Family Time

Today my dad didn't have to work so we wanted to go out and do something as a family. After about 2 hours of debating what we should do we eventually decided to go to boomers and ride the go karts and play miniature golf. Darren started the game off with a hole-in-one...

Then he got another...

And another...

And then we stopped taking pictures after his third hole-in-one. I think he ended up with 5

I even got a hole-in-one

Gage got a hole-in-one but refuses to take normal pictures...

And dad got a hole-in-one but didn't want to take a picture of it, so this is all I got

Mom didn't get a hole-in-one, but she still played well!

After miniature golfing we headed over to the beach to watch the sunset. It was such a beautiful day...it seriously felt like summer and it is December! I have no idea how I live in Rexburg! Everything was so beautiful we couldn't help taking pictures :)

We found so many crabs in the reef. They were really big and gross but I had to get a picture of one. Overall we had a great day playing and watching the sunset. We have been enjoying the great San Diego weather and we will be sad to go back to the freezing cold!

Christmas

Darren and I got to have our first Christmas together! It is so nice to be together now for all of the holidays. We spent this Christmas in San Diego with my family and next Christmas we will be in Portland with Darren's family. We wish we could have had Christmas with both families but it just wasn't possible. Darren and I both love Christmas and all of the pretty lights and family time. The Christmas season is a wonderful time and we are sad to see it end, but good thing Christmas comes every year! I am thankful that my Savior, Jesus Christ came into this world to atone for my sins and to make it possible for me to return to my Father in Heaven. I love celebrating His birth and thinking about the little baby Jesus who was born in a stable. It is weird to imagine Jesus as a little baby because I mostly think of him as an adult, but when I imagine him as a baby I bet he was the most well behaved, beautiful and innocent looking baby ever. And I can't even imagine how it would have felt for Mary to be his mother. Well anyway these are some pictures from Christmas morning with my family... It was a great day and I loved being with my Darren and with my family.

Josh and his memory foam pillow

My dad with his new tie

Arie opening her Pottery Barn gift card

Darren opening a shirt from me

Gage and his new electric guitar!

And Darren and I holding up some of our presents...and wearing some. We decided that every year we are going to take a picture like this. It will be our new tradition. Darren and I are most excited about our kindle fire which we got from our parents but I am also loving my new beanie from Gage, my new coat from Darren, a cute Christmas pillow from Josh and Arie and Strabuck's caramel apple cider mix that I got in my stocking. We got a few other things but this is all we could manage in the picture. And Darren had to have his grapefruit that he gets in his stocking every year!

Something to Blog About

For Thanksgiving Darren and I went to Oregon and surprised his family. They had no idea that we were planning to come up there for the week so it was really exciting. Darren's family does this silly thing that whenever people come home everyone in the house pretends like they are asleep. Sometimes they even drop to the ground in the middle of the floor and pretend to sleep when someone walks through the door. When we were staying at their house this summer, I would always laugh while I was pretending to sleep. I thought it was so funny and I had the hardest time keeping a straight face. So when we went there for Thanksgiving Darren came up with the idea to ring the doorbell and then pretend we were asleep on their doorstep. They loved it that we surprised them and we had a really fun time with them in Oregon. We did a lot of black Friday shopping and hanging out with family. On Saturday Darren's parents work in the temple so Darren and I were going to go to a session so we could spend more tine with them. We drove Darren's dad's car to the temple and on the way his car started to act super weird. I thought Darren was just swerving a lot but a few seconds later we heard a pop and the car started jerking. Luckily, we were able to pull over safely. Darren got out of the car and saw that the back tire had popped. We were both in church clothes and we both had no cell phones. It is really scary being pulled over on the freeway with all of the cars zooming past you. It took us a while to get the car jack and the tire out of the car and I hadn't even realized someone had pulled over to help us. The guy asked us if we were going to a wedding, we told him no, but he said one time he was on his way to a wedding and his tire blew but no one pulled over to help him so he got all dirty. He didn't want us to have to get dirty so he offered to change the tire for us. It was so nice and we were so appreciative! We ended up missing the temple session but we were just happy that everything worked out. The next day when we were driving back to Rexburg our bad car luck continued. We had been driving for about 6 hours when we noticed that the speedometer on our car was flickering back and forth, it started to make us pretty worried and then we got even more worried when a bunch of lights started coming on like the airbag light and the ABS light. I told Darren to pull over right away, luckily he didn't listen to me and waited until the next exit to pull over because when we got off, our car completely died. Everything was dead. The lights wouldn't even turn on. We were driving 2 girls we had found from the ride board that we didn't even know very well, but we all got out and pushed the car to the nearest gas station. It was pretty lucky that we only had to push it for a minute and then the car was able to roll the rest of the way because it was downhill. When we pulled into the gas station we called Darren's parents and told them about what had happened. They said there was nothing we could do for our car that day because it was Sunday and the shops were closed. Darren's family just happened to know some people who were driving to Utah and they were an hour behind us. They came and picked up the two girls that were riding with us so they could take the shuttle in Boise back to Rexburg. A few people stopped by because they saw that we were broken down and they said they thought it was a computer problem with our car which is very expensive to fix. We were super bummed because of the situation that we were in and that we were going to have to miss class the next day. Even though we were in a stressful situation Darren and I remained pretty calm, except I did cry for a few minutes to my mom, but other than that we handled the situation well and worked really good together. We couldn't have been luckier about where we broke down. Even though we were kind of in the middle of nowhere, Darren just happens to have a great aunt who lives in the middle of nowhere. She was only a few exits down the highway, so after sitting at the gas station for at least 4 hours trying to get everything situated, she came and picked us up. We were worried about leaving our car over night with all of our stuff in the car but Darren's second cousin, Kay is a police officer so he called some of his buddies and had them drive by a car a couple of times. Kay also called a mechanic for us and he came out the next morning to look at our car even though it was his day off. We figured out that a connecting fuse had fried and that little fuse powers the whole car. They don't usually carry that specific part in the stores but the mechanic was able to make one for us. Once we got that little wire fixed, our car was good to go! And guess what? The fix only cost 25 dollars! Wahoo! We couldn't have been more blessed! Throughout this whole situation everyone kept telling us that we had an angel watching over us. Considering the circumstances, things worked out so well. We could have broken down in the middle of nowhere with no cell service and things would have been a big mess. God was watching over us and we realize that it wasn't just luck. Everything worked out and it didn't even cost us hardly anything to fix the car. We are so thankful for how things happened, and to know that God was watching over us. It was a good Thanksgiving week that reminded us of all of our many blessings!

