Winter 2010

This semester I started my fulltime job at Rexburg Care and Rehabilitation. Matt was taking a couple of really really hard Accounting classes (which he did really well in). The biggest news was that Matt and I found out that I was pregnant! We were, and are, really excited about this! I was getting too stressed out with 13 credits at school and working fulltime so I switched to parttime and eventually quit for several other reasons. We had a nice little visit from Jesse and Francesca Harrison during the semester. We had a lot of fun bowling and playing games around town.

Aparrently our camera was on the wrong setting because Matt lost Jesse's head in this one.

We stopped by Brittany Munk's boutique "Brittany Rae's" because Jesse and Matt wanted to check out her new place. They found these amazing neck warmers!

Jesse broke the manikin's hand while they were modeling for us : )

Sean and Court stayed in Rexburg for Easter and Juan was up visiting so Matt and I decided that they should come have Easter with us! It was really fun being in charge of my first Easter dinner. Matt helped out in the kitchen a ton! He prepared the ham all by himself!!

The finished and eaten product : )

Mexico City - February 2010

Here are a couple of aerial views from the plan that Matt took of some of his areas and of Mexico City. The first one is incredible because if you look closely the entire thing is jam packed with city/buildings.

During our visit one of Matt's convert couples (Veronica & Noah) came up to him during church and asked if he would baptise their son (Ivan). Matt had the opportunity to baptise him the day before we left. It was a neat experience.

I thought it was hilarious that they sold toast at the grocery store!!! It made more sense when I saw that most of the people did not have toasters in their homes.

This is Dulce and her three children. They were sooo precious! The two little girls didn't quite understand that I didn't speak Spanish and they persistantly tried to make conversation with me! It was so funny because they adopted me as their friend and were talking to me the whole time while Matt was talking to Dulce. I had to keep on interrupting them because they girls wanted responses and I couldn't give them any! Hahah! It was great! They taught me names of some animals in Spanish from their school books and insisted on me taking gifts that they had for us and the "baby". The youngest girl (the one in the light shirt) wanted us to stay forever. It looked like she was going to cry when were leaving. It broke my heart!

Here is Matt and Paulina (left) and Matt and I on Paulina's balcony. Paulina has been one of Matt's strongest converts. We were excited to hear that she was planning on going to the temple that month. Paulina LOVES Matt!!! So was so nice to give me, and both my mom and Matt's mom some intricate table doilies. We were extremely flattered because she said that the large ones took her about a year to make! I am holding a stack of the small ones in the picture. Those took her a couple of months each!

We stayed at Blanca's house while we were in Mexico. Matt calls Blanca his Mexican mother. She is a really strong member that Matt was able to baptise. Her daughter was already baptized when Matt come into the mission and her two sons were baptized after Matt left. While we were down there the oldest son was on his mission in a two a couple hours away. It was really sweet to hear that he wanted to see if Matt would come back to Mexico and baptize him, but Matt took too long : )

Here we are at their house playing cards on one of our last nights. We taught them hand and foot and they taught us this speed type of game, very intense!

Here is Matt standing on top of a hill looking over one of his areas. We went to the church building that they used to meet at and there was a wedding reception going on. Matt figured out that it was the sister of a man that Matt knew from his first transfer. Surprisingly the man remembered Matt by name!!! They were extremely nice and offered us to eat and join the celebration. The bride and groom came up to us to welcome us! I felt like a celebraty! I don't think I would've noticed a couple of casualy dressed people walk into our reception. We felt really welcomed. This is really how it was wherever we went. The Mexican people are very hospitable. We had to turn down a lot of meals while we were there because there were just too many people to visit!

Matt wanted me to be able to see the Teotihuacan Pyramaids. Mario and Montse, two of Blanca's kids, offered to escort us to the pyramaids. It was really nice of them, because I don't think they had a lot of fun : ) It was really interesting to see all of the village ruins surrounding the pyramaids and imagining what it looked like back when they were whole. We climbed "El Piramida del Sol" This was the tallest pyramaid and it was a good work-out! The next picture is of me at the top looking over at "El Piramida del Luna". It was really cool to see all of the symbolism to the gospel. Matt pointed out that there were 12 little pyramaids surrounding the three larger pyramaids (very interesting!).

