Weiss Sealing and Family in Arizona

  Caitlin and I drove to California and stayed at her parents house in San Diego to go to the Newport Beach Temple for Jody and Dieter's sealing to each other and to Maddison and Ceci.  They were sealed on January 17th and it was awesome!  The girls were both so good.  Here are some pictures of them outside the temple.

Ceci had changed a lot since we last saw her.

Dieter, Jody, Maddison and Ceci

   After the sealing, we all went to BJ's at Balboa.  It was the first time I had been in a car going on the ferry and it was pretty fun.

On the Ferry

Grayson was super funny during dinner and making crazy noises when he saw a soda because he wanted to drink it so badly.

Pizookie!

Here's one of Grayson before we left for the sealing. I think this picture is really funny!

   We all drove back to Arizona the next day and everyone stayed at my parent's house.  It was pretty fun, but pretty crazy too because basically everyone got sick at one point from this flu/cold type thing that was going around.

Dad with Carter wearing their stripes

  We did a lot of fun stuff while everyone was here.  We went to the Natural History Museum, the aquarium, bowling, played at the park where we played a game from Brazil that Dieter taught us called Taco.  Jenny actually tore her meniscus playing.  We also spent a lot of time playing around the house.

Putting together a puzzle at the natural history museum

Scarlett, Maddison, and Sierra

Dieter and Kara scoring some points in Taco

Dieter ready to bat. Jenny was on my team. This photo was pre-knee injury.

Me up to bat. This game was really fun! I'm really out of shape though.

Scarlett and Whitney

Grayson loves Aunt Caitlin!

The family

My dad was helping Whitney scale the wall outside the bowling alley.  People outside thought it was very amusing.

 Here's some pictures of playing around at home. 

Grayson brought this book to the table where Caitlin was and handed it to her and started pulling himself onto her lap.  It was really funny!

Fun with Aunt Caitlin

The kids love playing with glass door to the pantry.

I had Grayson at dinner and he decided to eliminate the middle man and go straight for the corn.

We had a birthday party for Ceci while all of the cousins where there.  She got a lot of good gifts that Maddison was pretty excited about too!

Uncle Dieter lighting the candles.

Singing "Happy Birthday"

Reading one of Ceci's new books to everyone - The Billy Goats Gruff

Scarlett and Grayson watching a movie

Jenny and her kids and Dieter left.  Dieter went with them so he could fly out of California to get back to work.  Jody, Maddison and Ceci stayed for a while which was really fun.  Jody got to do a lot of shopping and returned a lot of stuff she bought, eat at Del Taco which she misses when she is in Dubai, and spend lots of quality time with us!

Maddison liked to sit on the counter and help Pop-Pop and Grammy with breakfast

Caitlin and Ceci watching a show on my mom's Nook

Ceci was cute and would prance everywhere.  This may have been when we were having our snowball fight.

I went with Jody and the girls to Jump Street where they got to play on the trampolines.

I had some fun with a feature on my phone that lets me do sequences

Ceci didn't move as fast as Maddison, so she is in tighter clumps

It looked like Ceci knew what to do on Dance Dance Revolution.

We cooked smores one night and it was pretty fun.



Christmas Break!

  We had a pretty eventful Christmas break this year.  This year was supposed to be Christmas at the Sutherland's house, but I only had Christmas day off from work, so I couldn't spend Christmas there.  Caitlin and I went down to San Diego the weekend before Christmas and I drove back to Arizona on Sunday to be back at work on Monday.  Caitlin stayed in San Diego, enjoyed Christmas there, drove with her family to Utah for her cousin Greg's wedding, then on the way back from Utah her family stopped at the Las Vegas airport and she flew back to Arizona.
  I'll start some pictures from December 1st.  Caitlin, my mom, and I decorated the Christmas tree and the tree looked pretty good!

Me wearing my cool sweat pants that are pulled up a bit.

Caitlin admiring the tree

This is what my dad likes to do during the tree decorating.

    On December 19th before we drove to San Diego, we opened a few presents that we got for each other and that my parents got for Caitlin since she was going to be in San Diego for Christmas day.  It was pretty fun to open presents early!  Caitlin knew what all of her presents were though!  Well, all but one - she didn't know that the jewelry stand was a jewelry stand thing.  I'm not sure what it's called.  The present opening started with a snowball fight!  My mom bought soft "snowballs" from the Hallmark store for each of the families in our family to have snowball fights with.  It was a lot of fun!

Caitlin throwing a snowball.  My dad went up to the second story and was attacking from above.

Caitlin with her jewelry thing.

