Celebrating Rivalry Week: Stained Glass Rivalry Panels

It's that time again. That magical time of year when friends become enemies almost instantaneously. For me it's not so much the friendships that magically disappear for a couple of hours: it's my marriage.

Yes, that's right. I, a BYU Cougar, married a Ute fan. I know, I know, it sounds crazy, but it seems to be working (except on Rivalry Day, of course ;) ).

Okay no, it's really not all that bad. To be honest, I'm not very big into the whole rivalry thing no matter what team it is. Don't get me wrong, I love my Cougars, but I'd rather spend my time watching the game in the background than being on the front lines battling with the rest of the crowd.

But regardless of your team preference (or distance from the battle), there's one thing we can all agree on: a good game. That's why Aaron and I decided to celebrate together—in style!

Check these babies out: stained glass Utah and BYU logos. These were so fun to make but it tends to be pretty pricey and time-consuming. Totally worth it though! They are beautiful, decorative, and totally unique.

You can't really tell cause mine is so dark but the blue is translucent like the red in the "U"

Aaron's "U." This came out to be about 8"x8" ish.

And my "Y." This one came out to be about 7"x11" ish...

And you can have one too! These, and other team designs are individually hand-crafted and make great gifts. Comment if you're interested and I'll give you the details. Or just comment and tell me what you think! :)

The MTC

Well, as if today hasn't been the most heart-wrenching day of my life, I don't know what has. There's nothing harder or more exciting than watching your little brother leave for two year to serve the Lord, knowing the next time you see him, he'll be a man.

Needless to say, we've all been emotional wrecks all day. Actually, in my case, it's been all week. For those of you who haven't had the experience yet, it's sooo hard. But, it's so exciting! (Let's be honest though, it takes a while for the excitement to kick in.) For me, I had to have a good cry, take a nap (and some Tylenol cause of the headache) and look forward to the first letter home!

After lots of comforting words from people who've done this before, I've found a few things have really helped so far. 1) Realize that he's only a few miles away. Especially where most of my time spent is at BYU, he's really only 1/4 mile away. By the time he leaves for Peru in 3 weeks, we'll be used to the idea and it won't be quite as hard. 2) We're entitled to random outbursts of emotional distress over the next two years. The fact is, we miss him and as much as we know he's making the right choice we're going to miss him, and that's ok. 3) I've resolved to write him every week. Even if I don't hear back from him that often, it will make me feel better to know that he'll always have a part of home every week. Especially where he's serving overseas and letters take longer to get there.

But I think the thing that has helped the most is looking forward to his first letter. I'm so excited to see how he grows, see pictures, and hear stories. That will be priceless...

Al Fox Fireside

As many of you know, Aaron's dad is a bishop in Roy. Well he and my sister-in-law, Amy, organized a fireside for last weekend and Aaron and I had the good fortune to be able to go. Amy used the project for a Personal Progress project opportunity and she did an amazing job! (yay Amy!)

They arranged to have Al Fox come and speak. Can I just say? She is absolutely inspired. She's so humble and full of the spirit and she has such an inspiring story. It was so good, internet, so good. She does these awesome videos that are on YouTube but I've posted one of my personal favorites here. Take a look and you'll see what I mean.

Even just being around her really made me think about where I'm at and where I want to go in life—who I want to become. I think about the kinds of things I want to be remembered for and I ask myself, "am I living my life in a way that the Lord can use me as a tool to accomplish His means? Am I helping to build His kingdom? What kind of an example am I setting for those that don't know?"

I hope the answers to those questions grow more positive every day and I hope that I am constantly becoming a better daughter, a better sister, a better wife, a better me.

Antelope Island

This year Aaron and I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day with my family. His family had come down to visit a few days earlier to open gifts and spend some quality time together but we really missed them a lot. So a few weeks ago we went up to Roy to surprise his family for Christmas and New Years. 

