...christmas day...and nothing to do...

hey there. well, it's christmas day...and i have nothing to do. we opened presents at 630 this morning...and that's about all we have planned. when i was younger, we used to be able to play with presents all day...or use them, like gaming systems like the N64 and such. now that i am older, it is kinda hard to use a bunch of clothes all at the same time. and i as i get older(i say that like i have some years behind me), i realize more and more that i would love to spend this time with that special someone that i haven't found yet. someday though i am sure. i did get something i could use to pass the time, but i already watched it. i got the blue man group concert tour dvd. and we watched it already. and it is only 1145 in the morning. i am done watching tv though. i want to get out and do something. i am tired of being lazy. i guess i could go and finish my chores that i didn't do on saturday.
saturday was a good day. went and cleaned the church in the morning after shopping for kati, then watched football all day. first was the trinity game on tv, which they won!! and then it was the BYU game, which they barely won but should have won by alot more. they are such a much better team than they played that night. it was frustrating. but they won and that is all that matters.
anyway, back to christmas and boredom. on a lighter note, i did take some pics of christmas and found some pics that i said i was going to post from holloween. so here they are.

This is nick. he got this guitar for christmas. sweet.
this is mom. just hangin out.
even the dogs were tired from waking up so early...
rayo got a 30GB iPod. we don't even own 30GB of music anywhere in the house.
remi also got guitar strings for his guitar. that one that he has he got for free though. someone gave it to him...lucky, though i prefer the acoustic.

this is me and dum at halloween.
this is me, dum, and courtney at halloween.

and this is my bishop and his wife. this was before Dog got in trouble for being racist.

...christmas eve...and good friends

well, it's Christmas Eve, and i am here in texas with the family. just about to head to bed. it is kind of early for me to go to bed. i am normally in bed after 11 so 9:45 is pretty early. on christmas eve we always have pizza for dinner and always watch the movie white christmas with bing crosby and danny kaye. we also always get to open one present, which is always pajamas. i didn't want to get into my pj's this year, but i was kind of forced to. oh well. tradition is tradition.

i wanted to take a sec and just make a comment about friends and how awesome they are. before i had dinner, i was able to talk with a friend who is in utah right now. before i talked to her i was having a fairly rough christmas holiday. some things in my life have been worked out and some were and are having some difficulty being worked out. i know about school and work now, finally, but relationships and family life are a bit rough and were causing a lot of problems for me. all i had to do was just talk to her and everything was ok. without really realizing it, i think she made my day. it was really good to just be able to talk to her as just a friend. so, if she ever reads this, thanks and i am looking forward to seeing you again in the summer, you and all of my other friends up there. i miss you guys a lot. anyway, thanks and merry christmas!!

...happy 80th Pop...

hey ya'll. i said i was going to post pics from my grandpa's 80th and our thanksgiving in Cali. so here they are. they aren't really in any particular order. i wasn't the one taking the pics or there might be a lot more them and better ones maybe...not saying that i am good, but i am way better at taking pics than anyone in my immediate family. and i am way more humble than them about it too. ;) just kidding. happy 80th Pop. love ya.

this is my mom and our second cousin. her neice had a second baby.
this is three generations. sleeveless is my aunt anna, behind is my cousin heather, and then there is her daughter.
left to right is grandma, aunt natalie, matthew, patrick, kyle, and rayo. in the back in dad.
this is the actual 80th celebration for grandpa and his kids and grandkids. extended fam was the day after(which we missed because of a two day trip to texas).
this is a close up of the man.
this is probably the best pic of the whole trip. that is nick asleep on the couch. my mom got that one. i could not have done better myself.
we thought that we were going to give kati's dog away, so we took her with us. we ended up keeping her, which a lot of us are happy about, because she is such a sweet dog. she loved it at my grandparents house. the backyard and garden have been having squirrel problems. squirrels aren't problems for roxy, they are playthings, so my grandparents fell in love with her too because she chased away the squirrels. she could see them through the glass and just watch until she could be let out. it was so funny.
this is an interesting head shot of my cousing greg. i have no idea who took this one.
left to right, ali, kati, amy, and jessie.
every year for christmas, my grandpa hangs these ornaments from his ceiling by fishing line that runs to the door. it is taped to the door so that when it opens or closes, they come up and down. that is a fond memory from my childhood. i put them up this year. i am the tallest person on that side of the family. lucky me.

:) fun...

well, it has been a long time since i have written...or posted pics for that matter. i really need to get better at taking pics. i guess i could post the ones of my grandpa's 80th, i don't have the camera though. i think my parents have that one. i could get them i guess...someday. hopefully soon.

when i first started this blog, lindsey tried to convince me that i should try and write 100 things about myself and post it like she did on her blog. needlesstosay i was less than enthused about doing it. i didn't think i was interesting enough to have 100 interesting things about me. i still may do that someday, but now i want to do something similar but less time consuming and less brain racking.

