Also

I also forgot to mention that we booked a trip to Disneyland for Spring Break! We will be driving, which will save us a ton of money on gas, and I am stoked because I finally feel willing to splurge on a few Disney items I have been wanting every time we go! For example...

It has been a while...again

I figured I should give you all a quick little update since I haven't blogged for a while. School is back in full swing, and it's going to be a busy semester. Brandon currently has 5 classes and has assignments for his internship class to do (he is doing his internship at work), and I am taking 18 credits again. My classes this semester seem like they are going to be a bit more work, mostly because they are psychology classes, so it is something pretty new to me. Brandon is working just over 30 hours, and I am working about 29 hours, which is the least amount of hours I have worked since my second semester of freshman year. So needless to say we have been pretty busy these past two weeks!
Today after school Brandon and I have to go to the bank, then we have an interview for a girl's dissertation study, then we have to go to the grocery store, go to his parents house, go the library, and pack all before ten. It is going to be a busy afternoon! Tomorrow we are going to Boise! I am excited to see my fam, even though it has only been a month since we last saw them. We can't leave until after five because Brandon has to work all day, but at least we don't have school on Monday, so it will still be a decently long weekend.
We talked more about grad schools yesterday and I think we have it narrowed down to our top three: University of Georgia, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in that order. The longer is stays cold here the more excited we get to go somewhere warm!

What a good weekend!

I just want to take a minute (or several) and tell you all how great my weekend was! First, Friday morning I got to sleep in until 8:00, and it was magical. Brandon and I got up and took our time getting ready and packing for the weekend, and finally hit the road around 11:00 after picking up our Christmas cards at Walmart. The drive was long, but we made it there by watching/listening to Santa Clause 2. We got to Boise around 4:00 and hung out with the fam all night! I helped my mom make a tasty dinner, then went to Target with her to pick up Anthony's pictures. Let me tell you, my brothers are pretty dang good looking. It's incredible how much they have grown up. When we were at Target, we bought Christmas Vacation 2. What. A. Ripper. I talked my mom into letting my brothers open their gifts from me and Brandon! We got Adrian a hammock, and Anthony opened his birthday present, which was a wallet. Then they made us each open up a present! Brandon got the newest Maroon 5 cd and the movie The Dark Knight Rises, and I got the Elvis Christmas cd. Let me tell you: best gift ever!!!!
Saturday morning we woke up early, and my mom and I took Adrian to his wrestling match. We dropped him off around 7:45, then we went to Walmart for some shopping. Afterwards we went to McDonalds for some breakfast beverages. We both commented on how we wish we were the kind of ladies that went to Starbucks, but we're cheap, and Starbucks is not, so McDonalds it was. Then it was back to the high school for some wrestling. Adrian had a by his first match, so he didn't end up wrestling until after 12:30. Brandon's parents got to the school at 12:30 to pick him up and take him to the game, so he didn't get to even see Adrian wrestle. It was fun but scary to see Adrian wrestle. Most of the time I wanted to jump over the railing and punch the kids my little bro was wrestling. It made me so nervous! But not the girl, he conquered the girl real quick.
After wrestling, we went home and ordered some pizza. Brandon's family came over after the game and had dinner with us before they headed back to Logan. It was nice to have both families together! After dinner we six went to look at the coolest lights in Boise. A video of it can be seen here. We went home and watched Dark Knight Rises, except only Brandon and dad made it through the whole movie. The rest of us are old people and went to bed early.
Sunday we woke up early again and drove to Twin Falls to meet family and exchange gifts. Adrian rode with me and Brandon on the way there, and we listened to some music from our past. It was pretty great, that kid is a hoot. We got to Sizzler, ate some tasty food, then went back to the cars to exchange gifts. We blasted the Elvis cd from our car, and got to watch my dad and grandma bust a few moves in the parking lot. It would have been embarrassing if it hadn't been so dang funny.
I got to spend some quality time with my mom, watch Adrian wrestle for the first time, dance with him in the car, watch my dad dance (sorta), and laugh with my entire family all weekend. It was so much fun!! Hopefully I get to see them again soon.
Brandon and I came home and put the presents under the tree and made milkshakes and nachos for dinner, then laid down to watch more Revenge. I fell asleep pretty early, but we got to sleep until 6:30 this morning, so we were pretty happy!
I want to gloat about Brandon's grades!! He got his first 4.0 ever in college!! The finance final that he was most nervous about ended up being his best grade out of any of his finals. He got 100%!!! How great is that? He is such a hard worker, I am so proud of him!!
It started snowing here around 1:00 and hasn't stopped yet! I was going to maybe leave early because I woke up sick today, but I am hoping that the snow will slow down sometime before 5:00. Unfortunately it doesn't look like that is going to happen. Tonight is sushi night, and maybe some ice cream from Coldstone. Hope you all have a good week!

