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!

Going Back to School

So this week has been pretty uneventful, other than the fact that both Bob and I have signed up for Spring semester at UVU. By signed up, I really mean that I was re-admitted and Bob turned in his transcripts and application. We still have to figure out financial aid and if that doesn't work, then we will be needing a way to pay for school. I declared a major too, Business Management. Unfortunately, that was before I looked at the class requirements which included my dreaded Math 1050. For those of you who don't already know, I hate math, more than I hate anything else in the entire world I hate math, and I'm bad at it too. Granted I have gotten 100% in all my math classes thru Math 1010, but then Math 1050 makes -10% sense to me. I tried once in highschool, failed out of the class. I tried again in college, and this time I mean I really tried. I did every assignment, plus the extra problems that weren't assigned, and double even sometimes triple checked the answers. I went to the Math Lab for free tutoring every day after class to rework the problems with a tutor to try and make it sink in better. Before the test I went and got an hour long private tutoring session to review every assignment I had done and the review in the back of the book. The day before the test I took the practise test from the back of the book. I turned my test in unsure of 1 or 2 questions but overall pretty sure I would at least get a B, and maybe have a chance at passing the entire class with at the very least a C. However when I got my test back, it was an F, I managed a grand total of 48% on the test. I dropped the class for Math 1040 which I managed to squeeze a C out of, thinking that was enough math for a degree. Apparently I was wrong. According to my research, the only degrees I can get without Math 1050 are: Communications (too many graduates, not enough jobs to go around, no other job wants those graduates), Art (not Art Education, just Art. Pretty useless), and Legal (Pre-Law, which means going to law school if I want it to be worth anything, and I don't want to be a lawyer). Bob and my dad both say I can pass the class, but I don't think they really understand the level of hate math has for me, and I for it. That was the first time that I truely poured everything I had into something and got nothing in return, worse than nothing! An F would pull down my GPA, and waste my tuition money not to mention the money I spent on the damn textbook. Now I'm right back where I started, spending a lot of money to go to school, with absolutely no career direction... Blah, hopefully Bob will do better than I did at getting a Major....Sorry about my math rant!

Our First Married Thanksgiving

This year was Bob and I's first Thanksgiving together as a married couple! Although, it wasn't our first Thanksgiving together... Just like we do every year, we spent the day trying to juggle family time with both sides of the family.

We started out the day at the Bell house to eat an early dinner with my parents, all of my sisters and my Uncle Leon who was in town visiting all the way from California. Dinner was delicious and my mom really out did herself this year with so much food that all 8 of us hardly put a dent into it! After an interesting talk with my uncle and some family bonding time, we were off for dessert at my sister-in-law Tessa's house. Although I was already stuffed from dinner at my parents, I still made room for some of Tessa's homemade spinach dip that I love so much, and of course some pumpkin pie.

Then it was off with my nieces Katie and Mimi in tow to meet all my sisters at Walmart for some black Friday shopping. Although we didn't get as many movies as we have gotten in the years past, we still didn't do half bad... I was able to get several movies that I wanted like Hunger Games, The Avengers, The Amazing Spiderman and many many more. We were also able to snag some good deals on a new TV, X Box with Kinect, a DVD player and some black boots that I really actually needed! Most of all it was fun to spend some bonding time with my new nieces! I have only been their aunt for a month and I already feel like they are growing up too quickly, Mimi was already talking about cute boys and wearing make up, and Katie is talking about High School next year and getting her learners permit! 

I'm so thankful for my wonderful new husband, my amazing mom and dad, cute little sisters Rachel, Kelsey and Savannah, all my new in laws Marcie, Wayne, Tessa, Sam, Ryan, Lisa, Ana, Jonathon, Dani, Ricki, and Cassy and of course my adorable nieces and nephews who know how to put a smile on my face and I'm so lucky to watch grow up, Katie, Devani, Sammy, Robert, David, Mimi, Daniel, Jonathon, Russell, Corey, Lauren, Ryan and Braxton!

I'm also thankful for how lucky I am to live in a safe, warm house surrounded by loving people and of course our kitties Jasmin and Cleo, our bearded dragons and all our snakes to keep me from ever feeling lonely.

I'm also thankful for all the amazing friends I have who love me and support me no matter where I am in life, or how long we go without seeing each other. I truly feel like I have the best friends the world has to offer!

I'm thankful that I live in a country where I'm free to live the life I want for myself, and that I have the ability to continue my education in whatever field I choose.

I'm thankful that I have a job that I enjoy with people I like working with and that I make enough money to comfortable support myself without always wondering how I will make ends meet.

I'm thankful that I have my health and that my loved ones do as well. This year has really been a great year to show me just how much I really have to be grateful for!

Sorry

I just noticed that despite all my pictures being organized and looking neat and tidy when I wrote my last post, they published all over the place and in some unorganized mess. I apologize for my technical difficulties, and hope you still enjoy the pictures.