Meet Nixon

On February 28th we fell in love with the cutest black lab and had to bring him home! Nixon was born on December 23rd which means today he is 11 weeks old. He has been so much fun, and we are so lucky that we picked a smart and handsome puppy! Andy works at home so Nixon always keeps his daddy company on those long days. Andy is such a wonderful husband, he wakes up at at least 6 every morning to wake Nixon up and take him for a walk to go potty. Every day when I get home Andy has taught Nixon something new, he already knows how to sit, fetch, and we almost have him potty trained... but not quite :). I have such a wonderful husband and he sure loves his little guy.

Andy and Nixon taking a nap

Annie and Nixon

Uncle Toby and Nixon at our cabin in Park City

Toby and Nixon on a walk

It's official!

I will be teaching 2nd grade at Eagle Valley Elementary in the Fall!!! I am so excited and I cannot wait to start creating my classroom and lessons for my students! Alpine School District is amazing and I am so happy that I finally will be a teacher!

Just a few things we have learned....

We are absolutely loving life in our new home. It has been such a blast being out here, and everything is just perfect. I just wanted to post about the things that we have learned since we have moved out here in our new house...
1. Garbage day is on Thursday. This took us a few weeks to get used to, but when the garbage starts to pile up you learn pretty quick.
2. If you let the snow get too deep in your driveway because you haven't bought a snow shovel your neighbors will come do it for you.
3. When you finally buy a snow shovel and go out to shovel your driveway for the first time, your neighbors will feel bad for you and come over with their snow blowers to get the job done in half the time.
4. Neighbor Christmas gifts rock.
5. Circles do not get snow plowed so from time to time you may bottom out trying to get to your driveway.
6. Since circles do not get snow plowed, people give rides on sleds behind their 4 wheelers during the day.
7. You have to buy a mailbox.
8. Living in a home without blinds can be interesting... good thing they came a couple days after we moved in.
9. If the bank forgets to take the real estate key box off the door, there is a switch inside that you can push to take it off yourself.
10. Reception is not great out here and since we have not yet set up service we do not watch tv. Needless to say, your own movies get old fast.
11. Because movies get old fast, you can watch tv shows on the internet if you don't mind pushing start again after the commercials end.

This has been such an amazing experience. We are still getting used to being homeowners! We love our neighborhood, our ward, and everything we are currently doing out here.

Home Owners!!!

We closed today! I am so happy, it seems surreal because we have been wanting this for so long, but if finally happened! I will update more later about our move and how we are enjoying life living alone again! :) (Im pretty sure it will be great!)

Utes, NOG bonfire, Thanksgiving, Twilight, and our house!

I of course have to post about the U of U and BYU game even though it is long gone :) My camera of course was out of batteries that night so I have no pictures but I sure had a huge smile on my face the entire game! I was so excited! It was a great game and I was so glad that they won.Last Wednesday night my friend Whitney Beck came home from the Air Force Academy to have Thanksgiving with her family so she had a party at her house for the NOG. Let me just explain first, the NOG stands for the North Ogden Gang, otherwise known as some of the best friends I have ever had! It was so much fun to go buy some Jones sodas and kick back like we used to before everyone was married and having babies! Thanks Whit, we had a blast!

Thanksgiving was a blast, we had a rocket launch in the morning with Andy's family and then a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner that night at Stan and Jenny's house. After dinner we played a fun present game and we all had a ton of fun! I have a lot to be thankful for right now!

I know that everyone is sick of Twilight by now, but I had a late start because Andy's family wanted to go so we waited til they went (and they paid which makes it beneficial to wait...)! It was awesome! It was way better than I thought it would be and I loved it. It obviously changed a bit and left out some of the parts in the book, but there is no way they could have fit it all in, and quite frankly I think they did an amazing job! I loved it, and that is all the more I will say.

