May 28, 2008...

...is the day that my brother, Kevin, comes home from his mission! I can't believe that he's already in his last five months as a missionary. Time sure does go by quickly, doesn't it. A lot has changed since he's left. I (nearly) finished my degree at BYU and started the dental hygiene program at UVSC. My parents moved from California to Utah. I got married! Karen graduated from high school and is going to college. And lots of other things - too many to name.

So instead of flying home to the Sacramento airport, Kevin gets to fly "home" to the SLC airport. I'm excited that he's coming home so soon.

(I don't have a picture of him as a missionary, but I don't have any pictures of him on this computer, either. I'll be sure to post some when I get the internet back at home!)

Christmas!

It's about time that I posted again. I need to post those Christmas tree pictures that I promised! And now I have some pictures from Christmas day, too. I hope that everyone had a great Christmas. I sure did! Here we have Tyler standing excitedly next to our finished Christmas tree! Right before I took this picture, he had placed our "tree-topper" on the tree - the big red and white ornament you can see at the top. A few days later, Tyler's mom gave us a real tree-topper, but I don't know if we took any pictures of the tree with it on. I might have to go home and do that!

Here is a picture of our tree with the lights in the house turned off. I decided to post it because I think it looks pretty darned cool.

I love this picture of Tyler's stocking hanging from our unusable fireplace. My stocking was added later, but no picture was taken. Another one I need to go home and take, I suppose. We'll have to work on getting some stocking holders in the next few years because we definitely have the mantel space to use them! :)
This picture is of Tyler and me after we finished opening our presents to each other on Christmas morning. As soon as we finished opening them we headed to my parents' house in Draper, where we opened more presents and got to talk to my brother, Kevin, on the phone. He's currently serving a mission in Florida (Jacksonville). We next headed to Tyler's parents' house to open presents, and then it was off to Tyler's grandparents' house for more present opening. Talk about a tiring day!

My mom gets my dad the temple calender every year for Christmas, and this year happened to feature the Sacramento temple, which is where Tyler and I got married. Here we are holding up the picture. (And in case you're wondering, the Sacramento temple picture fell on the month of June. Close!)

Welcome to Utah, Dad! My lucky parents decided to move to Utah just in time for all of the wonderful snow. Here's a picture of my dad snow-blowing the walkway and driveway. Thank goodness the neighbor let him borrow this snow-blower. It's much faster than the shoveling-technique my dad had previously been using.
Hahaha. My mom thinks this picture is funny. I'm eating a mint cookie while reading the crepe recipe we used to make crepes for Christmas breakfast. I obvioulsy have really great eating habits - eating a mint cookie before making breakfast. I think I'd eaten a Pillsbury biscuit at some point that morning, too. I love those things. That and ranch. ;)

Here we have Tyler with the cordless drill and accessories (on his belt) that my parents gave him for Christmas. Needless to say, I am a little worried for my house. Good thing it's a rental, huh? That means lots of practicing with the power tools before Tyler gets his hands on our first home. :) Oh, and the reason Karen's leaning over in the back is because she was trying to get out of the picture. Nice try. :P

That's all for now, folks!

Hmm...

Does anyone have any idea why my list of 'blogs i read' is getting cramped up? I've tried fixing it, but it won't space out. Maybe there's nothing that can be done and Miri and Sami will just have to be really good friends. :)

Independent Study Class

So...I lied. I can still post because I have pretty easy access to the internet thanks to Tyler's wonderful family office, but I can only make it over at night (or rather, I only dare come over here to use the internet at night when everyone is gone) and I don't want to mess with adding pictures. Not that it's hard to add pictures with this computer, it's just that I'm, well, lazy. Maybe tomorrow night I'll come over and post pictures of our first Christmas tree. It's not like I have any pressing plans, seeing as Tyler is studying like crazy for his finals, my house is pretty clean, and all of my Christmas presents are wrapped. Actually, I do have one pressing issue - the one that inspired the name of this post.

I know that not many students read this blog, but may I still make a suggestion?

DO NOT TAKE AN INDEPENDENT STUDY CLASS IF YOU CAN HELP IT!

Because of the way things worked out with my school and work schedule, I'm left with one measly class that I'm required to take in order to graduate. Now that I'm over at UVSC (UVU, excuse me), I decided I'd take the class through independent study. I had heard that independent study classes were generally easier than taking classes on campus and I'm usually a pretty motivated person, so I decided I'd give it a try and finish the class over the summer.

Wrong.

I bought the class in late April and I didn't even finish a fourth of it during the summer. It's not that the class is extremely hard, but really, the last thing I want to do is sit down and work on the darned thing. I don't exactly enjoy doing it, and the subject...probably isn't my favorite in the world. I'm hesitant to say that, though, because the class is business law and I married into a family of lawyers. Maybe that means I have lots of help, right? Eh.

So now I'm stuck finishing the entire class over this Christmas break. I technically don't have to finish it until April, but with the way the hygiene department at UVSC (UVU - whatever) has scheduled my next semester, I won't have time to do much of anything else except school and what little work I do. Oh, joy. I suppose that once I'm done, though, I won't have to worry about it anymore and I'll be able to get the little piece of paper that makes it official, if you will. It's really more of a, "Congratulations, you got your bachelor's. Now go get your master's since a master's is the new bachelor's and you need one if you want to go anywhere in your career."

(Ha - and I'm in an associate's program. But don't bring this up with my dad; he wants me to get an MBA.) :)

With that said, I suppose I should go work on it so that I can graduate. Every little bit helps. The one good thing about Tyler having finals this week is that it gives me a lot of reason to work on my independent study class. And since he's studying right now, I should be too.

Wish me luck!

Internet-less

I'm sad to report that there won't be any new posts for the next little while because Tyler and I are without internet. Hopefully that changes soon and we'll be back to posting in no time!

Decorating with the 'Rents

On Sunday, Tyler and I went up to my parents' house to have dinner with them and help decorate their Christmas tree. Here are some pictures from the "event."

This is a picture of the house that my parents are renting in Draper. At first impression it seems like a nice house, but once you start cleaning and moving stuff into it, you realize how many things are wrong with it. For example, the foundation is settling, so the house is a bit crooked. Needless to say, my parents plan to move out when their rent contract is up. Or they might wait until Kevin is home so that he can help with the next move...
Here's a picture of me decorating the tree. Tyler took it because he absolutely loved the reindeer antlers I'm wearing. :) Tyler "decorating" the tree. It was actually more like "Hey Tyler, pretend your decorating the tree so I can take a picture of you." But even though this picture might be fake, Tyler really did help decorate and he did a great job.
He also couldn't believe how many ornaments my mom has. This picture captures just a portion of the plethora of ornaments the Weidmers have.
Dad "decorating."
My mom was in charge of taking all of the ornaments out of the boxes. Tyler and I put the de-boxed ornaments on the tree, and my mom is going to follow up with colored balls to finish.

Ta-da! The partially-finished tree.

Merry Christmas!

Boggled

I cannot for the life of me figure out how to add music to my blogs. Can someone help me out? :) I'm sure it's very simple - I just can't find how to do it!