A good end to a good year

I haven't had time to blog while we've been home because we've been so busy enjoying time with our families and loving the holidays!

Some quick highlights so far:

Union Square at Christmas time is my favorite

On the field at the Hunger Bowl

-2 weddings

-got tickets to go to the Warriors vs. Kings to watch Jimmer...10 minutes before we were to leave Mark starts vomiting and we have to skip the game.

-Girls night in San Francisco with my sister-in-law and mother-in-law

-Girls night with 2 of my besties Ronisha and Lindsey

-Spending time with the Warrens

-Christmas!

-Mark's christmas present not coming :(

-Watching Christmas Story, Elf, Home Alone, It's a Wonderful Life

-Spending time with the Barkers

-me getting really sick with a sore throat, thinking I have strep, and then throwing up {it felt really great} going to the doctor, strep test negative, doctor thinking I have mono, got blood tests done, finding out I don't have mono!
-Went to the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl at AT&T park with my parents.

-and finally Booking our Flights to Europe! It's official, Mark and I are going to Europe in April! 

We are so blessed and lucky to have such amazing families who love and support us. It has been so great to be home and spend time with our family and great friends. We love the Bay Area and are soooo excited to move back here in April. I think this final semester in Idaho is going to be rough: it will be freezing cold and we are going to be so anxious to finally be done with school and be out of Idaho and start our "grown up" life.

I cannot wait, I'm so excited to see what the future holds for us. Thanks for being so good to us 2011 & Welcome 2012!

I'll be home for Christmas

This weekend was another good one.
Friday night my sister Rachel and her roommate Sam came over along with Jamie and we made oreo bites (oreo cake balls? whatever they are called, doesn't matter, they are amazing!) and peppermint bark, both are great Christmas treats and sooo easy to make.

I also got to spend lots of time with my man, went to the gym together on Saturday, then went to lunch at Costa Vida, ran errands and even got him to watch Water for Elephants with me, and he really liked it! He thought it was going to be a chick flick, on the same level as the Notebook. He wasn't at all excited when we rented it, 2 minutes into the movie he looks at me and says "this is going to be depressing, I can already tell." But about 10 minutes later he was so focused and into the movie. I think this is going to be one we buy :)

Now I just have to make it through today and 3 more workdays and then I get to go home to Danville! Friday can't come soon enough!

Tribute to Jared Johansen

This is a post by Jared Johansen's cousin. She describes Jared and Tiffany so beautifully. She talks about the funeral and God's greater plan for Jared in a way that I could never.
This post brought so much peace to me. I'm so glad to hear Tiffany, Nick, Nate, Christy and Alan are doing well.
At the bottom of her post, there is a link to the Jared Johansen Trust, which will help provide an education for Reese and Jaclyn. Anyone is welcome to donate.

love/mostly hate relationship

Running is not my thing. I've never understood people who just "love" running. It's hard on my knees, my throat, I get bored {do I need to go on complaining?}

But I go through phases where I'm motivated to run. For the past few weeks I've ran on the tredmill every night. I started really slow and just ran {ok maybe it was jog}/walk for 25 minutes. Then I started to increase my speed just a little each night. Then increase the time by a few minutes. Then try to run 2 miles straight, then increase a quarter of a mile each night. Last night I increased my speed to see how fast I could run a mile, I'll be honest though, I didn't push myself as hard as I should have {but I was worried because I had Craigos pizza right before and I didn't want to throw up at the gym}.

But I think my biggest problem is that I get bored running. I try to watch tv, but the gym only shows CNN, Fox News, BYU tv and ESPN, I need some Kardashians or a real tv show to distract me. I listen to my iPod, good beats that give me a good pace and motivate me. But I still get bored.

I don't think I'll ever love running. But I do love how I feel after. I love being a little sore in the mornings.

Goal: I'm going to run every day, no matter how short or slow, always run!

finished!

As of yesterday I am completely done with my Christmas shopping! and let me tell you, it feels dang good! I stress so much over what the perfect present for each person is. Now I can wrap the gifts, finish all the little finishing touches, and enjoy Christmas.
9 more days until we go home. 18 more days until Christmas.

favorite child.

