Our First Christmas (married)!

Sorry this post is a little late! Bob and I had a wonderful first Christmas together as a married couple! Bob's parents were in Idaho with Grandma Malan so we spent most of the holiday with my parents and sisters as well as Ricky. We were spoiled rotten! We got a lot of the things we wanted and some things we didn't even know we wanted. Bob loved all of his 12 days of Christmas gifts and can't wait to cash in his day of snowboarding! Bob gave me a real set of pearls with earrings, a bracelet and neckeless, as well as The Walking Dead book, some wonder woman undies, and a couple new posters. Unfortunately my camera is broken so I didn't take any pictures, but then a week later at Merryim's birthday party I remember my phone has a camera so I was able to take pictures of that! For her birthday we went downtown to look at the lights, and we went to Golden Coral for dinner. Ana and the kids were also in town so they were able to join us! It was so much fun spending time with my nieces and nephews, I just love them more each and every day! This past weekend we were also able to spend some bonding time with our good friends Jill and Brad with a little wine and beer pong. Sunday we rounded out the weekend by going to my best friend Chelsea's baby's blessing. Benton was so good and quiet throughout the whole prayer and boy is he getting big! I saw him only a few weeks ago and he felt like he was twice as heavy!

Bob and I on our way to Benton's blessing

Merryim while we looked at lights

Bob and I at dinner for Merryim's birthday

Me and the birthday girl, Merryim!



My adorable nieces Mimi and Lauren
while out looking at lights

Mimi opening her birthday present from Bob and I

She was so happy about her colored jeans!

Holding up her new outfit. We gave her the matching
hat too.

Preparing for Christmas

Hello Everyone! With only a couple days left until Christmas, I'm happy to say Bob and I have finished all our shopping, and all our gifts are wrapped and ready to be handed out! It's probably best that we don't have the stress of fighting the Christmas crowds right now since we are both fighting off some nasty colds. Bob started showing symptoms first but by Wednesday we were both laid out! We had congestion, headaches, runny stuffy noses, achy ears, the sorest throat I've ever had, coughing, sneezing, body aches, stomach aches, and chills. If you can think of a bad sick symptom, one of us had it! Bob was able to make a trip to the store and buy us the strongest cold medicine they had (He went for the behind the counter remedies) and of course he stalked up on Dayquil and Nyquil. He also made a trip to Zupas to buy my favorite soup, before coming home to cuddle up with me, thoroughly drug ourselves up and try to sleep the sickness away. I want to say it worked since I'm feeling better today, but I still feel miserable so I'm not out of the woods yet! Bob seemed a little better this morning too, but it's hard to say since he's been at work all day.

On a brighter note, I got to experience what Christmas with neices and nephews is like for the first time on Sunday! Bob's family got together last Sunday to celebrate Ricky and Dani's birthdays, but since most of the family was heading out of town for the holidays, Bob and I decided to hand out the neice and nephew gifts as well. Before we handed out the gifts however Bob and I looked at each other and realized that we didn't think about getting a gift for Tessa's new foster daughter. She has only been with them for a few weeks, and I didn't even meet her until after I had bought all the gifts already. Luckily Bob had wrapped a new, amazingly soft blanket for me for Christmas, but it didn't have a tag on it. After consulting with me to make sure it was okay, we decided to give it to Kari. I wasn't sure she would like a blanket, instead of a toy and candy like the rest of the kids, but her face lit right up when she opened her gift, and I don't think I saw her without the blanket for the rest of the night! The other kids seemed to enjoy thier gifts as well! I got lots of hugs and thank you's, and a couple kids were so happy that their hugs felt more like tackles, LOL! I hope everyone enjoyed their gifts, I did the best I could on a limited budget! It was definately the highlight of my week (I should have taken pictures, but I forgot!) and I'm so excited to spend so many more holidays with these kids!

