Our first major married life accomplishment

Aside from getting married itself, Brad and I have reached one of our first big married life accomplishments. Thanks to our tax return we were able to pay off our our 4Runner and officially call it "ours"....rather than Nebo Credit Union's :D Thank you, Mr. Tax Return! We were really excited to be able to do this, and to celebrate we spent a night out on the town....at least for us it was. We headed to Applebees for some good eating, strolled over to the liquidation sale at Circuit City where we purchased 2 seasons of King of Queens (our latest addiction. seriously. an addiction), made a stop at the pet store to look at the puppies (my favorite part of the night....aside from the ice cream I'm about to mention), grabbed a movie and the ice cream and headed for home to enjoy a night in comfy clothes and some good movie watching all with the weight of one less payment hanging over our heads. I insisted we take a picture of us with the newest edition to our family (the car...of course) while at the credit union so that I could scrapbook it later. Since it may be a while until I am able to find time to scrapbook, the pic can be found below (complete with ecstatic faces :).

Viva Las Vegas

For Valentine's day Brad and I decided to take a trip to St. George and Las Vegas. I hadn't been to either since my senior trip 5 years ago, and Brad hadn't been even longer to St. George. It was his first trip to Las Vegas. We packed up and left Friday morning and stayed in St. George. We had a lot of fun hanging out around town, hitting up the outlet stores, the movie theater to see "Taken", and of course...Coldstone. (Oh, how I'd do anything for Coldstone!) Brad was ecstatic to find they have an In-and-Out Burger there, and joked that we were eating there every meal....turns out we only made it there once, luckily for our waistbands. Saturday we hit the road and headed into Las Vegas.

By pure coincidence while talking to my parents a few weeks earlier we found they were going to Las Vegas for the President's Day weekend, and Brad and I mentioned we were going over Valentine's day weekend....after talking a bit we realized those holidays are the SAME weekend! So, we rolled into Las Vegas and met up with my parents to hang out in Vegas for Saturday and stayed in the hotel/casino Sam's Town, which was really nice. After hanging around the hotel for a bit, we headed down to the strip for the afternoon and Brad was far from impressed. Lots of walking, a little shopping, and a ton of weird people. I enjoy watching weird people, so I was somewhat entertained. All in all we had a great time, and it was sooo good to get away from the regular routine of our lives right now: work, school, sleep, work, school, sleep.

Somebody's Gotta Be Crazy....

Last Sunday morning a counselor in our bishopric stopped by our house before heading over to church, despite our somewhat diligent attempts to go unnoticed and unassigned at church. Our church is at 9:00am, so needless to say we weren't ready or expecting him when he stopped by at 20 mins to the hour. He said he wanted to talk to us both, but since we weren't ready yet he'd just catch up with us at church. In the bottom of my stomach I knew exactly what he was stopping by for, not only did I know he was going to extend to us a calling, I knew which calling it would be and I had had that feeling since we first moved into this ward. As we were getting ready for church, I told Brad that if they were going to call us to nursery, like I suspected they were going to, that I was going to cry. (I have never really been "exposed" to kids much, my sister was only 3 years younger than me growing up, so I never had much experience with children. And frankly, I've always just seen nursery as a 2 hour day care...not quite what I wanted to do. I'm bad, I know.) He just laughed and said if that's what it was going to be then it would be a "good experience" for us. As you can see, he had a much better attitude about this than I had.....
After sacrament meeting we met with the counselor in the bishopric. And sure enough he said, "We'd like to extend to you a calling to serve in the nursery as teachers. Would you be willing to accept this calling?" Brad's response was and enthusiastic "Yeah, I'd love to!" (which almost made me wanna slug him for being so enthusiastic) while mine was a mere "sure, I'm willing to do that." If brownie points are gained in heaven for the enthusiasm shown when accepting a calling, I'm not counting on recieving very many for this one.... :) I am glad to say though, I never did cry about it like I told Brad I was going to if this were our calling.....so, I should get some points for that, right?
Not only were we given a nursery teacher calling, which was to start the following week, we were asked to sub in the nursery that same day. Guess they wanted to get our feet wet a little bit before pushing us completely in the water. Yes, pushing. At least for me. I know Brad will be jumping in on his own head first. I'm beginning to think that someone "up there" is crazy, for putting me in the nursery. They've gotta be. But I know there is a reason I've been called to serve in that position, and I'm going to try my best to have a good attitude about it and find out what my purpose is there. My guess is that the purpose for me may be to find I'm not gonna be ready for kids anytime soon. Lol. Just kidding. But luckily I have an enthusiastic husband serving with me, and hopefully I will be able to learn from his example and willingness to serve. So, buckle up, we're in for an adventure!