3rd Anniversary

Our Anniversary is on May 30th, and this year I was on the road from Utah to Wisconsin on that day, so we decided to celebrate it after we got moved in a settled. Trek owns this really sweet Bed & Breakfast in downtown Madison which we were able to get a discount with, so we stayed there for a night. Our room was pretty awesome, the bathroom was even better. It was really nice to just be able to go relax for a weekend and recover from all of the craziness of moving.

Playing around with the remote for the blinds

Our room was at the top of this cool staircase

View from the top of the B&B

We went out to dinner and had some 

fried cheese curds, pretty good actually!

A nice Wisconsin cheese platter

We went to the farmers market and came home with some goods

This past week has been pretty good, other than our AC is not working, but luckily we are getting it fixed tomorrow morning before it gets too hot here. We've been hanging out with some people from our ward which has been fun. I went to a cool waterpark the other day with my friend Char and her kids, it was a blast! We watched a movie and played games with a couple in our ward on Friday night and then we went out to Waterloo to hang out with our friends there last night. It's been nice to get to know more people out here. Hate to say it, but I actually like it out here quite a bit. 

On Friday I had an interview for a math position at a community college in a small city out here about 45 min away. It went really well and I have a second interview with them on July 3rd, so hopefully I get the job. It's only part time, but that actually works out really well for me because I wanted to try and get something more flexible as opposed to teaching full time. 

Jared and I got called to be sunday school teachers for the 16-18 years old in our ward. We taught for the first time today, and the kids are pretty cool so I think it will be a fun calling. Jared also got called to be a counselor in the young men's today so he's gonna be double doing it for the next while. 

Well that's about it, things in Wisconsin are pretty good so far!

Life in "Winsconsin"

Haha, our nephew Drake has a hard time saying Wisconsin, it usually comes out as "Winsconsin," pretty stinkin cute! Anyway, after two straight days of driving my mom and I made it to Madison. The drive was  definitely kind of boring through Nebraska, but once we hit Iowa it got alot better. It's really green out here in the Midwest, although pretty dang flat. Driving that long made me feel like a old grandma though, I don't think my lower back has fully recovered yet!

We had gotten here on Thursday night, so Friday morning my mom and I ran a bunch of errands and got stuff for the new place while Jared was at work (and when I say "at work" I really mean the 100 mile bike ride his Trek department did that day, the perks of working there I guess!). It was ridiculous how much crap we got, did some serious damage to our bank account! On Saturday we spent the day painting the apartment which actually went pretty quickly because our stuff hadn't gotten there yet. Sunday we went to church and it was nice to reconnect with some of the people I had met when I visited Jared there back in April. The movers came with our stuff on Monday morning. It only took them 30 minutes to unload all of our stuff, pretty comical. We spent the next few days unpacking and organizing everything. For the most part everything is put together except for a few boxes Jared needs to go through. It is nice to have so much extra space in this apartment. Both of the rooms are huge compared to our old place, and they both have pretty big walk in closets, which is awesome! We've also got the garage for storage and tonight Jared got some hooks to hang his bikes from the garage ceiling so there's literally nothing on the floor of our second bedroom, perfect spot for visitors. We've even got a nice air mattress for you so please come see us!

Tuesday was my birthday, the big Two Five. I like to think of it as the quarter century year, but another math geek (thank you Kathie!) pointed out that it is a perfect square year, which is pretty cool too! We went to dinner at Panera, their strawberry poppyseed salad is seriously out of this world, so delicious! Then on Wednesday we had some of our friends, Jen and Ivan, come over with their two cute little girls Lily and Sofi. We had dinner and cake and then we played some Just Dance. It was nice to have some friends over, made our place seem more like home.

Today was my mom's last day here, so we decided to check out downtown before she left. There are alot of cool shops and restaurants down there by the Capitol Building and the university. We had fun walking around and checking it out. We also found this European Bakery that has some good pastries and sourdough bread. It reminded me of my grandpa's bakery in Cleveland, except his is definitely better!!

It was hard to say goodbye to my mom. She was seriously so much help this past week, we could not have gotten our apartment in order without her! It's sad knowing we are so far away from all of our family and friends, but I'm just glad that we are together now. In a twisted way the long distance was probably good for me because it's made the actual moving part of this alot easier. As much as I would love living close to family, I'd obviously rather be with Jared, even if that means being with Jared 2000 miles away from everyone else.

Anyway, Wisconsin itself has been nice so far. The weather has probably been the best part. I know it will get hotter, but this past week has been in the mid 70's, low 80's with a nice breeze that comes through our windows all day. I think we lucked out with our neighborhood. It seems to be a newer development with some four-plexes like ours but then alot of single family homes as well so it doesn't feel like an apartment complex or anything like that. Even though I definitely miss the mountains, it is really really pretty out here, super green with alot of trees. It's awesome too because you can drive three minutes out of the city and it feels like you are in the country and in a completely different place.

Here are some other random Wisconsin tidbits I've noticed since I've been here:

- Everything closes early around here, by 10 pm everything is shut down.
- They only mow the lawn about three feet back from the road along major streets and highways, the rest of it they let grow high, kind of weird.
- Alot of the homes here have detached garages. I would shoot myself if I had to park my car in the garage and then sludge through 4 feet of snow in sub zero temperatures during the winter!
- People definitely have some awesome accents out here, I've already started picking up on some of it, so I'll probably start sounding like a Wisconsinite (whatever that word is!) here pretty soon.
- The Super Walmart here has underground parking that is insulated. . . I'm living in fear of the winter!
- All of the houses here have wood trim
- It's always cloudy here during the afternoon
- Most days have been pretty windy, I'm not sure if this is a constant, let's hope not

Last time seeing Utah mountains, or any legitimate mountains for a while

Completing one of his many "man projects" 

This was the kitchen island which he successfully constructed.

He credited the completion on his amazing Lego building skills haha!

We finally have a grill!!

The pretty green out here!

This was literally two minutes away from our aparment

and we definitely don't live in the sticks.

It's crazy how fast the landscape changes around here!

Living Room

Kitchen

2nd Bathroom

Our Room

Our Bathroom

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!