An Update

I suck at blogging. My life is just way too busy to blog, but I wish I did it more because one day I will appreciate that I took the time to write our memories down. This semester has been good but SO busy. Darren has to volunteer for one of his classes and it is like a job he goes so much! I have a ton of busy work because of my major, but I usually like my assignments, I just don't like that they take forever. Other than school we like to take naps, watch 24 and go out together. We are obsessed with Applebees steak and we go there any chance we get. We also have a mid week date tradition of going to 5 buck pizza every Tuesday. Sometimes we go to Sammy's too because they have a buy one get one free deal on Tuesdays. Usually we are too full though. We watch 24 all the time and we are completely addicted. It is such a good show but it gives me nightmares! It is starting to get cold here, and now that we have a driveway we have to shovel it which is SUCH a bummer. We just celebrated Darren's birthday and now he is an old man. I think that is pretty much it. Our house is cute, but we have a lot of spiders and it is usually cold, however we still like it. We got called to be nursery workers and I am quite excited but if you ask Darren he might not say the same thing. I love spending everyday with Darren and I really can't believe we have been married for 5 months. The time has really flown by!

24 cupcakes and 24 bean dip. We had a miniature 24 party with Maddie and Jordan and we had to have 24 food!

Darren pretending to be Jack Bauer

Eating mummy pizza on Halloween

Eating his birthday dinner

His birthday package from his family

Birthday dessert: Darren's delight

Blowing out the candles!

Knotts Soak City

The same day that we took family pictures we went to Knott's Soak City. My family had been wanting to go all summer but we never thought we would be able to go because of my broken foot. But, the last Saturday that Darren and I were there we were able to go!! It was a lot of fun, especially the ride Pacific Spin! I love it!

It was a fun last day in warm San Diego. It will be along time before I can wear a bathing suit again!

The Fam Bam

A couple of days before Darren and I left for school my family decided to take some family pictures. We haven't taken family pictures in FOREVER and this was quite the experience. We went to the beach early in the morning which meant bad news for my hair. Super frizzy! But besides that they turned out good...well at least some of them.

We had some like this... (the good ones)

Since when did my 14 year old brother get to be a head taller than me?

And then a lot more like these... (the silly, funny, everyone is doing their own thing pictures)

My one leg ruins the picture, but I couldn't get it that high off the ground because I had just started walking again!

For some reason it was extremely hard for my family to take good pictures. Mostly because my brothers were being super silly and saying funny things or doing weird poses, but I really like the silly pictures. I think they are fun and it makes me smile when I look at them.

This next one is my all time favorite picture. I think it is mantle worthy :)

The Royal Treatment

We went to the beach on Thursday and it was one of the best times I have ever had at the beach and all with a broken foot!

I had to wrap my boot in a garbage bag so sand wouldn't get in my boot while I was walking down the beach but I took my boot off once we got to our spot.

My cute husband!

My pathetic foot. At first, I was really scared to go into the water with my broken foot but with some convincing I decided to try it.

We figured out a lovely system of getting me into the water and this is when the royal treatment began. I said so many times throughout the day that I felt like a queen!

Josh or Darren would piggy back me out into the water (It was mostly Josh though) until we were pretty far out. Then I would get on the boogie board and get pulled even farther out. When a big wave would come Josh would send me on my way into the wave. I have never caught so many waves in my life! It was so fun dropping into the wave and riding it all the way to the shore! I did it a ton of times and I am sure Josh got his workout but it was really nice of him.

Josh also would pull me on the boogie board in the shallow water as fast as he could! It was actually kinda scary! While he pulled me, so much sand would shoot into my hair, eyes and mouth but I loved it! Once we were going really fast sometimes he would just let go and I would go flinging off. My foot never even got hurt! It was such a fun day at the beach and we did lots of laughing. I LOVE when something is so fun it makes you laugh. That's how that day was.

The boys ended the day with some ultimate frisbee...

until they lost it out in the ocean. I can't tell you how many times they have lost that frisbee and how many times they have found it 50 feet down the coast in the water. But this time, unfortunately, they didn't find it.

I love him. He makes me happy.

The end to our fun and laughy day!