Studio 5 and Good Things Utah

This week is National Marriage Week and because of my associate with the Utah Marriage Commission they have asked me to write a blog post that will be posted on http://blog.strongermarriage.org/ This post will be used to help the Utah Marriage Comission promote stronger marriages and will be used to promote it on Good Things Utah on Wednesday and Studio 5 on Thursday. So here's a copy of what will be on the blog and we sure to watch Good Things Utah on Wednesday and Studio 5 on Thursday and look for my blog post!

Unnecessary Pressure

Hi, my name is Chelsea Petersen. I am currently a graduate student at Utah State University in the Marriage and Family Therapy Program. I would like to share with you the one thing that I would change about being a newlywed, if I had the chance.
A little over two years ago I got married, while going to school, and trying to work. Add the adjustments that need to be made in a new marriage on top of being a student, preparing for Graduate School, and working, and there was a lot on my plate. My husband Brett, who I might add is quite a wonderful man, also had a full load with school and work. When we were first married, I put a lot of pressure on myself to be the “perfect wife”. I thought that because I loved him so much I had to show that love by being the “perfect wife.” To me, this meant having the house spik-and-span 100% of the time, having a home-cooked meal on the table every night at 6 pm when he’d walk through the door, and catering to his every need. I felt a pressure from society that I had to be this ideal wife. Don’t get me wrong, I loved showing him my love by doing all of those things for him but it wasn’t until about 8 months after we were married that I realized that Brett would still love me if there wasn’t a home-cooked meal on the table the second he walked through the door, or if the laundry didn’t get done until we were down to our last pair of undies. I have learned that those things are OK. It took me and Brett some time to figure this out together. Brett would often walk in the door and I would be busy running around the kitchen trying my hardest to get things done so that I could measure up to that “perfect wife”. Often times I wouldn’t even stop what I was doing to welcome him home, to give him a kiss, to tell him I love him, or even ask about his day. Over time Brett helped me to realize that a spotless house is nice, but it’s more important to live in a place where you can feel relaxed and be yourself. By trying to measure up to the “perfect wife” I was not being myself. One of the most important things for me now is not to be perfect by society’s standards but to be the best person that I can be for my husband. Now that we are getting further into our marriage and beginning to discuss children and how we would like to raise them, I find myself again, trying to be the “perfect parent”. I have all the solutions for every problem that will happen with my children and exactly what I want my kids to do and not do. I am sure that soon enough, when my child is eating a Kit Kat at 3 months old or writing on the freshly painted wall I will have to change my way of thinking once again. But hey, I can dream for now, right?!?
My hope for you as the reader is to not make the same mistake that I have made. Realize that the most important thing in your marriage is to take the time to really love your spouse, communicate your expectations with each other, and to not get wrapped up in everything the world says that you should be. Love your spouse to the best of your ability and don’t worry about what other people say. Who knows, you might surprise yourself and actually enjoy watching a football game while you’re curled up next to the one you love.

A New Year

School has started and I once again am busy running every where. This semester seems like it will be much more applied than my past semester. I don't have as many classes but the reading is still crazy. Can I just say that I love reading about 1,000 pages a week?!?! But at least it's reading that is interesting so it's not terrible but it still is not my idea of fun. I love all of my classes and am really enjoying this semester. For some more good news about the semester I saw my first clients this week. It was crazy to think that people are coming to me for answers to their problems. I felt so inadequate - there really is no way to describe the way that i felt. I was so tired after the session that I just went home and put on a pointless movie so I wouldn't have to think anymore. But the good thing is that I will never have a first first study.
The day was kind of crazy but I must say that I have the best husband in the world. When I got home there were flowers on the table with a note and my favorite treat - Queso and chips! I think that i'm the luckiest girl in the world! Thanks Honey!
Although I greatly enjoyed the break, I must say that there wasn't a huge feeling of worth while on break. It's good to be back in school and back to feeling like I have purpose again. I'm getting back into the groove of being stressed and feeling like I have 5 million things to do and no time to do it. Hopefully, by next week I will finally have my system back.
Natalie and Greg's house is almost done - just have to do the finishing things (cabinets, carpet, tile, plumbing, and finish electric work). And then we can start on the apartment in the basement and then we can get out to the country life soon! YEAH!!!! I'm looking forward to being out there but I'm not looking forward to the longer drives to school... The next few months are going to be SUPER busy but very satisfying.