Me opening up a gift.  It was an awesome flannel shirt!

Caitlin with some presents to unwrap.  It's a cupcake cookbook and the complete set of the Magic School Bus.

Caitlin looking through the cupcake cookbook.

Caitlin was pretty excited to open her iPad Mini that we got at the Thanksgiving Black Friday sale.

Glued to her iPad.

The view from the second story.

 Caitlin and I drove down to San Diego the next morning.  We had a ton of fun there.  I ate tons of cookies, like tons!  Caitlin and I ran 8 miles with Tricia and her friend Jen.  It was the farthest I have ever gone!  I felt good.  Then later that night we went down Christmas Card Lane which was pretty awesome.  Here are some pictures.

Sponge Bob

Spiderman!

Caitlin and Cody being funny in the car.

Busy street

  While I was there I got to open my Christmas gifts!  I got a new skateboard, a couple shirts, the Man of Steel movie, the Nokia Lumia 925, and a Fart Machine!  It was really fun.  It was too bad that I couldn't stay for Christmas though.  It was a lot of fun to be with Caitlin's family, even for a short time.
  Caitlin stayed in San Diego and I came back to Arizona because I had to work.  On Monday, I went to the Gammage theatre with my parents and watched Michael McLean's Forgotten Carols.  It was fun because it was a Christmas play around Christmas time and when Caitlin and I were dating, we went to see the Forgotten Carols at the UVU events center.  It was our 5th date I think.  Here's a panorama I did with my phone during intermission -

  Christmas morning was fun!  It was like I was in high school again because it was just me and my parents.  We had fun opening gifts.  Here are some pictures -

My parents got me a Nintendo 64!

My dad has worn the same striped sweatshirt for like 30 years, so Jon and Kara pitched in with me and Caitlin and we got him this new, hip Volcom striped sweatshirt.

This is a pretty cool Under Armor running jacket my mom got me.  It came in pretty handy when Caitlin and I ran the half marathon - I'll post about that later.

  After we opened presents, I got on Skype and my virtual presence was had at Caitlin's house.  It was fun to be with them on Christmas morning.  Caitlin got a lot of good gifts!  She was very excited about the Fossil watch that she didn't think she was going to get.  Here's what it looks like -

It's a rose gold watch called the Cecile.  Cait's been drooling over it for a while now.

 The picture was blurry on Skype so I kind of got a headache watching, but it was worth it to see my hot wife!  Here's what the screen looked like -

Pretty blurry huh?

  Jayce was pretty funny on Skype.  The first thing he said to me was he asked, "Hey Billy, do you notice anything different about me?" I didn't notice anything, so Jayce said, "I am not sniffing as much anymore."  And that was hilarious because he's been doinging these really loud sniffs repeatedly.
  Later in the day we went to an early dinner at Uncle Tom and Aunt Karen's house.  The food was good and the Wyatts, Tom Barnes Family, me and my parents were there.  Here's a picture of the multi-colored Jell-O that Alysa made, it was delicious!

  Everyone there was asking me where Caitlin was, so I had to explain to everyone a million times that she was at her family's house in San Diego and I couldn't stay there because I had work.  It was funny that everone asked me about that separately from each other.

  I spent the rest of the Christmas break hanging out, playing Hang Time on my N64, grading papers for Caitlin, working, and stuff.  Here's some pictures -



The Sutherlands love pushing the limit with their cars and drive way past the empty line so confident that their cars won't run out of gas. I always am so nervous when I'm there for this, but I was driving home from work and the needle went past the empty line before I got to Costco to fill it up!  I had to send this picture to Caitiln and her mom so they'd be proud of me!

Caitlin doesn't really like going to Panda Express and I love it, so we rarely go.  She's a good sport sometimes and goes because she knows I like it so much.  I had to make sure to get my fill of it while Caitlin was in San Diego so I wouldn't want to go so much when she came back.

While grading some assignments for Caitlin, I found this answer to question #6 which was "What are your plans for Winter Break?"  I was a little freaked out and I thought this response was funny.

This response literally killed me and then I came back to life!  I thought the answer for #56 was so funny, I wanted to give them the points for it, but it's completely wrong so I marked it wrong.

I sent this picture to Caitlin just to remind her, in case she was having too much fun in San Diego, that I am fun too and that I make some darn good cookies.  Caitlin's mom makes way good cookies, so that wasn't much of a strong argument...

  Christmas break was a lot of fun!  I love Christmas and I'm glad that Caitlin got to take a break from teaching and get in some good time with her family.

 

V-DAY 2014!

