One Year Together!

Daniel and I celebrated our first anniversary in beautiful, sunny Texas. We were getting kicked out of our room at his grandparents' house for a while anyway, so we decided to get a hotel in Austin and see the city.

We started at the Saltlick BBQ restaurant in Round Rock. They had some pretty good food, but we liked the pork ribs the best.

I meant to take before pictures, too, but... I forgot...

Outside the restaurant.

Next we headed into Austin and checked out the Capitol building. It's even bigger than the nation's capitol! So it's true when they say everything's bigger in Texas. It's also a very beautiful building! And inspiring to think of the dedication in building it before they had all the machines we have now. So much thought and work and care went into it and all the amazing buildings from that time period.

The central dome

It says "Texas" everywhere... the tour guide said "Just in case you forget where you are"

The senate room. 

These are the ORIGINAL desks and they are beautiful! They had some artists in there restoring them while we were there.

"Texas" in the lights, haha

The House was in session. There's something important about that tree, but I don't remember what it was, haha

The building from the outside. Does anyone know how to flip pictures?

Next we headed to "Mount" Bonnell. A whopping 106 STEPS to the top. Like literal stair steps.

But there was a nice view from the top. There was also a view of the city, but it was far away and didn't look that impressive in the picture.

The silly steps!

Then we checked into our hotel and checked out the Arboretum shops. We were still full from lunch, so we got some ice cream and rode the weird stone cows. I'm still not sure why they were there...

I'm firing guns. Because we're in Texas and that's what people do in Texas!

Daniel scolding the ashamed cow.

Then we headed to the Trail of Lights for some depressing Christmas cheer. We heard it used to be really good but the people who originally did it sold it and it got lame.

Our favorite was the tunnel of epilepsy:

So we tried to get out of there as fast as possible

All of the exhibits looked something like this. But at least this one has something to with Christmas! Not all of them did...

This was the one exhibit with Jesus. And he is creepily huge...

But there was a nice view of the city lights at the end!

After that we headed back to the hotel and relaxed in the hot tub for an hour before they closed it. The next day we saw The Hobbit in the morning. It was a really nice couple of days and we think we'll make a tradition of mini-vacations for our anniversary.

Can anybody guess where we are?

Hello from warm, sunny Texas! Anniversary update to come...

Happy Birthday to ME!

This weekend was a great one, most definitely because it was my birthday! I started it off right by skipping all my classes on Friday to celebrate. Instead I went to stand in the rain/hail/snow and listen to President Uchtdorf speak to all of the ROTC cadets. It was especially cool, because afterwards Daniel and I got to meet him!

After that, we headed home and cleaned up a little before my parents got here. Then we went up to a cool hibachi grill in Sandy and came back down for the basketball game! My parents were going to buy tickets, but some woman handed them some sweet ones (almost center court, 15th row) for free! And there were open seats near them, so we just sat there... haha.

Then when we got home... the power was out! It snowed really early this year so none of the leaves are off the trees and I guess it took out a few power lines nearby... My parents were going to blow up an air mattress to sleep on, but... no power! Luckily we have a comfy couch and a twin bed so they didn't have to sleep on the floor. So we sat around in the dark for a while and talked and they gave me my awesome present:



A 9-cup KitchenAid food processor!

The next morning we got up (and the power came back!) and went to Kneaders and saw Skyfall. Dang good movie... and Adele's new song is INCREDIBLE! After the movie my parents headed back to Idaho and we went to Texas Roadhouse with Rachel and Derrick for our combined birthday lunch.

That night, Daniel and I went to the BYU football game, even though it was 400 degrees below zero... We actually had amazing 9th row seats, but of course the game where we have good seats is the game where we get to practically stand on the field! Daniel was being recognized with the ROTC so he was standing down with the cannon crew, and I got to fire the cannon! It was pretty sweet and I got a free t-shirt!

He's in there... I promise!

I went home after the third quarter because we were up by 40 points and by that time our 9th string players were in and it wasn't worth freezing my toes any more. Daniel had to stay and do stadium cleanup, but because of the snow it didn't take as long as it usually does. We watched the Office, went to bed, and almost slept through church this morning. But we made it on time!

GREAT birthday weekend!