Holiday Fun

This holiday season has been so good to us. We were able to spend a lot of time with our families and enjoy some much needed R&R. We were able to play hard with the Jones Family while they were visiting from Alaska. We weren't sure when we were going to see them again until Aleene (Zach's sister) got engaged. So good news - They will be back in MAY! YEAH! We had a wonderful Christmas Eve and morning with the Petersen family. It is so much fun to have 2 families to celebrate Christmas and other holidays with. Although at times it can be exhausting it is always a good time! On Christmas day we were also able to talk to my little brother Dillon who is serving a mission in Portland, Oregon. It was so good to get to talk with him. It's crazy how grown up he sounds in just 6 months of serving. I was also proud of my mom - she only got a little teary-eyed when we were hanging up the phone.

The rest of the Christmas break was full of games, great fun, and wonderful people. Probably the highlight of our parties was the New Year's Eve party that my parents had. It was an ungly sweater party and our family took it to the top. We not only had ugly sweaters but we had ugly hair-dos and make-up to top off the whole outfit. It was such a fun night. My nephew stopped by for a few minutes with his parents (Nat and Greg) and he did not recognize me. Brett name for the night was also "Petey the Pedophile". When you look at the pictures you will understand why he was so fortunate to receive that wonderful name. My name for the night was Loralynn. Quite fitting I would have to say. Here are some sweet pictures to document the night.

Petey the Pedophile and Loralynn

Our 80's rendition of photographs

Family Photo

We are sad to see the Joneses go home and the holiday season to come to an end. We have been back to school for a few days now and are getting settled back into the school life...
Here are some other pictures of the fun that we have had during our Christmas Break.

Seeing the lights on Temple Square

Elk at Hardware Ranch

Grandma Jones doesn't like to smile for the camera and it's my goal to catch her with a smile at least once.... You are SO welcome Lynette!

Garrett as a shepherd at the Wright Family Christmas Party - he was either trying to poke someone or something the entire time.

Sweet Brooklyn did a great job as Mother Mary

I love this picture of Garrett - the good shepherd caught doing something he's not supposed to! His face is priceless.

Christmas Morning. The G man loved his tool bench and is so serious every time that he plays with it.

Dax seemed to enjoy Christmas and opening lots of new toys! I miss the little guy!

TWO WHOLE YEARS

On December 15, we celebrated our 2nd anniversary. I can't believe that it has been two years already! It's a feeling that is very hard to describe - it's like I don't remember a life without Brett. Don't worry, I hate when people get super sappy on these dang blogs so I won't go there but these past 2 years really have been the best years of my life thanks to Brett and to his wonderful family.

For our anniversary this year we decided to head back to where we went on our Honeymoon - Park City, Utah. Only if you remember from our Honeymoon both of us were pretty sick and spent most of the time indoors. We didn't get to go skiing or shopping or anything but it was still good to get away. So this year we decided that we would the same thing only this time with both of us being healthy we could do everything that we didn't get to do on our Honeymoon. We left later Tuesday afternoon and go to Salt Lake City for our first night. We stayed at the Radisson in downtown so we were able to walk everywhere we went. We walked to dinner at Ramone's Macaroni Grill, which was fabulous food by the way. Then we walked down to the Gateway and walked around there for a little while. We didn't buy any thing but it was fun just to walk in all of the stores and look at everything. We found out there are a lot of fashions that we like to make fun of right now so we had some really good laughs at some of the people at the mall and some of the clothes at the mall.... Great times! We decided not to see the lights at Temple Square because we will be seeing them next Wednesday when we get to pick up my sister and her family who are coming from Alaska! We have had a countdown to their arrival basically since the day we pulled off of the coast of Alaska. We are so excited to see them! So instead of seeing the lights we went to visit Brett's brother Brian and his wife Sher for a minute and to pick a few things up from them. They are awesome. We wished they lives closer so we could spend more time with them but we sure do love the time we do get to spend with them.

When we got back to our hotel we decided to hope in our GiGanTic Jacuzzi tub that was in our room instead of going down to the pool area. (This is rated, we got in the tub in our swimming suits...) While I was inthe tub I started feeling really nauseas and proceeded to puke. Afterwords I thought I was feeling better but I was up all night puking and with the diarrhea the entire night! Let's just say that December 15 is not a good day for Chelsea and puking.... On my wedding day I puked twice because I was sick.

