BuSy! bUsY! BUSY!

It's been a while since I posted an update. We've been super busy with school and haven't had much time for anything else it seems like. These past 2 weeks have been especially busy with all of our teachers having big projects due and lots of tests. So we've had our hands full. This is a picture of Brett so hard at work in the library on one afternoon. This is just to show you all how hard we really are working... :)

Ok, so we really have actually been quite busy. We feel quite old because we work so hard during the week and then when the weekend comes all we want to do is sleep, hang out with each other, stay home, and go to bed early. No there's nothing wrong with this but this past weekend was Halloween and we didn't really want to do anything. However, I did convince Brett (who has NEVER been to a corn maze EVER BEFORE!) to go to the corn maze with me. It was a haunted corn maze and Brett doesn't like being scared. But he was a really good sport and made me go through all of the scary tunnels first and everything. We really had a good time and enjoyed spending the evening together.
The next morning we got up early for the opening morning of the pheasant hunt. We headed out West to Benson and went hunting with my dad, my brother, and my brother-in-law Dearth. I slayed the most pheasants. I shot 2 pheasants (actually 3 - but my cousin Jason shot the other one first so I let him have it) and I even cleaned one of them on my own. Brett was kind enough to clean one for me. Brett got one and Dearth got one but they gave them away so they didn't have to clean them. But we did have them for Sunday afternoon dinner and they were quite delicious. Now I can lay claim to the mighty hunter of the family!

My sister Megan and her husband Zach are expecting their first baby in March and they found out today that IT'S A BOY!!! Congrats to them! We are super excited for them. We just wish they were closer so that we could hug and kiss them and watch Megan's tummy grow!
I also got some good pictures this last week. We had a little going away party for Brett's cousin, Tyler, who left to go work at a ski resort in Colorado and I caught this great picture of Dearth (he didn't know he had crap all over his face and I snapped a picture before he got wipe it off).

And Brooklyn was quite the cute little witch for Halloween - quite fitting I would have to say for her attitude lately. But we sure do love our little Brooklyn!

Brett also needed a hair cut really bad! So I gave him one and his bushy beard just looked quite comical so he decided to trim the beard. He looks so much younger, even with just trimming it - it's crazy. This is just a picture of him trimming his beard (notice all of the hair at his feet - that's all from his hair!)

The HUNT

As many people know, this week is the deer hunt. For any of those who don't know, the Petersen Family are 'die hard" hunters. They don't really care if they get anything, they go out everyday looking for deer, but they don't mind if they don't shoot anything - they just LOVE the outdoors. It's been a family tradition for about 60 years and will probably keep going as long as there are mountains to call home for a week. Deer Camp is quite the extravagant event. They really know to live up there in the hills. They all like to think that they 'rough' it for a week but heaven knows that they don't. They have quite the camp. It's really fun for the whole family and even the little ones can enjoy it because every tent is heated. Well, Brett has taken off for a week and left me a widow (someone has to stay home and be responsible). I don't mind because I get a lot done when it's just me at home but I sure do miss him. It's the longest we will have ever been apart - all for 'the hunt'. And when he returns - NO MORE BEARD! He's been growing it for 3 months and I almost don't remember him without a beard. He started going it early for 'the hunt' this year and soon 'the hunt' will be over and there will be no more beard. I will have to say that I do have mixed emotions about this. I have quite enjoyed the beard and will be sad to see it go but will once again have my husband back and not some mountain man.

I did get the opportunity to head up to Deer Camp last night and spend the night. We had a great time. Great food, great company, and a great time. I just wanted you all to be able to experience just a little bit of Deer Camp, especially my mother-in-law (who never makes it up to deer camp), to be able to know the true joy of her husband while he is away. He is taking a shower, with HOT water in the shower tent (I must say that it is quite nice - Craig said it's better than The Hilton). You can't really see anything in the video but the beautiful noises that you will hear are hilarious! If you look close you can see the silhouette of the shower tent and the light illuminating the tent. Make sure the volume is turned up...

This would explain where Brett gets his wonderful singing habits from. To see exactly what I'm talking about click here. Scroll down to the post: Brett loves Suma!! and watch the video.
This is a picture of us at Deer Camp, enjoying the fire.
Check out my sweet beanie – I think I’m going to wear it to school every day.
We were playing in the fire and were throwing ash in the air. I was able to snatch this picture of it. We thought it was pretty sweet and thought you’d all enjoy it too. If you look at it close it looks like a ball of hair on fire – kinda cool.

Go Aggies! Go!