12 Days of Christmas

So since Bob doesn't read my blog at all, I think it's safe to share his secret present with you! The other day I got to work and my co-worker Teresa was working hard at planning the 12 days of Christmas for her husband. I thought it was such a good idea, that I stole it and decided to plan my own 12 days of Christmas for Bob! Here's what I'm doing for him:

Day 12: 12 Chocolate Chip cookies (his favorite)
Day 11: 11 Reason's I love you (framed with a picture of us)
Day 10: $10 Gift Card to Scheels
Day 9: 9 "coupons" for a back massage (from me without complaints LOL)
Day 8: An 8 pack of crayons with a Batman coloring book for us to color together on cold snowy nights
Day 7: 7-Up ( A 2-liter so he has plenty to last him thru a late night game night with Ricky)
Day 6: A 6-pack of his favorite beer
Day 5: A 5 blade razor (this may be a gift to me as well since his skin will be so smooth!)
Day 4: 4 energy drinks (he buys them before work almost every day)
Day 3: Menage A Trois
Day 2: A new pair of gloves-extra warm and waterproof so he can wear them snowboarding
Day 1: A snow board day, my treat (it may turn into a ski day if I hate snowboarding since I know how to ski)

Since Day 1, is the best gift I'm doing the gifts as a countdown to Christmas. Day 12 will be on the 14th, so I'm almost there!

Other than the Christmas shopping this week has been pretty mellow. I went to UVU to talk with the financial advisers about paying for school. They were extremely unhelpful. They pretty much told us that as long as we live with Bob's parents, they won't give us financial aid because we might get money from our parents. I explained that both of them are retired/unemployed and therefore don't make any money to give us. She simply shrugged her shoulders at me and said that sucks, guess you'll have to find another way to pay for school. I then asked her about student loans, she said she won't be able to get me a student loan until after the tuition deadline, so I would either need to pay tuition and use the loan as reimbursement or I would have a sizable late fee. Both sounded like ridiculous options so I asked her about payment plans. Unfortunately to get a payment plan we would need to pay a large portion of the tuition as a down payment to get on the plan, and we would have to do it before Friday (we don't get paid in time for that) Anyway, long story short, Bob and I can't afford to go to school this semester and we are really upset at the hoops UVU has made us jump through to be admitted, then to sign up for classes and now to pay for school. Bob is going to look into trade schools and community colleges, and start saving money to pay for school, and I'm going to look into other schools and other career paths as well. Hopefully we will figure out where we are going with our lives soon! Wish us luck!

The Boring Life of Bob and Brittney

So there really isn't much that happened with Bob and I this last week, but I told myself I would try and update this blog once a week so I'm writing anyway. My last post I talked about my concern and frustration with signing back up for school. In order to fix that frustration I went and talked to an Academic Advisor about my concerns and he gave me a list of options that don't require anymore math but still give me a bachelors degree. I think I have decided to master a couple languages. I will probably major in Spanish, minor in French and get an "Interpreters Certificate" in ASL as well. I have always wanted to know another language, and I want to travel so I thought, why not? The only problem is I haven't been able to sign up for classes or been able to see what financial aid is available to me because the school put an academic hold on my account until I see and academic advisor...they put this hold on my account after I saw my academic advisor! I don't know what their deal is, but if I don't sign up for classes soon, there won't be any classes still open for me to sign up for and I won't be going to school in the spring after all.

I also received a bit of news this last week, both bad and good. The bad news is one of my close relatives is getting a divorce from her husband. I don't know if this is an announcement just meant for close family and friends right now, so I will keep her anonymous for now, but it's a tough situation since they had kids together and now there is the question of how is she going to support her family, where is she going to live, where is she going to work, and most importantly what happens to the kids. Bob and I are going to help as much as we possibly can, but unfortunately with both of us trying to work and go to school while supporting ourselves and the animals that we have taken responsibility for, we are in a tight place.

On the bright side, one of my best friends Chelsea let me know this week that they have found a house, and may be moving in this month! I'm so excited for them since I know they have been feeling a little bit cramped living in one bedroom at her parents house with their newborn baby and their dog. Now they will have more rooms then they can even furnish! Plus, since she was living with her mom, dad, sister and brother-in-law, there were lots of built in baby-sitters, but now I might have a chance to have some bonding time with my honorary nephew while Chelsea and her husband go out on a long deserved break/date!