This little festive man is dressed us to do an incredible trick with a few of his performers. You can see in this picture that they all start at the top of this 50ish foot pole. They are each tied to these ropes that are coiled around the pole. When they release themselves the weight of their bodies unravels the ropes and the spin around the pole! It was pretty fun to watch.

Here we are with Blanca's family, her husband is sitting on the right. On one of the first nights they took us out to dinner to try the best "Tacos Al Pastor" in town. Since this was a sit down resaurant we flet like it was safe for me to eat. Most of the food people get in town are from stands, which can be sketchy sometimes (we didn't want to possibly disease our unborn child). These tacos were the best tacos I have ever had in my life, Matt agreed! They are spicey pork with pineapple. They had a bunch of salsas and vegetables to put on top, SO GOOD!!! The corn tortillas were made right there near the tables. It was super cheap too! Matt said he thought the bill for all 6 of us came to about $40.

We went for a LONG drive down to the town that Blanca's son was serving his mission. It was near the town Puebla. We had the address but it was really hard to find. I think we were driving for a total of 6 hours that day. Luckily Mexico City is actually a really pretty place once you get outside of the city! This is a picutre I took up in the mountains.

Here are two picture of this huge volcano that we drove around. These are pictures from opposite sides. The picture on the right you can barely see the outline of the volcano in the clouds. We just liked this picture because you can see how large it really is.

Here are some of the locals near Puebla it looked like what I always picture Mexico to look like.

This is one of our favorites. The little boy on the left had a little puppy that hid when we took the piture. These kids just look so picturesque to me!

Here is a picture of one of the LDS church buildings in Mexico. It's was such a breath of fresh air to see in the city. I kind of made me feel at home. I was surpirsed at how many there where just in the area we stayed in.

The most memorable part of the trip was going down to visit Juan Alberto, Blanca's oldest boy, where he was serving his mission. His parents weren't supposed to see him so the just rode with us and we planned on just leaving them the car while we visited. So, what ended up happening was that we couldn't find their house so we asked some of the towns people where the missionaries lived. They pointed us in the right direction and to our surprise while we were driving we saw "los eldres!" walking along the street. Blanca and her husband ducked down in the back seat and Matt waved to Juan Alberto he waved back and when he saw it was Matt he freaked out! He was even more surprised to see his parents sitting in the back seat : ) So we found a place to park and Matt and I went up the hill to meet him and his companion while his parents stayed down the street in the car. We stopped by a little tienda to buy them some drinks and just talked for 15-20 minutes. He was so glad to see Matt it was a really emotional moment for all of us. Matt was so glad to see someone that he taught the discussions to teaching others the same principles. We later heard from Blanca that Juan Alberto wrote in his e-mail that he had been having a hard time on his mission, but seeing Matt and his parent's support just gave him such a great boost! We were really glad to hear that. Definitely worth the long drive.

These pictures are all chronologically backwards... so this is a picture of us at a Mexican cathedral in Puebla. It was really interesting to see the similarity in styles compared to the European cathedrals. The insides were just as immaculate, but the outsides had a definite Spanish style.

Here is some fancy building in Puebla. I don't think we knew what it was, it just looked cool : )

Here is Alberto and Blanca in the back of our car on our trip to visit Juan Alberto. They were fun to travel with. They actually took the whole five days off of work and their duties to make sure the we always had an escort when necessary around Mexico City. That was a really big deal I think because he is a big business man. He works as an accountant. There family is actually very well off for Mexico. I felt like we were in a normal American home when we stayed with them. We actually had our own room with a huge flatscreen TV, bathroom and balcony exit. I wasn't expecting that at all. Matt also noticed that Alberto had an incrdible amount of suites and dress shirts in his enormous closet next to our room : ) I thought that was awesome!

One last random photo. Here is the picture of the Basilica in Mexico City. Matt thinks it is one of the largest cathedrals in Central America, not sure though.

End of Fall Semester and Christmas Break

So I am extremely behind on the blog... I am going to try and catch-up. I've been looking through our pictures, remembering some fun times, and I thought I would share a few:

This is one of the windows in our house. Matt doesn't throw balls as much in the house anymore : )

Matt and I bought a Christmas tree from Broulim's for our house and when we let the limbs down we found this small heart shaped nest! So romantic, haha! This is kind of a bad shot of it, but it's the only one that we didn't look like idiots.