Finishing the semester off right.

Maybe I am jumping the gun here. I don't even have 2 of my final grades yet, but who cares. I am going to tell you anyways. This is mostly for those of you who don't have Facebook, and for those of you who do, you are just going to have to hear about it again!

This semester, after taking 18 credits and working 33 or more hours a week, I ended with a GPA of 3.94. This takes me from an overall GPA of 3.6 to 3.7. That is a ton!! I took my one and only final this morning and feel pretty good about it, plus I had a high A in the class beforehand.Brandon knows for sure that he has 3 A's, and we are just waiting on his last two classes to post the final grades. We are pretty proud of ourselves!

It is kind of incredible to look back on how far we have come since before we started even dating each other. The semester that we started dating, Brandon hardly went to his classes, and I got a C for the first time ever in my entire life. We both had a lot going on that semester, and it reflected in our grades. It's crazy how much a healthy relationship can do for other aspects of your life!

Finals week. Finally.

Guys. Where did this semester even go? Seriously, we just got back from Florida like 3 weeks ago, I'm pretty sure of it. Now Christmas is in 25 days? Brandon and I are so confused about where all of our time went. I didn't work nights, neither of us worked weekends, and we really did spend a lot of time at home together, so why did it go so fast? Not that we are complaining, because now we have a three week break, but if time keeps moving faster and faster then that means eventually (soon) we will be grown ups. And that does not sound fun.

This semester finals won't be too bad really. Brandon has one final this afternoon, and only one tomorrow at 11:30. He was supposed to have a final at 7:30 tomorrow morning but his professor cancelled it! I have one final on Wednesday at 9:30, and then an easy paper due Wednesday night by midnight. I had a 5 page Spanish paper due today, but I worked extra hard on it last week and turned it in Friday so I wouldn't have to worry about it over the weekend. The best part of this whole week is the fact that we don't have anywhere to be on Tuesday and Thursday until 9:15, so we get to sleep in!!! Friday neither of us are working because we are getting up early and heading to Boise!!

Let me tell you about the past two weekends. Since it is now December, I have been in full on Christmas-spirit mode. The first weekend in December we decorated for Christmas and made cookies. That Saturday we had Brandon's family over for hot chocolate and cookies and we watched Christmas With the Kranks! That was a pretty good weekend, but honestly nothing can compare to this past weekend!

Friday night we babysat Brandon's four little cousins. I absolutely adore them, and they pretty much worship me too, so we have a really good relationship. While we were waiting for Brandon to get off work we started watching Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas. When Brandon got there we made Christmas shaped sugar cookies and let them decorate them. It was messy!! Ruby is 4, the youngest, and her cookies were just a mess of frosting and sprinkles. They didn't look very tasty, but at least it was fun! After the kids went to bed Brandon and I sat in front of the fireplace, and I fell asleep for a little bit, until their parents got home. We didn't get home until after midnight and ended up sleeping in until 10:30 Saturday morning. It was super nice though, since I got kinda sick again last week. When we finally crawled out of bed, we had a tasty breakfast, then went to buy a tree skirt and a Christmas tree!! We didn't ever buy a tree skirt last year, so I was pretty excited to finally buy one. Last year we also bought our tree from Walmart and it died real quick, so this year we went to a tree lot and it made me a happy girl! Granted, it was freezing outside, but I do love going to the lots. Except this place didn't give us mini candy canes, so that was a bummer. We went home and set up our tree, had some hot chocolate, then took the truck back up to Brandon's parents. They lent us the truck to go get the tree, and they also are letting us borrow their tree stand. Brandon and I bought one of the metal kind that are a huge pain to set up (mom you know exactly what I am talking about) but his parents had one of the bigger plastic kind and that was way easier to use! After we dropped off the truck, we came home and put on Elf and started to put lights on the tree. We decided that two strands of lights wasn't enough, so we paused the movie and ran to Shopko to get some more lights.

