacity, I really don't care what I do anymore. It's kind of a funny feeling because I'm usually a little (majorly) OCD when it comes to planning out my life and figuring stuff out like that, I've just decided I'm not going to worry about it.

Anyway, here are a bunch of random picks from the last month. My trusty flip phone I had for five years finally died a few weeks ago, so I caved and got an iphone. I kind of love it, but sorry if some of the pics are crappy quality because that's all I've been using as a camera the past while!

Big and I made a pretty sweet tent

His new thing is to give a "thumbs up" in every picture!

With Holly and Sarah on our hike, I don't know 

why we decided to do a cheerleader pose. . . haha

My dad bought Jared a drill, so he could

build stuff or something. . . 

I got a new haircut when I was down in STG!

Us sisters rockin the colored skinnys, I was thinking 

about how our shoes perfectly demonstrate our personalities. . . 

Whit's leopard flats = quirky with an attitude

Melissa's heels = high maintenance (in a strict fashion sense my dear!) with ambition

My Vans = laid back with no style! haha

And then there is Biggie just lookin cute!

I am done with school forever!!

Right after I picked him up from the airport,

the look of happy spouses who hadn't seen each other in over a month!

Hudson, such a good baby!!

Jared was the first one to teach Big how to game,

and he created a little gamin' monster!

Bed Head haha

We took a little church vacation and 

went to the aquarium in Sandy yesterday

Jared looks like he's about 16 in this picture haha

Peace out Provo, it was fun while it lasted!

Done

This week marks a week where I feel like I am done with everything. . . I'm done with my thesis, I'm done with my graduate program, I'm done with teaching this year and mostly I'm just done being without my husband. Yesterday I defended my thesis, probably one of the biggest accomplishments of my life, and he was 2000 miles away. Today was kind of a crappy day for him and I'm 2000 miles away.  Our 3rd anniversary is in a few weeks and we'll be 2000 miles away from each other. Although I am honest when I tell people that things are okay and we are doing fine, it still sucks sometimes like tonight and another month of the long distance blows, especially for him being by himself out there. But whatever, it is what it is and we can't do anything about it. I'm heading down to STG for a couple weeks and Jared will be traveling to Sun Valley, Idaho for a week this month because he's in charge of a photo shoot up there, so the time will go faster now. I can't even imagine how army/military couples handle being apart like this and for even longer periods of time. I have a lot of respect for them and the sacrifices they make, because being apart from the person you love most is hard.

Anyway, on a lighter note, I passed my thesis defense which is really good news! I only had a couple of small revisions I had to make, so now all I have to do is submit an electronic and hard copy version of it to BYU. My 5 year old trusty flip phone decided to break on me yesterday, so I finally bit the bullet and entered the world of iPhone users this morning. The nicest thing about that will be the map application thinger for when I get out to Wisconsin, considering there are no landmarks (like mountains or even small hills!) that help you orient yourself out there! Jared finally got his road bike put together so he's been riding around Madison quite a bit this past week which has been fun for him. He's going to start riding his bike to work now that the weather is getting nicer out there. It is about 40 miles round trip, he's crazy!

A Week in Wisconsin

One really nice thing about being in my second year of grad school is that I really have no responsibilities during finals week. This semester, my students were scheduled to take their final on the very first morning so the rest of this week was completely open for me. We decided it was a perfect time for me to fly out and visit Jared in Madison, so we've been hangin out the past week which has been really fun! I cooked dinner for him the other day for the first time in about 5 weeks, I hate to admit that I actually kind of missed doing that!

Anyway, I flew in late Saturday night and we went to church the next morning. Our ward seems pretty cool, everybody was really nice and welcoming. That night we had dinner with our friends Jen and Ivan, who live out in Waterloo. They have the cutest daughters who remind us of our niece, Halle. We had a good time playing the Kinnect with them after dinner. I found out Jen is a big time Guitar Hero fan, which is right up my ally! We rocked out for a while, and I'm sure we will jam together many more times in the future!

We've spent the rest of the week exploring Wisconsin and getting a feel for the area. I was able to see the inside of our apartment the other day and it's really nice. Quite a bit bigger than our apartment in Provo, so it'll be great to have more space, plus it has a two car garage which will save our lives in the winter! Today we drove up to a city called Wisconsin Dells. It's a pretty cool little place, kind of the mecca of waterparks in America, it has a ton of indoor and outdoor parks. We also found a pretty big outlet mall there too, which Jared's mom will love to go to when she comes to visit us!

