Graduation and other uber exciting things...

It has been almost a year since I posted! Apologies. A lot has happened in the last year, or I guess week. Nathan and I just graduated from Southern Utah University! Nathan graduated in Marketing and I graduated in Art with a minor in Library Media. It was a very exciting day! I feel so blessed that Nathan and I were able to graduate together. I think that made it all the more special! So many people came and supported us. Most of our family and close friends were there! It was a milestone I will never forget. 

What's next you ask? Who the heck knows. I'm honestly feeling lost at the moment. Nathan is preparing to take the GMAT to get into the MBA program at SUU. And me? Hoping to find a job I can stand. People think that just cause you're graduated from college you should have eVeRyTHING figured out. They raise their eyebrows when you tell them you graduated with a BS in Art. They look at me like, "Yeah, that sounds like B.S." lol, jk. But really, I'm sure a lot of people have their lives figured out when they graduate. Like people who are blessed with accounting skills, lucky you. You've got a job. But I wanted to study something that would make me happy and something that would provide me with the variety I crave in my life. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of my degree. If I could do it over, I don't think I would pick anything else. Just having my Bachelor's degree means something to me. 

So right now, I'm lucky enough to still work at the school. Yup, as a janitor. Something I can stand. It's a tender mercy from the Lord, but who knows how long it will last. Hope I can find something I enjoy soon.Wish I could be a simple janitor forever. I like simple and minimal stress. Or can I just be a student forever? Please?

On a happier note, TODAY is our 3 YEAR ANNIVERSARY! Yayyyyy us! It's been a great 3 years. Time flies, but at the same time, it's hard to imagine not being married. Yes I got married young, but it was the best decision I've ever made! I'm so happy to have such an amazing teammate. I couldn't have found a better guy. I'm glad I snatched him before he could get away, haha. We are planning to go down to St. George to my parent's vacation home for our anniversary get-away this year. We have done Vegas the past two years, and that was great. But we think this would be the right choice this year money and time-wise. It should be a lot of fuunnnn!! Can't wait! Here's some pictures of us throughout our 4 and a half years together as a couple! Aww so sentimental.

taken in March 2008 (we look so young! I was barely 19 and he's 23)

Summer 2008

Engagement Picture March 2009

Wedding Day May 9, 2009

Honeymoon in California May 2009

One Year Anniversary in Vegas May 2010

Two Year Anniversary in Vegas May 2011

These were taken just the other day by Shauna, love them!

 

P.S. Oh yeah, and I got an award. I was honestly really surprised. When my professor told me, I was like, "Are you sure?" haha. I don't mean to sound prideful about it, but I was really excited so I wanted to record it. I guess it's an outstanding art student award in the BA/BS degree in Art. My professor also picked out two awesome books for me! It was really an honor. (I guess my BS degree got me somewhere.) My mom, sister and niece drove three hours to be there for the ceremony thingy that wasn't very long. Also my mother-in-law, brother-in-law and another niece came to it too, wish I could've got a picture with them also. Oh and of course, my sweet Nathan was there. He's always so supportive of me. I am so grateful for the wonderful people in my life!

Wowzers!