Sidenote: we love Shopko. Like we go there at least once a week just to walk around. It was so busy on Saturday!! And their Christmas aisles were cleaned out. All their Christmas stuff was half off, and there were maybe fifteen boxes of lights left, so we got lucky.

Anyways, we got back home and finished decorating our tree, and finished watching Elf. It had started to snow when we got home, so it was perfect tree decorating weather! Luckily the snow held off until after we got out tree picked out. So we finished watching Elf, and around 5:00 decided that we should maybe get our butts off the couch and go do something. We went to Costa Vida for dinner, which was my second time that week. I guess I can go without it for so long but once I get back to it, I can't stop! After dinner we decided to go back to Shopko (told you we love it). Brandon and I have been talking a lot since Thanksgiving about how to do Christmas for each other this year. We feel like when we need or want something, we just buy it, and that last year for Christmas we bought each other things just to buy them. This year we decided to take the money we would have spent and put it towards gifts for children in need. At Shopko they have an Angel Tree, like sub for Santa, so we went and chose an Angel off the tree and shopped for a little 4 year old girl. It was so fun to be able to buy things and know that this girl is going to have a better Christmas because of it. It made me really grateful for my parents and how hard they have worked my whole life to be able to provide a good life for me and my brothers.  Brandon's brother James only tells us that he wants world peace for Christmas, so we decided to do another angel but in his name. And I had so much fun doing the first one that I didn't want to put off doing the second one. This round we chose an 8 year old boy. He needed underwear and wanted anything Hulk, so we looked for Hulk underwear, but couldn't find any. That was sad for us. Anyway, what started out as just dinner to get out of the house turned into a 4 and a half hour trip out of the house. It was really nice though. Those of you who know me well know that I cry at the drop of a hat, but I had a mini cryfest because I was so happy. Christmas is my favorite time of the year because of all the happiness, and I feel like every few weeks or so lately I realize how much I have to be grateful for, and how nice it is to actually be happy.

But enough cheezyness!! After our shopping venture we went home and made brownies and watched Santa Clause, my second favorite Christmas movie! Then we fell asleep around 11. Yesterday morning we got up at the crack of dawn (7:30) to go to a missionary homecoming. We got home around 10:30, made muffins, finished Santa Clause, then took a 3 hour nap. I love naps. I can't tell you the last time I had a good, solid, nap. Man. What a good weekend!

So Brandon has his final today and I am working from 7:00 to 5:00, then I have a study session at 5:30. My professor offered to come to the study session if people provided him with pizza, so it's going to be a party! After that I have to wrap Christmas presents. It really needs to be done. Thursday we are going to a Christmas play with Brandon's family, then Friday morning we will be on our way to Boise! Brandon is going to the Potato Bowl with his family, and I get to watch Adrian wrestle for the first time in ever! I am really excited actually. Except not about the spandex. I can never get over how awkward that is.

I am going to try and post some pictures on here. I just got a new phone (smartphone!) so now I am cool and can take really good pictures. I just need to try and figure out how to get them from my phone to the computer....

Figured it out!! Okay here you go!

First night of playing with my smart phone!

 

The two cookies covered in brown sprinkles are Ruby's


 

Our tree skirt!



Our treeeee!!!

 

Some of our cute decorations. We got that snowman cookie jar for $3 at the DI!



We made these cookies the morning we decorated for Christmas and gave them to our neighbor!

 

Favorite people in the whole world.





