Natasha and Kelly's Wedding

This weekend Natasha and Kelly got married. It was awesome! Some, though sadly not all, of the family was able to come, and it was just a great weekend. I got to help Natasha out with tons of the preparations, particularly this last week, and the day turned out just perfect. Here's a few pictures of the happy wedding party:
Best moment of the day? From my cousin Rachel's mouth. "Went to my cousin Natasha's wedding yesterday. She looked absolutely beautiful. The best part of the whole day was watching my Uncle David with the most serene, yet joyful, smile on his face as he watched Natasha and Kelly dance." I agree completely.

Crafty Ornaments

I've been off school all week for a career week. Apparently I'm supposed to be using the time to find an internship, but instead I've mostly been doing crafty things and my homework for next week. Bill and I did decide we want to go to Henderson this summer for internships, so I've at least narrowed my field, but that's pretty much the extent of my internship search.

I did, however, enjoy making these adorable Christmas ornaments that my MIL gave me a kit to make. Thanks Suzanne!!! They turned out fantastic and I had so much fun learning how to embroider to make them. I want to get new Christmas ornaments each year, but we were pretty much out of funds after Christmas, so these became the ornaments for Christmas '09. I'm really happy with them. I'm trying to catch up with my sister Tori's crafty abilities. I don't know if I ever will, but here's my start. :)

First Kitchen Disaster

I've made a goal to eat better this semester, and also to go through all the recipes in the recipe box my mom gave me when I was a senior in high school. I've been adding to it for years, but haven't used many of the recipes since I put them in. Tonight i decided to make a spaghetti casserole that turned out fantastic. Well, that is, until I pulled it out of the oven and set it on a burner that was still on. I didn't realize it until the entire glass dish shattered and sprayed glass all over the stove and countertop. This is the result:



You might be wondering if we had to throw what used to be a beautiful casserole away. Thanks to Bill's amazing salvaging skills, we were able to salvage a good portion of it and enjoyed it for dinner with only a few pieces of glass found. lol. I don't know if we'll be able to eat what we saved later, but we did get some of it for dinner. We ate very carefully and scrutinized every bite, but what we did eat was really good.

It took a LONG time to clean the kitchen all up and I'm hoping I got all the tiny pieces of glass. Miracle of miracles, I only got one tiny cut on the tip of my pinky while cleaning up. It happened at the very end after I had taken care of everything and was washing out all the rags. I call that pretty good luck.

Squaw Peak, take 2

Bill and I have been wanting to finish our Squaw Peak hike for weeks now, so we finally did it last night. Bill had tons of homework and I had a bridals session with Natasha in the morning and a baby shower for a friend, so we didn't get out the door until about 3:45 PM. That was fine though. We both have good headlamps and I have done this hike twice before. The weather was great this time, so we headed out with no worries.
The hike was indeed fantastic. We're in much better shape than a few weeks ago after having done lots of pilates and lots of walking back and forth to school. We made it to the valley we stopped in last time in much less time, due to the snow being hard-packed and our stronger lungs and legs. It got dark about then, so we pulled out our headlamps and kept going to the top. In the summertime there are switchbacks from the valley up to the top, but in the winter, people have just plowed straight up. It was absolutely beautiful when we got to the summit. All of Utah County was spread out below us and lit up so nicely.

It took longer to get back down than it might have at another time because with the snow so packed, we slipped and slid all the way down. It was hilarious as both of us wiped out a few times when we stepped on patches of ice. No injuries, just a few sore muscles. Good times! We have a goal to summit a minimum of 13 mountains this year, so there's the first one. Woot!

On a side note from my last post, I haven't heard anything about my coaching classes, but I'm just going to take the three I'm most interested in this semester and see if I can take any more in the future.

All I want to do is Coach

So I've had this dream for years that I want to coach high school sports--tennis, running, or volleyball, or even all three. I was so excited to be coming back to BYU for my masters program because BYU has an accredited coaching minor program and I really want to take the classes so that when I coach I'll be much more skilled than I otherwise would be. I discovered the program in my last semester of my undergrad degree, so I couldn't do it then, but I planned everything so I could do it now as a masters student.

Just last semester they dissolved my old college and moved all the majors and minors to other schools at BYU. The coaching one went to the School of Education and so I headed up there today to get a form to declare the minor. Little did I know that everything was very shortly going to fall apart. I get there and they tell me the only way I can declare the minor is to meet with a counselor. I say I already have and that comment leads to the discovery that they are no longer allowing non-education majors to add this minor. I can't believe it! There are so many people that want to coach that aren't going to be teachers. What the heck?!?!

Well I wasn't terribly happy and had quite the little interchange with a guy there who was completely convinced that was how it should be and I just let him know I thought it was a ridiculous policy. Oops....Anyway, I head down to one of the coaching classes I'm enrolled in, which I'm so excited about, and just determine that if I can't actually declare the minor I'll just take the classes. But wait! Right after the class, I go to talk to one of the professors about the program and she tells me that actually I can't even take any of the classes unless I've declared the minor, which they won't let me do, so according to her I'm completely shut out of the program. It's not her fault at all; in fact, she was incredibly nice and gave me lots of things to try to see how to get trained and such, and also how to petition, but what junky news!

I pretty much feel like my world has fallen apart. More than anything else I'm doing right now, this coaching program is what excites me the most. I want to coach more than I want to do most anything else, and I want to be a good coach, so I want to take the excellent classes BYU offers in the subject while I'm here and have the chance. I want the minor that gets me accredited to coach, but if that's impossible, I at least want to get instructed. I've been looking online and I'm not sure that the people I talked to today gave me all the right info, so I'm going to call tomorrow and get the answers about this, but for the moment I really do feel like this dream I've had for years just got shattered.