It's been a long, long time! I am bad at updating this. Mainly because I have a hard time navigating this website. It's kinda sad because I usually don't have too much trouble figuring things out on the computer, but this blogger thing kicks my bum.
Looking back at some of the posts I have posted, wow, I'm a nerd. I guess it's mostly for my own records anyway since no one reads this anyway. :P
And once again, wow, it's been like 6 months. Looks like I have some ground to cover! We just finished up school for the summer. It's nice to have a break! And I have decided to stay another year at SUU. It just feels right to me after praying and weighing my options. I have decided to stay and get a minor in Library Media and develop my skills and knowledge in art further. Plus, I get to keep my super chill job at the college for another year. Wahoo! So I know I made the right decision. Many people are wondering what my deal is, but I know it's best for us and that's what matters. We have a plan :]
We just celebrated our two-year anniversary last month! It was sooo much fun! We decided to go to Vegas again and wow, that was an adventure. First, we get to our hotel next to Fremont Street called El Cortez. I do NOT recommend it! We booked a "vintage room" which is an original room from the 40s that had been restored. The pictures looked SO different from the actual room! It was teeny-tiny and smelled awful like smoke. We told them that our room smelled when we had booked a non-smoking room, so they send the maid up to spray some air freshener in our room. Um, hellloooo? That's not going to work. We asked them to put us in a different room, but they were totally booked. We decided to leave for the evening and walk the strip. Despite all the sin, Vegas is still an amazing place! There is so much talent and beauty in it. Sometimes it's hard to see with all the nasty ads and partying, but it's there! Nathan and I always feel so out of place when we go, but we try to focus on the good. When we got back to our room, it smelled even worse and then our tv wouldn't turn on. Nathan called the front desk and the lady said she'd send someone up. We waited for awhile, and heard nothing. Nathan and I were ticked off and really just wanted to leave. We decided to go down to the front desk and the lady totally gave us attitude and told us since it was an old room, we had to flip the switch on the wall. She lied and said she tried to call us back, but we never heard anything. So Nathan just said we wanted a refund. They told us they couldn't refund us for the night, but they could for the rest of the weekend. So we stayed the night in a smelly,junky hotel room. Haha, what an experience!
The next day, we drove around for over an hour calling places trying to find a decent hotel room. Almost everything was booked or way out of our price range. Motel 6 was one of our last resorts and when we pulled up to look at the place, Nathan was disgusted and said, "Just book Circus, Circus, this place isn't romantic at all!" It was great and well worth the extra money!!
Later on, we were walking through the Luxor to pick up our tickets for the Titanic Exhibition. A lady walked up to us and asked if we wanted to see a free show. We asked what the catch was, and she pulled us over to a desk to talk to this guy about it. He made it sound so different than it really was. He said basically we can give two hours of our time to go tour a new hotel opening up and give our opinion and we'd get free Criss Angel tickets. We decided to do it. It ended up taking 4 hours of our time and they were pressuring us the whole time to buy a time share. It was miserable, but the Criss Angel show was worth it! It was so fun and a lot better than I thought it would be!
The next day, we went to the Titanic Exhibition. WOW! SO worth the money! They gave us each replica tickets of actual passengers on the Titanic and it gave a short background on the person. They told us to look at the lists at the end to see if our passenger survived. They had so many awesome artifacts and replicas of actual rooms from the ship, including the staircase! Nathan and I got a picture in front of it (still need to scan it in). They also had an actual chunk from the Titanic! It was 12 x 26 feet, huge! There was still glass in the windows, oh my goodness, it was so neat! They also had wine bottles with wine still inside and perfume vials that still smelled like perfume! It was so awesome. Oh, and my passenger survived, she was a first class female and Nathan's passenger perished, but he was a third class male, so I kind of expected it. But his daughter ended up surviving and was the longest living survivor from the Titanic. Soooo neat! So we had a great time in Vegas, Nathan and I always have fun together. I love us! And I'm not just saying that ;]
We have a lot of fun plans this summer! Including two trips to California! Hopefully I'll be better at updating! I added some other random pictures taken over the past couple months!

Fall is here!

So I've started noticing that I seem to title all of my blog entries something to do with what season it is...haha. How original. Anyway, the new Fall semester has begun and I think we're finally back in the swing of things! It was really difficult for me to find the motivation, probably because I didn't get a real break from school since I took classes all summer! But that's okay, in all honesty, I love school. I think I'm going to have some kind of early midlife crisis when I graduate in May! I don't know what I'm going to do with myself, especially if I can't find an awesome job to keep me busy! I guess we'll see what happens when I get there! :]
It's been nice and mellow lately. No real drama or anything like that. Nathan, Aaron and I went to hike Angel's Landing in Zion yesterday! We went all the way to the top! It was quite the accomplishment for me, especially considering my lack of athletic ability and fear of heights ;] For those of you who don't know what Angel's Landing is like, let me give you a short description. So basically, you know those super high cliffs in Zion? Yeah, you climb to the very top of one of those! And, toward the end, you hang on to chains because it gets really narrow in some places and there's cliffs on either side of you. Yeah, it was freaky. People die up there. But yeah, it was a good time. I'm extremely sore and probably will be for a while. But I'm really glad that we went!
We went with my family to Lake Powell in September. It was so much fun! The entire family was together for a day! That doesn't happen too often. We also hadn't gone to Lake Powell in 5 years, another thing that doesn't happen too often, haha. But it was great!