It has been a fun trip! I am not looking forward to coming back to Utah tomorrow. The next few weeks are going to be insane. I defend my thesis on May 1st, then I have to revise and submit the beast to my department. I'll hopefully be in STG for a couple weeks during the middle of May and then the movers will likely come sometime the week after that. It's crazy this is all really happening!

On the drive home from work

Jared is so proud he can hold up his new road bike 

with only two fingers!

We drove past a "ski resort" on our way up to see the waterparks

These Wisconsin folks have a lot to learn about real skiing. . . 

like how it's usually done on a mountain and not a hill haha :)

Just one of the waterparks out there

Ha, we don't really know what was up with this crazy building

we think it's somehow connected to one of the waterparks out there

Haha, we parked next to this gem at Best Buy,

it was definitely taking up about 3 parking spots!

Weekend with the Gibbons Fam

Well it was a super quick trip up to Washington for the funeral (Jared's grandpa) but it was great to see all of the Gibbons family. The funeral was really nice, I hope 60 years down the road (knock on wood) my funeral will be similar. My grandpa passed away several years ago and the comparison between his funeral and Grandpa Gibbons was completely night and day. None of my mom's extended family are LDS, so my grandpa's was pretty sad. Even though I knew I would see him again, it was still hard because I didn't feel that sense of hope that I felt at Grandpa Gibbons'. Kind of neat, Jared's grandparents have 40 or so grand kids, and they were all able to come to the funeral.

Ha, hanging out with his extended family has always been a little crazy as I only have 5 cousins on both sides and he has probably close to 100 between the two sides! It was fun to catch up with everybody. All of the guys were impressed with Jared's job at Trek, they thought it was pretty sweet. Jared and I got a lot of flak from everybody about seeing each other for the first time after almost a month. Haha, I think they were all expecting us to go nuts with the PDA but we have never been that way, so we did not embarrass ourselves! :) 

There were some pretty funny moments from the weekend that I have to share. I drove up with Heidi, Kell and two of Jared's cousins, Kira and Melissa. We got there Thursday afternoon before the viewing and had lunch and got cleaned up at Kira and Melissa's house. Their dad Clair was showing us this black bear he had shot and then mounted the skin (fur? whatever the politically correct term is) on the wall. Kell was trying to find the bullet hole and started rubbing this little black dot on the bear's skin.

Kell: "So is this the bullet hole??"
Clair: "Ummm. . . that's actually the nipple"
Kell:  "Oh. . . " (slowly removes finger from bear)

Haha we about died laughing. Oddly enough (not really ha) the second incident also involves Kell :)   As a preface, driving through Oregon is the pits for two reasons 1) the speed limit is only 65 and 2) you aren't allowed to pump your own gas, you have to wait for a gas attendant to do it. Anyway, we stopped in Oregon to fill up. We rolled the window down and were sitting there waiting for the guy to come over and get the credit card so he could pump our gas when Heidi started talking about how she thinks it's weird when pregnant girls talk about being "prego" or "preggers" etc. (she's 7 months along now and wonder woman for surviving a 12 hour drive in her state!). Kell was sitting by the window that was down and proceeded to shout her two cents worth on the issue while the gas attendent walked up to get the card from her:

Kell: "Yeah you just have to say I'M PREGNANT!!" (sees gas guy standing by the window and sheepishly hands over the credit card)
Gas Guy: ". . . uh. . ."
The rest of us: Bahahaha

The guy probably thought we were a bunch of crazy idiot girls but it was pretty freakin hilarious! Haha who just randomly shouts "I'M PREGNANT!" at a gas station?!

I wanted to take some pictures while we were up there, but my camera lasted exactly 4 pictures before dying on me, awesome. So I took them of two of my favorite people, our cute niece Hannah and Jared, while we were on our way to the funeral.

 Haha, pretty sure I caught her off guard

 Such a cute kid, I just want to squeeze her!

 Ha, nice face babe

Had to do black and white cause my camera takes crappy 

pics sometimes (I swear it's the equipment not the operator ha!)

