documenting the journey...

i am sparing you all by not taking pictures of us spending our first 20 hours on the road, but i will share our memorable incidents we've had along the way......
we started out on tuesday morning a little later than we hoped, but we finally got the car packed and got on our way. and nothing too eventful happend 'til it got dark. we have an ipod holder that plays through the radio, and it plugs into the cigarette lighter. so we were going along, i was driving, and the player started to fall out. joseph picks it up, and i thought there was some plastic still in there, so i reached to grab it, not thinking about it being a socket i was reaching into, and i got shocked, except for that didnt even phase me because there was a metal spring that got hot and burned my finger really well. i didn't panic, because it didn't hurt too much at first, and then i could smell the burnt flesh, and the only water i could reach was a cup of sprite in the cup holder, stuck my finger in that, and it started to tingle even more..... anyways, it was a long night for me with a burning finger. every time i've ever burned myself, i've kept cold water on it, and then it hurts worse until i can sleep and then it doesn't hurt anymore. i couldnt sleep because i couldnt take pain medication, and i didnt want to keep my finger in water in a bumpy car ride, so i found that i could keep my finger against the cool window and be fine. but imagine trying to sleep while holding your finger up to a window.... i worried that people in other cars would think that i was flipping them off, but whatever.
event number 2- we were going through nebraska, and as everyone knows, you shouldn't speed when you are in nebraska. the cops are everywhere. so joseph was driving and i had finally dozed off around 2 a.m. when i was lurched awake from the car slowing down. all i could see was bright red and blue flashing lights everywhere, and i started to flip out. we really don't need a speeding ticket at the moment, but that wasn't why i was flipping out. our license plates have been revoked in the last couple weeks because our insurance is in utah and the plates are from north carolina, and the people in NC figured it out and they became invalid. we have been trying to get it resolved as quickly as possible, but its taking some time, and meanwhile the last thing we need is for a cop to run the plates and send the driver to jail. so i ask him how fast he was going, and he had the cruise set at only five over! so the cops walk up, all three of them, shining flashlights so i felt like it was noon outside, and asks for license and registration, and then says, well you were going 70 in a 65, so you were going a little fast, so i'm just gonna write you a warning so you slow down tonight. just follow me back here for a minute so i can write this up for you. he gets out, and leaves me sitting in the car for about fifteen minutes. talk about the longest fifteen minutes of my life! i'm sitting there, trying my very hardest not to hyperventilate, because all i could think was, what are they doing??!!?!?!?!?!? why is it taking so long to tell him to slow down a little??? is he sitting in the back of the cop car????? what will happen to me if they take the car????? this is soooo dumb!!!!! all i can see are the headlights glaring at me, and i have no idea whats going on! finally, he walks back and gets back in, and i ask what happened, and they had just been talking about summer sales for the last fifteen minutes while i am having a heart attack! but in the end, i was glad that he was able to keep the cop from running the plates and getting us in major trouble. thank goodness!
we got to st louis wednesday morning, and we will be on the road again tomorrow morning as we head to dc. it has been sooo nice to have this little break here without worrying about school or work and just relax before starting work on saturday. it was espcially nice to be greeted with 75 degrees and sunshine, and to leave behind a snowstorm that happened today in utah. but i sincerely hope that nothing else too eventful will happen!

ps- the 'before the baby bump' picture will come soon for all those who have been asking to see it! i promise after we get settled down again i will post something!

forget about finals....

.....lets play some ball! okay, so we still have finals that start.... tomorrow...... but i wanted to give a little shout out to my macho hubby of a football playa! he has played flag football basically every semester since, ever, and this was his team's first winning season! it was a little crazy because they got put in a different division than they should have been, but it was still a great season and i was a proud fan at every game! he was playing with some of our mutual friends from washington, and its always good to have an excuse and catch up with old buddies.

get yer game face on!

they always wore black, and the team they played was white. hence, black and white.

a little huddle action

joseph brewer, please sign your name so i can give you a t-shirt.

you're a winner!

woot woot! the winning team!

the really funny thing about this team was that by the end of the season, not a single person could name all the players they played with. the first time they heard everyone's name was when they read off the names to hand out the shirts. its all about team unity, right?

two more things: i am quite over this stupid utah weather. its a good thing that i am already planning on locking myself inside this weekend, because i don't plan on enjoying the snowstorm we are expecting to come through. yes, a snowstorm, towards the end of april.

i'm making a public apology to my sister-in-law jill for not doing cooler things while she was here. we are boring. and we have no proof that she even visited. i'm so very sorry. :(

okay one more thing. we are moving tuesday. thats in about five days. wish us luck.