Second Christmas

We've had some struggles getting Christmas gifts from Bill's parents. The address got mixed up a bit and apparently the post office is still unable to figure it out, as our package has still not arrived 2 1/2 weeks after it was sent. The address on the package had the north and east switched, which just happens to be only half a block from our apartment with the same post man, so you'd think it would have gotten here, but I think the USPS computer system has it lost somewhere. Hopefully it will come. Anyway, Bill's sister drove up this weekend and brought a few gifts for us. We opened them last night and it was fun to have a second Christmas.

We're pretty excited about this new teakettle :)

First Day of School

Today's the first day of school and I'm excited to be back! I really like my program and I'm just excited to be in it moving forward. I have tons of finance and numbers classes this semester: budgeting, government finance, statistics, accounting. Should be interesting. I like these types of classes, so I think I'll like it, though they are some seriously nerdy classes. :)

Last week was tons of fun. My sister had a bridal shower that was a sleepover. There were probably 10 ladies there, but there were just four of us that spent the night, all married. I've got to say, it was hilarious. I haven't had a sleepover for years and years, and it was so entertaining to have a bunch of married girls together talking about random things until 2:30 AM. The random conversations are rather different nowadays than when I was
in high school, but just as fun. I'm so excited for my sister's wedding! Her reception is on the 16th and it's going to be great. A few pictures from the shower:
Oh man, these cupcakes were SO good!

The Betty Draper Evening Gala Gown GROSGRAIN GIVEAWAY!!!!

The Betty Draper Evening Gala Gown GROSGRAIN GIVEAWAY!!!!

Oh my gosh, this is a beautiful dress and I really love it. Anyone that likes patterns and cute dresses and things like that should definitely go to the Grosgrain blog.

Good times!

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!

Thanksgiving but no Turkey Yet

It's been a great, relaxing day. We are up at a condo in Park City and it is so relaxing and fun. We've just relaxed all day playing card games and Wii and having random photo shoots. Pretty fun stuff. Because two of the couples had plans with other family today, we are having our Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, so this has been our do nothing day. It feels fantastic. Here's a few pictures from some of the fun things we've been doing.

What happens at 1AM when we're all sleeping in the same room. Notice my sweet new pajama pants from my MIL. Love the orange and yellow stripes!


Playing a cool new card game called hand and foot. I'm addicted.My sister-in-law Miriam had a great idea involving a light, a camera with a slow exposure, and a laser pointer. So fun!

A little bit of modeling fun.

Looking forward to Thanksgiving

I'm just about done with all the school and work things I have to do today. After that and when Bill gets home from work, we're heading up to meet his family in Park City to stay for the next few days in a condo. I am SO excited! If I can just get my work done now so I can relax, it's going to be a fantastic holiday! Hopefully I'll have pictures and stories to tell afterward.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Shabby Apple Dare to Design Lawn Frock GIVEAWAY!!!!

Love this dress! I want one!

Shabby Apple Dare to Design Lawn Frock GIVEAWAY!!!!

Mad Craziness

I haven't blogged in weeks because I don't feel like I have much to blog about. School is absolutely crazy. I regularly get up at 5:45AM, am out the door by 7:30AM or so, and I don't get home until 5PM on a good day, and more normally after 6PM. It is insane.

I just love my classes and I love being back in school and learning so many new things, but I am going a little bit crazy with the schedule. Bill and I just don't see each other very often and when we are together, we're usually doing homework. All of the fun things we love to do together aren't happening at the moment because we both have so much homework and go to bed so late at night that we're just dead all the time. It's a good thing we ran our marathon a week into the semester before it got crazy because I haven't been running in probably a month. I hate it! Don't worry though. Bill is getting me to do pullups and pushups and situps at night now and that feels great. I have this crazy desire to start doing triathlons, but I think about the time that will take and it makes my head spin.

So yeah, life is crazy at the moment. I'm trying to hang on and when I start to have crazy reactions to things, I try to remember that I'm ridiculously tired and if people are bugging me like crazy, I try and step back and blame it on that. :)

In other news, Bill got 100% on his surveying midterm. Woot! He's amazing! My group and I just had a 9-minute conversation with the Utah House of Representatives. It was awesome! It's so hard to get time with him, and it was freely offered to us through a contact at the state capital that my teammate Ryan knows from his work there before he started the program. So there's definitely good things going on in my life at the moment, it's just a little more crazy in ways that I can't control at the moment then I would like. I like being busy, but I also like it including things I love to do, like hiking and rock climbing and running and stuff like that. The balance is rather off at the moment.

Mom's Rocking Chair

The finished chair. The detail on the top is so beautiful.

I don't exactly remember when it happened, but somewhere in the last couple years I had this idea to refinish a rocking chair my mom has had in the basement for as many years as I can remember. It was my great-Grandma's, and looked like it could be really pretty if it was cleaned up. Probably 6 months ago, I posed the idea to my dad and more recently to my siblings as a gift to my mom for her birthday in September. Everyone thought it was a great idea, so I started the process.

I got it cleaned up and refinished and had a new seat put on it. It sounds like a pretty simple process, but I tell you, it took a long time and figuring out if we could afford it and that kind of thing. It was finished just in time. I picked it up on the 24th, which is my mom's actual birthday, and had it in my living room until Sunday when we celebrated her birthday.

Mom LOVED it! She had the best reaction I could have imagined when we let her open her eyes and turn to see it. She was completely surprised and touched and happy and it was just awesome. Here's a few pictures from the party.

Mom blowing out her one candle.

Mom's reaction. The picture doesn't do justice, but she gave her trademark squeal of approval that I imagine all my siblings remember well.
Mom enjoying her chair. She was so happy and it was awesome.