Now for our final update on our house, we should close tomorrow!!! We are so excited to move in this next weekend! We bought a refrigerator to match our other appliances and today we went to measure it to make sure it would fit. We feel like this house is perfect for us in every way and we are so thankful that it worked out! Today we went to our new ward to check it out since we will be officially moved in on Friday or Saturday and we loved it. They are building a brand new stake center near our house too so a lot of new things are happening and we couldn't be more excited! We will keep you updated but if you don't hear from us this week it is because we are undergoing the monotonous task of moving... again... but hopefully this will be the last time for a few years!

Our Crazy Life

I feel like I have died in the blogging world! I haven't updated in forever, and yet I read everyone else's blogs and always check if you have updated yours that day or not! So, in the spirit of getting better I will post a gigantuous post of our lives these past few months.

August ended with a huge change in our lives, we left our wonderful apartment for hopes of finding a exceptional house. It was super hard leaving our first home! Even though we don't really miss the random alarm clocks throughout our building, and tons of kids always screaming, we miss our ward, our friends, and just being on our own. It was a lot of stress moving out because we decided to do it on the spur of the moment, and school started the same week we were moving. I would go to work, go to school, pack til really late, and do it over again! It was crazy, and I would never do it again :) Andy's parents, Scott and Tina, were kind enough to let us stay at their house until the deal on the house went through so that we wouldn't have to pay rent for nothing. However, we were mislead to how long this process would take!!! 2 1/2 months later.... we found our house!! We are so excited, and now we can say that this whole process was worth it, and most of you may think that 2 months is not that long, but it sure has been a learning experience living with other people, and we are glad that we are almost done. Dont get me wrong, Scott and Tina were SOOO hospitable and sweet. They even cooked every meal for us because Andy and I don't get home from school and work until late at night. They have been so awesome, but I cannot wait to get into our own home again!

Right after we moved in we went to Flaming Gorge for the last time this year, and it was a blast. You cant really tell, this was the boat parade. A bunch of people dress their boats in lights and they are awesome! Then everyone with boats goes into the middle of the lake and watches the boat parade! It is a lot of fun. School was the next big task to be accomplished, Andy and I are in school full time, and working full time. It has been a crazy couple of months. Now you can see why I found blogging to be somewhat difficult! Andy graduates in May with his Business Management degree from the University of Utah, and I just started student teaching! It has been a lot of fun. But I think it is safe to say that I am the only one who fully enjoys everything about school right now!

September went by in a haze, and I truthfully do not remember much that happened that month, I do remember that we both were sick, it was a hard month for us. October was just great. I think we got used to living with the parents, and everything was just great. Jayni, Jake, and I canned applesauce from free apples! They were, however, pretty gross so we had to cut them into tiny pieces to get all of the nasty crap out but that is what you get when they are free! Then Jayni and Jake hosted a Halloween party at their new house for our family. It was so much fun! However, Andy, Elly, Toby, and Annie were the only ones to dress up! Slackers..... :)

Toby, Annie, and Elly

Andrew, Elly, Annie, and Andy

Jake, Elly, Jayni, and Toby

Sayuri, Jee Won, Tina, and Justin

Andy and I dressed up as Guitar Heros but Andy had to take off his wig and makeup because Toby thought it was scary :) Elly was a Southern Bell and Toby was a cute little pumpkin!
The actual Halloween day was fun too. We had to dress up for work, and then we had a haunted scavenger hunt that Rebecca put on and it was sooo fun. Every year she puts on a great scavenger hunt with tons of clues all over the Salt Lake valley. We look forward to this ALL year long! We get into groups and whoever finishes first gets a prize. This years theme was Haunted Murders. It was so scary! I made Andy go inside all of the scary places because there was absolutely no blasted way I was going down into some crazy haunted cellar in the middle of the forest! Andy was only really scared once, and it was at the end. The next clue was inside of a coffin in the middle of a field and Andy had kicked the coffin and it was empty so he opened the lid and one of Rebecca's daughters dropped a figure on fishing line out of the tree and I have never heard him scream so loud in his life! It was hilarious. What a fun night! Here are some pictures:

Annie, Abbie, and Krista

We hid Krista's purse and made her go on a Scavenger Hunt for it, as you can see, she was a little lost at this point :) Scott the Mafia guy trying to sneak inside the pass through box at work

So, we had a little too much fun on Halloween, and it was a great day! As of now, I just started student teaching 5th graders at Draper Elementary and I love it! I taught my first lesson on Roanoke and Jamestown and it turned out 100% better than I thought it would and I am looking forward to the next two weeks. My students are sooo funny and I just love teaching them.

