Thursday, December 17, 2009

Finally done with Finals

That's right. School's done for the semester. Let the packing/cleaning/throwing away of tons of stuff begin in earnest!

On a depressing note, we're hanging out with Scott, Stephanie, and Sam tonight. Now, normally that's not depressing, but the fact that it could potentially be the last time that we hang out with them until next Christmas is. Depending on what goes on in the summer, we might not see them. Sad day!! I will miss the hours of Stephanie and I watching the boys play Smash Bros, and occasionally joining in and getting our trash kicked.

But on a very happy note, we're only a few short weeks away from being able to hang out with Shad, Katie, Barbi, Robert, and their respective kids. Change is sad, but definitely good at the same time.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

And so it begins...

School's winding down, and as of today, Tucker and I only have 2 weeks left in Utah. 2 WEEKS!! It's so crazy to think that we aren't going to be coming back here after Christmas. And not gonna lie, with all the snow we got this past weekend, and with all the snow that's supposed to come this next week, I'm super excited to leave.

I've finally started going through stuff and sort of packing this week. I posted ads on a couple sites for all the furniture that we want to sell/get rid of before we leave, and we've already sold 3 of the 5 things we posted. Kind of crazy how fast it happened. But it's a relief knowing I don't have to worry about those things anymore. Packing, however, is another story. That's what I'm stressing over. I just can't see all the stuff we want to take actually fitting into our car. So if anyone has advice about moving long, long distances, I'm open.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Something new to keep me occupied...

So for those of you that don't know about my job, it's super easy, and most of the time me and the lifeguards sit and watch TV shows on the computer while we're at the pool. We have our schedule for when we watch new shows that come out every week, but to fill the rest of the time, I've finally discovered Heroes. Dang good show.

Thanksgiving in Phoenix

So after some 'subtle' prodding from a certain sister-in-law (*coughKATIEcough* :) ), I've collected some pictures from my sister's facebook to post here from our Thanksgiving this year. It was sooooo nice to be able to go home, especially because it seems like it's been forever since I've been there. And the great part about this Thanksgiving was we were able to bring home Sam, Scott, and Stephanie with us! So while one half of the Smith family was having a great time in Spartanburg, the other half was in Phoenix celebrating with the Perry family.



The dinner was excellent, and the grand total for people we had over to eat including us was 17. Needless to say, things were a little crowded, but it was super fun. Scott brought along his Wii, so lots of Smash Brothers and Mario Kart were played. Aside from that, I took Tucker, Scott, Sam, and Stef on a driving tour of the greater Phoenix area. Basically we drove downtown and then went to Scottsdale Fashion Square (a huge, rich people mall). We walked around for a bit, and while the boys were getting a Kobe beef hotdog, Stephanie and I went to a couple stores to look at stuff, and both really liked Anthropologie. Super cute store. We also went to see the Mesa Temple lights one night, but I don't have any pictures from that, Stephanie does, however.

So that's it. Thanksgiving break was awesome, aside from the ten hour drives there and back, but they were worth it. Guess we'll be seeing you guys (East Coast Smiths) soon!!

Monday, October 5, 2009

I have a real excuse...

Our computer is broken. Sad day. Hopefully it will be fixed within the next couple weeks (yay for warranties!), but until that time, I'll be forced to use the computers here at school and at work as well. It's kind of crazy how much I use the computer in my daily life, but it took our computer breaking for me to realize this. I suppose this could be looked at as a good thing. Tucker and I are certainly reading a lot more than usual.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Okey-dokey

So two and half months, give or take a few days, is quite enough of a break from posting on here. I'll stop being a slacker and start doing this again. On to the recap of the summer....

It's been fairly eventful, to say the least. In June, we made a trip out to the Carolina's to have a Smith family reunion. Sam came home from his mission, and then we all went to Lake Lure to stay in a lake house for a few days. While there we white-water rafted, water skied, played in the lake, and had an awesome time. It sucked having to go home, but it was fun while it lasted. We even got a decent family picture!!
The weekend of July 11th, we were able to go down to Phoenix for a few days. The reason for the trip: my grandma was going through the temple for the first time and was going to be sealed to my Papa and my mom. Needless to say, I really wanted to be there for it. It was an amazing experience, and I'm so proud of Grammy for making the decision to get her endowment. Even though she's a stubborn old lady, we love her tons.

Other than that, we've... or at least I've had lots of fun hanging out with my sister. We've gone to a wedding, hung out with friends, and spent time with family. Tucker is going out of town this week to go to his dairy competition (cross your fingers for him, the check we would get if they win would be really nice to have), and I'm going to stay here and be lonely for a few days. Good thing I work so much or I would be really bored. Next week we get to head out to North Carolina again for Scott and Stephanie's wedding (YAY!); it'll be a fun weekend to spend with the family.

