Student Teacher Extraordinaire!

My sister was featured in the local Newspaper this morning and was chosen from all of Logan to represent El Ed student teachers! Hooray Kellie! Check out the article HERE

Faking Spring

As you can see in the post below, Logan has not caught the message that it is Spring time! gggrrrrr. I am feeling a little cramped in our tiny apartment (although we have had so many people tell us that these will be the best memories we will ever have as newlyweds... grumble grumble... I think hindsight must add a certain amount of idealism to the memories!!!) and so we decided to try and force Spring like activities (If you haven't caught that from our visit to the hot springs and other shenanigans!) On Sunday, I was happily talking to my brother on the phone when I looked out the window.... and what did I see? Certainly not popcorn, but a Deer!! Look closely in the pictures (click on it to zoom in) and you will see two deer that wandered through our neighbors grass into an abandoned lot.. in the middle of the city! We went on a safari trying to get some good photos, but we were too clumsy.

Then, despite a wet falling snow, we decided to take our Easter eggs (which we were afraid were going to start smelling) and roll/throw them down Old Main Hill (as is tradition on this campus) with some friends. It was a fun activity and made me feel like it was a little closer to Spring. :-)


Jared's egg rolled the farthest, Kyle lost a good old fashioned egg toss with me when the egg busted all over his hand, and we all had a great time!


We also got an amazing picture of Hope as the sunlight attempted to break through the cloudy day. If this blog has felt like a bit of a travelogue, I apologize. Many of my friends with kids spend their blogs documenting what the kids are up to, but we will choose to spend our posts showing our posterity that we managed to have a ton of fun as newlyweds and that we refuse to get boring! Ever!

What I woke up to this morning :(

Is this some cruel April Fool's Joke? **Sigh**

Easter Weekend

We had a great time Easter Weekend with Kyle's family in town visiting. His sister, Melissa, will be joining us at USU next fall for her first year of college. She had a lot to sort out with the University and her housing, so it was productive for them as well as fun for us. We celebrated my Mother-in-law's birthday a little late with my first ever from scratch German Chocolate Cake. Whew! I now have a tasty recipe for the delicious frosting which I am sure I will attempt in the future since canned frosting is a sin in this family! :-) On Saturday, we ventured to a little place called Crystal Hot springs for some soaking in the hot pools as well as some cold water sliding. Keep in mind that it is still not Spring here, so we had a lovely day with mid 30- low 40 degree temps (you can see the snow in the background of some of the pictures!). It was amazing despite the cold temperatures how warm I felt... and how it did not deter us from running up the frozen concrete to go down the water slides again and again. I even came home with a touch of sun burn (which has since made me a golden brown!) in the middle of a very long winter. It felt nice to enjoy some bronzed skin at my water aerobics class! Enjoy the photos!




In other recent news, my thesis is plugging along. I thought that I was ready for a proposal meeting, but my professor has other things in mind, so I am back to work diligently today and see how far I can get in two weeks. Pray for my motivation because the chapter I have to redo is highly unpleasant and very tedious. It will all be worth it when I am done, but it has been such a discouraging process. I who have been known through life to be a total optimist with undying hope have found this to be one area that can get me down very quickly. **sigh** A moment of honesty... I am not great at technical writing. I just want my posterity who will one day read this to understand that this has been a HUGE trial for me, but I am working to try and keep the hope. I think it is a little more discouraging recently because it is physically painful to sit and write all day too. I will have to take a hiatus from my job in May until my thesis is done, so hopefully this process will end soon so that we can return to life post graduation!

p.s. This is a shout out to my fabulous brother Nate who's birthday it is today. Love you tons and enjoy the March Madness games... a truly great present for you!

Pain in the Butt!

From the title, you might be thinking that I was referring to my most recent change in Blog layout. Actually, this time around, it was quite easy! (and Kellie, you did awesome work on the header! Thanks!) I am also not referring to any teenagers or small children for which I am responsible. This is quite literally a post about a pain.... and yes.... it is in my bum! :-) Now before I lose your interest, let me explain a little bit. For about the last 6 weeks, I have not been able to ignore a persistent pain in my lower half after any type of extended sitting. Now, remember that my primary tasks right now involve working on my thesis and doing therapy... both sitting activities! As you can imagine, life has been pretty painful! Kyle loves to laugh at me when I stand up because it seems so crazy how much discomfort it has given me. For the last little while, I have been trying to figure out what is causing my tender tush problems. I figured that I was just sitting too much between the computer time and the therapy time, so I decided to increase my activity level. No major results....still tons of pain. It has gotten so bad that I cannot even sit long... I have to move and lay down and do all kinds of strange looking behaviors in session to compensate for this posterior pain (do you like my catchy alliterations?? I have been having too much fun with this!)
Today, I finally solved the mystery. After weeks of complaining (and Kellie and Kyle getting lots of laughs over my grimaces and strange actions) I decided to diagnose myself once and for all. I googled all kinds of things related to pain in the gluteus maximus (and wow... that brings up a fun afternoon reading!!) and then remembered an incident from a while ago... One night while running to make it to my water aerobics class, I had rushed out in the snow wearing only flip flops and my swimwear. I completely biffed it and fell really hard on my backside in a very icy snowbank. Besides it being extremely cold, I remember that my buns of steel felt like buns of sore, but I soon forgot about it because I was suspended in the water and then came home and went straight to bed. Soon after this, I began to notice the pains in my behind. Therefore, after a complete and exhaustive internet diagnosis, I have determined that I have broken (or perhaps just severely bruised) my tailbone. I have no desire to get it officially checked out because the descriptions of diagnostic procedures for such an injury were enough to make me go white! And the worst is that the only respite from my symptoms will come if I sit on a goofy donut pillow and just wait for it to heal on its own. This makes thesis writing and therapy a little difficult.... not to mention awkward to bring up in every session!! The moral of the story? I don't suppose I have one. Perhaps you can all avoid running in the snow in flip flops from now on. Mostly, I just thought solving the mystery (for it has truly been one for six weeks!) was hysterical. Call me Inspector Butt!