a laugh a day

yesterday was one of those really good sundays. i mean, every sunday is good, but this one was extra good. it was a GORGEOUS day outside, and we walked to church for the first time. our kids we teach were actually pretty well-behaved, and we got through our entire lesson. then we had a family dinner with joesph's siblings jacob and jill and my sister lindsay, and we played the turbo edition of cranium, and had a blast. we ate some yummy pumpkin chocolate chip cake, and our friends jake and jenna stopped by. one of the best parts of the day was that our primary kids we teach were so good, and they made us laugh throughout the entire lesson. i'll share just a few of the funny things they did and said:

we taught the lesson about the nephites being slaves to the lamanites, and they escaped because they gavve wine to the lamanites who got drunk. at the end i asked the kids what they had learned. one of the shyer kids raised his hand right away and said "don't drink too much wine!"

we were talking about being in bondage, and i joked about school sometimes feeling like bondage, and the kids heartily agreed. then joseph said we only had a few more days of it, and the little girl in our class that pretty much keeps to herself suddenly burst out with "thats not fair! we have to be in school til june!" and crossed her arms all grumpy and frowned.

sometimes the kids need a little time to get the wiggles out, and i let jill do simon says with the kids. she had them do a few funny things, and at one point she had them get on their knees. she said simon says and kinda paused while she was thinking about what to say next, and i told them to bow down, and they did it! they were kinda giggling, but they all started bowing down to jill, and we couldnt stop laughing.

at the end we play hangman til its time to go, and the kids were having a hard time guessing the word i had. i kept drawing more parts to the hanging person so they could get it. at one point, i drew some long curly hair, and joseph said "oh, we know its a girl." then, the boy who had shaved his head earlier that week said "or a boy with really long hair!"

okay, so maybe some of these were funnier to me, but i had to write some of these things down. suprisingly, we are gonna miss these kids. we have one more week with them, and i'm a little sad! we were just figurng out how to teach them. i guess thats how it works.....

here's a laugh from today. i got a kick out of this article about the new yankees stadium.

say hello to peanut!

i know you have been DYING to see our little one, because we have been too! we went to the doc today, and if every doctor's appointment could be like this, the whole world would like going to the doctor. our doc is great- thanks for the recommendation katie and jenna! we saw the heartbeat and counted all the fingers- so crazy!

he didn't give us the picture where you can see the fingers, and this is a picture of a picture and kinda blurry.... but its there! and we arent totally sure of the due date. we had calculated oct. 26, then someone at the desk told me the 27th, then the nurse told me nov. 4 (i almost tried to tell her she was wrong...) then the doc measured the baby and said oct. 22. SO. we aren't really sure still, and it will come, sometime. i'm feeling a lot better than the last few weeks, and most days are pretty great! i've got a slight bump now, but its hard to tell because of the weight i lost.

in other news..... today is my younger brother marshall's 18th birthday! he is my little brother, but has been taller than me for a few years now, and we have confused for twins a number of times (i am now the shortest out of everyone). we were pretty close in high school, went through a lot together, and had some good times. he's my favorite little brother!

this is us at before a church prom. we love each other, i promise!

we had a pretty dang good weekend too. i got to see one of my roommates from freshman year kelli hansen that i haven't seen in over a year and it was soooo great to see her again! we caught up on everything and where everyone was from our ward, etc. good times!

we also got to see my cousin rachel and her husband rob, who live in southern utah. they came up for a track meet, and we got to see them for a few minutes before they left again. rachel and i have been pretty close, and has been one of my best friends since birth practically! totally love her!

and yesterday we got to attend the afternoon seesion of general conference. it was kinda funny because it was an amazing conference but i didnt get enough sleep the night before and managed to get a little snooze in and missed some of it. i was so embarassed! after that we made a quick drive back down to orem and hung out with cousins and relatives. good times!

also, a quick shout-out to good friends matt and margaret who got married on friday! they looked so happy and they had a fun reception! congrats to you two!

anyways.... a busy but fun-filled weekend! more updates to come, a few more fun things to read about. we are moving in two weeks (holy cow!) to go out to washington dc for the summer. we are finishing finals up early and driving through st. louis to see my parents for a couple days before i start work in the office joseph is working for this summer. we are living in college park MD, which happens to be the city my mom grew up in! pretty funny how those things work out!

i got all the luck

i seem to be a magnet for bad things happening while sitting in a classroom.....

