Night Skiing

In February we joined up with my 2 old roommates Alisa and Amy and their husbands and went night skiing up to Brighton. We had been trying to plan this for almost a year, but it never ended up working out for last winter because of my ridiculous wedding planning, so it got put off until this winter. We had so much fun. Alisa and Brian and Amy and Jordan were all on skis, but Ryan and I stuck to snowboarding. I'm still not very good because a lack a confidence in my snowboarding abilities after last year. The one time we tried to go last year after we got married, I ended up catching my edge on our first run down, falling on a very icy patch of snow and bruising my tailbone. This time I did a lot better, but had a hard time trying to keep up with some of the others on their skis. 

After a great night of skiing and snowboarding we ended up going to the Porcupine Grill to get some amazing nachos and chat. We ended up only getting 2 orders of them for the 6 of us, which was a good thing because they were a big towering stack of them on each plate. We ended up not even finishing them entirely. 

It was so good to visit and ski with two of my best friends and their hubbies. Sadly this may be the first and last time we are able to do this. Alisa and Brian are moving to Idaho after Brian graduates in April and Amy and Jordan are moving to Texas for the summer for Jordan's internship. I'm super sad that both of my friends are leaving Utah, but I guess that just gives Ry and I an excuse to take a few road trips to visit them. :) 

Birthday, Valentines, and the Praxis

I'm 2 months late with this one, but I wanted to share. 

For my graduate program we have to pass a Praxis test before we can graduate and get certified. Well I had been dreading this test for a very long time. The Praxis is fair game to test you on anything you learned in any of my speech therapy undergraduate or graduate coursework. Luckily you only need a 600 which roughly equals a 60% to pass. The test is 120 questions and you have 120 minutes to complete the test. I hate timed tests because I feel so pressured to finish in time! I ordered a study book with some practice tests. I took one practice test first to see how much I knew on my own without studying and I ended up barely not passing. This made me pretty nervous though because this meant that I would have to put in some major studying time if I wanted to pass. I could always take the test again, but I didn't want to spend another $120 to take it. I studied a little here and there, but it was hard to find the motivation to study when I had to study for an online class, was working at my externship at the hospital 30+ hours a week, and working my job another day a week. I ended up having the day off before I had to take the Praxis, so I spent all day cramming as much as I possibly could. I studied a little more the morning of my test and then went to take it. My score popped up when I had finished the test and for a minute I forgot what I needed to pass. I was just expecting it to say PASSED or FAILED along with my score but it never did. Luckily I did pass. In fact I did a lot better than I had anticipated! 

So to celebrate Ryan took me to one of my favorite restaurants to celebrate the next week... Benihana. We technically were celebrating 3 things - my birthday, passing the Praxis, and then Valentines day (because I was scheduled to work on Valentines day). It was so yummy! Ryan definitely knows how to spoil me! :) 

Now I just have to finish this online class, finish this externship and my next externship and then I will be done. Well at least with school, then I have to put on my big girl pants and find a job. 

Christmas

I know I'm about 4 months late, but I had to share about our first Christmas together. 

We were lucky enough to get a Christmas tree from Ryan's sister and brother-in-law. It was their Christmas tree they used when they were first married and it was just the right size for our living room. My mom also gave us a couple other smaller Christmas trees to use as well. Needless to say we had a Christmas forest in our living room this year. 

 One of our Christmas traditions we started this year was going to Temple Square to see the Christmas lights (I know just about everyone has this tradition, but it's a good one). One of our favorite things about the lights at Temple Square is all of the bags that are lit up with tea lights and have Christmas greetings in various languages. Ryan's favorite is finding all of the Polish ones.

I have to admit Ryan's parents definitely spoiled us for Christmas this year. Ryan's dad works as a sales manager at a piano store and whenever one of his kids gets married he gets them a piano. Because Ryan and I both play the piano he let us pick out a little nicer one. :) I was on cloud nine! I have been wanting a piano for years now and was so excited to get this beauty for Christmas. Boy does it sound great and it fits perfectly in our living room.

Another Christmas tradition we started, is going to midnight mass at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. We waited outside in the cold for about 2 hours before it started. It was a good thing that I bundled up or else I would have froze to death! I had to admit it was very... different. Not like any sacrament meeting, stake conference, or general conference I have ever been to, but it was interesting to compare and contrast the practices of Catholicism to our religion. The one thing that was very different was the incense. Mass ended up being a lot longer than I had originally anticipated, so we ended up getting home after 2 am. I was pretty darn beat and tired by the time we got home.

Ryan had told me that he had thought long and hard about what to get me for Christmas and a couple of weeks before Christmas he told me that he couldn't think of anything and so he was just going to get me some gift cards to some of my favorite stores. I kind of thought this was lame, but I didn't really believe him at first I knew he had something planned but I didn't know what. For weeks I had been complaining about how we had very limited seating in our living room and wanted some accent chairs to go in our living room for when we had company over to visit. We had actually looked at a few at RC Willey when we were there with my brother and sis-in-law looking at furniture, but they were pretty pricey. I had showed Ryan a few at Target that weren't as expensive. Well my wonderful husband went out and bought me these 2 very cute accent chairs to go in our living room. After we got home from Midnight Mass, he waited until I was asleep to sneak downstairs where he had hidden my chairs and brought them upstairs and wrapped a big bow around them to surprise me for Christmas morning. I was very surprised and overly ecstatic! I was so proud of him for picking out the chairs because not only were they just cute by they matched our living room perfectly!

Now that Casey, Savannah, and Brody had moved out downstairs we had a whole lot of extra room that was just empty. Ryan and I had kicked around the idea of buying another couch to put downstairs, a sectional of course. So before Christmas we went out and bought ourselves a very large and comfy Christmas present. I was so excited to have our couch for Christmas so we could sprawl out on it while watching all of the movies we got for Christmas.

Needless to say we were very spoiled for  Christmas this year!