And one last update... Tucker will be graduating in December, and hopefully will be getting an internship with the church at Welfare Square in the winter. Then next summer, we'll probably be moving away from Utah, whether it's for an internship in Michigan or Missouri, or if Tucker gets accepted to NC State and can start working there. We really hope that Tucker gets accepted there so that he can start his masters there. It would be awesome to be near family.

That's it for now. I'll try to be better about this again.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

My Poor Hair...

K. All I'm going to say is that I'm blond again..... like UBER blond. I got my hair done a couple days ago, you know, wanting to lighten it just a tad from what it usually is because it's summer again. Well... apparently the girl that did my hair thought she would make me a platinum blond....... yeah.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Yipee!!!

'Chuck' got renewed!!! Definitely one of my favorite shows, and I'm so glad that it's coming back for next season. YAY!!

Friday, May 8, 2009

Quick Update

Since school got out a couple weeks ago, my life has consisted of sleeping and working. There's been some exercising, reading, eating, and playing of WoW thrown in there too, but it really feels like all I do is sleep and work. My life is boring. Oh well. By Friday of next week, I'll have more stuff to do, and then June will be packed full of super fun stuff to do.

Why Friday of next week, you may ask. Well, next Friday is when my Lifeguard Instructor course will start. I'm super excited about it. Basically it's a class teaching me how to teach others to be lifeguards. I'll be able to certify others in CPR and basic first aid, and (of course) lifeguarding. Once that class ends, me and Tucker will be headed down to Kanab, UT for my family's annual Memorial Day Reunion. We'll only get to be down there for a couple days this year, but it's better than nothing.

Swimming lessons will start the first week of June, and I can't wait! Teaching lessons is what I look forward to every summer. And I'm even thinking of branching out into private lessons, so if you or anyone you know is looking for a teacher, you should call me.

Oh, and as a final note, I've signed up to run another 5k! This one will be in Wilmington, NC in June. I'm really excited, and it's keeping me motivated when it comes to running, because I'll admit, I've been slacking these past couple weeks. But I'm back on course, so we'll see if I can keep up with Katie..... I probably won't be able to, but that's ok.

Until next time!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

A Darn Good Show

K, so I thought that I'd share this for any of you looking for a good show to watch. "Chuck" on NBC is possibly one of my favorite shows. It's an action comedy that we watch here at work, and it's pretty much amazing. The 2nd season is winding down now (I think there's only one episode left), but it's well worth checking out on Surf the Channel or some such thing.

WANTED:

A cheap, fun hobby. I've decided I'm kind of a loser because of the fact that I don't do anything cool like scrapbooking or quilting. I would really love to pick up something like that, but I don't have basically any money. So if anybody out there knows of a hobby that I could pick up that doesn't require a big chunk of change every time you want to do it, let me know.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Tucker screams like a girl in his sleep

K, so this is quite a funny story.. at least it is for me and Tucker. Saturday morning I was woken up abruptly by Tucker "screaming". It wasn't quite a scream/yell, cause it was one perfect note. Actually, I didn't know if he was singing in his sleep or yelling, so I woke him up (it was about 4:30am), and we both had a good laugh about it because, apparently, he could hear himself.

He said that the reason for his yell was because of a scary dream that he was having. He blames the occurrence of the dream on the movie Poltergeist 3. In the dream, he had hit a crazy lady in the face, who then in turn told him that he would die in 24 hours. Later in the dream, Tucker falls off a tall building (this is where he screamed at).

So, the next time you see Tucker, you can have a good laugh at his expense because he screams like a girl who's singing. Hahahaha!!

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Seeing if this works... Apparently now you can text stuff to you blog.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Utah's weather is super dumb.....

I don't know how the weather is elsewhere, but the weather here in Utah is ridiculously spastic! It snowed a good 3 inches today.... it's the middle of April; this isn't supposed to happen anymore! Dumb....

In other news, the semester is winding down, and I am so ready for it to be done. Anatomy has totally burnt me out, and working up the motivation to go to class is really hard (and I fail on some occasions.... more often than I would like to admit). But I think that I'm doing well enough in the class so that I won't have to retake it, so that's good.

Tucker had a fairly frustrating past couple weeks, due mostly to one person in his group for his Product Development class. I've never heard Tucker complain so much.. it was kind of weird. But he's done with that class now, so he's relieved. And he's graduating in December!!!! Yay!! And then hopefully (if things go our way), he'll be starting his Master's in January. With any luck we'll be able to stay here so that I can finish up school as well. But we'll just get through the Bachelor's degree before we start freaking out about that stuff.