As many of you know, the epic battle between the BYU Cougars and the USU Aggies took place last Friday night. With the Ags being ranked 116th in the nation (if you aren't aware, that's almost the very bottom...) and the Cougs being ranked 8th, we all thought it was going to be a blow out, that is everyone except for my dear husband, who says he'll never lose faith in his Ags even if they are at rock bottom. Luckily for me it shows just how faithful he is. Anyway, back to that game...
Brett's sister Natalie and her husband, Greg, attended BYU and are quite the BYU fans (needless to say, they are the outcasts of the family). All of Greg's family are huge BYU fans so we have a friendly family rivally between us all and Nat put a poll on her blog to see who Garrett should cheer for at the game. Sadly, BYU won, but of course, not without cheap play. Natalie and Garrett did attend the game and sat with Aggie fans and they both cheered for the Aggies. Here are just a few pictures of Garrett at the game (notice that he is extremely happy in the USU shirt and as soon as we put the BYU hat on him he started bawling) This kid knows what's up.

The Aggies put up a dang good fight against the Cougs and scored WAY more points then probably anyone thought they would. We only scored 14 but if they would've had one more play they would have scored another one. We got the job done and made them drop in rankings to 9th. :) WAY TO GO AGGIES!

Brett sported this shirt to the game... We loved it! His boss made a whole bunch of them and gave one to Brett. The school also made some that said "YBU" on the front and on the back it said: "Win or lose, you still live in Provo." Unfortunately, I did not get a picture.

Even with all the good things that have been previously mentioned this is my favorite... Anyone who knows the fans at Utah State knows that they always have something crazy going on. For example, no one likes to place USU Basketball at home because it's always SO loud in there and the fans are always taunting the other players. The Dee Glen Smith Spectrum is ranked as one of the hardest places to play in the nation, and it's all thanks to the fans. Our football standium would probably be up there too but it's hard to cheer for a team that isn't as good as they could be. Ok, so I'll get down from my soap box and tell you my #1 favorite thing from the game: It was this sign, which reads, "BYU - keeping ugly girls out of Utah State since 1888" and I couldn't agree more! Go Aggies!

FaMiLy

You will have to forgive my "slowness" but I'm just not getting stuff on the blog like I used to. Last Saturday Brett and I, The Maynards and Craig (Brett's sister Emily and her family and Brett's dad) went to the USU vs Idaho football game and believe it or not Aggies actually won! Yep, it's true... check out the score board above (42 -17)! It was a fun game and it was fun to get to hang out with the family. Their family is so cute we really enjoy hanging out with them.

Me and Brett

The Maynard Family

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go the Women's Conference. I spent the day with my sister-in-laws, Emily, Natalie and Sher, my mother-in-law, Sue, and 2 of Brett's cousins, Jan and Kami. We headed down to SLC in the morning to go shopping and spend the day around Salt Lake. The conference was so uplifting. The women of the church are awesome! I have a whole new outlook on my Relief Society experience and am excited to get more involved in my ward and be able to serve the women around me. And because of Natalie I will never be able to look at President Uchtdorf the same. She thinks that he is "by far the best looking man in the Qurom of the Twelve" and was sure to tell us the she all thought he is a "stud". It was awesome to be able to spend the day with such amazing women and learn so much from their examples. Thanks for letting me tag along girls! :) (I forgot my camera at home, so Natalie and The Andersons will probably be posting some pictures of us all soon.)
Today we were able to hang out with my mom's family. Her older sister just moved back to Utah from Kansas. It was fun to get to visit with them and they were able to meet Brett for the first time. They are such great people and we are glad to have them closer again. My aunt Janalee and her famiy came down from Idaho. It was fun to be able to hang out with every one and catch up.

The Flinder's Family

The Thomas Family

Tagged!

So I got tagged by Britt forever ago but am just now getting around to actually doing it... What you do is post these rules: List 3 joys in your life; 3 fears; 3 goals; 3 collections/obsessions; & 3 random facts. Then you tag 5-6 others at the end.
JOYS: 1 - spending time with Brett 2 - spending time with friends and family 3 - Anything athletic/competitive
fEaRs: 1 - failure 2 - hurting someone else 3- dying too young
GoAlS: 1 - do well on the GRE 2 - graduate in Spring 2009 3 - get into the Marriage and Family Therapy Masters program at USU Fall '09
ok so those are all immediate goals and I'm going to give you some life long goals too...
1 - get Brett to travel outside of the US with me 2 - raise a family 3 - own a small ranch (possibly own my ouen troubled youth facility specializing in equine therapy on that small ranch)
CoLlEcTiOnS: 1 - Face cards: I buy face cards every vacation that I go on that have a bunch of pictures of the area 2 - junk - I don't mean to collect a lot of junk but for some reason I always seem to gather it up and then I have to get rid of it all about 6 months later. 3 - Pictures! I love pictures and have tons of pictures of nearly everything that I have done in my life (especially major events) I consider my photo albums my journal.
rAnDoM FaCts: 1 - I love doing anything outdoors, especially hiking, running, horse riding, shooting - I enjoy it all. 2 - I love watching movies, especially with Brett and especially when I can talk him into a chick flick 3 - I used to be "up-to-date" with all sorts of underground bands and music and since I've gotten married my love for music has not decreased at all but my time for it has and so I no longer can say that I am "up-to-date" with all the good music that's out there.
I am tagging: Marlee, Kami, Emily, Natalie, Trisha and Whitney