My cute kitty.




Okay just look how little she used to be!!!!



Long time no blog

Well, I am still a lazy blogger. But you know what? That's okay, because I am taking 18 credits so I feel like its okay to be lazy every now and then. This week has been the busiest, most stressful week I probably will have all year. Looking back at everything, there really was no reason to stress, but I stressed so much that I got sick again, and I was just sick last week. I had two tests, two quizzes, a paper, a presentation, and two group project meetings to attend. Plus on top of that, I offered to model for my friend and that lasted three hours last night! However, that ended up being lots of fun. Here is a picture of my face from last night.

Kinda weird, but it looked really neat. Also I loved my eighties hair. My week is pretty much over though. I have one more group project left tonight right after work, and I told my group that we should only be there for like 40 minutes. I am way anti-school after 5:00 on Fridays.

Brandon finished one of his classes last week and ended with an A in the class! I am pretty proud, he is such a hard worker! Also, the nice thing is that before this class he had 88 credits, and once this class posts he will have 90 and that lets him register the same night as me! Its way great because now we only have to wake up at midnight to register once instead of twice. He is doing really well in all of his other classes too; he has a 407% in one of them! Bet you thought grades like that didn't exist huh? Well they do, for awesome people.

This weekend we are planning on just taking it easy. Pad Thai, Disney's The Haunted Mansion, and milkshakes tonight, Oil changes and corn maze tomorrow, then absolutely nothing on Sunday. I just want to sleep lots so I can not be sick anymore.

Last weekend was a pretty great one!! It was fall break for us which meant no classes on Friday, so Thursday at noon we busted out of this town and headed to Boise. We got there around 5:00 and went straight to Adrian's football game. It was so fun to see him playing for my old school; we even made him a sign! I tried to let only him see it so it wouldn't embarrass him, but his friend Tyson saw it and kept trying to point it out to every single kid on their team. We had dinner that night after the game and just hung out before we all went to bed. Friday everybody had school and work, so Brandon and I ran some errands, went and visited my uncle Matt, then went and toured BSU! I love their campus so much! They have lounge/cafe space in every single building that I feel really caters to the students. It gives you so many options of where to sit and hang out/study in between classes. Plus, who doesn't love the Smurf Turf right? That night we watched Rock of Ages and hung out more with the fam. Saturday, my dad, Adrian, and Brandon went hunting early in the morning, so my mom and I got up and went shopping and had a mini girls day. Anthony was taking the PSAT. When everybody got home, my dad, Brandon and I made SUPER tasty eclairs, then we all went out for Thai food for dinner! Sunday we went to Target with my parents, then hit the road. I always hate coming back to Logan, but it has to be done.

Here is a test to see if you are still/actually reading this:

Brandon asked that I insert a poll. Please leave your answer as a comment.

Where should Brandon and Caitlin attend grad school?
-Boise State University
-University of Georgia
-North Carolina State University
-University of North Carolina at Charlotte
-Utah State University

(Just a side note: if you vote for Utah State, your vote won't actually be counted)

Next week is a pretty tame week for both of us, which will be way nice. Then we are going to Idaho Falls and doing things Thanksgiving style minus the food. We always go to Idaho Falls for Thanksgiving and go to the mini bazaar and a movie, and since we are doing Thanksgiving in Boise this year, I still wanted to go to Idaho Falls and do those same things. I like tradition, what can I say.

Sophie is doing well; I'm sure you all were wondering. Since it is getting colder at night she is starting to sleep under the covers with us again. It is my absolute favorite thing. Brandon was borrowing this backpack, and Sophie loved it. One time, she crawled in it and Brandon carried her around on his back for like a good five or ten minutes. So dang cute.

There is a couple that moved into our same apartments that are getting married next month. They are both 22, and we love them! We have had them over for Wednesday night pancakes, played games, and the girl and I talk quite a bit during the week! It is nice to have some friends that live so close!

Well, today is my day of relaxation, so I am going to go read! I found the book The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel today, and my mom said my Grandma loved the movie, so I am starting on that! Have a great weekend!

