2012

Well, the world didn't end.  I guess I didn't need to hurry and get married after all!  Just kidding, folks.
Anyway, here are my 2012 highlights:

• Planning a wedding (awesome and awful!)
• Endowements
• Marrying my sweetheart in Seattle
• Honeymoon in the Bahamas
• Reception in Albuquerque
• Setting up our families first home
• Cutting my hair
• Breaking in our camping gear
• Passing Calculus
• Lake trip
• My sister coming to visit
• Voting for the first time
• Serving in the temple 
• Thanksgiving in Spokane
• Christmas in Albuquerque

There's alot to look forward to this year!  Tyler starts school next week, but I'm off until April, so I'll be working full-time between three jobs for the next couple months.  When I make resolutions, I'm pretty good at keeping them because I try to pick easy ones that I would mostly do anyway!  Cheating? Maybe.  We are still working on some good family goals, but here are my goals:

1. Do my visiting teaching every month
2. Budget more faithfully (we have a budget, I'm just lazy about it)
3. Go to the temple every other week
4. Get up and go to the gym whenever Tyler does (good thing this starts tomorrow because I just couldn't do it today)
5. Cook Sunday dinner (this includes a delicious roast, gravy, jello, rolls, potatoes.  Mostly working on good home-made gravy for now)

Are you making New Years resolutions?  Did you keep last years?  What was the best part of your year?
-Mrs. Smith
2011

home at last

It broke my heart to leave Albuquerque, but it is wonderful to be back at our place. And this year, we have a new addition to the family!

This is my puppy, Zap.  He's a along-haired chihuahua and he's 8 years old.  Another fun fact: he's toothless.   He inherited bad teeth that have been rotting away for a while, and eventually my parents (who he lived with until now) had all of his teeth removed so that he wouldn't be in pain anymore.  He road in the car with us all the way from Albuquerque!  Poor little dude.  We're so happy to have him. Our little apartment is just the right size for a lapdog.

(Also, I'm posting from my new Galaxy SIII smartphone.  Awesome!)

-Mrs. Smith

...another number

Today is my sweet momma's birthday!  It's pretty fun to have epic parties 3 days in a row. 

We spend most of the day doing Christmas eve stuff with extended family.

I think her favorite presents were her new Maui Jim sunglasses, and a new silverware set (both from dad).

Happy Birthday Mama!

twenty four

Today is Tyler's 24th birthday!

We partied yesterday-

went out to lunch at I Heart Sushi,

(where only Tyler actually ordered sushi)

bowling,

presents,

burgers on the grill,

and oreo ice-cream cake with exactly 24 candles.

Today, fed ex delivered his BIG birthday present-
a droid DNA.
(I give good presents- last year I got him a special edition Zelda DS)

Happy Birthday Hon!
-Mrs. Smith

family

So happy to be with my people again in Albuquerque!   We got to do some fun family pictures today.  More to come!

new-mexican dinner

I am SO excited to see my parents in just TWO DAYS!  In preparation for beautiful New Mexico, I made a yummy dinner with most of my New Mexico favorites and it was so good, I thought I'd post about it and make y'all a little jealous. ;)

 Home-made sopapillas

 Tacos a la Idaho (which means ELK meet!)

Home-fried tortilla chips.

Felt super nasty a few hours later, thanks to all the fried food, but it was totally worth it. 

-Mrs. Smith

study break

As a personal goal, I never do homework on Sundays.  Sometimes that means I get up early on Monday morning, but usually I get it done Saturdays.
As this semester has gotten crazier and crazier, I look forward to my Sundays more and more.  It's the one day of the week Tyler and I are both home together (except for church meetings).  When it's warm, we go for walks and rides on the motorcycle.  These days we stay home and make yummy treats or read books.  It's such a nice break from the craziness of school and work.


Last night, we went on a double date and did a photo-scavenger hunt.  First to 10 was the winner!
Here's the list:

1.  A picture dancing in a parking lot

2.  One of you with and ex-roommate

3. Picture with a blue emergency phone (they're all around campus)
4. Picture imitating a statue

5. A scan of your hands
6. A picture with Christmas lights shaped like a star

7. Picture of you both at the temple

8. Rubbing from a church sign
9. Picture with something that says BYU-Idaho

10. Picture going down a slide

11. Picture outside of a public restroom

12. Picture with a body of water
13. Posing next to a redbox
14. Picture in a random person's apartment
15. Give someone a hug
16. Picture doing a good deed
17. A picture in the Linux lab
18. On a park bench posing like a model

19. Hanging up-side down

Also, us in the car!

