A Time of Change

So we've been experiencing a lot of change lately. First off, Jason started a new job this last week. He's working in Sales for a company named Qualtrics. They have a great survey tool, a good company culture, and a good staff that attracted Jason to the company. After one week working full-time, he's not loving it, but he learning a lot. He knows he doesn't want to make this his career, but he's also hoping that it could open up some opportunities for him. The nice thing is that it is full-time with benefits, the inconvenient part is that it is in Provo.

If working full-time wasn't enough, Jason was also called as the Second Counselor in the Young Men's Presidency as well as Scout Master. People in the ward have been both congratulating him as well as giving their condolences. Jason's excited for a new calling and he doesn't shy away from hard work, so I'm sure it will be a good learning experience. I do find it a little ironic that about 2-3 weeks before his call, he was commenting to his brother that Scout Master is about the last calling he would ever want to have. :) Jason earned his Eagle Scout, but just barely! He found a song on the internet called "Born to be a Scout" that has become the new theme song around here lately. In fact, it's been played so much that I can't get it out of my head.

I also got another calling in addition to being Relief Society chorister. I was sustained as a co-director for this year's ward road show. The first meeting is on Thursday, and we perform on April 8th for the whole stake. I imagine that will take up a lot of my spare time for the next month and I'm sure you'll get the updates on its progress.

The other change for me in the last couple weeks has been not having a functioning computer. The internet has been out on my computer for the last several weeks and has been hard on me to be without. I use my computer, and particularly the internet on a daily basis. I've tried to fix it, but even the repair people can't seem to figure out what's wrong with it. I may start computer shopping here before too long even though I'm happy with my other computer. I just need it to work correctly.

Besides working, we did have the chance to go skiing last weekend. We met Jeff and Sally and their kids up at Powder Mountain. They had a little condo there for the weekend, so we had a nice place to rest and have lunch in the afternoon. It was cold and snowy, but the skiing was great and it wasn't too crowded. It was a lot of fun!

This weekend, we had friends over for dinner and games, watched a BYU basketball game at my parents' house, and celebrated my niece's 5th birthday. It's nice to have a break for the regular work week.

Temple Projects

I spent a Fri. night putting together this picture. I've wanted a picture like this for awhile, but it costs a lot and I don't want to spend a lot of money.
Anyway, I heard about this company called Poppyseed projects that does temple kit classes. In about 3 hours I painted the frame with two coats of paint, applied vinyl lettering, put a special coating on the picture to make it look like an oil painting, and then stapled it all together. I didn't know a single person there, but fortunately women doing temple kits are usually pretty friendly people. :) I think the picture turned out well and it only cost me $55 dollars instead of $300.

Jason's B-day & Valentine's Day

Two weekends ago we went to dinner with Jason's grandparents for a late graduation/birthday celebration.They took us to eat at the Garden Restaurant at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. It was delicious! After dinner we went back to their home and played several rounds of Hearts. It's fun to play even though I don't think I would ever win while playing with Jason and Grandpa Richards. Some people play for fun, but those guys play to win! :)

Fast Sunday we went to Jason's brother's ward in Provo for James' baby blessing. The blessing was nice. We stayed for the whole block and then had a yummy soup and rolls meal after church. Andy and Kimra were still in town so it was fun to hang out with them again, and we saw Chelsey and Mike after Sacrament Meeting.

Jason's birthday was a week ago. Unfortunately, he was sick all week so we really didn't celebrate much on his actual birthday. I think it was more disappointing for me that for him. :) He got a really bad long-lasting cold that made him sick for over a week. He hardly had any energy for days and didn't play basketball for over a week--that's a sure sign that he's really sick!

For his birthday I got him The Prince of Egypt movie and three brown shirts with white strips. I actually gave him a brown shirt with stripes for Christmas but he didn't seem to like it too much so I returned it. After I told him I returned it, he acted surprised and asked if I was going to give him another shirt. Well, instead of giving him one, I gave him three. Now wasn't that nice of me? :) Jason was excited to see my three gifts for him. He wasn't too surprised when he opened the first brown shirt, but he was when he opened the second and third one. I even bought the Christmas shirt again so he could decide the best size and style. He picked his favorite and we returned the other two. It's not often you buy and return the same shirt twice!

