Top 10

Top 10 ways to spend your Tax Return

10. Buy enough paper plates to never have to wash plates ever again.

9. Buy a custom printed shirt that says "I 'heart' Obama" for you and 20 of your friends.

8. Make up for that crappy Valentine's Day gift you got.

7. AppleBee's, AppleBee's, AppleBee's, AppleBee's, AppleBee's, AppleBee's.

6. New shoes, new shoes, new shoes, new socks.

5. Go see Confessions of a Shopaholic in theaters at least 4 times.

4. Buy clothes that fit your after-Christmas body.

3. NASCAR Tickets??

2. Subscribe to ESPN the Magazine, just for the free stuf they give you.

and the Number 1 way to spend your tax return...

Go on a weekend cruise! unless you live in California where all you get is an I.O.U.

New Year!

Everyone has been bugging us to post a new blog. Both Shawn and I (Laura) have been very busy lately with school, and our lives are kinda boring, so we haven't posted anything for a while. I decided since this is a three-day weekend, I had a little bit of time to try my hand at putting together a post. Shawn was more than willing to let me do one, since he has done all of them up to now. Sorry I don't have pictures, but I haven't mastered the skill of carrying my camera everywhere I go. It just seems that funny things happen, and I think to myself, "I should have taken a picture of that," but I don't have my camera!

Okay, since our last post:

1. We went up to Bountiful for two weeks over Christmas and New Years. We had a lot of fun with everyone, and enjoyed playing with our little nephews, Kolby, Christian, and William. It was great to hang out with Jacob and Jennifer. Most of all, it was wonderful just to be able to relax for awhile. After the two weeks were over, and we had to come back to Cedar City to start school, it was really weird walking into our very quiet, calm apartment! (Not to mention...it was nice to sleep in our own bed!)


2. We started the new semester with new classes and high expectations. I am taking Histology, Biochemistry II, Cell/Molecular Biology, Chemical Literature, and Analysis Lab. Shawn is taking Communication Theory, Mass Media Theory, Organizational Communications, Non-verbal Communications, Ad Lab of Centurium Consulting Group, and doing an internship with CTV12. This semester, both Shawn and I needed a couple upper-division credits in order to graduate, so we actually get to take a few 1-credit classes together. These are Black History Month and Native American Week. As you can see, we have very busy schedules, and rarely find free minutes where we don't have homework that needs to get done!


3. We got everything in line so that we can both graduate. In May, I will be graduating with a degree in Chemistry from the College of Science, and Shawn will be graduating at the end of the summer with a degree in Communications with an emphasis in Advertising from the College of Humanities. He will be able to walk in May also, but it just so happens that our commencements are at the same time. We got special permission for Shawn to walk with the college of Science with me, so that we can be at each other's graduations!


4. I found out on January 7 that I was accepted to The Ohio State University College of Dentistry. This was my first choice when I went to their interview. We are very excited to be moving to Ohio at the end of the summer. The white coat ceremony will be on my 22nd birthday (September 21) and school starts on September 23!


5. We went to the Miss SUU pageant to support the school that we will be graduating from. Many of Shawn's friends from the Multicultural Center performed during the pauses when the contestants were changing and such. It was fun to see them dance and present some of their culture to us! The girl who was voted to be Miss SUU is my old landlord's daughter (if any of you remember me talking about Dutch, you know how I felt about this!)


6. Shawn is still working with SUU Aquatics as an assistant swim coach for the Junior Swim Team. He loves this job because he gets to teach little kids how to swim, and he gets to yell at them to go faster. All the kids love him, and look forward to coming to swimming every day!


7. I mentor with the Youth and Families with Promise, and have fun while I'm at it. The girl that I mentor just turned 14, and was sad to hear that I got accepted to dental school because she doesn't want me to leave! I love hanging out with her every week, and see how much she improves with everything. It makes me miss my little siblings every time I see her!


8. Shawn has really picked things up with Horace Mann Insurance Company, and wants to do quotes on everybody! He gets really excited every time he learns that he can save another person a lot of money on auto and property insurance.


9. Shawn has been recruited this past month to do many flyers and advertising for the plethora of events put on by the Multicultural Center. He is very creative and loves to show off his PhotoShop prowess!


10. We celebrated our sixth month anniversary on February 9. It is so weird to think that it has already been six months since we got married. It is funny how "time flies when you're having fun!" We love being married, and are so excited to spend the rest of eternity together.

Ha! a quicky!!!

I am going to make this a quick one because of the crazy long one I put up last time. So starting with Friday, really Friday night, we had a ward Christmas Luau (however you spell it!)

Laura and I got dressed up.

She wore her wrap and I wore a lava-lava that I borrowed from a Samoan dude that I know. It was fun and we got a lot of compliments, because Laura looked so good ;-) We didn't go sit on Santa's lap, I thought it would be fun to go sit on him at the same time, and then list off everything we could even think of, but Laura didn't think it was such a good idea, so we took pictures next to the palm tree.

Then Saturday came, and Laura made an awesome stocking hanger, it is so cool, we hung it on the wall and it looks great. We have blue stockings, because blue is way cooler than red :-)

Really we just liked the blue ones better. I got my bike all ready to ride, I adjusted the seat and got the tires pumped up at the gas station.