Hi guys!  IT'S ME CAITLIN!!!  I have not blogged in literally half a year.  I think.  It has been a long time.  I should be doing school work (as always) but I am going to do a quick post right now just because I feel like it.

Yesterday was Valentine's day, and it was the best day ever.  Billy is so great.  We were reminiscing about Valentine's days past yesterday and we both agreed he has greatly improved in his holiday skillz since we first got married.  Our first Valentine's day was a bit sad and there were some tears shed, but this year he completely blew me away!

First of all, let me just tell you a little about my life right now.  Teaching.  Ok that's it.

Haha but really though.  Teaching is my life.  I always say "teaching is the worst job in the world, why would anyone do this?!" because really it is.  So if you ever think my life is awesome, THINK AGAIN MY FRIEND.  Teaching is hard.  But, to be honest, it does have its moments.  So here is my schedule:  wake up at 5, leave for school by 6:30, drive (at least) 40 minutes, teach all day (most days it is literally all day with one period for lunch), then student hours/parent hours/staff meeting, then a little lesson planning for the next day, then drive 40 minutes home, get home at 6, eat, finish planning tomorrow's lessons, grade some papers and go to sleep at 9:30.  And every day is the same.  And every day is SO tiring.  So that is why any free time I have is used eating ice cream and watching a show.  But I also have to make time for running or I start getting depressed and depressed mixed with stressed is NOT a good mix!  It can lead to a weird rash on your legs??  (I won't go into the details haha) So life is crazy.  Whiny rant over.

Ok anyways so yesterday I wake up and have kind of forgotten it's Valentine's day since I'm super tired.  So I go downstairs to grab the keys to leave and this is in the key drawer with the keys on top of it!

Boo yah See's candy!  Side note--Billy has NEVER gotten me chocolates for any occasion in our whole 5+ years knowing each other!  It's pretty hilarious.  We were talking about it the other day.  So this was a big day!  I love chocolate.

I thought "wow!  What a great Valentine's surprise!" thinking that was it until dinner.  And perfectly happy with that.  But THEN I get to school super late so I have to teach basically right when I get there and then one of the front office girls brings me a card and tells me to open it ASAP.  So I do, and it's from BILLY!  And I read it to my class and they were all oohing and ahhing and pretty excited, just like I was.  Then they were trying to guess Billy's name forever and I wouldn't tell them.

Then every period throughout the day I got a little gift delivered by the front office girls!!  The first one was nail polish and had a note that said "is this your favorite nail polish color?  TREAT-YO-SELF".  That made me LOL.  The second one was lotion and it had a note that said "for your purse so you don't have to put chapstick on your hands anymore" (because I really did that the other day).  Then the next one was chapstick with a note that said "In case you run out of lotion" HAHA!  Then the next one was a bag of peanut M&M's and the note said "so you don't have to share with me" (since he doesn't like peanut).  Then the last one was the move Les Miserables with a note that said "so you can have the songs stuck in your head forever".  He knows me.

I also got some gifts from students.  One of them being ANOTHER MUG.  I threw away 6 Christmas mugs (they were all ugly).  Why do they think I love mugs so much?

There was also treats and chocolate fountains in the teacher's lounge at lunch.

Let's just say it was the best day ever at school so far.  Very exciting and fun.  Billy is so great.

Then I got home and these were on the counter:

Sent from my Mom!  Yummmmmmmy!  She's da best.  And THEN I found a brand new Fossil necklace hanging up with my other necklaces from Billy!  That was a super fun surprise!

Then we went to dinner at Buca di Beppo and then watched Ender's Game together, which Billy had all planned.  It was a great day.

I love Billy so much.  Not just because he planned an awesome day, but because he is always trying to help me out and make me happy.  He is ALWAYS helping me with my school stuff because he knows how stressed I am.  He is always offering to make me dinner, or pack me a lunch, or do anything to lighten my load.  He tells me to put my feet up when I get home from school and brings me a glass of water.  I also love him because of the person he is.  He is funny, smart, clever, genuine, caring, thoughtful, responsible, etc. etc.  He makes us say our prayers together every night.  He makes sure we are fulfilling our callings at church.  I'm a lucky gal!

Anyways, this turned into a sappy and super long winded post.  G2G put grades in the grade book, grade some stuffs and plan my lessons for next week all before Billy gets home from work.  Probs not gonna happen.  SEE YA!

P.s. I know we still need to blog about Christmas and new years and about Jody and Dieter and everyone coming out here and about the temple open house and about basically everything else in our lives but it can't be done right now sorry!