Vacation Recap

So here's a little update on a few of the things that we've done the last couple weeks. First off, Friday night of finals we headed up to Salt Lake to drop off my mac to get it fixed. It was gone for an entire week! For those of you that have seen me recently, you know that my macbook hasn't strayed from my side pretty much ever this last semester. It was strangely liberating to be unable to access all the things I look at every day. I liked it, though I was very happy to get it back. We spent the night at our friend David's house so we could go play in the mountains Saturday. We woke up to this:
Freezing fog. We were worried about the state of the snow in the mountains, but we should have been more worried about our parking. We were halfway up the mountain we were climbing
when ski patrol called us back down because our car was illegally parked on the side of the road. Who would have known? So we came back down and headed down to go rock climbing all afternoon at the gym in Sandy. It was way fun. I was sore for at least four days after, due to previously mentioned out-of-shapeness. :) It was totally worth it. What a fun day!

Then Bill and I headed up to Temple Square to enjoy some lights. They were beautiful!The week running up to Christmas was pretty uneventful. We both worked and I got a few random things done in my free time.

Christmas Eve and Day were wonderful! We spent it with my family this year and had tons of fun together playing games, reading the Nativity story and singing Christmas hymns. We went to a movie Christmas Day after our morning present opening party. It was just a great day and fun to be with family.
We spent the night at my sister's place for Christmas, so when we came back home it was so weird because we hadn't planned a single thing after Christmas. Having a whole week ahead of us with no plans save for Bill working was an awesome feeling. We've done a few things. Most eventful was our sledding adventure last night. We went over to Rock Canyon Park to enjoy the snow that had been falling all day. The sledding was so fun until I ran into a big ice wall at the bottom of the hill, with my hip. We decided to try a different hill, so walked all the way across the open field to the other side. The first time Bill went down he came up over the rise at the bottom and plowed into the icy hill with his hip. Only his was much worse than mine. It took him about five minutes before he was able to get up without feeling like throwing up. He's okay, but that ended our sledding/snowboarding fun. We're both rather bruised today, but it was fun anyway.

It's been snowing all day today, and Bill really wants to teach me how to snowboard, so tomorrow we're going to rent a snowboard and go up into the canyon somewhere so he can teach me the basics. Should be fun. I'm sure I'll have pictures to share when we're through.

I love vacations

Oh how I love breaks between semesters! I've had so much free time and it's been wonderful. I've found the time to start exercising again. I started doing pilates all this week and it feels great! I'm so out of shape that they are making me really sore, but I like it. I'm excited to get back in shape. I have a racquetball class next semester, so that should be fun. I also have big plans to swim and lift weights and do some running. You know, all the things I usually do that I totally dropped this last semester with how busy classes were. :)

I wasn't sure I was going to make it to the break. I was going full tilt on my final projects until 4:30 PM on Friday, the last day of finals. It was stressful, but I did make it and all the projects turned out fantastic. I've gotten a few grades back and the semester is looking good! Yay for resting and rejuvenating for a couple weeks! I'll be excited to start classes again next week, but the break has been wonderful.

Finally, an adventure!

Squaw Peak. We hiked up in it in a crazy snowstorm.

Bill and I, he especially, have been pining after all the adventures we want to go on but don't have time for at the moment because of the busy, busy school schedule. We finally were able to get out Saturday and go snowshoeing, and it was awesome! We're both super out of shape, seeing that since our marathon in September we've run maybe 3 times. Oops! I don't know if I can begin to describe all the busyness of school, so I won't even try. Suffice it to say that we have four more days of finals and projects and then we're free for Christmas Break!

Being so out of shape, we decided to tackle Squaw Peak, since it's not very long. We woke up Saturday morning to more snow and a huge storm over the mountains, but since Squaw Peak is right on the front of the mountains and I've been up there before, we felt okay about it. It's been bitterly cold all week, around 0 degrees most mornings, so the snow hasn't had time to melt, it's just been piling up.

Here's a few pictures of our hike. We ran out of time to get to the top, so we stopped at the meadow right below the last little ascent and then headed back. We had a ward Christmas party to get back to with an amazing dinner. Just couldn't miss it!


These are in the meadow at the top. You can kind of see how much snow was coming down. We went down this trail, even though it was snowing so much you can't even see it in the picture. So pretty!

Bill sporting the balaclava. I wish I'd had one with all the wind, despite it making you look like a bank robber. :)

Someone saw me

I had the craziest, busiest day today. I don't really have finals in my program, just projects/presentations and they're during the last week of classes, not during finals. So that means that my life is absolutely insane right now! I have a dinner tomorrow night for my etiquette class final and my guitar class final right before. Thursday morning bright and early my final project/presentation for three classes is scheduled, and that project has driven me nearly crazy all week. I'm seriously worried about getting done with it in time. Tomorrow I also have a paper due in my government class that I haven't started. Needless to say, I'm stressed! So what am I doing online? Taking a few minutes to de-stress by blogging and then it will be back to the races! I want to tell a little story that happened this weekend.

Bill and I went to the temple Saturday morning and because it was so busy, we got out later than we'd planned. We left the temple at 11:30AM and Bill had to be at a team meeting to work on one of his final projects right then. We didn't have time to go home, so he was starving but just had to go. So I dropped him off and told him I would bring him some lunch.

In one of those good wife moments, I had the great idea to make cookies and bring them with me for him and his group when I brought him food. I decided to make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and found a recipe that turned out to be absolutely delightful from a ward cookbook that I believe my brother and sister-in-law gave us for our wedding or Christmas or something like that. Thanks Mark and Kelly! So I made the cookies, some pasta and such, and headed up to campus to bring it all to Bill. We had a nice little break while he ate and then I headed home with the tupperware, feeling all good about myself for bringing him lunch AND cookies. Just a disclaimer lest you think I'm congratulating myself too much. I am so, so, so, so, so busy ALL the time with my grad program, so I don't have a lot of time to cook, let alone bake, though I love doing both. I was very pleased to find a minute to do that and get to share it with Bill.

Anyway, the whole experience wasn't a big deal save for what happened the next day. We were both in Relief Society and they had this little Visiting Teaching minute where you share good stories about visiting teaching. One of the girls in our ward raised her hand and said, "I saw Sister Ashman walking out of the Clyde building with empty tupperware in her hands and I just thought, oh yay, they love each other so much!" Bill and I were both a little surprised, but it was really fun. You never know who's watching you and it's kind of fun to be caught doing something nice.

Good news!

I found out today that I vested my 401(k) for the company I've worked at for the last three years. Woot! I've just been working about 10 hours a week since I started grad school, and I really wasn't sure I was going to make it. My company had a three year vesting schedule where it was all or nothing, so for me it was about a $5,000 difference if I vested or not. I'm SO happy that it happened! What a great day!

Our Very First Christmas Tree

Bill and I bought a real Christmas tree tonight! We brought it home and decorated it with a box of ornaments I swiped from my parent's house. They have such pretty ornaments! I wish I did. But my collection is growing. Anyway, we brought the tree home and decorated it tonight. I love it! It's just a little tree, so it fits perfectly in our small little living room. Bill and I decided to take a few pictures in front of it and they turned out pretty cute.

This is Bill trying to untangle some lights. It doesn't seem to matter if you roll them up nicely. They still get tangled pulling them back out.

Here I am rummaging through my mom's box of ornaments looking for the prettiest ones. She's got like 3 other boxes full of them. I'm jealous!
Yay for our tree and our first Christmas married!

Oh, and my sister Tori just had my newest nephew, Daniel Adam James. I'm so excited for them! He's adorable!