Summer over already?

Sadly, yes. Summer is almost over. What the heck? That's stupid. It feels like it just barely got here. That's what I hate about getting older, times goes by way too dang fast. I just want to enjoy the moment, but it's like you're always anticipating the next stressful event. Living in the moment is kid stuff. When you're a grown up, you have too many responsibilities to live in the moment. Not that I'm all that old, haha. I'm going to enjoying my youth. No rush. :]
Nathan and I had a good summer.( Definitely better than last summer :P) I quit Walmart (oh yes, it was great) and I still have nightmares about working there. I don't know what's wrong with me, but that job was terrible. Haha. So I just worked on my summer classes and did well. They were definitely a full time occupation! Nathan's boss at the school offered him a full time job there, so it worked out great. And his boss is actually hiring me for the school year too! I'm happy to have a job, but not very excited to start working, lol. Next week school will start. My feelings about it are torn. I'm excited to have a little change, but not looking forward to the stress. Oh well. I'm so excited! I'm going to graduate in May, if everything goes as planned! Hurray me!
Anyway, we were able to do some fun things this summer with friends and family. And we're planning to go to Lagoon with our friends this week for a summer finale. I'm excited. Geordie came home last week after serving a mission in Mexico! It's great to have him back!
Above are some pictures of the fun times throughout the summer. I hate how they're before the text and not after, but oh well. Don't know how to fix it, so I'll deal.

One Year :]

I am proud to say that Nathan and I survived school! We were thrilled to find out that we did well in our classes! Hurray for accomplishments! Nathan did so well and worked so hard. I'm so proud of him!
We celebrated our one year anniversary on the 9th of May! It was very exciting. We went down to Vegas and had a blast! We stayed at the Hilton off the strip and it was surprisingly nicer than I thought it would be. We can't afford much right now, so for the price I was expecting Motel 6 style. It's always nice to be pleasantly surprised! We went to a mystery dinner show called Marriage Can Be Murder. It was hilarious! The murder was sitting across from us the whole time! He sure had us fooled! It was so cool. We walked the strip, definitely got our exercise! I must say, there are some really great things about Vegas...and there are also some very bad things, lol. Just walking or driving around you get bombarded with all kinds of junk you really don't want to see. But hey, Vegas has some awesome things about it too! Don't think I'm going all fanatical on ya! We had a great time. Can't wait to go back! There's still so much to see and do there!
Nathan and I are still figuring out things for jobs this summer. Well, I am anyway. I got a job at Walmart last week and it's already not working out for me. They hired me for part time and they're working me full time hours and they don't give me the days off I ask for! They also don't treat me very well. So I'm looking desperately for a different job that will work with me better. I'm going to be starting summer classes soon and I really need an employer that will respect that and give me the schedule they promise(not to mention-following their own policies..I quote "Respect for the individual"? I think not. I'm not getting those benefits anyway). Nathan has a great job at the school and I went and talked to them about a job also and they're going to let me know if they find anything. Cross your fingers for me! Blue shirts and khaki pants are going to be the death of me! ;] Ok, ok, it's not the worst thing in the world, but it's just not right for me personally. If you work there and you love it, that's great! I'm not saying it's bad for everyone!
My parents bought a beautiful vacation home in Hurricane. It's so amazing! I love it. I feel like it's a personal blessing straight from God! Let's just hope I won't be working every second they come down so I can actually spend some time with them!
Life is tough, but it always works out! Especially if you're willing to see the good! Seeing the good in things is one of the best things you can accomplish in your life!