It's All About Me

You may think this title sounds selfish, but my birthday IS this Saturday. So this background is in honor of me. You may now start wishing me "Happy Birthday".

What's new wid chew?

Hello there, my peeps. Dave here. I want to tell you about some stuff that has happened in our lives lately, and possibly in more detail than you care to know.

First, I've finally started working a lot more recently. I've got two big translation projects that I'm working on, one is a huge report about the status of the Russian nuclear icebreaker fleet, and the other is a back-translation of some standardized math tests for New York from Russian into English. What that means is that the state had the tests translated into Russian, and now I'm translating it back into English so that the test-makers know that the translation is correct. It's pretty fun, but I'm having to remember what the heck quadracepts and decagons are. (Be afraid 3rd graders, be very afraid!) The jobs both pay really well and are keeping me really busy, especially since I'm still interpreting at hospitals too. I'm so awesome!

Next, Kathryn and I have either bought or been given about 12 movies in the last month, the most expensive of them only being about $5 (well, of the ones we bought). And we just bought a DVD/VCR player last night, so I think we are now officially upper-class. We are super rich, unless you actually factor in how much I owe for my student loans, in which case we have a lot of negative money. But still, we actually have been pretty blessed financially lately, especially since we don't have any of those money-holes living with us, otherwise known as "children." (Disclaimer: I don't hate children. Yet.)

Hmmm, what else? Kathryn is sleeping right now, it's raining, I'm wearing manly slippers (yes, that's possible), and there is permanently a funky smell coming from our walk-in closet because of all our shoes (especially Kathryn's, since her shoes do not always require socks). In short, life is good. Amen.

Anniversary Celebration

Well I said I would write about our real anniversary celebration when it actually took place. As mentioned 2 posts ago we were busy with other things on our anniversary so we didn't get to celebrate. The day after we did do something. We went out to dinner. We decided to try this place by our apartment. It's called Rosie's Country Kitchen. It's a Denny's style diner but older and family owned and operated. It's run by people from India which kind of surprised us. Most of the food was American but they did have a little section on their menu of Indian food. We ate the American food. It was really good. We enjoyed it and it was nice to get away to celebrate our 2 years of marriage. We didn't just go out to dinner. Again, as already mentioned in the previous post, we went to the zoo a month ago as part of our anniversary. So the celebrating is over but every day is a celebration that we have survived each other this long. Just kidding. It's been a great 2 years!

Christmas 2009

Well Christmas came and went way too fast. I always get a little sad after Christmas. It means we wait for a whole year again before we get to celebrate. Yeah the presents are great, but I love how the famly gets together and we get to play, and there is Christmas music, lots of food and candy, and just the whole Christmas spirit. I know I'll be seeing family throughout the year, but there is just something special about coming together at Christmas. Anyway, I'm not trying to be depressing, I love Christmas time but it's sad that it has to end.

We did have a wonderful Christmas. We spent it with Dave's family this year. I'll start with Christmas Eve. We had a very large and delicious dinner, like Thanksgiving. Then we loaded into the car to look at lights, sing carols, and deliver goodies to friends. When we got back, we all shared a spiritual/inspirational Christmas story. It was great to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas. Then we watched a video called, Joy to the World, which is the nativity story. Then we went to bed.

We woke up at 8:00 and waited at the stairs for the annual picture taking on the balcony. Then we got to come downstairs and look in our stockings. All the presents are passed out and then starting from youngest to oldest we open a present each until they are all opened. Then we ate cinnamon style goodies for breakfast and then we started playing with toys and games. We took it pretty easy all day. I even snuck in a nap. I called and skyped with all my family and then before you knew it it was bedtime again. I sure do love Christmas. Here's what Dave and I got for Christmas: clothes and some jewelry, movies, games, money, a handmixer, reading books, songbooks, a webcam, candy, a Leatherman, decorations, and few other little things. It was a wonderful day and I hope the spirit of Christmas found you this year too! Merry Christmas!

Mom finishing up the chocolate covered candies.

Waiting for storytime.

"Oh Christmas Tree."

This is Dave trying out his new Leatherman.

Playing on the new Wii.

2 YEARS OF BLISS

Today is Dave and I's 2 year anniversary. Dave went to breakfast with his friends. I had to work. Then tonight, we had a party at his parent's house with lots of family and friends to watch the BYU Bowl Game. BYU won! I know what you're thinking. That is the coolest anniversary ever. Right? Well maybe you weren't thinking that. It's not exactly what I had in mind but we are going to celebrate tomorrow when neither one of us has things going on. Celebrating your anniversary is hard when it is in the middle of the week and especially during the holidays. We actually did a little bit of celebrating about a month ago. We went to the zoo. We did it early so that it would be warmer. It was a really nice day and we enjoyed ourselves. Tomorrow we are going out to dinner. It'll be great. So here are some pics of our real day but I'll post more later when we actually celebrate it.

Dave having breakfast with our friends the Smiths and Harrisons. They're not in town very long so I'm glad Dave got to see them while they were around.

We had a full house for the BYU Bowl Game. There were almost 30 people there watching the game, eating, or playing games. It was a really fun night.

I'm so grateful for Dave. I'm glad we get to spend eternity together. He is a wonderful husband and is so good to me. He has such a strong testimony and helps me to be a better person. He is very patient and has a great sense of humor. He makes me so happy. I'm very blessed. I love you Dave and Happy Anniversary!

Photo Shoot

I was getting bored of our pictures and decided Dave and I needed a Christmas picture. The setting is our apartment. Here are a couple we took.

This is one of my favorites. I was getting mad at Dave for not being serious in the picture.

This is us reenacting an engagement picture.

We were testing the camera. I was thinking of using the pillow as a prop, but that has a high dork factor.

Another picture. The end.

Thanksgiving Break

Dave and I went to Utah for Thanksgiving. On our way down to Enoch, we first met up with some of my old roommates. We went to Thanksgiving Point and visited, ate some great ice-cream, and goofed off at the store. It was great to see Alicia and Betsy. I miss those girls and my other old roommates. We sure had a great time when we were living together and so it was really fun to meet up. Here are some pics.

Here we are strategically posing in front of a Christmas tree.

Poor Dave is forced to do whatever we want when us girls get together.

Dave does what we want because we are so hard core. Don't mess.

After we were done goofing off, we drove down to Enoch. Thanksgiving morning was a blast. We had a Turkey bowl with all the cousins. We had been challenged by the Richey clan. Catherine Richey is one of my best friends and it was all her family we played with and against. We didn't divide teams by family, we did it by birthdays, the beginning of the year vs. the end of the year. Luckily this way made it so I wasn't chosen last. It was really fun. As many of you know, I'm not a huge football fan, but playing is different from watching. It was touch football, and then someone had flags and so we changed it up a bit. The game was a tie at the end though some think otherwise, but a tie sounds good to me. It was great. Sadly, I don't have any photos of the glorious game. After working up a sweat, we cleaned up and headed next door to my aunt's house for the magnificent feast. So yummy.

Lots of the family, lining up to get some grub.

Poor boys, don't know how to handle the feast.

The day after Thanksgiving, we have our family Christmas party. We eat pizza, make some kind of craft, dip candies in chocolate, do some service project, and have fun.

Dipping chocolates. Mmm Mmm Good.

Of course the boys were by the TV.

We left Saturday night to head back up north and this is the weather we had for about 30 minutes, but then it cleared up. At least I had some what of a white Christmas before heading back to California.