Saturday Mornings

I'm feeling a bit guilty this Saturday morning, well most Saturday mornings I feel a bit guilty, and here's why. . . I get up (after sleeping in a little!), eat some breakfast and then either start working on HW (like this morning) or go grocery shopping. Usually while I participate in these activities, Jared takes it upon himself to clean the apartment, even though he has other things to get done as well. Right now he's deep cleaning our stove. Who lets their husband do that every single Saturday?? I'm lazy. It's not like I don't do my fair share of cleaning throughout the week, but it always seems like Jared spends every Saturday morning doing dishes, sanitizing counters, vacuuming etc. Maybe I should just feel grateful he's 1) a neat freak and 2) willing to clean at all, but right now I just feel bad that I'm being selfish and doing HW instead of helping. Thanks baby for being so considerate each week.

Christmas Break in STG

Well we are back from our amazing 2 week stay in STG with the family! We had a great time just hangin out and relaxing. We were both pretty burned out from school so it was great to be able to take a break. I've decided to just do a picture post and add details here and there instead of trying to remember everything we did.

This is with Jay and Linda Hammond. I have known them for years and I consider them to be grandparents. They lived on the same street as us when I was growing up and I would always go over and watch/talk sports with them. They used to go and watch me play basketball when I was in high school. Basically I just love them.

Ready to open presents!

Now I can go mountain biking and have a nice cushioned ride with my sweet new biking shorts, thanks Carolyn!

A nice purple dress shirt for Jared, he really likes the color

We've been wanting one of these awesome toys, thanks Mike and Carolyn!

I kind of just love this picture, we are cute eh?

All dressed up in Banana Republic! I saw this sweater in their outlet store in Seattle during our girls weekend and everybody agreed that it looked like a Jared sweater, luckily he thinks so too!

Sportin my new basketball shoes, yes!

Okay, so on Christmas day Drake wanted to play with some cars. . . the boys decided to take over and create the ultimate course which included a jump through a flaming hoop! I'm pretty sure the adults had way more fun with this track than Drake did! (See video below)

And of course they decided they should take the jump out the back door for optimum height and distance, haha!

Drake scored in the present department

A mickey cell phone!

He was super excited about getting that Mickey phone, the kid is seriously OBSESSED with Mickey. I think I watched a good 10 episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while we were down there and I think I am now scarred for life!

Slinky

Playing his favorite game with my brother Nick. Drake loves to "cully" (color)

On New Years Eve we had fondue with my parents and my friend Carrie who came over. It was pretty sweet because I had never done any other type of fondue other than chocolate. We had steak, chicken and veggies that we deep fried in oil, yum!

Jared's extended family owns a farm up in Washington and they specialize in apples. They brought some down for us a few weeks ago and we decided to make some applesauce out of them because there was no way we were going to eat like 50 HUGE apples! They were seriously the size of small pumpkins! My mom showed me how to make and can the applesauce so we now have 12 jars of delicious homemade stuff! By the way, any guesses as to what was going through Jared's mind during this picture?? Haha, his face totally cracks me up!!

This picture sums up the majority of our daytime activity during the past week. . . college football bowl week!

Now we're back in P-Town ready to start a new semester. It will be a challenge to start getting up early again (since we were lazy and slept in late just about every morning down there!) but I think we are both looking forward to our classes and we're excited to be one semester closer to being done with school! Hope everybody had a fun time over the Holidays as well!

Caution: This video is fairly long and may contain some sarcastic Musso humor and bantering between siblings! I mostly just get a kick out of listening to how intense everybody is about making a sweet race track, and all the cheering, so funny!

Girls Weekend

This past weekend I headed up to Seattle to spend a girls weekend with all my sisters-in-law (sister-in-laws? who knows) and Jared's mom. We had a great time shopping, watching movies and just hanging out together. On Friday night we went downtown to see The Nutcracker which was really great, can't believe people, especially men, can move their bodies so gracefully! I was able to get all of my christmas shopping done, and then I spent more money, which probably is not great for our bank account, but it was alot of fun! I should have taken more pictures, but the only one's I got are from when we went to the ballet, so enjoy. . .

Thanksgiving/Birthday Week

This past week has been a busy one for Jared and I. Luckily neither of us had classes on Monday and Tuesday, so school was pretty laid back, but we spent tons of time with family, which I for one, am paying for today as I think about all that I need to get done during the next few weeks of the semester! It is crazy how fast the past four months have gone, I can't even believe it! Here's a quick recap of the week. . .

Sunday (11/21)

We went to church then headed up to Whit and Chris's for dinner and football. While there I was chatting with Whit, Liss and Mom about what to get Jared for his birthday which was on Wednesday. I had been trying to decide if I should get him a Wii because he really wanted one, but I was worried that we would both waste too much time on it (my reservations have proven to be true by the way!). They told me to go for it, so I spent the night trying to find a good deal on KSL, no luck.

Monday (11/22)

I was luckily able to find a guy up in SLC who was selling his Wii on KSL. He was selling it with a few games that we wanted plus some other extra accessories for only 250 bucks, which was a pretty dang good deal! I told him that I would pick it up from him the next morning. Monday after school we met up with my family it go see the Harry Potter movie which we both really liked.