Just another Thursday...

I can't seem to focus on studying for my Spanish test, so rather than waste time on Facebook, I figured I should blog a bit. Everything is all the same around here, work and school. This week it was Brandon's turn to be suffocated by test papers, but he is still alive, so no worries. I had one test this morning and did pretty well. I asked Brandon to look at my score first, so he tricked me and told me I did poorly, but I got the 8th highest score in a class of 55, so I felt way good about it! I have a Spanish quiz tomorrow and then a Spanish test next week that I am dreading, but it should turn out okay.

Last weekend my family came down to visit and it was so much fun! They got here Friday night at about ten, and by that time we were all pretty tired. So we gave them a tour of our new apartment, and then we all hit the hay. Saturday morning we woke up and had breakfast, then headed up to Brandon's family's cabin at Bear Lake. It was his parents' weekend for the cabin, but they couldn't make it so we had the cabin all to ourselves! We were seriously only three minutes away from the cabin when Sophie POOPED IN HER CRATE. It was not a fun experience. Luckily she didn't even step in it, or else the situation really would have been a disaster. We dropped off Sophie and all of our stuff at the cabin, then headed in town to Le Beau's to get a shake and go to the beach! My dad was so funny; I am pretty sure he didn't stop talking about how good his shake was all weekend. We hung out at the beach for about an hour, skipping rocks and playing in the kind of sand, just until the boys got bored. Once we got back to the cabin, we played a round of Monopoly Deal and had some lunch. After lunch, Adrian, Dad, and Brandon went shooting while Mom, Grandma, Anthony and I watched a movie and basically did nothing. It was so nice to just have time to relax! The boys got back and we watched the Utah State-Colorado State game for a while until we got hungry for dinner. After pizza, we sat in the hot tub for a while, played a round of 5 Crowns, had dessert and went to bed. Oh, I forgot about how much wildlife we saw that day! We saw a ton of deer, and also a turkey! Just a hen, but still. The only turkeys I have ever seen are the ones I end up eating....

Sunday morning Brandon and I accidentally slept in (oops) and woke up to a nice pancake breakfast being prepared by Mom and Grandma. Isn't it incredible how much better food always tastes when your mom is the one making it? My family wanted to be home around 5:00, so we left the cabin around 11:00 to make the drive back to Logan. Pretty much we got to the apartment and then my family left. It is always hard to leave them, or to see them go. Logan is only 4 hours away, but it is definitely not close enough for me!! Luckily, Adrian is coming down this weekend for the homecoming game, and then Brandon and I are going to Boise in about three weeks over fall break!

Other than Adrian coming down this weekend, more people are coming that I am excited to see! My old roommate Alycia, like me, loves dance parties. So Friday night, I am making Brandon go camping with James (okay, not really making, but I kinda told him that I wanted to have a sleepover so he should have an adventure), and Alycia is going to come up and go to the homecoming dance with me and Chelsea!! Brandon is not really one for dance parties, so I am excited to finally get to dance my little toosh off! Then back to our apartment for a good old fashioned sleepover! The next day, we have a nice reunion lunch planned for those of us that lived on the third floor of building D in the LLC. A couple of our good friends recently got back from their missions, so it will be really fun to see them! I am especially excited to see Sam! He is from Twin Falls and just got back like two weeks ago. I have been waiting to see this kid again since the day he left!

Saturday night Brandon will be home again, thankfully, and we are going to the homecoming game! Guys, we have more school spirit this year than ever before...what the heck. We have been to one game, watched two on tv, and today, we even bought special shirts for the homecoming game. We are so proud of ourselves! After the game we are planning on taking Adrian and his two friends to clean the sink at Angie's. Hopefully Adrian will actually be in the picture this time! I will try and post again next week or something....


To Alycia and my mom: If you just finished reading this, you probably have some time on your hands. I would appreciate it very much if you would go blog about something. Anything really would do.

Also, Brandon and I are buying an ice cream maker today. Remember how I have lost like 12 pounds? Yep, it's all about to go right out the window. And by out the window I mean back to my butt and hips. YAY!