Thursday, December 1, 2011

Cruisin'

Mike and I were able to go on a cruise to Mexico in October for our Anniversary (thanks to Uncle Sams tax return from last year). It was SO nice! We went to Catilina Island and Ensenada, which gave Mike the opportunity to see the ocean for the first time and to leave the country for the first time. We drove out to California over conference weekend, spent the night in Vegas and took off the next day to the ship. We had the most "romantic" stateroom complete with bunk beds! Yes, we are cheapo's. The beds were amazingly comfortable though :)

The cruise was really cold the whole time so we didn't do any excursions. Since most of them had to do with being in the water, we opted out. We did however, make many excursions to the dining room (can you say all you can eat Frozen Yogurt?). On the formal night, the waiter brought Mike 2 plates of crab and we ate lots of tiger shrimp. I swear I gained at least 6 pounds on our trip!! I didn't weigh myself for at least a week or two after just incase.

I did make it to the gym once on the cruise, but there is something about running on a treadmill... that is on a ship... that is on the ocean. The gym was on the very front of the ship and all of the treadmills/ellipticals faced the front windows. I could see the bow of the boat going down and up and from side to side. Feeling the boat moving and seeing the blinds in the windows moving slightly... made me feel like I was running sideways and about to tip over. I was due for some motion sickness pills after that little jaunt.

My favorite parts of the trip were sitting in the dining room really late at night and talking to Mr. Berry as we sipped on hot chocolate, or going on walks on top of the ship late at night. Mike also bought me a massage in Mexico (which I was thinking might be sketchy based on the surroundings of the shop) but it was $20 for 40 minutes and the best $20 he could've ever spent! I had never had a massage before, but it was SO heavenly. I also loved the car ride there and back because we were nerds and listened to Harry Potter 7 the entire time and had discussions about it. It was so nice to spend time with Mr. Berry and to have no cares in the world for a little while. We'll have to go again sometime, but with friends. Any takers? :)

What the Berry's have been up to

I figure it's been a while and I need to catch up. Here are a few things that have been going on since September... or whenever I last posted.

-- After a lot of thought and prayer, Mike decided to change his major and his career path and is now going into Geophysics. I think he will do so FABULOUS! He is super smart and loves anything and everything that has to do with science. It's going to take him 2 1/2 more years of school (blah!), and then another 2 for his masters degree, but I'm happy that he's excited about it and that he knows what he wants to do! Time will fly like it always does and he'll be done in no time! He thought he wanted to go the insurance route for a long time, but that was way too stressful for him. He was always worrying about work.. and I mean ALWAYS. Commission jobs will do that to you I guess :) Anyway, we're happy with that decision and feel like it's going to be what's best for Mike and for our family. In the mean time Mike is still going to be working for Farm Bureau part time and has another job he started a couple of weeks ago that will be perfect with school since he can basically make up his own hours. Mike will be driving with me to Logan next semester so he can go to classes and I'll drop him off at school like his little mother (precious!) Now we just need to figure out why God wants us in Brigham City since Farm Bureau is what brought us here. I'm pretty sure we know why, but I'm sure there are even more reason that we don't know about yet :)

-- We paid homage to our Mexican ancestors and went on a cruise in October for our anniversary.

-- Mike got called to be the assistant scout master in the ward and I got called to be a Laurel advisor. It's kind of weird to drive to mutual with each other :) We're both loving it and and we're learning a lot.

-- Got a new front door for the house

-- Painted more things in the house

-- Had an amazing Thanksgiving with the Merrell's

And we're happy as clams. Life has it's rough edges to it, but we're working out the kinks and so far so good.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Man Vs. Mud

Well on September 4th, Mike and I hit the big 2 years of marriage and what better (and romantic, might I add) way to spend an anniversary then to trudge through the mud with the in-laws?! Mike and I ran it with my sisters Chelsie and Brooke and it was SO fun! There were a bunch of huge water slides we went down, we army climbed through one part, we went through a really long trench that I'm assuming was dug out by a back ho and oh my goodness... hilarious! It was deep in some place and shallow in others and Chelsie and I had some serious struggles with not tipping over. I guess Mike and Brooke just have outstanding skills. Anyway, here are some pics.