.

I always encourage Tyler to be safe by making him take pictures with me while he's driving.

Hmm.  I think it's time for me to get a haircut.  I miss having bangs.

We're heading to Albuquerque this Saturday!  Just have to get  through finals.
What are your Christmas plans?
-Mrs. Smith

the cold

I have a problem.
And I am about to complain about it for a little bit.
Do you mind?
I hope not.

I get colds every year, usually around the end of a semester when I'm the most stressed out.
Or right after the semester ends, when I'm trying to relax and do fun vacation-y things.
A cold usually stays for 2-3 weeks...
Week one feels like I got hit by a brick wall
Week two feels like someone left the nose faucet on
Week three feels like my lungs are trying to cough their way out of my body.

I'm right on schedule, currently on the coughing my lungs out phase, and hoping I get better for finals next week.
Last semester, I was pretty sick during the last few weeks of school and ended up bombing several finals, dropping my strait A's to a B average.
Really don't want that again.

Why is it that when a teacher feels sick, class is canceled,
but when a student is sick,
they should still show up and get everyone else sick?

On the positive side, my final projects include
-building a calculator
-writing a family-history program
-an essay on the depths on infinity
all of which are pretty cool (albeit a pain to finish).
If I can stop coughing long enough to get them done.

Are you illness-prone?
What do you do when your sick?
Does that nasty airborne stuff actually work?
Whats the best cough medicine?  Delsym isn't cutting it for me.
Thanks.
-Mrs. Smith

Christmas in college

After finals week, we'll be spending our holidays down in New Mexico.  I'm thrilled, because I haven't seen my mom since my wedding.  That's a long time, folks!  Even though we'll be taking off pretty soon, I couldn't help but invest in a little Christmas cheer around the house.

We've got a few lights on timers...

Front

 Back (The window glows green like the front one and we put lights on our porch railing)

Also picked up some cute jars at DI and filled them with Christmas candy for the entry-way table.

Two more weeks until school is done.  Can't wait!

Also, what do you think of this article?  Not article, post.  Personally, I love it.  Although my marriage decision was definitely not mainstream, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.  18 or 28 or 38...I don't know if you can ever be totally prepared for marriage, but you have to be ready and willing when its right.  Right?

-Mrs. Smith

grateful

One year ago today, I said yes to my best friend and my sweetheart.

I know these one year ago deals are a bit silly, since we've got forever together, but I'm just so grateful for all the events that lead up to our marriage.

hopping the border

We got the car working after all, so we made the trek up to Spokane to stay with my sister-in-law, Christy.  Technically, we were in Rathdrum, Idaho, which is right over the WA/ID border, but we went back and forth quite a bit.  Hence the title.

I didn't actually get any pictures on Turkey day, but my other sister-in-law, Tracy, did a delicious brine and the turkey was amazing!  There was lots of running around and yelling by the kids, game playing by the adults, and chaos-managing by the grandparents.

Tyler took me to visit some fun places, like the Nut Factory, where we purchased some amazing chocolate.

That is $120 worth of German Chocolate

And Northtown mall, which is the biggest mall I've ever been in.  They have a ginormous tree.

This is Tyler driving me to those fun places.  I took alot of pictures of him driving.

Went out to one of Tyler's favorite burger joints for lunch, and they made me the best chocolate shake I've ever had.  Actually, it was Tyler's chocolate shake, but I drank most of it.

This is Tyler waiting for his food

This is Tyler drinking his shake and driving

We saw a ton of SUV's with these stickers on...notice this family has six kids, three dogs, and a cat.  We saw another one that had nine boys and one girl.  

On Friday night we went to the lighting ceremony in Coeur D'Alene, which is a big event hosted by a lake-side resort (which, by the way, we stayed at right after our wedding).

It was quite cold

They did a huge firework show

Proof of fireworks

then sang Christmas carols
then about a gazillion Christmas lights went on.  It was awesome.