Um...... nothing else to report really. Hopefully I'll remember to post in a week (ish) to let you all know how finals go.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Birthday Week!!!

So I know I said before that I would update everyone (well... anyone who even reads this anymore) on how the 5k went, but school kind of took over until about 330 this afternoon. The 5k went about as well as I expected it to. And surprisingly, I actually enjoyed it. Of course, I walked about half of it seeing as I did no training whatsoever to get ready for it. I think I'll sign up to do another one though, and yes, I'm actually running now.... well, I haven't for about a week or so now because of a sore throat and some congestion. But I promise that once those clear up, I'll be back out there.

But yeah, as of wednesday, I am officially 22!! Gettin' up there; I know. I didn't expect the day to be all that great mostly because of the fact that I was going to be doing stuff constantly all day long, but the day actually went better than I had hoped. I forgot to set my alarm Tuesday night, so I woke up late which put me in a bad mood right off (but in reality I was really glad that I got to sleep in a little), and then I had my dumb anatomy lab for three hours (but I left early so I could get ready for Activity Day). Activity Day was at 330 that afternoon, and the sweet Primary president brought cupcakes for everyone and they sang me happy birthday. The activity itself was funner than I thought it would be; we "egged" the bishop's house, or in other words, we heart-attacked him with paper easter eggs. Then when I got to work that night, my friends had balloons, a whopper from Burger King, and a crazy weird birthday song waiting for me (they're pretty much the best co-workers/friends ever).

So all in all, my birthday was actually a good one. My parents sent me a movie I wanted and a couple cute shirts, and Tucker got a movie from them for his birthday too. We also got a flippin' awesome ice cream scoop from Katie and Shad, which I tested out, and it's pretty much amazing (thanks Katie!!!) My little sister Jenna though, she was definitely my favorite person this week. She brought me floors and an oreo pie on Tuesday night, Thursday she took me out to lunch at Chipotle (which we drove all the way to Sandy for), and Friday she and my brother Jeff to me to see BYU's rendition of Macbeth (which was set in Book of Mormon times........ yes, it was most definitely a horrible play. I give them props for trying though.. the acting just wasn't that good). Basically I love my little sister a ton!!

Well, I think that's about it for now. Oh, Tucker went on a campout last night with the teacher's in our ward (dumb, I know... it's still freezing cold outside here), and poor Tucker didn't take enough stuff to keep him warm, so he froze all night and didn't get any sleep at all. I'm just waiting for him to come home from school right now so that he can sleep the rest of today and tonight. Poor guy.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Tomorrow's going to be one heck of a day

Tomorrow's date is March 14th, for those of you oblivious to calendars, and as the title of this post suggests..... it's going to be insane, or maybe I'll just be insane.

My midterm for my anatomy lab starts tomorrow at 8am and closes at 5pm (I can show up anytime during those hours to take the test). I think I'll do ok on the test, but honestly, I feel like I should have been reviewing everything I've learned this far for the past three weeks. There's just so much information, that I don't think I'll be able to remember it all. And while this test won't be horrible, it'll be bad enough to make me not want to do anything else all day, but lucky me, I have some anatomy homework that needs to get done this weekend........ stupid, never-ending class.

But yeah, while I'm stressing a little about this test, the thing that I'm stressing the most about for tomorrow is this 5k that I'm running. That's right folks, I'm 'running' a 5k. And this race starts at 9am... pretty much it cuts into valuable midterm taking time. But the thing is, nearly all of the anatomy students will be participating in this race due to the fact that we can get some serious extra credit points for doing it. Basically, if we register for the race we get 10 points. If we actually show up and run the race, we get 15 points. And if we run the race and beat our professor (who is running it), we get 20 points. That's HUGE!!! Especially when the only other way is to take a quiz every week that you can only miss one on for a grand total of one point extra credit per quiz (sucks, I know, though it sucks more when you miss two questions).

So my strategy for tomorrow is to show up, survive the 5k (because honestly, I haven't been running in months), and then drag myself over to the anatomy lab to take this beast of a test. I really must be stupid for doing this, but hey, I get a shirt for doing the 5k, so that's pretty cool. Anywho, wish me luck, and I'll report back on how tomorrow's events go for you probably next week sometime.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Yay!!! (and a little boo)

We got our car back today!! Finally. A full week later, but I guess it's ok, cause it's better that we get back a fully functional car that won't break on us again in a month.... but it very well might (stupid Dodge). It cost $1510, and Tucker's parents completely took care of that for us, which we are super, super grateful for seeing as we don't even have $1000 in our account at the moment.

