Hello all! I hope your days have been merry and bright, I know mine have been.

Tyson and I have been pretty busy, keeping up with all the "House" marathons and "Treeman: search for a cure". It's a hard-knocked life my friends, hard knocked. We're doing what we can to survive.

Christmas was great I must say. We got some sweet presents this year including PHOTOSHOP. Yeah, you heard me. When you are a BYU student you can get the full monty for just over $300 so that was the parents' gift to us. Thanks! I'm sure that someday I will figure out how to use it and decorate my blog with pictures of beauty and glamour. But until then all you get is this.

"Merry Christmas, Love. If you take any more pictures of me at this frightful hour I may have to eat you with my pearly whites, all of which I am showing you now. Or maybe I'll just get you back with an early morning snapshot of yourself."

Tyson gets a Nerf gun every year for Christmas, a tradition which I happily uphold. However, his sister Emily may not be as thrilled with this tradition as she is usually at the receiving end of the spongy missiles. Watch out!

Another thing we got to do was play in the snow! We made Mr. Googly McSchmoogly on Christmas Eve and I'm sad to report he met an untimely death when the temperature hit almost 50 degrees (+rain) three days in a row. R.I.P. Googly.

Oh, and guess what! I totally made a friend. I've been so worried that I wouldn't meet anyone out here and I would live the rest of my life friendless and alone. ESPECIALLY because after living in Utah for so long I'm afraid of people who aren't Mormon... Just kidding. But seriously, how else was I going to meet anyone?

Anyway, we finally got to go to church (it had been cancelled the last couple weeks because of the weather) and I started talking to a girl in relief society. We chatted a little bit about this and that after church when she said those 5 little words I'd been longing to hear.

"Do you like to scrapbook?"

SOLD.

Numbers were exchanged and bonds were made. Who knows, we may end up with a relationship like what my friend Brittany and I have (we have been shopping for scrapbook supplies many times together, and yet have never actually scrapbooked together) but that would be ok.

A friend, a friend! La di da!

It doesn't snow in Vancouver

It doesn't snow here, Tyson said

As he took the hat off of my head.

No big drifts or flakes galore,

No scraping windshields anymore.

Things cannot freeze, it's much too warm,

Driving will not do you harm.

It doesn't snow, we're so convinced!

Our budget for plows has been minced.

And as for salt we don't have any,

'Cause we are environmentally friendly.

(sorry that one didn't rhyme so well)

There'll be no alerts or frosty bite,

No Bing Crosby dreaming of white.

It doesn't snow here, was the warning,

Is it something I'll be mourning?

No that's ok, I like the rain,

I can live without seeing snow again.

And that's the story of how I know,

Here in Vancouver, we get no snow.

We made it!!

After a harrowing drive and a lot of unpacking,

Washington... We HAVE arrived.

We didn't make the trip all in one day though, we made an overnight stop in...

CHRISTMAS CITY!!!

Isn't is so Christmasy??

Loved it.

This is actually Rupert Idaho where Tyson's grandma lives. She was nice enough to let us stay the night so we didn't have to make the 14 hour drive in one day.

Oh, did I say 14 hours? I meant 18 hours due to the cruddy road conditions that prevailed.

This was actually the best part of the trip where the sun was out, the road was pretty clear, and the landscape was beautiful.

And here's what we saw the rest of the time.

Poor Tyson.

But eventually we made it to the apartment!

Here's a couple picures of it.

It's a little bigger than our old apartment which is nice and it has TWO whole bathrooms. An excellent upgrade I must say. This way when Tyson and both have to go potty we dont' have to ro sham bo for the bathroom!

We even have a mantle to decorate which I just love.
Don't mantles just seem so festive!?
Anyway, we're trying. We only had a couple days to decorate after all!

Goodbye

Well, I was going to write this whole post on a bunch of random stuff that I was thinking about but I just didn't have time.

So instead I'm just gonna say; we are moving tomorrow (AAAAHHH!), I'm not sure when I'll next have internet (WWAAAAHHH!!), and I'll miss all my Utah peeps!!

The winner takes it all

The loser standing small.

So Tyson had a graduate luncheon/pizza party/giveaway thing to go to today, however, since we had movers at our house he didn't go.

I mean, we never win stuff anyway, so we figured he'd just miss out on a couple slices of pizza.

His friend just called saying he won 500 bucks. 500 lonely bones. 500 opportunities.

Wasted.

On someone else.

He wasn't there to claim his prize. We all know what happens when you aren't there for your prize. I feel like such a schlub!! It is my fault after all that he didn't go. He could have left me alone with the movers but I felt awkward about it and so he decided to stay with me.

The prize ruiner.

Queen of loss.

Mistress of anguish.

Tyson decided to race to BYU to see if there was any chance he could still redeem the gift. My hopes are not high...

But wait...

He's calling me...

...

WOO HOO!!