For some reason I didn't realize how extremely dirty I was going to get. I spent a LONG time in the shower trying to get clean. :)

After the "race", my dad took me and my sisters out to Maddox for dinner. Chelsie and Andrea were about to move away (to Oregon and Italy) :( and it was the last time for all of us to go out to dinner with each other before everyone took off. Can I just say how much I love my sisters? They are hilarious and I am always giggling when I'm with them. Now it's just me and Brooke and we'll have to find some way to keep life entertaining in the sisters department.



Sunday, August 21, 2011

The House

We have been busy, busy, busy with the house every weekend and it's been really fun to see it transform into our home. There will be lots of pictures so hopefully you'll be able to see our progress.

I guess a little info about our house. It has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, and the basement has a bedroom already framed so that's another things we'll be working on in the coming months/years (not so sure how long it's going to take to get to certain projects). When we moved in, it was kind of a mess, but we had a lot of help from our families to get things scrubbed, painted, scraped, moved, sanded, lifted, you name it! Mike's dad fixed A LOT of things as well and we are so grateful for all of the help we got from everyone. It sure made things easier for us!

And now on to the plethora of pictures!

Before we moved all of our stuff in, the first thing to happen was we painted the ceilings throughout the entire house and the family room. It's amazing what a little paint can do to completely change a room. Furniture and pictures helped out the front room a bit too.

BEFORE


AFTER




Last weekend we painted the kitchen red with some left over paint we had from our previous apartment. It also made things seem a bit more homey and it was fun to spend the morning with Mike just listening to music and talking about random stuff as we painted our little hearts out.

BEFORE


After


Before


AFTER






Here are a couple of more pictures of different rooms in our house.

This is the entertainment room in the basement the people here before us were working on. Once we've put in a new bathroom upstairs and put in a yard next spring, we'll be putting carpet in here and using it.



This is a little kid room and it's really cute. It has a elephant and a monkey painted on the wall and there's a giraffe on the back of the door. I would take a picture of it now, but you definitely don't want to see the mess of boxes in there.



We'll be working on the rest of the house gradually and I'll post pictures when more things happen around here and when more rooms get painted and worked on.



Changes

The last month has been completely full of changes. They've been very good changes, but scary ones too. Here are a few of the things that have happened.

-Got a new position/promotion at work which gave me the hours I wanted and a raise which was nice. So far it has been great, but I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing half the time so it's been a little adventure/stressful.

-Moved into our house (Post coming up about this little diddy)

- Moved into a new ward.
We went from being one of the oldest couples in the ward to the absolute YOUNGEST. If I could split my ward up into percentages according to age... hum, I'd say 65% are 60 and older, 25% of the people are in their early 30's and older, and 10% are in their late 20's or they're teenagers & kids. Where does that put us? With the teenagers or something? :) No, so far it's been great, just a tad hard (for me especially) to get used to. It seems like women just need friends and since we've moved here I've always had an entire row to myself to sit alone on in Relief Society and whatnot so as lame as it sounds, it's been hard for me to be a loner and to have no one to talk to. But one upside! I can stretch out and take a nap if I'm ever feeling like it with all the chairs :) They do make them nice and cushy. I'm sure it'll be just fine and I just need to be brave and get to know people.

-Had our cars broken into
On Friday morning as I was pulling out of the driveway to drive to work in Logan, the passenger door swung open on my car. I thought that was weird and remembered our neighbor telling us they had had their GPS and DVD player for their kids stolen out of the car and that whoever stole it had left the passenger door of their car slightly ajar so they wouldn't hear the door get shut in the middle of the night. I pulled back in the driveway and looked around in the car and saw that Mike's GPS doc was on the floor, but they hadn't taken anything. I thought it was really weird. They must have been looking for one specific thing because they didn't take the $100 gift card we had (there's only 13 cents on it so we didn't care that it was sitting out) on the seat. There were other things they could've taken too, so I thought it was odd. Mikes car had the same thing happen, but once again, nothing stolen. We had our car doors locked so whoever did it must be good at getting in quickly. On that note, being worried about being robbed has also been a new change :)

So far the changes we've had have been awesome, hard to get used to, and wonderful, but I'm grateful that we know this is where we're supposed to be and what we're supposed to be doing. It makes it all easier.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Shout out to Brooke!