Friday my parents ended up with extra tickets to a Vocal Point concert in Salt Lake and invited us to go. It was a lot of fun! I really liked it and so did Jason, so that was a good way to celebrate his birthday. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Saturday we went to the BYU v. U of U basketball game. We got there about 20 minutes early, which is the earliest I've ever been to any BYU sporting event! BYU wasn't on fire by any means, but they played a good game. Jimmer didn't play well during the first half, but had a good streak at the end to help win the game. After the game we ate dinner with our friends, the Jacobs. The food and company were great and we had fun playing games afterwards. I made brownies that morning intending to bring them for dessert, but they didn't turn out very well and Jason and I have been trying to eat them all week so it doesn't go completely to waste.

Valentine's Day was nice. Jason bought me a pretty bouquet of flowers and we went out for dessert at Red Robin. Fortunately for me, Jason's good about showing me he loves me in little ways almost every day, so I don't have to wait for it only a few times during the year. I do like have fresh flowers around though, it makes me hope for an early Spring.

Birthday Celebration

Thank you for the phone calls and birthday wishes. I had my golden birthday this year which makes it kind of a cool birthday. I had an interesting work week leading up to it though, and although I'll spare the details in this post, I'll just say that there was a lot of drama going on at work and unfortunately I was directly and indirectly involved.

Friday I finished a delivery of 9 courses to our client. I was pretty stressed on Friday because of a series of events that occurred earlier in the week, but after working all day without breaks, I was able to get it finished at 5:30pm so that I could go with Jason and my family to see the BYU Ballroom Dancers in the little theater of the Conference Center. We had great seats and they put on a fabulous show. They certainly do know how to entertain.
Saturday my friend Sara came up to visit me for my birthday. She took me to Mimi's Cafe and we had the most delicious stuffed French toast! I'll have to go back soon because it was delicious! She gave me the Bananagrams game for my birthday and I asked her to stay and play it with Jason and me before she went back home. As luck would have it, I won our first game!

In the evening Jason and I went indoor climbing at Momentum. It was a lot of fun. We climbed until we couldn't hold on to the wall anymore and I was sore for the next several days. I really enjoy rock climbing but if I ever want to make a hobby of it, I need to actually buy some equipment. It's kind of like skiing where if you only do it occasionally, it can be pretty expensive.
After climbing Jason took me to dinner. I felt like Mexican and had never been to the Mayan restaurant, so he took me there. Unfortunately it was the worst restaurant experience I have ever had. The food was horrible! I literally only ate about three bites and didn't want anymore. Jason ate more of his only because he was so hungry. We ended up telling our waitress who got the manager. We told the manager about our food and he took it off our bill. They didn't offer any free birthday desserts (which is one of the reasons we went there in the first place) but I did order fried ice cream and ate that instead. The ice cream was good but the experience was so disappointing. I'll never go to that restaurant again. Where is a Los Hermanos close by when you need one!?!
Sunday Jason and I taught the combined YM/YW lesson at church. It went pretty well and turned out to be a good experience. That evening we ate a yummy dinner at my parent's house and played hide-n-go-seek with the grandkids.

Last night we finished the birthday celebrations by having dinner at Jeff & Sally's house. Andy and Kimra are here from Chicago for a wedding so we had a family dinner/ get-together. Besides eating, the main even turned into a soccer game in the basement that included kids ranging from 3 to 35. I sat on the sidelines as a content spectator. :)

Jason is still job hunting. He had an interview last week and one today and he's submitted quite a few applications. We don't have any more news than that for now, but he's determined to find something good, so I'm sure that he will.

Date Night

Friday night I had one of the most fun date nights that I've had in a while. Kristilyn and Mark took us out to celebrate our graduation as well as our upcoming birthdays. They took us to Tepanyaki for dinner. Neither of us had ever eaten there before and it's one of those restaurants where the chef comes to cook the food right in front of you. We all ordered something different and shared it with each other. It was so much fun and the food was all so good!!! I generally consider myself a seafood hater, but I must admit, that it can be really good when it's fresh and cooked right. I tried fresh shrimp for the first time and actually thought it was pretty good. Jason's salmon was also really yummy.

After dinner we went over to Barnes and Noble and talked while we cleared some room in our tummies for dessert. After a while we went to Maggie Moo's ice cream. I have never had Maggie Moo ice cream before either, but it's kind of like a Cold Stone. Sometimes I have a hard time deciding what to get since I don't know what to mix together, but I tried strawberry and pina colada ice cream with a raspberry mix-in. It was YUMMY! Well worth the shivering to experience the delicious taste! We went back to Mark and Kristilyn's to eat our ice cream. We always have so much fun talking to them and I usually end up laughing a lot. Thanks for such a fun night Mark and Kristilyn!