:-)

Juice Time... Thanks to Arizona!

We were able to spend some time with Kyle's family this week since they are in town for his sister's spring break as well as a few weddings. We will get to see them more when they come up to Logan to visit this coming Easter weekend, but for now, they left us with a little reminder of them...

FRESH ORANGES!!

In their AZ home, they have nine orange trees that are producing like crazy! This is the peak time for their ripeness (actually I think we are a few weeks early, but they taste great!) and so they brought us a whole box. YUM! These oranges are made for juicing, so with the help of a little juicer they gave us, we are enjoying fresh squeezed juice (while it is still snowing outside!!). Kyle is getting a workout, but I am grateful for his efforts.

In other exciting news this week, WE HAVE EMPLOYMENT!!! This is super exciting because our checking account has begun to dwindle after 6 weeks without his paychecks! Thankfully, I have been able to keep bringing in money, but I am excited to have this stability and to get back to living off of one income again (so I can finish that blasted thesis!) He will be a cost accountant for a small company called Boomerang Systems. They make automated storage units that you drive up to and then hydraulic lifts are used to access your unit and bring it down to where you are parked in a totally secure car port. Apparently, it is all the rage in Europe and this company is one of the first to do it in the U.S. If you want to check out the company's website, they have some really interesting demos...just click HERE. This will be a great place for Kyle because there is room for growth and it will be excellent resume building job for Kyle. We are really grateful for the stability that we have appreciated and it will be nice to have this new challenge. Thanks to everyone for your concerns!

Fake Easter and our Spring Break

Now that Kyle has had his crack at posting (and I am thrilled that he finally decided to take part!!) it is my turn! Last weekend (when Kyle picked up his new gun) we gathered with all but one of my siblings (we missed you Nate!) for the traditional Webber Family Easter Egg Hunt. There were some complications for being able to be in Idaho on Easter, so we celebrated a little early. My parents started this tradition with us when we were tiny and you might laugh because it has become so valued by us kids that we will not let them skip it now, even though we are all grown! Spouses have entered into the tradition and the competition is fierce! Last year, Kyle and I beat my brother Aaron for the FIRST TIME EVER (no joke...he has won for twenty something years in a row! and we were even tied together!) and so he has been really hesitant about this year's hunt. Due to the intense snowfall, we were forced to carry the tradition indoors this year. Aaron and his wife Allyson were handicapped because Aaron is on crutches due to a recent basketball injury. Kellie always gets a head start cause she is the youngest, so that left Kyle and I duck taped together to have at the full body contact (except for Aaron...we were told to play nice this year and not injure him further. grrr! :-)) hunt. I could give the play by play, but unfortunately, I forgot my camera. Needless to say, a new record was set at the Webber home this year. KELLIE WON!! This is a first for her, and though Aaron continued to be very upset by his two year in a row upset, I found myself rather distraught. I cannot wait till she is also married and we will all have to be tied together so that the playing field is again equalized! needless to say, a good time was had by all. I was also excited to find a surprise waiting for us when we returned to UT. Though we still have snow all over, there was something trying to peek through the ground!

WE HAVE A FLOWER!!!

This made me immensely happy. I have no idea how this little survivor makes it cause it still is below 30 degrees every single night and has not really broken 40 degrees outside yet. The wonders of nature amaze me.

We are also on Spring Break this week, so we have made efforts to do something fun every day to make it feel like a break. Monday, we went home shopping and redecorated our house for the new coming season. Yesterday, we met up with some friends for the traditional Shake of the Month at the local ice cream parlor and some discount bowling afterwards, and tonight, we are off to Student night at the dollar movies to watch a good chick flick! Any suggestions for tomorrow's activities??

Finally. . . a post from Kyle.

As all frequent visitors to our blog know, my wife Allison has dominated the blog thus far. I finally had her log me in so I can post something. I have had no desire to mess with the blog mostly because Allison usually keeps it updated before I do anything about it and by then she has said it all. However, I finally am posting a blog because I am pretty sure Allison wouldn't post this one. After much twisting of arms and convincing Allison that I wanted a Ruger 10/22, she finally said yes. Of course she put a very strict stipulation on it. Most used 10/22's go for $150, I found a new one for $165 that someone had purchased but his wife wanted gone. I thought it was a great deal but Allison convinced me not to do it. After some time passed we took a trip to Grand Junction to visit Allison's grandparents and Spunk took me to visit all the pawn shops to find a Ruger 10/22. This time Allison finally said I could buy one. . . if, and only if it was $130 or cheaper. I thought, "how the heck am I going to get one that cheap." With no avail we came back to Logan empty handed. By this time I had almost given up on getting the Ruger. Then one night as Allison and I were headed to bed and she told me to call her dad. "What?" I asked, "why do I need to call your dad. Is he upset with me? Does he think I am not treating his daughter right?" I wouldn't call her dad until she told me why so she spilled her guts. "He found a gun for you for $125. You better call him and thank him." I was in shock! The Ruger 10/22 is 15 years old but shoots pretty well. So while we were in Idaho Falls we took a trip to the west desert and adjusted the scope so that it is accurate. The group of shots can be covered by a thumb. That should tell you how consistent this gun is. It was a steal!! I love shooting that gun. I have added a few pictures so the husbands of all the my wife's friends can appreciate a post by us!