...flashback to last semestser- some guy sneezed and a fat wad of snot/spit landed on my head....

today in class: sitting there at the end of a row, lecture just started and the girl sitting next to me gets a phone call. she has to answer, so she gets up and as she is taking a step she takes a swing with her arm and pops me one right in the nose. a punch right to my nose! in the middle of class! and i never even talked to her before! i was highly suprised, and i think i must have looked pretty angry, but i was really actually just stunned. she apologized, ran out the room, and came back and kept apologizing, i thought.... i honestly was trying to listen to the lecture, and i could barely hear her anyways. i wasn't mad, but she felt bad, so she got up again (more carefully!) and went to the vending machine and bought me m&m's. i didn't want them, but i ate them anyways.

moral of the story: i wish there was one. bring on the big nose jokes, its okay i know i got a big honker.

great. just great.

why did we have four inches of snow yesterday? it is nearly APRIL for crying out loud.

another boring week, i'm sad to report. but i promise next time will be exciting. next week we have:

• first doctor's appointment
• general conference
• sister jill is coming to visit
• wedding
• birthdays

speaking of general conference..... does anyone have a special treat that they have while they watch it? in our family, we ALWAYS have orange rolls for breakfast and chili dip for munching. it would not be the same if we didnt have those two things twice a year. i'll share with you these two recipes.

chili dip- one can Hormel chili- NO BEANS and 8 oz. cream chese. heat chili and melt cream cheese all together in a saucepan over medium heat until all melted and heated through completely. serve with frito's chips (we usually double this and use the dip kind of chips)

orange rolls- go to the grocery store's freezer aisle, buy rhode's orange rolls and follow the directions. if you live outside of utah, good luck finding them! one of the blessings of living in utah. you can subsitute with pilsbury if you can't get rhodes. those are great too!

oh what to blog about....

i got nothin' folks. and we got no pictures of anything recent. school is life at the moment, and the fact that finals are coming up in just a few weeks is kinda scary. our washer, which we've only had for two and half months, decided to stop working. which conveniently happened when we really needed to do luandry. i hate food, except grapefruit. mmmmm...... we are moving to washington dc as soon as school is out, and i cant wait to enjoy the pool everyday. but we haven't decided what to do with our house. know anyone who needs a place to stay in utah this summer? speaking of dc, here is a pic from last summer- its called handy, something about a religion.

sorry this was soooo boring for y'all, but really the most exciting thing that has happened was an easter egg hunt we went to last night that had money in the eggs. we were not very good hunters :( but it was fun to hang out with friends.

today is the first full day of spring. i think i will go get some flowers and plant them.

oh you want an update?

okay, well i wish that there was something to report... but theres just not much, other than i am in a constant battle with food every day. and its the first time that i am not happy to have suddenly lost some weight. right now just trying to keep the end in sight, and get through the next little while.

and now, back to watching the biggest loser. (i would watch american idol, but this has captured my attention a little more this season. )

no longer a teen? and get excited!

first: today was the big 20- woohoo! i have the left the world of teen things and become... not an adult. why? because i still can't 1-drink and 2- gamble in casinos. because apparently, those things are for responsible adults. but i can still vote, get married, get a credit card, buy a car, house, etc. woop dee doo. (just kidding on most of that- i LOVE my husband and being married and i LOVE my house!)
the first thing i did this morning was go back to sleep. then i waited for my wonderful husband to wake up, and he asked what i wanted for breakfast in bed. i asked for cream of wheat because thats the only thing that sounded remotely good. i guess now would be a good time to announce to those who dont know that we are having a baby! (i gave up on trying to keep it secret because there are too many people i want to tell!) and today was my first official morning sickness. i only managed to eat a few bites before dry heaving my way to the bathroom. we had no crackers in the house, and so i dressed, drove to the store, bought a cart full of crackers and ginger ale (while an old lady behind me kept sneaking up and touching my butt... i dont understand what was happening. if i had tried to turn around i would have knocked her over thats how close she was. and all she bought was orange tic-tacs, which almost brought me to tears thingking about my grandmother's obsession with orange tic-tacs) and the cashier asked me how i was doing. i know i looked like a zombie, and wanted to share the details of hanging out by the toilet this morning and why all that i was buying was things to cure the sickness, but i smiled, gave the "good how are you doing?" response, and went home, where i proceeded to eat nearly an entire box of cheese and cracker ritz.
the rest of the day was pretty uneventful, but a wonderful day to relax and hang out with my husband, who i didnt see much of last week. i ordered pizza for dinner, thats how much i really didnt feel like going out.
so yes i really am pregnant, i am due october 26, i havent had my first appointment because i am a slacker and am freakishly scared of miscarriage. we have no idea a boy or girl, but we are having fun coming up with names. (suggestions of names you like or hate or claim i cant use are welcome anytime!) and guessing. originally he thought boy, i thought girl. but we have been joking around that its gonna be twins or triplets based on a dream he had the other night, and the fact that women carrying twins are more likely to feel nausea/and vomit.

special thanks to sister lindsay for her little blog about me. feel free to get to know me a little better by clicking your way to her blog on the right and enjoy some embarassing photos of yours truly

congrats!

just wanted to congratulate mr. and mrs. smith who got married last friday! we were lucky enough to be invited to the sealing and even though it was a snowy cold day, everything was beautiful and the couple was oh so happy! mike and joseph are buddies from the mision and its been fun to keep in touch. anyways... we wish the cute couple the best of everything!