The TUB

The next morning I was feeling better but not 100% so we took it easy. We got up late, ate some breakfast and then headed down to Cabela's for a couple of hours. We headed up to Park City about 4 pm, check into our hotel, The Yarrow, then went to dinner at Loco Lizard. They have the best salas there, we ate there on our honeymoon and we decided we just had to go back. It was great food. After dinner Brett had set up a massage for me, which was so awesome! I loved it and it was such great way to relax, especially after a very stressful semester. Thanks honey! The next day we spent the day on the slopes. Although snow conditions were not perfect, the weather was warm and it was a beautiful day for skiing! We had a blast and really enjoyed our little getaway! We headed home last night and Brett is now out goose hunting in some really foggy weather... Here's some pictures of the awesome Deer Valley and our wonderful ski day!

Us on the lift

Brett with some HUGE cabins behind him

Chelsea with some of the resort and cabins in the background

Some GigAnTic cabins that we skied past during the day

Birthday Blues

Wednesday was my 22nd birthday. I knew that it was going to be a special one because you only have the same double digit number every decade. With that being sad let me recap my birthday for you:
It was a normal morning, I got to sleep in that morning and was taking it pretty easy. I was getting ready for the USU vs BYU basketball game when I went upstairs to get my small digital camera so that I could take it with me to the game. When I opened the drawer that is always in I noticed it was gone. I called Brett and asked him if he moved the camera and he said that he hadn’t moved it. He also asked if his camera was there, that’s when I noticed his camera and his video camera was gone. He then said he noticed the lock on the bathroom window was broken and that he thought we had been robbed. I looked in the drawer where we had been keeping some extra cash and low and behold the cash was all gone – there was about $400 dollars. The cash was from some of our last tips in Alaska, we had decided to use it for buying Christmas presents so we hadn’t put it into the bank. So the robber got away with 2 digital cameras, a camcorder, and about $400.
We think the robbery occurred on Saturday night. On Saturday my mom had gone to our apartment to get some Sunday clothes so that we could go to church with them the next day instead of coming home and going to our own ward. While she was here, our landlords were next door cleaning the apartment so that some new neighbors could move in this week. She talked to them in the parking lot and said that we would be staying with her for another night and we wouldn’t be home until Sunday. We believe that someone overheard them talking, someone in the neighborhood, so they knew they would have all night and the next morning to get whatever they wanted. When we got home Sunday night nothing was out of the ordinary expect some cloth curtains were missing from the kitchen window. The kitchen window is very small and kind of an awkward size so our landlord just made some cloth curtains for us instead of using blinds. We found it odd that they were missing but thought that she might have come into our apartment when she was there on Saturday to measure them or take them home to make some new ones for the other apartment. We weren’t too worried about it, that’s why we didn’t find out until Wednesday because we didn’t notice anything missing (we don’t use our cameras very often) and we weren’t using the money from the drawer yet. We didn’t discovery anything was missing until Wednesday, December 2, which just happened to be my birthday. Happy Birthday to me – you’ve been robbed.
We aren’t too devastated by our losses, we feel very lucky because we could’ve lost a lot more than we did. But it still sucks! We just feel so violated. The cops came and tried to get fingerprints but they didn’t really get anything good so we’re not hopeful they will be able to find anything from the fingerprints. It is under investigation, and they will continue looking for the cameras for us but that’s about all they can do. We’re not hopeful that we’ll get them back but what can you do?
We did end up getting into the BYU vs USU basketball game. Me and my best friend, Heidi, went up to wait in line at about 3:30 and the line was clear back by the Hyper building. It was the longest I have ever had to wait in the line but it was a dang good game. I thought the Ags were going to disappoint me in the first half but second half they got the jitters out and were actually able to play. They did not disappoint…. A ten point victory was very very sweet. I’m pretty sure the Cougs will not be coming back to the spectrum for a very long time – unless their dang head coach, Rose, gets fired or moves! Go Aggies GO! They did make my birthday a lot better. After the game we made a trip to Wingers for some Asphalt Pie and boy was it delicious! Let’s just say neither one of us slept very well on Wednesday night.
Thursday night Brett was at a study session for his chemistry final from 6:30 to 8:30. I went home at about 7 and was cooking some dinner when all of the lights went out in the house. Brett was still in the study session and I was so scared. I didn’t know what was going on, we have tripped out breaker before but I only had 2 lights on and the microwave. I thought of everyone that I could call to come and help me and I couldn’t think of anyone that could be there in a relatively short amount of time. I ended up calling Justin, a friend from my cohort who lives a couple blocks away to come and help me. When we got there I was still shaking but he helped me flip the breaker back and all was well again. Thanks Justin! Brett got out of class really soon after that so luckily I didn’t have to be home by myself for too much longer. I’m just not sure how much more of this stress I can take. I need to new apartment….

