Valentine's Weekend

Valentine's Day this year was even more chill than last year...I'm beginning to see a trend haha.  We decided no gifts this year since we are poor and have no time to shop anyways.  Billy did get me my favorite Ben & Jerry's ice cream though...yummm yum that's all I needed!

We had a good weekend, and kind of just counted it all as our Valentines celebrations.  Friday night we went to go see Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Yes, we actually paid money to see this movie.  No, I was NOT happy about it.  But we went with some friends and it ended up being much more entertaining than I thought.  It was fun that it was the Pride and Prejudice story...I really liked watching it with different actors/actresses playing the same characters.

Saturday we headed up to Peoria in the morning for Caitlin and Clayton's baby Jane's birthday party!  I can't believe she is one!!  It was super fun being there, seeing their cute house for the first time, and rekindling our friendship.

Quick photo of the happy little fam

Afterwards we did our normal grocery shopping and worked on school/lesson plans/grading forever.  We went on our Valentine's dinner date to Cheesecake Factory, the ultimate cliche!  I didn't even take a picture.  Wow.

Sunday was actual Valentine's day.  We decided to grill up some salmon for a little fancier of a dinner so we headed over to our friend's apartment complex to use their gas grill.  It was deeelish!  Afterwards we went over to the Johnson's so me and Danielle could finish our paintings and the boys watched a movie.

The amazing sky on Valentine's Day!  SO pretty!

Tried to get a picture with it...

Oh I forgot!  Kara sent us an amazing Valentine from Scarlett, Grayson and Piper that we LOVE.  My mom also sent us an amazing Valentine's package!!  There was a custom See's candy box in the package of ALL caramels!  Dream come true!

Thanks Scarlett for the amazing artwork!

I had Monday off of school the next day and spent the whole day grading!  YIPPEE!!  Thanks to all who made our weekend totally fun!


Also-- here's a little bonus.  I just thought I'd look for fun for some pictures from our first Valentine's Day together, February 2009.  I looked at Billy's old blog and here is what I found!

"Valentine's Day - I had a pretty fun Valentine's Day. everyone was giving away candy which is always awesome! I made an awesome pop-up card for caitlin and hid it in my house with little tweety bird elementary school kid valentine's day cards hidden all around my house with clues to where the pop-up card was hidden. caitlin loved that, and she totally liked the card. She likes giraffes a lot for some reason, so i drew on one there and also used a picture of her hugging some other girl, but i cut out that girl and put my picture from halloween of 2004 in there. it's way funny. We also had a great dinner at my apartment, lasagna with salad and garlic bread. Then we watched Eagle Eye. That movie was way intense! i don't want to watch it again ever probably, but it was a good movie."

Good times!

February Fun

The first Friday of every month the Phoenix Art Museum and the Hopi Museum (Native American) open up for free for people to walk through.  We went with the Bests, Costas, and Johnsons!  It was super fun!

I call this one "Men in a Corner"

I just wanted to be a T-Rex

Billy and I had a date day one day (that one day off in January...so I guess this doesn't count as February fun...) and went out to breakfast, to see Daddy's Home with the Johnsons, and then I hiked Camelback with Danielle.  It was an awesome day.

Billy and I started doing more official date nights as part of our New Years resolutions.  Here is one of our favorites so far at Buffalo Wild Wings!

The Johnsons are so awesome and they have started to do more official date nights as well and they invited us over for one of their dates, painting!!

As far as I got...I have since finished!

Boo ya!  I kind of messed up the letters but I still think it looks ok

Billy's beautiful scenery painting

 We got free burritos from Chipotle for them trying to win customers back which was awesome!

Flower dissection again this year!

Awesome painting by a student!  I love it!

Both of us have been reading/listening to Harry Potter and borrowed the movies from my friend Rachel!  It has been SO fun living in the Harry Potter world over these past few months!  Rachel let me keep her DVDs since she has them all on Blu-Ray!  Holla!

 Look what Bruce and Karen dropped off one night on their way home from CA...SCORE!!

One morning on my way into work...gotta love these AZ skies!

Anyways, we did more random stuff too but that's it for now!  Life is good!

Big family news!

My brother Derek called me the other day (Jan 24th?) and the following conversation happened:
Derek: "This is my girlfriend Mariah"
Me: "Awesome!  Nice to meet you!"
Derek: "We have some news!  We are getting engaged!"
Me: "WHAT?!"

I was pretty shocked for a couple days haha but eventually got over it and now I am super excited!!  I GET A NEW SISTA!!  I'm stoked!!!  The wedding is May 20th in Palmyra, NY!  Mariah is awesome and I feel super lucky I get her as a sister in law!  They got officially engaged a week later and the rest is history!  Welcome to the Sutherland fam Mariah!

Science Night!

On January 22 my school had a Science Night.  We had one last year too and I volunteered to help out with a fancy microscope that one of the parents was bringing from their lab at ASU.  I set up slides of student's cheek cells, onion cells, etc. and I got to walk around and look at all the other booths.  This year I said I would do 3 dissections: a frog, a shark, and a fetal pig.  I thought it would be similar to last year but BOY WAS I WRONG.  I was a super popular booth...had a constant crowd the whole night!  It was insane!  I did not get a chance to leave my table at all...stuck behind it for 2 hours.

The frog was easy, I actually did two so Billy and some other people could have more time to set up the Doc Cam so I could project the dissections onto the wall.  It wasn't working and people were getting restless to see the shark!  Turns out the shark was WAY bigger than I thought and I was going to cry when I pulled it out of the plastic.  It was like 3 ft long!  But I just sucked it up and did it!  Everyone seemed super impressed.  I didn't want to do the pig either because it was so sad but I just sucked it up for that too and it ended up being super cool.

Frog!

Hahaha I love this picture because this is my bossy, listen to what I'm saying face.

Dissecting the pig, and smiling at the same time

My instagram pic

The next day the school sent out their weekly email and I was the teacher spotlight!  Boo ya!

Well, I'm off to "practice for a half marathon"!  Hahaha :)

Life in January

Back in AZ we got back into our normal routines.  Billy started up at Thunderbird again and he took on teaching his Psychology class at BASIS all by himself.  Life is super crazy!!  Poor Billy has TONS of driving he is doing, back and forth from Thunderbird to BASIS, back to Thunderbird, home, etc.  It's crazy!  He drives over 100 miles every Wednesday.  He really enjoys school and is having a great time with his Thunderbird classes, he just wishes he had more time to devote to school work.  The AP Psychology class is fun for him to teach too but it is just a lot of extra work he definitely could have done without.  The extra money sure is nice though :)

We have been trying hard to plan things to look forward to in order to help us get through the long months of January and February.  One fun thing we did was go see Star Wars in 3D at the fancy recliner chairs theater in Gilbert with Bruce and Karen.  We met up for dinner before at a burger place, then headed over and got comfortable in our huge chairs.  Next time we will be wearing pjs and bring blankets!

Other things we've been up to...

Trying to eat healthy at work...lasted a solid week.  Boo ya.

Fun mutual activities...making snowmen out of cotton candy

One of my YW...I love my calling!

 Snowflaking the seminary teacher's door (Diana Costa) since she is an ex-YW leader...

 Snap chatting with Danielle has been one of my fave pass times since getting an iPhone

 Ice cream with the Johnsons (not sure why this pic isn't turning)

Watching lots of TV like this since it's freezing in our apt but we refuse to turn on the heat

One of my evening runs through Papago park...I love AZ sunsets!

Watching Star Wars and pretending he's the emperor

Crazy times but fun times!  We can't wait until Spring Break in March...holding out for that!