Four things about me that you may or may not have known in no particular order.
Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Milker at a dairy in Rexburg, ID
2. Lawnmower....also in ID
3. Pipe mover....once again, also in ID
4. Wrangler in Park City

Four movies I would watch over and over:
1. White Christmas
2. Indianan jones
3. emporer's new groove
4. Pride and Prejudice(the five hour one)

Four places I have lived:
1. SoCal
2. Aurora, CO
3. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hertzegovena
4. Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Four TV Shows that I watch:
1. The office That's actually all!

Four places I have been on holiday:
1. Sugar City, ID
2. Fort Worth, TX
3. Ventura, CA
4. Goblin Valley, UT

People who e-mail me the most: Personal, not counting lame work emails (:
1. Dina Bula
2. Dad
3. Brianna
4. Lindsey

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Lasagna
2. Adobo
3. Burgers
4. Chips

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Somewhere else
2. In Utah
3. At BYU
4. ...married...

Four Favorite Books (we could just take this section out and it wouldn't hurt my feelings any)
1. Tennisshoes Among the Nephite series
2. Miracle of Forgiveness
3. The Scriptures
4. The Lord of the Rings series

Things I am looking forward to next year:
1. School!!!
2. Moving back to Utah
3. Getting wiser
4. Making new friends

so that is that. i will try to write more often.

...life...

well, i guess if you had everything the way you wanted it, you would never learn about not getting what you want. it is really humbling. i was hoping to keep my job at directpointe for a bit longer, but i was doing no good and was a waste of money and effort. so i quit and just started a new job today. i am still in warehousing, cause i want to go into logistics and i would like the experience.

i was also hoping to get back up to utah this january, but that won't happen. job and other things are just making sense that i should stay here. it is cheaper to get my associates down here and then move up afterwards. yeah. i am having a hard time putting things into words right now, but that is basically what it is. here i am in texas and here i will stay for a while.

i took some pictures of our haloween party and my costume. it was fun. i will post them when i can.

the house

Well hello there!! It has been a while. In that short while my family decided to move houses. It was pretty much just up the road so it wasn't that far, but I had forgotten how much stuff we actually have and tend to collect. I am tired. I am done moving; though I think that I have much more of it ahead in my life. Well, I told Kristen that I would send her pics of the inside of the new house. She had already seen the outside...now that I think about it, I don't have any pics of the outside of the house. Oh well. I might post one later. It is red brick...just like just about everything else in this state. Please also remember that this is big for us. We have lived pretty modestly for most of our lives and now we have a chance to live fairly comfortabely. Anyway, here they are. There is a short narrative at the bottom of each of the pictures.

This is the entryway from the front door. We hardly ever use that door. We mostly come in through the garage. The door on the right is to the office and the hallway leads to the kitchen. If you turn to your left, you will walk right into the front room.

This is the office. I should have turned the light on.

Front room. Once again, I should have turned the light on. The opening you are seeing in the back by the boxes is the dining room.

...the dining room from the kitchen. Not much of a dining room right now...it will be someday...maybe.

The kitchen from the dining room. We spent most of a day painting this kitchen from a nasty green color to a mint green color. My mom loves the granite countertops. And we will be getting a new table too. In the back is the family room and the door that you see is to the three car garage. The garage isn't very long, but it is wide so it is easy to get in and out of cars. Yes!!!

The kitchen from the family room. We are probably someday going to take the paint off of the cupboards. My dad thinks that there is oak wood under there....more work. The door on the right is too the backyard and the opening by the fridge is too the dining room.

The family room. We also spent most of a day painting this from a very light blue color. My dad wanted it done before the new couches arrived. That was rough.

Backyard.

Backyard. It's pretty big.

Game room. Right at the top of the stairs. Ali's room is right on the right. Just a bit farther down on the right and you get her bathroom and then if you keep going, you get my parents door. Turn to the left down a little walkway and the boys room is on the right and Remi and I are at the end of the walkway.

Ali's room. The door in the back is a pretty decent sized walk-in closet. If you turn a little more to the left, there is a door to her bathroom. Yes, she has her own bathroom with TWO sinks. All the boys get is a jack and jill bathroom. Girls are spoiled.

Ali's bathroom from the game room. If you walk in and turn directly right, her room is there. If you turn left from where this was taken that is my parents door.

This is at the door looking left. The little door in the wall is a crawl space. And man is it a crawl space. There is not a lot of room in there at all.

Turn slightly to the right and you get the center of the room.

Turn to the right again and you get the rest of the room. The indent you see on the right is the door to the bathroom.

This is taken from their closet door which is opposite the bathroom door. The door you see there is the toilet. And yes, that jet bathtub does work and my mom loves it.

There is the bathroom door that leads to my parents bedroom. Aww, they even have an elevated sink for my dad.

This is at their closet door looking into their closet. This is the left side of the closet. All of my mom's stuff. Mind you, there is some hanging space over my head too that is up near the ceiling. Their closet ceiling is really high.

This is at the door looking at the middle of their closet. Lots of shoe space.

And this is to the right. My dad's side. It is huge. It is five to 8 paces (depending on how long your legs are) from my mom's side of the closet to my dad's side. It is very large. And don't forget the ceiling space. Very nice.

hmm. No this is not my room. This is Rayo and Nick. Messy as usual. The door in the back is their walk-in closet that isn't really that big.