When I got home from our date, I found that the wireless card in my computer was broken. I wasn't too happy about that because I just replaced it four months ago. I took it back to the repair place and the man was so nice about it. I was there for an hour, but even though the wireless card was only warrantied for 90 days, he still replaced it for free and also gave me a new top plate (laptop keyboard) since he saw that it was starting to break and Apple apparently covers that repair for free too. I'm grateful that my internet is working again.

Work has been pretty stressful the last few days. I have a delivery of 9 courses on Friday which means its likely I'll be working long days all week. At least it's due the day before my birthday so at least I can enjoy my weekend.

Welcome to 2011!

It's still a little surprising that we're already in the year 2011. I'm finally getting used to the idea, but I remember being in elementary school and thinking that the year 2000 seemed far away!

After Christmas break I think I got the January blues for several days when I realized that the next work holiday I had isn't until May. My work is still going well for the most part. I like being an instructional designer, but I think I would like it more if I did it less. Fortunately, I do enjoy the content I'm working with and I feel that I'm contributing to something worthwhile and meaningful and helpful for families.

Basically I'm in the thick of scripting and deadlines for this project until May. Because we're doing so many courses there are two contractors that are helping out with this project. One of these contractors happens to be a girl in my ward. She was looking for a job a few months ago and I mentioned my company was looking for contractors. She applied, was interviewed, and then hired for the beginning of the January. She was assigned to my project so I'm now working on the tricky balance of being both friend and supervisor. The nice benefit of her being hired is that we started carpooling to work and that is saving time and gas money, so I'm grateful for that arrangement.

To help me have something to look forward to, Jason and I planned this year's vacations. I don't get a lot of time off for work during the year, but I'm trying to get what I can out of the days that I have. So, we're taking two trips. The end of May we'll spend a week in New York City with Jason's brother and his family, and then we'll fly to Buffalo to see my sister and her family for a weekend before we fly back. The other trip is a big family reunion in San Antonio for a week during July. A week ago we spent several days shopping for plane tickets to get the best price possible and I think we did pretty well. May seems far away right now, but hopefully it will come quickly. I'm excited for both of our trips! I know they will both be so fun and I'm looking forward to see our out-of-state family.

Jason's last day of seminary was on Friday. He was kind of sad to say good-bye to his students. He doesn't regret the decision of choosing another career, but change is still hard and not knowing what comes next is difficult. He'll be looking for a job as well as checking out graduate schools full time now and I don't envy him at all--job hunting is one of my least favorite things to do. We're grateful for everyone's prayers and advice.

Things have been pretty low-key since Christmas. We're doing a free month trial of Netflix so we've been watching a movie every weekend for the last several weeks. We've seen Toy Story 3, How to Train a Dragon, and Inception. Toy Story 3 was our favorite of the three. I actually didn't make it all the way through Inception. It was a little too intense for me, so I just had Jason give me the detailed version of the second half of the movie. He did a good job so I felt like I watched the whole thing. What a complex and complicated movie!

In the last couple of weeks we've also played games a couple times--once with my parents and once with our friends the Gurrels. We enjoyed learning a new game called Citadels. It was so fun that I hope to play it again soon.

A Few Fun December Events

New pots and pans for Christmas (Thanks to Mom and Dad, Gr+Gr B, and Gr+Gr Richards)













A few games of air hockey New Year's Eve.
















Playing Settlers of Catan (Thanks to the Carter Family)












Jason grows a beard over Christmas break



















Christmas Eve get-together














Baking sugar cookies for the neighbors













First Presidency Christmas Devotional with Marilee and Devin












Playing Hide-n-seek with my nieces


A few other fun things . . .

1. Enjoying the cool snow storms (not quite as cool while stuck in traffic on I-15)
2. Speaking in Sacrament Meeting the day after Christmas
3. Singing Christmas music with the ward choir
4. Filling in as a last second Mary for our family retelling of Luke 2
5. Watching my nephews James and Grants "rip" their presents and enjoying the delicious breakfast afterward.
6. Being Santa Claus for my parents this year
7. Attending a BYU basketball game
8. Seeing Hale Center Theater's production of "A Christmas Carol" with family
9. Going to Temple Square 3 times! --- to see my parents sing in their missionary choir, the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, and David Archuleta with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
10. Having days off of work to spend time talking, eating, and playing with family.
11. Ringing in the new year with ping pong and air hockey.