BYU

basketball is ranked third in the nation...nuff said. Bring on that #1 tournament seed!

Weekend in Spokane

This weekend I drove to Spokane by myself to see my grandma who has been pretty sick for the last month. I coordinated the visit with when my dad would be there. It was a really good time, it was so great to spend the weekend with my dad and my grandma was doing so much better than either of us were expecting. HURRAY!

I didn't take any pictures because my dad and my grandma both take pictures, but it was wonderful and we all enjoyed each other's company!

Great Minds Think Alike

Richard left the house 2 hours before me, I was fast asleep when he left...and yet, we picked the same shirt to wear today...out of the bazillion BYU shirts we have, we picked the same one...I think it is a sign.

We both represented our team all day long. GO COUGARS!!!

Anxiety

Yes...I am getting anxiety just thinking about the BYU vs SDSU game tomorrow...

As much as I want to be in Provo at the Marriott Center for this game it is probably a good thing I am not...it could kill me.

Christmas Break

We had a FANTASTIC Christmas Break, we had a lot of fun spending time with all of our friends and family in Utah! Unfortunately, we were to busy having fun to take many pictures, the few that are on this post are the only ones that we took (BUSTED). I am bummed that we didn't take more pictures, but in my defense, we just did a lot of hanging out and playing...not really much to take pictures of. Because it would take forever to write all of the details of our break I will just do bullets... :)

• We went up to Salt Lake and saw "White Christmas" with some of Richard's family. It was so great, neither of us had either seen it and we LOVED it!
• We went to 2 BYU basketball games. The first game we went to was vs UTEP and we went with my whole family. Then later in our trip we went to a game with Justin and one of his friends.
• We went and saw Tangled with my mom and Grandma Christensen. SO CUTE!!!
• We went and saw Harry Potter 7 Part 1 with Justin. Really good, now we just have to wait to see the 2nd part!
• We had a great Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas morning with my family.
• We had a great Christmas dinner and evening with Richard's extended family.
• We met up with Tiff and Aaron in SLC, had dinner at Jason's Deli and then went to Temple Square to see the lights.
• We had dinner with Gabe and Leslie and then we went bowling. We got to meet their super cute baby Brooklyn.
• We went to Dave and Kristen's, chatted, played games, and had a good time. We got to see their cute daughter Kylie, she has definitely grown since we left in May.
• We went to Alec and Lorie's, played games, and had dessert. We got to meet Andrew, their happy and adorable 4 month old baby.
• ...notice a trend...yeah, all of our friends have babies....haha....guess that is what happens when you grow up and get married!
• I GOT TO TALK TO DIANE ON SKYPE! For those of you who don't know, Diane has been one of my very best friends since 3rd grade and she is on a mission in the Phillippines. She gets home on May 5th and I am super excited because I will be in Utah at the end of May so I get to see her! I can't wait!
• Richard's sister Carolyn got engaged to a fantastic guy! We are excited to have Tyler join the family. They are getting married at Falcon Point Ranch (falconpointranch.com) which is owned by Tyler's family! We get to stay in the lodge and have a personal chef while we are there! WOOHOO! We can't wait! We get to see Carolyn and Tyler get married (SO EXCITED!) and we get to be pampered a little while we enjoy the family time!
• We spent lots of down time playing games, watching movies, and just goofing off. We love our family and friends and we miss them a lot so it was great to spend so much time with them!

UTAH!

This last week we got to go to Utah to enjoy Thanksgiving with both of our families, the original plan was to leave Seattle on Wednesday, but because of the whopping 4 inches of snow that Seattle got on Monday Richard's school was cancelled on Tuesday so we decided to leave late Tuesday morning. The weather wasn't great, so we only made it to Pendleton, OR...about 1/3 of the way. So we stayed the night in a hotel and got up bright and early for the second part of our drive on Wednesday, again the roads were not great, but we rolled into Spanish Fork at about 6:00.

Thursday we had Thanksgiving with my family at 12:30 and then we went to a second Thanksgiving dinner with Richard's family at about 3:00. Both of our Thanksgivings were spectacular!

Friday, Richard went skiing with a bunch of the boys in his family, I took the day easy with my family. I went shopping with my mom and brothers and just had a nice relaxing day.

Saturday, we went to Grandma Christensen's to have Christmas morning with Richard's parents then we went to my house to watch the BYU vs Utah football game, which we lost. :(

Saturday night brought the real reason for our trip to Utah, the most important part. It was Grandma Christensen's 80th birthday party. Almost her entire family came to Utah to be a part of the event, only four of her grandchildren weren't able to make it. She had family from all corners of the country: New Hampshire, Georgia, Washington, Arizona, and many others. It was a fantastic night and it was so great to honor grandma and see her life in pictures. We love you grandma, happy birthday!

Unfortunately, on Sunday we had to drive back to Seattle. We woke up at 3:15 Washington time and picked up Richard's dad and sister from Grandma's house to take them to the airport and then we were on our way. Just a mere 3 hours into our drive we hit the first snag...we learned that I-84 was closed at the Utah/Idaho border so we pulled off the freeway to discuss what we wanted to do...our options were sit there, go back to spanish fork, or go all the way around I-84 through Pocatello which, at the speed limit would add 2 hours to our drive. We decided that we would just be annoyed all day if we weren't making progress so we decided to go ahead and take the 2 hour detour, but before we got back on the road we wanted breakfast, but NOTHING was open, so we ended up finding a walmart and buying some pop-tarts and graham crackers.

The roads were pretty nasty until about 100 miles from Boise so it was a LONG drive, the normal 6 hour drive to Boise took TEN hours!!!! After that, the drive was fairly smooth, we were going to stop in Kennewick for the night, but we really didn't want to and we were feeling good so we were able to make it all the way home. We got in at about 10:30, which isn't that late except that we had been awake since 3:15...

18.5 HOURS LATER WE HAD FINALLY MADE IT HOME!

But the trip was totally worth it and we would do it all again!

Halloween

For Halloween our friend's Dustin and Sally Bluhm hosted a great 80's themed party, it was a lot of fun, and they went all out, it was so great!

Richard is rockin the flat top, he won the prize for best hair. And I found this fabulous wedding dress for $20 at Value Village.