Tuesday (11/23)

I used the excuse that I needed to go watch Drake while Whit and my mom went to the fabric store in the morning (I'd really rather die than go to the frickin fabric store!!!) to throw Jared off my tracks while I cruised up to SLC to pick up the Wii. I stopped by Whit's house on the way home and scrubbed off some dust and dirt that was on the Wii and the accessories and then my mom helped me wrap them up. I headed back up to campus to get some things done, but that was cut short by campus being closed at 3 pm because the "blizzard" of the century was bearing down on northern Utah. Jared and I decided to head up to Whit's to hunker down for the night because of the storm. Baha, this is funny. . . It's been a really long time since anybody in my family other than Nick and I have lived in a city that has real winters. So when we get over to Whit's, her and my mom, Wess and Liss were getting the propane tank filled, big jugs of water filled (just in case we would need it to flush the toilets if the water got shut down!) and flashlights rounded up. They were prepared to get snowed in, Jared and I just laughed, they were cute! Anyway, I was so excited about Jared's birthday present that I let him open it that night even though his birthday wasn't till the next day. He was pretty stoked and produced a manly "yeeaahh" when he saw the Wii. I had wrapped it in an Ugg box just to throw him off a bit. He later said that when he first saw the box he though, "I didn't know they made Ugg's for dudes..." haha. I think I deserve a "cool wife award" for getting Jared a sweet birthday present this year! We had a good ol' time playin Mario Cart that night. Drake loved watching us play and constantly yelled, "GO B, GO B!" or "Vroom vroom B!" (He calls Jared and I "B" because our nicknames are affectionately Bird and Bear in my family, don't ask...)

Wednesday (11/24)

When we got up I made Jared some breakfast for his birthday, I even made bacon, which is a pretty big deal for me because I really hate the smell of bacon! We then spent most of the day playing the Wii of course! We headed up to Heidi and Jeff's (Jared's sister and bro-in-law) to hang out for the rest of the week. Jared's parents and brother Brandt came down from Washington and we had pizza and cake and just hung out with the kids which was really fun

Very excited to blow out his candles!

Big breath . . .

And blow!

(Check out that cool shirt, a present from Jared's awesome parents!)

Thursday (11/25)

A pretty awesome Thanksgiving for us! We slept in, helped when needed with food prep and had a delicious feast with great company!

Friday (11/26)

Us girls were up at the crack of dawn (not really, but we tried) so that we could hit some good sales at Macy's and Target. Kell and I scored on some great black coats at Macy's and we all found some good deals at Target after that. We went home around noon for lunch and the rest of the gang, minus Jeff and the kids, headed back out for more shopping. By the time we got back to the house around 6 pm we were all beat! Jared and I headed back home that night.

Saturday (11/27)

I woke up to see our Chirstmas tree assembled in our family room, 10 pts for Jared! I had come down with a cold/flu Friday night when we got home, so I was pretty much out of comission the whole day, but it couldn't stop me from enjoying the BYU vs. Utah game. We had quite the crew come over for the game, basically my whole family cause Whit and Chris didn't get the channel on their Dish. After many complaints about the lack of HD (come on people, we're poor college students who live in a basement aparment) we settled in for a good game, at least until the very last play of the game! Oh well, there's always next year for Heaps & Co.

Sunday (11/28)

I still wasn't feeling very good that morning so I stayed home from church and slept. Jared took good care of me the whole day and even made some delicious creamy chicken soup with red potatoes and everything! He cooked, cleaned, made me rest and drink lots of water. There's nobody else I'd rather have to take care of me, he's a keeper. Our families were able to make it back home to Washington and St. George safely even in crappy weather which capped off the end to a very fun week.

The Game

Wess and Meliss were so nice to invite us to the BYU vs. New Mexico game last night. . . best part about it was the amazing seats we had. And when I say amazing, I really mean A-MAZING! Melissa's grandparents buy box tickets every season and don't use them very often, so Wess and Meliss invited us to go with them and use their grandparents tickets yesterday, seriously awesome!

Our view from inside the box!

Jared smiling like a crazy person!

He's so pleased with himself of course

A nice cute picture

Wess and Meliss, always cute!

The crew

Thanks again guys, it was pretty sweet!

Some Goodness

I found this band, Boyce Avenue, last year on itunes and they are way good! They've gotten more popular the past few months and for good reason. They have some original stuff, but they mostly do covers which are all amazing! Here's a few of my favoriate








You should seriously go check them out on youtube or itunes, they are just dang good!

Opinions Please

This is kind of a different post, but I've been thinking the past few days about being married. It seems like all you ever hear about lately is one broken marriage after another. It makes me wonder what those people were thinking, what could have been so bad, why can't they just work stuff out? But more than anything though it makes me admit to the fact that I probably take my marriage and my husband for granted more than I should. Obviously none of us have perfect marriages, and none of us are perfect people. . . but what can we do to show our spouses that we are grateful for them? Here's some things I've been thinking about, what do you think, what else can we do?

- Say thank you more often when he does the dishes, vacuums and cleans our entire bathrom from top to bottom

- Quit bugging him about how he should do his hair (ha)

- Stop to think before I say things that I'm joking about, because sometimes it can be offensive

- Be more patient with him and not try to coerce him into doing his school projects when all he really wants to do is ride his bike or relax for a while

- Continue to get ready, dress cute and look pretty for him (I haven't "let myself go" or anything, but for some reason I just don't care as much now that I'm married, which is bad!)

- Be slow to get upset but get over things fast

- Continue to tell him that I love him often

Those are just a few things that I could think of off the top of my head, I'm interested to know what others think, or what works for you. And even if you aren't married, still feel free to give suggestions!