He still gets it!! Turns out it wasn't a drawing, it was actually an award from the faculty for being the most outstanding grad student. He missed the speech all about how awesome he is, but the check will be in the mail.

YAAAAAAAAAY!

I love you all,

Your queen

of happiness and joy

HELLO, My name is...

Mari.

And I live in a land of boxes.

The packing guys came today and tomorrow the moving guys come. I sort of feel like I'm homeless... but with a home. Tomorrow our apartment will be an empty shell, just waiting to be cleaned.

Sounds fun, don't it?

Only one casualty so far though!! Too bad it was Tyson's favorite Mason jar.
And it wasn't us who broke it.

It was the moving guy.

I was just grateful it wasn't a vase.

'Cause I like my vases.

Even though they're not made of crystal.

Amen.

Things that are weird

1. Toe socks. I wore a pair of these yesterday (yes, I still have not one but THREE pairs of these) and they were just as uncomfortable as I remember. I wanted to amputate my foot after about 5 minutes of having it stuffed into my boot with that sock on. But then I didn't and I ended up wearing the socks all day long. I swear it will never happen again!

2. Seahorses. They look funny. And only a little bit like horses. I'm pretty sure I would still like to hold one though. And the men carry the babies. Hmm... Men carrying babies reminds me of...

3. This guy. Have you seen this guy? Uh, girl, uh guy/girl? He's pregnant. For the second time I think. And he lives in Portland, NEXT TO WHERE I'M GONNA LIVE!!!!

4. Older women laughing and... and... I'm not even sure I can say it... tooting on either side of me in a public restroom. Awkward!! This was another event from yesterday. What a day. What. A. Day.

5. Crazy space stuff. Like nebulas. Tyson tells me these are light years across. Whoa, they are crazy AND pretty.

Hey! Kinda like me! Heh heh, j/k friends, j/k.

6. Crazy space food. I love this space ice cream. I remember getting it at the planetarium and feeling like I could eat it FOREVER. Do astronauts really even eat this? It seems like such a novelty that they wouldn't stoop to it. But what do I know? I'm just a lowly earthling.



7. Being finished with school. Yes, it's true, I turned in my last assignment ever yesterday and so I am done! Done done done! Hee hee! I can't even believe it; it is pretty much the most awesome thing ever. And guys, the movers are coming tomorrow to pack up all our stuff. Holy moly, we are actually graduating and leaving. It is seriously the strangest feeling knowing that we are leaving in less than a week.

Goodbye Utah! Goodbye UVU! Goodbye little apartment!

Pictures courtesy of google images

Crazy

Blog content has been deleted by author for fear of offending anyone. If you missed it... sorry charlie.

They like me, they really like me!

So I'm supposed to be working on my senior project but I'm just not in the mood! I've been totally procrastinating and now as punishment I'm going to have to spend the next 4 days completely consumed by it. The problem is that I'm really in the mood to write... just not for that. I'm hoping that if I get this out of my system I'll be able to go back to my heinous horrible paper.

Well guys, yesterday marked the last day of student teaching. Ever. Forever ever.

I still can't decide if I'm sad or happy about it.

I will not miss all the stress that comes with being a student teacher, but I will miss the kids!! I liked them so much. They were funny and clever and talented and sweet (sometimes) and dangit I miss them.

And I'll miss Tracy, my cooperating teacher.

We got along really well, better than I ever could have thought.

I ended my final day with our Christmas concert which was totally successful and super fun. The kids even got me stuff! They got me two bouquets of flowers, plus a card that a ton of them signed plus a bag of m&ms. Tyson also got me a bouquet of flowers and some chocolates (10 of which I ate in one sitting today. It happens.) So grateful!!

Near the end of the concert they did this cheering thing for me and clapped for what felt like 10 minutes and I stood there feeling like a dork. Kind of like when you have to stand up in front of a room full of people while they sing happy birthday to you. You know? And you can't exactly sing to yourself or sit down so you just stand there smiling 'til your cheeks start to twitch. Yeah, it was like that. Really nice of them though.

The signatures on the card was probably my favorite part of it all. There were so many "I'll miss you's" and "you were the best student teacher ever" and "you are so cute". It made me feel really good. Never mind that half the boys told me they loved me and would date me if I wasn't married (good thing they don't know how old I REALLY am).

But then the icing on the cake was this:

Oh yes, one of my students found out I liked to scrapbook. Her aunt is Lisa Bearnson who owns/founded/something Creating Keepsakes. So this student, I shall call her "M", hooked me up with some sweet stuff. *sigh* and I thought only elementary teachers got gifts from their students. What a good day.

In case you were curious what we sounded like (and how my backside looks in black) here's a little video from the concert. This was the last choir which actually combined the A Capella and the Chamber choir. There are about 150 singing right now which I thought was way fun. I love huge choirs! We are singing Fum Fum Fum by Mack Wilberg.

p.s. this was my 100th post. yay me!!