As we were driving up we passed the exit for Antelope Drive and with it, a sign for Antelope Island. I, of course, was embarrassingly amazed and surprised that an island existed in the middle of the Great Salt Lake let alone that it was home to buffalo, porcupine, coyotes etc. (Now before you call me a total struggler let me defend myself by saying I probably would have guessed an island existed there but it's not something you think or wonder about on a regular basis.) Anyway, Aaron ended up telling his parents that I'd never been there so we took a family trip to the island the next day. It was really fun, too!

I have this weird fascination with seeing wild animals in their natural habitat. I once saw some bevers while rafting down the Provo River and was simply delighted. I also saw some raccoons run across a residential street in Salt Lake. That was pretty awesome too. Anyway, despite my strange enjoyments it was awesome to see wild buffalo in Utah. I've been to Yellowstone so I've seen plenty of wild buffalo in my day but in Utah?? Didn't even know they existed here. I really wanted to see a porcupine or a coyote but, no such luck.

Anyway we headed down to a little ranch on the south side of the island and hung out there for a while. We ended up taking lots of fun pictures and I learned how to lasso! (Aaron's such a good teacher!)

First he teaches me how to use chopsticks and now how to lasso? What a smart husband!

Dad's got an eye for setting up photos. What a cute family! (Even if we're not all in it...)

I love my cute sister-in-law!

As we headed back to the north side of the island, the sun was going down. We rushed over to the west side to snap some shots of the sunset and this is what we got:

Incredible. I love spending time with the family. Sometimes it's just so hard to be away but we're lucky they're not further away and even more lucky to have the other half of our family so close. Spending time with them is priceless.

Family Photos

Hello again! Once again I've neglected my blog in pursuit of other seemingly more important ventures like school and work. Blech. I'd much rather blog. Plus I find I have a hard time coming up with things to write about. So here I am, writing about the family photos we took a month ago. Most of you have probably already seen them but here they are for those of you that haven't:

Here we are! Aren't we precious? This is my side of the family. More to come hopefully with Aaron's.

Purple and blue (and gray). Great taste if I do say so myself. And no, I'm not in the least biased. ;)

The Mustaches were Mom's idea, believe it or not.

And there you have it! (These are the best of the best, of course). It was really fun to get to go take legit family photos. It's not something my family does very often but I think what with Aaron and I getting married and Jack getting his mission call to Peru, my parents realized the family was changing and we needed to document the moment before we all started moving away and it got harder. This is especially true since Tate will be leaving for his mission right as Jack is getting back. Crazy how time flies, isn't it?

Jack's Mission Call

That's right! It's finally here. Seems really weird that he's already going on a mission. Probably weirder for my parents considering they just had a wedding two months ago and by the time Jack comes home they'll be sending Tate out! Two missions and a wedding in 2 years. CRAZY! Anyway we had a friend open his call and give us an address to a restaurant that serves the food of the place he's going. None of us knew where we were going until we got there, of course, so we had a clue but he was blindfolded the whole time. :)

He's in for a treat. Peruvian food is yummy!

Pirates

Last Thanksgiving I had the opportunity to go to my cousins family's house in Bountiful where we all enjoyed a hearty meal and many a pleasant conversation around the table. One of which included the idea of introducing the Car Wash Pirates to the Dump Pirates.

You see, my dad and brothers had recently gone to the dump amid some random cleaning of our home and decided that their favorite people there are the guy with the peg leg and the guy with no fingers or hand (I don't remember which. Only that they hoped he would one day wear a pirate hook instead). They were thrilled by this discovery and figured that certainly they must be pirates--even if they didn't know it.

Well my aunt and cousins promptly shared their own experiences with the car wash pirates down the road. Apparently they wear bandanas and have all the tattoos and piercings a pirate might have and they yell to each other (which really actually ends up being more of shouting mumbles cause you can't understand them). They informed us that their car wash pirates would swab their cars and couldn't possibly NOT be pirates.

So naturally we should get the pirates together for a little soiree don't you think? I mean the car wash pirates would want to clean (instinctively) and the dump pirates, well, you can figure that one out...