Proof of lights

And now Tyler is hooking up the game cube he brought back with him.
I'm so happy to be back - it was a really fun trip, but there is NO place like home!
How was your Thanksgiving?
-Mrs. Smith

car trouble

Earlier this week, our car (2001 Chevy Malibu I fondly think of as 'old faithful') wouldn't start.  We jumped it at took it to the mechanic, who informed us that the battery was fine, so we left it with him for a few days to figure out what was wrong.

It's a bummer having only having one car, my 1996 Chevy cavalier convertible, for a few reasons...
1. It's freezing here, and my car is a convertible.  Also, it's wet, and my car isn't entirely waterproof.
2. Tyler and I both work two jobs, plus go to school full-time, and trying to spread one car over our crazy schedules was nearly impossible.
But we made it work for two days, got old faithful back after having an electrical short in the door fixed.
The next morning (Thursday), it wouldn't start again.  It wouldn't even take a jump.  We had to call a tow truck and tow it to the mechanic.  So it's still in the shop.

Now I'm kind of panicking, because my little convertible isn't reliable enough for a 7-hour drive to Spokane.  If we don't get the car back, we might not be able to go see the in-laws for Thanksgiving. Which is tragic.  Seriously.  I love my in-laws  (Why does that seem sarcastic? I'm not being sarcastic.  My in-laws are awesome).

Just so everyone knows.

Also, the Boise Temple was re-dedicated today and we got to go watch (via broadcast).  I'm so grateful for the beautiful temples that dot the earth.
-Mrs. Smith

seven things: my perfect man

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Disclaimer:  This is a very long, mushy post full of me talking about how great I think my husband is, so maybe you want to skip this one.  It won't hurt my feelings, really.  I just need to write down somewhere, at least once on the internet, how awesome my man is.  If you're gonna skip, check out those first six bullet points about things that brought us together.  They're pretty good.  But hey, if it's not your cup of hot chocolate, go watch this post  instead.  It's pretty hilarious. Even if you do read this post, you should go watch that video, because I think it's awesome.  Thanks!
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Now.
Back to business.

In all honesty, when I married Tyler, I hardly knew him at all.  If you'd asked me then, I would've denied it, because I genuinely thought I knew him.  If we had dated longer, maybe I would have become more familiar with him, but looking back, I still think our decision to get hitched when we did was the best decision of my life.

You can't fake that kind of happy.

I may not have known him then, but I sure do know him now, and I cannot believe what a man he is.  In so many little ways, he compliments my personality, enhances it, and makes me a better person. He understands me and loves me exactly the way I am.  Some people may call this luck, but to me, each moment is a testimony that my loving Heavenly Father guided me down the path to meet this man.

1- There may be disputations on this point, but I have a much greater sense of maturity and responsibility than others my age, which (I think) prepared me for a young marriage
2-  I ended up getting to date a huge variety of guys before Tyler and I started getting serious, so I had a pretty good sense of what I could and couldn't live with.
3- I graduated early from high school and went up to BYU-I, where I met Tyler
4- I didn't get in to BYU Provo.  Several of my friends with similar GPA's and ACT scores got in, and I was hugely disappointed, but someone upstairs knew where I really needed to be.
4- At the last minute, I changed apartments, which moved me inter Tyler's ward (church district).
5- I was living in the dorms, so our ward was entirely dorm apartments.  The first Sunday of the semester, Tyler's off-campus apartment got transferred into our ward.  It was the ONLY off-campus apartment in the whole ward, and we all joked that one of them was supposed to meet his spouse in our ward.  I sure didn't think it would be me!
6- I have always had a testimony that Heavenly Father will guide me as long as I am faithful, so when the time came, I could do something that seemed crazy because I knew HE knew it was right for me.

I know, that's only 6 things.  But that's not why I wrote this post.  I wanted to write about how my spouse completes me, how grateful I am for him, and how wholly I love him.  So here it is:

Seven reasons Tyler is perfect for me

1. He is easy-going.  I am uptight and anxious about alot of things (schedules, cleaning, traveling).  Tyler doesn't mind my craziness- he goes right along with whatever makes me happy.  In fact, he calms me down and helps me learn to let things go now and then.
2. He is happy.  Tyler is a rock, emotionally.  I am very much controlled by my emotions, and he's helped me learn to control myself and be calm.
3. He loves me anyway.  I didn't mean to, I really didn't, but I kindof tricked him when we were dating.  I was always happy around him all the time before we got married (duh, who isn't happy when their dating the man of their dreams?), so after, he got a hard dose of crazy from me.  And you know what?  He loves me anyway.
4. He laughs with me.  I'm a little weird.  Sometimes I do crazy dances around the house or talk in funny voices.  After a few weeks of marriage, these embarrassing qualities started to appear and I was afraid he would tell me to chill out.  Instead, he thinks I'm funny and tells me I shouldn't change.  
5. He can't sleep on a fight.  And neither can I.  It would be so hard for me if he turned his back on an argument to catch some sleep.  I know that some arguments take time to work out, but I'm so glad that we never go to bed without talking things through.  He always cares enough to hear my side, and he has never yelled at me.  Except when we're both excited about something, but that doesn't count, because we're both yelling and it's happy yelling.
6. He's a man of faith.  He is so good about daily scriptures and prayer, which means I don't have to worry about it.  We both know that we start each day with reading and a prayer.
7. He gives me attention.  When he comes home, no matter how much he has to do, he always takes 5 minutes to hold me close and ask about my day.  It makes a huge difference to me, to know that he cares and wants to spend time with me.

None of my words do him justice.  I could go on and on.  I'm so glad I have him.  He makes me so happy.  Also, I'm really grateful he's an ambitious, hard-working man.  And adorable.

And hey, I didn't even mention that he never criticizes me when I go back for a second brownie!  Or a third.  He usually asks me to bring him one too.  Hey, we'll be fat together! (Just kidding - Tyler loves working out.  Guess who got me to start running again?)

But seriously.  I love my husband.

Now that I've raved on and on, tell me, what's you're favorite quality about your sweetheart?
Don't hold back!
-Mrs. Smith

you probably didn't know this

BUT when I was in the 8th grade, I was in show choir at school.  (Also symphonic band and advanced choir).

First day of 8th grade-- looking hawt with my new haircut!

Looking back, I can only cringe, because

1. Shimmy-ing is a really mean thing to tell a girl to do when her cup size is 'almost-A.'  Also body rolls.

I'm the frizball on the far right

2. I auditioned to sing the national anthem, at which point I discovered my inborn ability to keep a tune (thanks to years of piano lessons) disappears when I do a solo.  Looking back, I can't believe I had the courage to do it.

Ohhh ya. Drink in the pink lightening. 

3.  Could I be any more awkward?  I mean whose idea is it to stuff awkward 14-year-old girls into pink lightening bolts and tell them to dance around?

Check out that face.  (Dead center)
At least we weren't wearing the body-tight aquamarine...

Throughout high school, I sang with a quartet of friends from church- we had a soprano, I was alto, a tenor, and a bass.  Although I didn't consider myself especially talented, I also didn't think I was awful either.  A few months ago, I did a duet in church and that's when I realized vocal performance probably shouldn't be part of my repertoire.  I'll stay behind the piano, thank you.

Again, I'm in the middle.  To the left of the blonde with one arm on her head, the other on her hip. 

When I was 8, I told everyone my dream was to sing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  Now my dream is to play that organ in the conference center. Just so everyone knows.

Any teenage experiences you'd rather forget?
--Mrs. Smith

seven things: television

I don't generally watch alot of T.V. except my daily dose of friends and the occasional episode of hoarders (not sure why I watch that show), but I make sure and watch a few of my favorites on line, mostly 1, 2, 3, and 5.
If I had DVR, I'd probably watch alot more.  So guess we will never get DVR.

My seven all-time favorite T.V. shows

1.  
2. Modern Family- so true to the world we live in.  The characters a loveable, funny, and the life lessons aren't too bad either.
3. Parks and Rec - Ron Swanson. 'Nuff said.  This one ties for first.
4. Community- always cracks me up, and Abed is my favorite T.V. character of all time.  Is it not in the fall lineup?  I have yet to see them premier a new episode.
5. Planet Earth/ Life- in my book, they're pretty much the same thing.  I love the gorgeous scenes, and I learned so much!  Someday I'll be able to afford the dvd's.
6. The Office- before Steve Carell left, obviously.  I'm still a weekly watcher, though.  
7. Friends- judge me if you will, but I do my best to catch the reruns every night around 9.
8. House- this one goes last, because after the 7th season, it got pretty dumb.  I can't believe they haven't cancelled it yet.  But I have the first 6 seasons on DVD and I love them and watch them all the time.

Any all-time favorites?  Current favorites?  

-Mrs. Smith