I decided it was time to change my blog background since I was getting a tad sick of it. While doing that, I thought, maybe other people are getting sick of theirs too. If you're sick of yours, you should probably click on the link on the top left hand corner of my blog. This is my sister Brooke's blog site. She is an HTML coding genius and creates free blog backgrounds. Check her out!!

http://www.babblingbrookedesigns.com/



Lake Powell 2011

Every summer of my life, and even before I was born, my family has gone to Lake Powell for a week in July. We take the house boat out on the Lake, eat lots and lots of yummy food, play cards late into the night, ski, tube, wake board, and live in a week of bliss!

Now, I thought I loved Lake Powell, but the second Mike got on the lake last year, he was hooked/obsessed/in love. I'm so happy he enjoys it and will put up with being cramped on a house boat with 15+ people for a week. This year was so fun and it was SO relaxing, which we both needed. Here are a few pics from the week.



My cute parents


This is my mother wake boarding on her 58th birthday. She is pretty hard core. :)






Mike and my nephew Colter


Mike, Christian and Colter Riding a 2 man. They didn't last long.


And of course, we can't go a single year without something happening to the suburban or the trailer :) Luckily this tire blew out right before an exit in Ogden.




Sunday, July 3, 2011

What? Homeowners?

Mike and I are moving to Brigham City at the end of July into our HOUSE! We will close in a little over 2 weeks. Am I excited? YES! We got a really great deal and the house is in really good shape.

Here are some pics. It needs a lot of lovin' so don't judge :) We're so excited to fix it up.


Front View: It looks so much better in person (it also doesn't help that it's winter in the pic), but we're going to rip out the yard and do some new landscaping.


Front room: Yes the walls are a neon yellow color. We'll be painting first thing.


Partially finished basement- The room with lights on in it is a big entertainment room.


One of the bedrooms

Flying By

My goodness, I feel like summer just started and it's already almost over!

Things are going really well for Mr. Berry and I. Our classes this semester have been all together... delightful. I am taking anatomy in Brigham and it has been killer. I took it from Andy Anderson the summer I got engaged... yep dropped that one! Doing it in Brigham has been SO much easier and I don't feel like it's been taking over my life. It is still really hard and I have to study a lot, but luckily, I have found a study buddy and we've been able to both do really well in that class. It also helps that my professors tests aren't ridiculous and he actually tests on things that either you know or don't know compared to Andy's where he had a trick in what seemed like every question.

Mike just finished up one of his classes last week and he'll finish Psych Stats at the beginning of August. I took that class last year so I've sort of been able to help out, but not really. It's funny how you forget things. I'm sure I will forget 80% of what I learn in anatomy this semester, but oh well! I'll be officially done with school and I'll never have to use it anyway.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Catching up

So I haven't blogged for a while. It seems like it's turning into a monthly thing. Yes, I am lame. Sorry!

Right now things are just peachy for us. We only have about 1 more month of classes and then we'll get to take a little breather for a couple of weeks until summer classes start up. I've got one more class to take this summer and I'll finally be graduated! I'm so excited to be done with my undergrad I can hardly stand it! After graduation I'm going to get my Speech Language Technician License and hopefully I'll be able to find a job working in a school before I apply to grad school next December so I can get some experience.

Mike and I are planning on moving to Brigham City in August... yes the ghetto of Utah (besides ChicOgden) It's going to be a party! It is there that our children will grow up and go to Box Elder High in all of its glory... I AM excited about all of the fruit stands though. Hello canning!

Mike has decided he wants to keep doing Insurance for his career which is pretty awesome! We absolutely love the people he works with and he likes his job so why not? :) We know it's the right place for us to be and we're both happy about it. I don't know if I'm extremely happy about the location of this job, but I will survive and hopefully with the temple being built, the city will get bigger and there will be more things to do besides go to Maddox and Wal-Mart. I'm just grateful that Mike knows what he wants to do with the rest of his life and that we kind of have a plan. We've definitely been blessed and I'm excited to see what's ahead of us!