I'm glad we were able to see Jared's extended family before moving out to Wisconsin since everything happened so quickly and he wasn't even able to really say goodbye to anybody before that. I will admit though, I'm somewhat relieved I never have to make the drive of doom from Utah to Washington ever again! (I'll be eating those words once I start the 21 hour drive from Utah to Wisconsin in a couple months though haha)

Basketball Memories

I was going through some of my old picture albums the other night and had a good laugh looking at the pictures I have from playing basketball with my friends through high school. If you knew me at all back then, you know how obsessed I was with playing ball, it pretty much consumed me for more than 4 solid years. I give basketball credit for teaching some of the best lessons of my life and for giving some of the best friends I've ever had. We've all gone our separate ways now, but it was pretty fun to remember some of the good times we had! I decided to scan some of the pictures and post them because they are funny to me haha! (Sorry for the poor quality but it's the best I can do!)

Bahaha the classic freshman picture! :) 

I look like I'm about 10 years old in this pic ha

That's me, #5

I'm pretty sure I sewed these sweats back in the day haha

We had a tradition of hiking Angles Landing 

in Zion as a team every year

At the top

LaRaine definitely ripped her pants on that trip

Hahaha don't ask me how, she was always doing stuff like that!

Seniors. . . minus Steph. . . where were you this trip?!

At a tournament in Arizona

A few of us did a three point shooting contest 

Havin a little fun after practice

Not sure what was going on here haha

Somewhere by Lake Powell in Arizona

Road Trip!

Uh. . . I don't even know lol

We did a scavanger hunt one day after practice

And this is what these weirdos showed up in! haha

Lol this pic cracks me up! 

Way to go Steph!

Warmups

The only action shot I have from playing, kind of pathetic I know!

Varsity (don't mind the part down the middle 

of my hair. . . I was a tad bit haggard in high school haha!)

Good times, love these girls!

This year will be seven years since I graduated high school and so much has changed since then. Probably more than half of the girls in the picture above are married. Some of them have had a baby, others have had multiple babies! Some still live in STG but many of us don't. It's funny because everything seems so dramatic in high school, you can't imagine life past the next day, let alone what it's going to be like almost decade down the road. I remember the person I was then and am glad for the person I have become. I would never have guessed back then how things would be now seven years later, but if I could have looked into the future when I was a high school senior, I think I would have liked to see how my life has changed.

Anyway. . . this weekend is going to be a little crazy. We found out a of couple days ago that Jared's grandpa passed away, so everybody is headed up to Washington for the funeral. Although the circumstances are pretty unfortunate, it will be nice to see all of Jared's family and he is going to fly in from Wisconsin so we will be able to spend a few days together there! 

Sleepover

This weekend Whit and Chris came up to Provo/SLC so that they could go skiing and hang out with some of their friends. They brought Drake with them and I spent Friday and Saturday watching him while they skied. It was really fun! They all stayed at our apartment on Thursday and Big was pretty excited to be having a sleepover with B. We set his bed up in the family room and I slept on the couch by him. On Friday I took him swimming at a cool indoor pool up in Lehi. That kid could seriously spend hours and hours swimming. Luckily we went during the day when it wasn't so busy and he pretty much had free reign of all the toys and slides. We watched Puss in Boots later that night and crashed early. On Saturday he got in his fill of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Mario Kart in the morning and then I took him to the Nickelcade (a five cent arcade for those of you who are unfortunate enough to have never experienced the awesomeness of a Nickelcade!). He went straight to the race car and motorcycle games and we spent the majority of the time playing those. Later when Whit and Chris got back from skiing we met up with some of their friends to get dinner and then let all the kids play at the Provo River Beach Resort. That place is pretty sweet, check it out if you haven't been there! It was nice to have those three around this weekend.

Haha I had some hilarious conversations with the Little Man, he seriously says some pretty funny crap. Here are some highlights

"When I get bigger I'm gonna drive B's car!"

"I'm gonna come visit B and Bah in Wisconsin when I am two fives old. . . " (and from his mouth it sounded like "Winsconsin" haha)

He was telling me how one of his friends he plays with who is a year younger than him is a little baby, I asked him what he was and he said, "I'm a man!"

I was singing and dancing in the car and he kept saying "B, stop that singing! B, stop that dancing!" I didn't and finally he shook his head and said, "B, you're makin me crazy!" haha

Jared started his job at Trek and so far he's really been liking it. He'll be working on stuff related to the mountain biking aspect of the company. This past week he redesigned a website for one of Trek's mountain biking teams. He's been able to meet some nice people out there and I think that he really likes the guys that he works with so that is good. Obviously it's not that fun living apart, but the fact that he has a job that he loves makes it a little more bearable for now!

Haha