A rough weekend

Friday evening, Brett and his friend Dustin went out looking for elk so I thought I would make good use of my free time and go for a horse ride. Me, my dad, and my brother-in-law, Dearth all took our young horses for a little ride in the Smithfield arena. I rode my 4-year-old, Oli and he was great. I got on my next "project", a 2-year-old, Millie. Everything was going just great when all of the sudden she caught me a little off guard and the next thing I knew I was on the ground. Everything was tingling all over. It took me a minute to get off the ground but when I did, we discovered that I had a HUGE bump on the back of my head and my vision was quite blurry. This bump on the back left side of my head was about the size of a baseball. It was caused by Millie kicking me! Yep, that's right. When I so gracefully fell off, I managed to land right under her and as she "jumped" over my head she kicked the back of my head. Luckily, my sweet sister-in-law, Natalie, had pulled up to the arena about 5 minutes before this all happened and she thought we should go have it looked at. We headed into the hospital and soon enough everyone was there. Brett had returned from the hills, my parents were there, my father-in-law, Craig, and Dearth and Nat and their son Garrett. They took me in for a CT scan and then we had to wait. It came back that I didn't have a fractured skull or anything I just had a mild concussion.

I scraped my hand and arm up pretty good and rope burned some of my fingers. My head killed! and sleeping was sort of a challenge but luckily I have the best husband in the world who is so sweet! He was such a great help and didn't want to leave me at all, for fear that I would get hurt again or throw up or something...
Doc said to take it slow over the weekend, so I sat in a car for a couple of hours on the way to Jackson Hole. Brett's brother Brain biked the LOTOJA this weekend so the whole family took a trip over to support him. We had a really good time as a family. It was great to be able to support B, and spend time with the Petersen family. Overall, beside the head injury and the body aches from getting bucked off it was quite the pleasant weekend.

We really like being home and being able to cuddle our cute neices and nephew.

A Life Update

We have been home now for nearly 2 weeks and BOY! have those 2 weeks flown. It now seems like our perfect summer vacation to Alaska is merely a dream. We are back into the swing of things at life at home.
Our last 2 weeks in AK were crazy! Megan and Zach bought a house and we had to be out of their apartment by Aug 15. However, we didn't even move into the house until the Aug 19. So we stayed at a woman's house that meg worked with and stored most of their stuff at another woman's house in her garage. So we were spread out all over Juneau. We sure were glad that we were able to be there to help the Joneses with the move, especially with Megan being pregnant, she had to be careful with the cleaners that she used. Their house is a fixer-uper but it will look so great once it gets "Jonesed". We think of them often and hope things are coming along good with the pregnancy and the new house.
Before we left, Brett and I also found some time to hike to the Mendenhall Glacier as well as halibut fishing. The glacier was amazing! It's vastness and clarity left both of us in awe. We loved the ridges in the glacier from the ice melting off. It reminded us of a salt lick for cows but bigger and BLUE!



Our friends, that we met through Meg and Zach, Tracy and Ellis Day took us halibut fishing on the last day that we were in Juneau. We both caught "chickens" which are very small (about 20 lbs.) and Brett caught one that was about 45 lbs! We were able to get it home with us and boy do we love it! We can't wait to go back and catch some more! Watch out, here we come next summer! :)


Brett didn't seem to have too hard of a time saying goodbye to the people and the place but I sure did! I miss Juneau and I miss all of the people I worked with so much! Pictures are of me and the girls I worked with and Ray was my favorite cook!

Brett's whole family was waiting for us when we got off the plane. I was so good to be greeted by such great people. We love them all so much and were so glad to see them all again. The babies are HUGE! We couldn't believe that they could grow that fast.

Brett has finally decided that he is going to graduate in English - Technical Writing. It's a good springboard degree for anything else he'll want to do. He is taking 15 credits this semester and is finally really enjoying school. Whew!
As for me, I am taking 18 credits this semester and will graduate in the spring. Along with the joy of graduating also comes the fear of taking the GRE and applying to grad school. I have also had the privilege of being selected to be a peer counselor for Utah State, that means that I will have clients of my own that I work with to help solve some of their most basic problems, such as stress management and sleep management and so forth. And to add to my crazy schedule I am also going to help coach the Sky View Girls Soccer team(s) -Varsity and JV. Call me crazy but I think this semester is going to be a little crazy! I decided to help out with the soccer teams because Doyle Geddes (the head coach) is not expecting a ton from me and understands that I am busy but I needed some "me" time in all of this and soccer is the only thing that I could think of that I would enjoy the most.
We are glad to be home and back in the swing of regular life. We had a great summer and are looking forward to many more to come.