This is a shot from inside their bedroom. You can see their sink, the bathroom through the door. Their closet is opposite of their sink.

This is room belongs to Remi and I. We have oak dressers, a light colored wood for a bookshelf, yellow pine for a bed frame, and a bright green wall on the left. You can't see it in this one, but you can in the next. My bed has nothing on it but the sheets and the pillows. The skateboard is Remi's. If you go around the dresser on the right, you will be looking at our side of the bathroom.

This is what I get to look at when I wake up in the morning. Door on the left is the linen closet, on the right is our walk-in closet. In the back is the shared bathroom with Rayo and Nick.

This one is taken from the entrance to our bathroom area. I tried to get all three of the wood colors in here, and the wall.

more about life...

you know, out of everyone that i know that has a blog, i think that i am the only one who updates on any kind of regular basis. not to say that i post regularly at all, but i do post a lot more than others...the three that i do know of at least. just another update. no pics again. they are coming soon though. and they will be of our new house. we just spent all of last weekend moving into a newer and bigger house. we painted mostly on friday. we weren't too impressed with the color of some of the rooms in the house so my dad said we should paint them before we moved furniture in. smart move i think, just very time consuming and tedious. we should start our own painting business because we have done it enough times that we are pro's now.

the pictures are coming later because not everything is done being unpacked and we still have some new furniture items to purchase. because this house is bigger, we have more space that we didn't have before, almost an entire room, so we are getting more furniture to fill it. so the pics will come in a week or two. that and kristen wanted to see the new house.

so i started sales today for directpointe and i realized that i am a terrible salesman. i was much better in procurement. and i liked it more. all i need to do though to stay on is hit 7 leads a month. it is harder than it sounds though. i am terrible. i said a couple of posts ago that i was going to get my associates while i was down here. i don't think that that is how it is going to work out now. as much as i love being home, i don't know how long i will last at this salesman job and i want to go to byu. there are some other things involved with that but i don't want to go into those too much right now. i need to figure it out before december though. i will be heading back up to utah for a visit right after thanksgiving in california with my mom's family and i think that will be when i make my decision. i don't want to rush into anything like i did with my move back home. don't get me wrong, it was the right decision, it just happened really fast. i left a very good job that was paying very well and had another job on saturdays that was just fun. i got paid to have fun basically. but it was awesome. i was going to be able to pull myself out of dept but not take any classes in the fall and once again have to pospone my schooling and i really did not want to do that. schooling is my main reason for moving down here. there have been a couple of perks along the way, like meeting kristen. that was a huge plus but not the reason i did it. anyway. that is me for now. we'll see how things work out later on.

life back at home...

Well, life back at home. You know, I really love my family, I really do. Sometimes there are headaches, as with anything or anyone, but who would I be without my family. I love being home. I have been able to spend alot of time with my brothers that I wasn't able to do before. I was always gone before I left on the mission. When I got home, it was work and church. I was hardly ever home, and I couldn't do a whole lot with them. Now that I am home again, I still have a hard time doing things with them because they are all busy doing stuff everywhere else. School has started and they are in everything from football to drama to choir. Always gone. But I am looking forward to spending the next few months with them and having the priority be the family rather than everything else.

A large part of me moving home was so that I could get enough college credit to transfer back into BYU as an enrolled student rather than a visiting student or just a night class student. To be completely honest, I could have stayed in Utah and done the same thing. I was going back to fulltime work at 15 dollars an hour(which is pretty darn good for a college student in Provo) and I had a saturday job(that was just fun, I didn't really need that one) giving horse rides in Park City. I could have just taken a night class and then gotten the last three credits I needed to transfer. When my family decided not to move out to Utah, I felt very strongly that I needed to come home. To be completely honest, it is alot harder being home again than being on my own. I was just about to start doing really well financially for a college student and I was very comfortable where I was at. But, I felt that I really needed to come home. As it is, I am taking two classes(because that is all I can afford at the moment) and will be starting work again for DirectPointe as a Sales Associate on monday(finally a paycheck!). With this new job, there is a great potential for earning a lot of money. But if I am only in Texas until December, I will not have earned a whole lot. Anyway, my point is that it is working out. It was really, really hard for me the first two weeks being home because I could not get my job worked out, I had no income at all, and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get into classes. As it is now, things have worked themselves out. And it is looking like I will be back up in Utah sooner than I anticipated. Things have kinda taken an interesting twist. So, earning a lot of money with this new job will be very helpful. And reducing costs by moving home is going to help a lot as well.

Kristen came out to Texas to visit last weekend. We had an awesome time and she loved being here. We took a couple of pictures but this one beneath is my favorite. This was taken the morning that she flew home.

Pictures!!!

So the first group of pics I took one morning on my way to class. There were tons of them but I was running a bit late. The truck is towards the bottom.

This truck is a Chevy 2500. It is a deisel with the Allison transmission and 365 horsepower and 660 sq ft of torque stock. It is a bohemoth. Big truck. Yeah.