Update

I know that all of you have been dying from anxiety to find out if I was actually the winner of the Long Tail Feather Contest in Newton, Utah. Well, worry no longer....

I WON THE LONG TAIL FEATHER CONTEST!

That means that I get a German Short-haired puppy. We talked to the person who was giving away the dog and said that it wasn't really feasible for us to have a puppy right now. He kindly told us that we could have the pick of the litter when we decide that we would like a puppy. As soon as we move out to Newton, which will probably be in about May, we will be anxiously awaiting the arrival of those puppies!
Oh and I guess I should comment on what great Thanksgiving Holiday we had. Brett was a little bit of a scrooge. He wasn't the biggest fan of putting up lights or decorating for the Christmas season. But he was a trooper and made it through. I love the holidays!We had such a great time with the family and really enjoyed the time we were able to spend with them.
Now we're back to school and I'm wishing there would not have been a break. My brain has been turned off for almost a week and I can't focus anymore. Fortunately, I only have a few more things to finish up until I can relax for about a month. Sadly, Brett will be pretty dang busy for the next week and a half. Then we can take much needed, nearly one whole month off from school. Lucky for me, I will be doing lots of reading during that time but I luckily it will be reading that interests me and that I don't absolutely HAVE to do....
YAHOO! The holiday season has arrived and I could NOT be HAPPIER! :)

One more thing: USU plays BYU on Wednesday at the spectrum -

GO AGGIES! GO AGGIES! HEY! HEY! HEY!

Fantastic Fall

Let me just say that Fall is my favorite time of the year! It's filled with lots of great holidays and fun times to be had by all. We had a "terror"-ific halloween. We didn't do anything too exciting for the big day but we got to spend some time with Brett's family, which is always a blast. Last minute before we headed to Brett's cousin Kami's house, we decided to throw on some stuff to make a costume. We're not really sure what we were going for but oh well. Hey, at least we had fun. Brett's was supposed to be a miner and I ended up being some type of beach bum or something. My sister-in-law, Natalie, said we could be Alaska and Hawaii and I think that's a great idea. So we'll stick with that.

Today was the opening day of the pheasant hunt. Last year we went to Benson and went hunting with my dad. This year we decided to try Newton with our brother-in-law. We saw tons of roosters this year, about 15 or 20 but only a got a few shots off at a couple of different birds. I ended up shooting a rooster with 24 inch tail feathers! YEE - HAW! That's a dang good bird! I was pretty stoked. Brett wasn't able to get a shot off at all but is planning on going out during the week so he'll get one before all is said and done. Newton is also having a "Longest Tail Feather" competition this year. 1st prize for the adults is a German Short-hair puppy and 1st prize for the youth is a shotgun. So far it looks like I'm in the lead but I don't know - we'll keep you posted. By the way... any one want a puppy? We aren't really in a position to have a puppy right now so I'm really not sure what we'll do with it if I end up winning the puppy. At this point, I'd rather have a shotgun... Here's my bird:

After the hunt, Natalie, my sister-in-law, had to run to the store so I ended up watching her son, Garrett, for a little while. After she finds out what we've been up to I'm not sure she'll ever want to leave her child with me again but he sure did have fun.

I taught him to "pet" the bird and soon after he was doing this...

He drug that bird literally all over for about 20 mintues until we had to go back to the house

This kid is 100% boy

We headed back to Spark's and Suz's house and Garrett pretended to drive the lawnmower and was very helpful in helping Spark's rake the leaves. And now I'm blogging when I really should be studying..... Gotta love Saturdays!