On my way home I got some quarters so we could do laundry...

In the laundry room.

Today we went to church, and in Relief Society/Priesthood, (we were combined today), some ladies talked about saving money by cutting coupons, so Laura started to do some of that, and now she's cooking some chicken wrapped in bacon. mmmmm....

Well, I think that's it, I hope you enjoyed it, we took pictures of our nostrils, but we figure you don't want to see those! lol later everyone!!

Finally, a new post!!

       Sorry everyone, I know that it has been forever since the last time we posted, and I guess that is my fault (Shawn).  Anyways it is now the first of December, and a lot has happened, I am going to skip all that other stuff, and focus on the more recent fun stuff, like last week, my birthday, and Thanksgiving.  My birthday was on November 26th, last Wednesday, and Laura and I got to go to my house in California.  Sounds great right?  Well, sort of.  First we had to drive to Las Vegas, and it was rainy and the roads were wet, so that wasn't all that fun.  Then we had to deal with Las Vegas traffic, which is terrible.  Once we finally got to the airport and got checked in, we found out that our plane was late, and that we were going to have to sit around for at least an hour waiting to leave.  So needless to say... (why would I say something needlessly? fill in the blanks!)  Once we got on the plane the flight was only about an hour and everything went fine from there, it was just the waiting forever to leave the airport that stunk.  

    Ok, on to Thanksgiving.   The day was great.  I got up early to go play some football while Laura stayed home with my mom and Maggie doing... something. i don't know because I was playing football, dominate!  Once I got home and showered Dad and I went out to get some food and munchies and stuff so we could eat the rest of the day, which we did.  Thanksgiving dinner was really nice, and we ate until we could barely move.  The rest of the night was really relaxing and we played cards and planned out our Black Friday attack.

    On Black Friday we did dumb things, like get up at six in the morning to go to stores packed with people and then go to other stores to try and find the things we wanted.  It was bedlam at most places, including Bass Pro Shops, which is an amazing store.  This place was redneck emporium, like Gucci for Gomer!

   Friday's dinner was pretty cool, Laura made Hot Turkey Salad, and we all ate it because it was awesome.  That night the boys, Scott, Dad, Jacob and me went into the hot tub and played some card games with our cool waterproof cards.   

   (Ok, I know this is long, Laura just called it a novel, if you think it is too long you can let me know and  I will try to keep the next one short.)

   On to Saturday.  An easy day of laying around and watching TV.  We did go do some more shopping, but only for a little bit, the we had In N' Out for lunch, which is always awesome.  the flight back to Las Vegas actually left early and we got back to Vegas on time.  Then I drove home from there and we got home at about one in the morning.

    Well, now you are all caught up, except for today's events.  Once we got to campus I started on page 2 of my 15 page paper, (content analysis about reporters and whether or not they were bias in reporting the results of the World Series in October), which was due at noon.  Unfortunately I didn't finish it at noon, I handed it in at about 4:30, oh well, my bad.  Tonight is the fun part though.  Laura and I went over to Wal-Mart and got Christmas things.  So now we have a Christmas tree and some wrapping paper for presents, I already wrapped a few, here's a pic:

The lights came with the tree, which I think is awesome, and Laura and I picked a box of ornaments each to put on it.  We got a bow to top it and we bought a special ornament to celebrate our first Christmas together, it is a wedding cake/bell that is rung by wedding bands interlocked inside it.  It's really sweet.  

   

        So that is pretty much it, except for the fact that today is an important day for Laura because now she can start getting accepted to dental schools.  So far she has been accepted to Creighton and Louisville, and she is on the non-resident waiting list for Ohio State.  so things are good, I think over the next few days she will get some letters and phone calls from Universities begging her to come to their schools.  Anyway that is it from us, we have been having a good time in Cedar, no snow yet, that's good, and we are looking forward to Christmas!!  See you later!!

Monday Monday....

Well it's Monday the 3rd, and how happy we are that it is November. So far I think we've had a great month!! I took my insurance test on the morning of the first, and I passed it! :-) So now I will have a company laptop, and things are going to get rolling here pretty quick. Laura stayed home and slept, then woke up to study. I called her when I was done, and let her know, it was pretty awesome. Later that same day I had a rugby game, that was really fun. i did get a little beat up, but its good experience and will help for other games. I do enjoy the competitiveness, the bruises and soreness, not so much. Laura doesn't like that part either, she stayed home to study while I played. It is kinda funny that when I get home I have to report on the bruises. we did win the game, making our SUU team undefeated. There isn't much more to report, my dad and Scott will be out here next Monday, that should be fun. Scott has a broken arm, but if he didn't I would have invited him to come play rugby with me, but oh well. Well, I don't know what else is going on, Laura has her University of North Carolina interview coming up next week, and the holidays are here soon. ;-D

So until next time, enjoy this video of a scrum. I'm on the other side, so you can't see me. Basically we do this every few minutes during the game.

Then there is this video of a line-out, we lift the guy up so he can get the ball, you have to throw it down the middle of the two lines so getting high on a certain time count is pretty important.