Oh, and what did Daniel get me? Well, I kept telling him what to get me, then changing my mind over and over again... so finally I just told him to surprise me. I figured he would get me one of the things I had suggested previously... but he didn't! I got this:



With a voucher for this:



I have ALL the Batman movies now! Best husband EVER!

FE, ROTC, FTX, etc!

As you can see, our lives are full of acronyms...

So I thought I'd start with a couple pictures of Daniel's ranger challenge competition last weekend. Turns out they beat the other teams by more than 2 hours... they're kind of a big deal.

 Daniel is really good at making awkward faces in all of his pictures...

This weekend the army took him away from me again, and he ran off into the woods with his army friends for a field training exercise.

 Telling other people what to do (it's what he's best at).

And they got to ride in helicopters!!! I'm pretty stinkin' jealous. I told him to promise me that I would get to ride in one some day, and he wouldn't! I guess I'll just have to get life-flighted out of the mountains on a camping trip or something...

My weekend wasn't nearly as exciting... I got to take my 8-hour Fundamentals of Engineering exam. Basically one test that determines whether I get to be an engineer or not... and it's comprehensive of pretty much EVERYTHING that I've learned in my last 400 years of school.

I don't have any real pictures, but I think these can kind of portray how painful it was...

I'm pretty sure we studied 400 hours...

I'm not an Asian teenager, but you get the idea. It was awful. But I feel like I did well and I'll get my results in 8-10 weeks!

I got a new calling in church teaching the 16-17 year-old girls. It's fun, but takes a lot more time than teaching the 6-year-olds... Daniel is still stuck with them, but he secretly loves it :) Ok so maybe he doesn't love it so much, but he still does a good job preparing lessons for them.

And we have some exciting news! Daniel got his branch preference, so he will officially be a Medical Service Officer after graduation! (read about it here) So we'll be with the army for six years and then he plans on going into hospital administration. This also means that we get to spend the summer in San Antonio! We're both pretty excited about that. We're also EXTREMELY excited to get out of Utah and spend some more time with Daniel's family.

We're just full of exciting news here, hopefully more to come soon!

Oh hi, blog...

Sorry about the lack of posts here... Our lives right now consist of school, work, more school, army, and more school. And those are boring things to take pictures of...

In fact,  I think I can sum up all of the fun things we've done this semester in less than 30 seconds. Depending on how fast you can read, of course.

-Football games
-Intramural basketball (me)
-Intramural frisbee (Daniel)
-Bridal/baby showers
-Eulerian and Lagrangian Flow Descriptions

Oh wait, that last one probably shouldn't be part of the "fun things" list...

Daniel and the Army ROTC won their ranger challenge competition this weekend! I guess won is an understatement... to use Daniel's words, they "pwned." I would go with "destroyed" or some similar word, since they beat all the other teams by more than 2 hours. This means that next year they'll be going to the Sandhurst competition in New York!

Next week I have my comprehensive exam of my entire college career (which is why I'm procrastinating and writing this post). That is definitely not going to make the "fun" list either...

Hopefully we'll have nice, fun "birthday" and "Thanksgiving" posts to liven up this dismal space... until then,

Go BYU!

Red Rock Relay

Ok I have one more post in me tonight... This weekend we headed back down to southern Utah to run the Red Rock Relay! With a 12-man team, we ran 187 miles in 2 days. I only ran 12.something miles, but Daniel pulled in a whopping 22.3! Our team captain, Jessica, was 4 months pregnant and couldn't finish hers, so Daniel helped pick up the slack.

The first day we started at the Brian Head Resort, and I ran a mile before I got to the lodge and rode the chair lift up... before I ran just right back down to the parking lot. It was a fun little trail run, though. From there we ran to Cedar City, then through St. George, and on to the finish at Zion National Park.

 Ready at the start line! Also, there's a creepy dude behind me.

 Finishing up the first leg!

 Epic handoff!

Daniel finishing his first leg.

Overall, it was a great experience. I had a ton of fun and Daniel LOVED it. We would definitely do this again!

Canadian Border Patrol

I have been laughing my butt off watching and re-quoting this video the last couple of days... hilarious!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFcIH2tK2iM

Fun side note: if you google search "Canadian border patrol," that video is the first result. Not the actual Canadian Border Patrol!!! Poor Canada... :)