Abbie got engaged on Saturday while we were working! Jordan (her fiance) had random people put ring pops with cute sayings on them through the drive-up tubes and each one came one at a time and at the end he was behind her with beautiful flowers and her ring. It was so cute and so much fun for me and Krista to be there. Here are pictures of that:

Finally, info about our awesome, wonderful, perfect house! We are so excited. Our offer was accepted, financing was great, and now we are just waiting for the inspection and then we will close! We understand that inspection could change the fact if we move into this particular house right now or not, but it is a brand new house, never been lived in, so we are pretty hopeful. We cannot wait! The things we love about our house are the size of it, the location, the neighborhood, the fact that it is on a cul-de-sac circle, the fact that it is overlooking the lake and the mountains, and that it has never been lived in! We already have 7 bedrooms finished, and an unfinished basement, so we would never have to make any more rooms downstairs! It is just a wonderful house and we feel so blessed to finally see a light at the end of this long road! Here are just a few pictures:

This is the upstairs. There are four identical bedrooms, 2 behind me, and 2 on the other end, and then this upstairs family room and straight ahead is another bathroom.This is the front door and living room. The stairs to the top floor are on the left.

This is our kitchen! I love that it leads into the family room! The garage and laundry room are through that door on the left.

This is half of our unfinished basement

So finally it seems our life is going to be back to normal and we again get to change new wards, new neighborhoods, and start a new life! We are so excited!

Weber County Fair

We went to the fair last night and we had a blast. The fair was one of my favorite times of the year when I was younger and I still really love it! We arrived just a little too late to watch our family sell their pigs in the auction, but we still were able to see them after. Then we went to watch Brent Moyes in Fair Idol! Brent is married to my cousin Stacie, so we went to go vote for him and watch him sing! Brent has an amazing voice and it was so fun to watch him! You were awesome Brent! After that Andy and I decided to go to the petting zoo...... :) My Grandpa told us that we had to go because they had awesome animals there so we decided to give it a shot. We mostly had fun taking crazy random pictures, but it was still really fun

This animal is a water buffalo and it made me laugh because I didn't know there was such a thing. I had listened to the veggie tales "water buffalo" silly song before, but thought it was a made up animal, so knowing that such an animal really existed made my day... :) This link will take you to a youtube video of "water buffalo" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a08A7lDjTFE

Finished for the Summer!!!

Andy and I both finished school this last week and it feels so great! Andy only has two more semesters and I am so proud of him. He is VERY smart and does a great job in all of his classes. However, after he graduates from the U he will be starting graduate school so we still have a ways to go. In the meantime we will be enjoying our 2 1/2 weeks off!!

Lake Powell 2!!!

I know, I know, pictures and posts of boating are getting super old.... but I had to post our awesome Lake Powell trip again!! This vacation was only a couple of days because Andy had a final on Thursday we had to be to, but it was well worth the drive to be in Lake Powell once again this summer even if it was only a short trip. We were able to bring my cousin Erik and his wife Jamie this time and it was a blast! Here are some of the fun pictures.

Annie, Jamie, and Abby

Erik and Jamie relaxing :)Andy and his little brother Tanner trying to surf with two people....

This is about how far they got :)

Pine View Dam

We went boating with my dad's side of the family on the 26th of July and we had a blast! The funnest part was the water weenie!!! I hadn't been on one of those for years! Thanks dad! Andy, Toby, Annie, Elly, and Andrew at Pine View Grandma Larsen with Elly and Toby

Elly and Annie on Grandpa's boat!

Andrew got up on 2 skis! Wahoo! (He sure is concentrating hard in this picture...)