I just ran across this article  about BYU-Idaho banning skinny jeans. Apparently you can't take a test in the testing center if you are wearing skinnys. I know this isn't really a big deal, it's just jeans, but it really irritates me.
I'm pretty sure no girl gets up in the morning, pulls out her tightest skinny jeans from the closet, looks at them and says "Yeah, these are just pushing the boundaries on campus just enough."
I wear skinnys because they tuck into my boots easily, so I guess they should ban boots too. And if you jeans are tucked into boots, how can you really tell they are skinnys? Is the campus going to ban all jeans in general so there's no confusion?

This is college. What are the majority of college students doing around the world? Drinking, partying, wearing scandalous clothes, etc. Look at the students at BYU-I and we don't participate in any of those things. Cut us some slack. How scandalous are skinny jeans really?

This is a great school. But it's not perfect. Looking back on my education, most of my classes were busy work, overloaded with group presentations and projects, I don't feel like I had an exceptional education at a "private university." I don't feel ahead of my peers at home in my major or more qualified for a career. I think the school has a lot to improve. They should be worried less about our fashion trends and more worried about the curriculum.
When the prophet tells us not to wear skinny jeans, or flip flops, then I won't. I'm so glad I'm graduated so I don't have to deal with this ridiculousness.
You've gone too far BYU-I.

How are the standards at BYU provo and BYU-Idaho sooo drastically different? It's like provo is the favorite child and can do whatever they want because they are perfect and we are the black sheep and have to have so many restrictions because our parent doesn't trust us.

Peppermint Tuesday

One day of work down, only 8 and a half more until I get to go home and be with my family and Mark's! I can tell today is going to be a good day, It's much warmer than yesterday {and by much I mean 10 whole degrees haha at least it's in the positive, not negative degrees} I got a peppermint hot chocolate from McDonalds on my way to work today and let me tell you, McDonalds did not disappoint! Plus Destiny's Child "Do you hear what I hear" is playing and Michael Bubles' Christmas album. Plus if work is slow today I have LOTS of shows to catch up on from Sunday. The first being the First Presidency Christmas Message.

Last night we had a fun date night with our good friends the Sorensens. We went and saw the movie "In Time" with Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfred, I think that's how you spell it? I absolutely loved the movie! It was so interesting and I liked how different it was but you could also compare it to real life. I thought all the actors were perfect. It was a hit, all 4 of us liked the movie!

Then we went back to the Sorensen's apartment and watched our wedding videos! This may sound strange, but it was such a fun activity, I would definitely recommend couples doing this. You get to know so much about the other couple just from their wedding videos. Brent and Jamie are so cute together, I love their story. They have known each other since elementary school. They are such a fun and positive couple, we love being around them and are really going to miss them when they move next semester.
During our wedding video we had a section where Mark's brother interviewed us individually, like the newly wed game. I have always hated that video because it was 10:00 at night and we had gone swimming that day and I just felt ugly and grimey. Jamie kept saying "you look so beautiful, even with just a ponytail in your hair. I would never look that good in a video." I thought she was just being herself and being nice but after she said that about 3 more times I realized she was being sincere. I told her I didn't think I looked good and she made a good point, we are our biggest critics. That is soo true. I guess after almost 23 years of looking at myself in the mirror, I know all my flaws.
Why are we so hard on ourselves? Other people don't see all the flaws that we see in ourselves. But then we see girls who look confident and assume they are cocky and full of themselves {which, they are 98% of the time.}
So is it possible for confidence and humily to coexist?

In other news, today I went shopping with Jamie and she helped me pick something to wear to the wedding! I'm so glad she was there because I probably wouldn't have even tried it on if she wasn't there because of the price tag. But it ended up being 20% off. Now if only she could be at the wedding with me...

Tonight we had another couples night! We went over to the Langi's cute new apartment and the boys watched football and played video games while we watched the Justin Bieber movie, lisa tried on her whole wardrobe, re-activated my twitter account and burned off the pizza and cocoa bean laughing. It was such a great night! Thanks jamie and lisa! #neversaynever