Daylight savings happened yesterday, for those of you that didn't know. Tucker and I actually didn't know about it till we got to church and someone mentioned it. Yes, we did get to church on time. The only reason we did, though, is because we use our cell phones as our clocks and as our alarms in the morning. And since cell phones automatically update their time, it still got us up at the right time. Thank goodness.

And as for the 'boo' goes, it snowed again today. I'm not really surprised that it happened again because it's only the beginning of March, but it's just really annoying when it happens right after we were having such nice weather. And it's also annoying when one where's flipflops to work, and the snow comes during work, and then one has to brush one's car off in those flip flops. Needless to say, my feet are cold.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Bad news just keeps coming...

The car guy called today. Our whole transmission needs to be replaced. *Insert frustrated sigh here.* He gave us the option of a total rebuild, costing about $2200, or replacing ours with a used transmission at about $1500. We chose to get the used, so if nothing else goes wrong, we get the car back tomorrow. Man alive.....

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

A Fairly Bad Week

Why is it that Monday's always have to have some problem associated with them? Cause, man alive, it sucks having to deal with them sometimes. And they're even worse when it makes the rest of the week bad. And yes, in case you haven't already guessed, this is another of those ranting posts.

Monday morning, I slept through my first class because I had a test in the class later that day and didn't see the need to go and get all confused with new information..... and I just wanted to sleep in. So I got to take Tucker to school before I headed to take my test. We didn't notice anything wrong with the car before I dropped off Tucker, but as soon as I was leaving BYU, I started hearing a whiny, siren-ish sounding noise coming from the engine whenever I was accelerating. Obviously, I knew this wasn't a good thing, so I called Tucker to let him know that it was being weird, and then continued on my merry way.

Yeah, well... just as I was getting up the hill in between Provo and Orem on University Parkway (at the light just before University Mall), I tried accelerating and all that happened was the engine revved. Basically it felt like the car was in neutral, except for the fact that it was in drive. So, lucky for me, I was coming up to an entrance to the mall parking lot, so I turned in with the little momentum I had left and managed to get to a safe spot to stop. I called Tucker and tried driving the car again to see if it would actually work, and it did just about half the time, but the rest of the time it felt like trying to drive in neutral. So I called AAA and they got a tow truck dispatched to tow me to a mechanic. And, I don't know about all the rest of you guys, but I've never really had a car break down on me before, and so I was really stressing, and to add to the stress, I couldn't get ahold of anyone to come get me, and I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to go take my test... so pretty much I was on the verge of tears while I was talking to the AAA lady. Then when my brother called me back, I totally just started crying. I do that sometimes.

Well, the tow truck guy came and picked me up (and by the way, it was probably the most awkward car ride of my life), and we got the car to the mechanic's, and to add onto the problem of my car not working, the poor tow truck guy accidentally cracked our oil pan, and so now that had to be replaced too (we didn't have to pay for it though). So yeah, I managed to borrow Jenna and Jeff's car so that I could get to school, and the mechanic guy said that he would call us later that day to tell us what was going on. But we didn't get a phone call. Which made me even more worried.

Tuesday morning we found out the news. Our torque converter in our transmission was broken and would need to be replaced. The estimate was $1500-$2000. Yeah. We definitely didn't have the money to fix it, but Tucker's parents generously offered to cover it for us. We are SUPER grateful. They've helped us so much since we've gotten married, it's not even funny. There's like no way that we'll ever be able to repay them.. at least not for like 8 years.

So yeah, that's my story about that. I won't unload about my tests in anatomy that I have coming up in the next couple weeks. Needless to say, the month of March kind of sucks thus far. Maybe after spring break is done with it will get better.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

I'm such a slacker...

Wow, 2 months of me not writing on here is pretty dang impressive. My excuse this time is that the holidays and finals took up a lot of my time towards the end of the year, and now that school has started up, I just don't have the time to post here. Lucky for me, work is super slow tonight and I'm not in the mood to study.

But yeah, another semester has started, and while Tucker is taking a super easy work load, I only have three classes, but seem to be studying almost constantly. Mostly this is because I'm taking anatomy. If it weren't for that class I would probably be just fine. But this class literally is taking over my life. The books for just that class alone cost us $400, and I spend anywhere from 3-6 hours a day studying for it. When I try to go to sleep at night, I have the terms just on like a loop running through my brain... not the best thing to have happening when one is exhausted.

Tucker's teaching a lab for food science this semester and he seems to be enjoying that. And I'm not positive on this, but I think that he's taking something like four different religion classes.... super easy stuff for him. But I guess it's ok as long as he does good in Ochem this semester.

Anywho, I've got to get back to work cause it's my turn to guard, so hopefully I won't be waiting like 2 months to post again, but you never know.