Here is a website (http://www.kingofforwards.com/hilarious-funny-forwards/limited-edition-utah-barbies/) that made barbies for different cities in Utah. This is what Brigham City got.


Hum....

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Once of the BEST weekends!



Last weekend was one of THE best weekends of my life. I was able to eat Sunday dinner with an apostle and every single one of my brothers and sisters. It was so awesome.

Two Sundays ago, Mike and I went to my parents for Sunday dinner and my mom started assigning out jobs for everyone for the next Sunday (stake conference) to make different things for dinner. When I asked my mom how many people she said were coming, she said 17. I asked her who was coming to make it 17, because that was A LOT of people. Her eyes got all watery and she said, "People your dad loves." She wouldn't tell me who because she said it was a surprise for my dad and she didn't want us all gawking at him when he got home from a meeting. That night when Mike and I got home, we were talking about it and wondering who it was, and Mike said, "Could your whole family be flying in?" I started counting everyone in my family and it added up to 17... Hum..

The next morning I called my mom and told her our idea and she said we were right! She was flying in Trent, who brought Erin and their boys, Justin and Angie, and Brooke. She bought all of my siblings tickets in December to come home to see my dad be released. The last time we were all together was when my sister Andrea got married, 3 1/2 years ago so I was SO excited.

Friday rolled around and everyone flew in. My mom wanted everyone to stay low until the Saturday adult session of conference. She asked all of us to be sitting on our families bench (which is where we always sat in church growing up) before my dad came in. Before the meeting started my dad came in with Elder Perry and sat on the stand and was looking around. He looked at me and winked and then I saw him wink at Andrea and the rest of us were smiling like dorks. I was right next to Justin and my dad didn't even notice him. Then, my dad saw him and he definitely was surprised. The rest of my siblings (Brooke and Trent) weren't there yet, but when they walked in, my dad was even more surprised and broke down crying. It was a very special night. After the meeting we all went home and spent the rest of the night talking and staying up late together. It was so fun!!

The next morning we all got dinner ready, went to an amazing meeting together, and had Sunday dinner with Elder Perry and Elder Fischer of the Quorum of the seventy. Elder Perry is such an amazing person. He was so genuine and so sweet. He gave the blessing on the food and you could feel the spirit radiating from him. Elder Fischer and his wife were also so nice and fun to talk to. It was such an amazing experience.



After he left, my whole family spent the rest of the night playing games and talking. It was honestly one of the best weekends of my life. I love my family so much and I was so grateful that my mom had the idea to get all of us together.

All of the girls getting dinner ready



All of my siblings

Sunday, January 16, 2011

December/January

These last couple of months have just whizzed by! Christmas break was really fun for us and gave us a lot of time to spend together which was SO nice. In December I started working and so far it has been awesome. I really like all of the people I work with and our managers are awesome. The company really cares for its employees and I think that in itself is awesome. I'm still learning a lot, but I finally feel like I'm getting the hang of things.

When it got closer to Christmas we were able to go to the David Archuletta concert with our friends the Drydens. We got there a little late so we couldn't get into the conference center which was kind of a bumber, but we were able to get into the conference center theater to see the performance. It was SO good. That kids voice is like butter!

For Christmas this year, we spent Christmas Eve and morning with my family. It was fun to have my sister Chelsie's little kids this year so there was a little magic. After lunch, we headed over to Mike's parents house and opened presents, had Christmas dinner, and watched a movie. It was a really fun day.

Eating my dads traditional Christmas morning Green Eggs and Ham.




As for January, we both decided to take all of our classes online so we could both work whatever schedules we needed to and not have to work around our school schedules. We'll see how that works out since I'm a huge procrastinator. I've taken online classes before and wasn't very good at staying on top of things so that is a pretty big goal for me. :)

Last night we were able to go with my parents and Christian up to Beaver Mt. for their ward ski night. It was FABULOUS! I didn't realize how much I missed skiing. It was so fun! Mike and I really want to go a lot more this winter because we both had a lot of fun. It has been a great couple of months! Just can't wait for warmer weather!