Monday, May 28, 2012

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!

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

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!