During Christmas Break Matt and I visited AZ to see my family. I didn't take many pictures but here we are at Disneyland. (Left) Matt and Josh on Main Street. (Right) Space Mountain picture where we are trying to be aliens. (Bottom) Matt is going to kill me for this one... He is being my Christmas present.

Fall semester we also visited Matt's family in Lincoln. Sherri and Brendi are much better picture takers that I am, so I leave it up to them : )

It's a Boy!!!

If you want to see our ultrasound you can click on the link below:

http://s836.photobucket.com/home/mssbyu04/recentuploads

First Half of Fall Semester 2009

Time to catch up! So after the honeymoon was over and all of the fun celebrations we knew real life had to begin. We were actually really excited to get back into the swing of things until the cold and homework hit us.

When we got up to Idaho we were assistant managers at Camden BYU-I girls housing. We stayed there for just about a month until Brendi, Rusty, and the kids moved back to California. We took over their management position and the house that came with it (Thank you Scott and Sherri!). We are so lucky to have room to fit all of our things in one place and trust me we have a lot of things : ) We de-junked a lot when we moved in but I think Matt is still amazed at the amount of kitchen supplies that I have. It has been really fun making our first real home together! I will post pictures later. Here are a couple of picture of some decorating that Matt did while we were unpacking : ) If you can't tell our walls are covered in sports paraphernalia... he was really sad when I took it down.

As far as school goes, Matt is keeping super busy with his Accounting and Spanish classes. He is getting really good grades, which we decided was from being married and anti-social : ) just joshin'! He is doing really well though. I am taking two nursing classes and so it would be pretty embarrassing if I did poorly in those. It has been super nice because I don't go to class more than once every two weeks. I have my last class of the semester tomorrow! I really like on-line classes.

With work we have both been trying to figure out this managing thing and the best way to get everything done. We are both bugging Brendi and Rusty a ton but I think we are starting to get a good hang of it. Matt has a new opinion about the single girls at BYU-I and is, thank goodness, very glad that he is married : ) They keep him busy. I am attempting to look for an RN job when I get sometime away from the house, but there hasn't been much success. I am planning on searching in Idaho Falls when I get a free day.

We are having a good share of fun so far. Two weeks into the semester, before Idaho froze over, we went on a camping trip with the Valentine boys, Cameron, Court, his date Hayley and a couple of my roommates Joy and Haylee. It was a ton of fun! We made tinfoil dinners and ate them with wooden silverware that the boys carved for us (we forgot forks) and we roasted stuff over the fire. The next day we all hiked up to the Wind Caves and did a little spelunking! It was the most intense caving I have ever done! There were a lot of really narrow tunnels that you had to wiggle through on your back and there was a big hole that the boys repelled down and climbed back up in order to get to the back of the caves where there is a big waterfall. The girls stayed behind because we were pretty scared of Cameron's special repelling gear. It was all really pretty and way nice to do just before the Winter hit.

Matt, Court, Cameron, Ben, and Adam formed a flag football team this Fall with a couple of their buddies. It was really fun to go watch even though I didn't know what was going on half of the time. Matt scored a lot of touchdowns and he says I missed them all because twice I was late to the game but really I was probably there I just couldn't tell exactly when he did touchdown : ) (He is teaching me). They are finished now with the games but I think they are glad because it is getting extremely cold at night lately. We are really dreading the snow : (((

Okay, I have to post this one special picture in here about Adam Valentine's birthday. They tied these two helium balloons to go under his chin and they sang him a birthday song! I couldn't stop laughing and had to take a picture so here it is! I hope you all enjoy this as much as I did!

Matt and I had our first Halloween together a couple of weeks ago : ) We carved pumpkins and on Halloween night we watched a really silly scary movie and handed out candy to the little kids that came to our door. They were SO CUTE!!! I think my favorite was this little girl that came in a fluffy triceratops costume! (Okay I just realized that the Sarah from Land Before Time probably came from the fact that she was a tri-CERA-tops! Haha!)

Okay one last funny picture. Matt and I have been trying to eat really healthy since it seems to be come that we people get married they care less and eat more. So we have been having fun experimenting with new things like this mini George Foreman grill that we got from Wal-Mart. Matt really likes it : ) Don't worry those burgers were like 2% fat and they are delicious!