Happy No School For 2 Weeks Day!

The tree is decorated, and has been for a while now! Only one bulb has been shattered and I got the decorations from my parents (who we get alot of stuff from) My plan is to stock up on all Christmas decorations after the holidays and hit the ALOT% off deals.

In about 28 hours we're off to play in warmer weather with Ben's family for Christmas!! It will be my first non-white Christmas and first Christmas away from my family. I'll miss them sooooooooooo much but I think I'll be fine. I keep telling Ben it's going to snow for me in California, just a little bit. We checked on his phone what the weather looks like and it predicts 50-60 degree weather, no sign of snow, but this is good. Ben's weather app is ALWAYS wrong. It predicted clouds and rain for our whole honeymoon and not to my surprise it was beautiful, sunny, humid, the whole time, except for one day. So I'm still crossing the fingers and think it will snow.

Side note: it seems funny that we are going to have to pack a suitcase just for presents, open them, and then pack them back. It's fun and I hope Ben doesn't see everything I got him when we open the bag or worse the bag gets lost, bag please don't get lost.

I'm so excited for this break!!!!!!! I thought I was school free until I got an e-mail from a professor telling me to read over the break for the 1st day of class :( and I need to study for the GRE and finish polishing my internship application. The internship, it's a big deal, without the internship I can't take the test to become a registered dietitian. If I don't get one I have a plan B.

Plan B: move to Hawaii and open a fruit stand. Ben said he'd join me!

P.S. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Smells Like Christmas Around Here

We have a Christmas tree, and it's REAL!! (not decorated yet, but will be soon) Mmmmmm the smell of pine fills the rooms of our condo and it smells like Christmas. Monday night we looked around but we didn't find "the one." Wednesday we tried again and found it! It was at Lowe's waiting for a home. The guy who helped us was funny. I told him we needed a hole drilled in the bottom because that's what our stand required. He looked at me funny and said, "A drill? I don't know if we have a drill." I told him, "This is Lowe's you have to have a drill." They ended up having a drill and as we talked to the man from Georgia he looked at me and asked "Are you Indian or something?" Ha ha, Indian.

I don't know why I get asked, Indian. I can tell when people are wondering what I am, because they look at me and then ask something like "Hope you don't mind me asking but are you __________?" Fill in any ethnicity, I have been called everything, maybe not Antarctic or Danish, but everything else. This is the 3rd time that Indian has been guessed.

1st time- I was at EFY and a girl in my group found out I was half Japanese. She told me she thought I was Indian this whole time. She was 13, she didn't know what indians looked like.

2nd time-I told a sealer in the temple that I was from Blackfoot. He then asked it I was Indian. Nope.

3rd time-Lowe's Christmas tree man.

When I moved into Raintree, as I was getting to know my roommates for the first time, I didn't want them to wonder and hurt their brain to figure out what I was, I immediately eliminated Indian from their pool of guesses. I randomly blurted out "Guys I'm not Indian." They just looked at me and laughed.

Can you see the resemblance? We're both holding things and have dark hair. Both have a necklace, no red tattoo but I do have a red shirt, I like little birds on my shoulder. As I compare myself to Pocahontas, the famous Indian who I'm guessing everyone is comparing me to, I look more Indian than I thought.

I'm holding up the famous cake we made for our ward Christmas party. Ben's sister Mary and her husband Ryan gave us a cake pan in the shape of a cookie! We made the cakes and filled it with cookies and cream ice cream to make an ice cream cake. I was embarrassed to take it out of the freezer because it was melting, but Ben brought it out and it was a HIT! It was the biggest cake there and the first cake gone, success!

And Ben grew a beard last month for a work competition. It's gone now and we are both happy.

Human Dog

We had our first family ward party. It was a chili/dessert cook off and talent show. Ben was very anxious to get involved in the ward so he signed us up to be in the talent show. What kind of talent were we going to do? We couldn't perform our Celine Dion duet or play Heart and Soul because we knew that everyone else would already be doing that. Ben then suggested that we work on learning a new talent and perform whatever we had learned. After 3 weeks we still hadn't decided on what talent to work on.

The week of the talent show rolls around and still no talent. The only idea I had was to throw food high into the air and have Ben, mouth wide open, catch the food. So that's what we did. Following a balloon artist who created the Little Mermaid (red hair, green fins, and purple shell bra included) we were next. Our act--the Human Dog. Ben set up the circus music and we began. I threw food that progressively got bigger into Ben's mouth, I showed the audience what food I would be throwing. With each food item that got bigger, the louder the oohhh's and aaah's became. The finale consisted of a full sized rice crispy treat. Ben caught it and the crowd went wild. I was surprised at how well we did. When we practiced it didn't look promising but when it came to performing Ben didn't hold back any of his food catching skills, he caught everything (mostly).

Now our new ward should really know who we are; the circus lady and human dog!!

1 Year!!

Guess what today is? Yep you guessed it Ben and I started dating 1 year ago.

I got home from a long day at school so excited to see Ben, and his car wasn't in the parking lot. I debated on whether or not to surprise him with a BBQ bacon burger but decided I wanted to drop my stuff off. I was sad because I wanted to see him, but as I opened the door my attitude instantly changed. I found Ben and a candle lit dinner. He is the best thing that ever happened to me!! He had made his famous curry for dinner and it wouldn't have been a celebration without the bubbly. It was the best welcome home I could have received. Oh, and the flowers!! I'm one lucky girl!!

Notice the plates are licked clean. Ben's a curry master!

Now back to homework. I have alot to post about, it's been a busy month. To be continued.....

I think Ben's Turning Japanese

I think Ben's turning Japanese, I think Ben's turning Japanese I really think so

You tell me......

Ben's an expert sushi roller who received the best training straight from the famous GRANDMA MATSUURA! My grandma is the best cook EVER!! I love cooking with her and learning how to cook form her. She gave me everything I needed to roll sushi last Christmas and now I was able to finally use it.

During the break between conference sessions rolling sushi was a perfect activity!!

The Result=MMMMMMMM

Our favorite roll is ebi tempura. That's what created and a little more...We invented some rolls of our own. I call it the Shrimpy Idaho Roll. But don't let the name be deceiving. The rolls were filling and delicious!! We added tempura shrimp, onion, cucumber, and POTATOES!! It was the Perfect Roll!!

So what do you think?

This is why I love my major!

All day at school I talk about food. Today in my clinical class we talked about ways to address obesity and watched a couple clips on how more agencies have addressed the issue. Here are a few of my favorites. Hope you enjoy and eat your veggies!



This is what my econ class looks like. Everyone is falling asleep, it must be the soda.

YAAAAHHHOOO!!

So I need to blog and this is a looooonnnnnngg one. I've been getting back into the school life and getting moved into our new place with no time to blog. Things have been busy. So I'll update a little about the wedding.

Pictures from the wedding are DONE!!!! Well the ones from the temple. My photographer was Mary Clark and I loved, let me emphasize I LOVED her!! She was great to work with and she took so many marvelous pictures to capture our special day. She hustled all of us through the pictures and told everyone where to go so that we would be ready for the luncheon at noon, and she succeeded!!

I only have the pictures from her blog but I should be getting a cd with all the pictures soon. The cd is in the mail so more to come. But for now until I post more, check us out on her blog here. I can't stop looking at the pictures. They make me so HAPPY and I can't believe how quick the day went by.

Now my dress. It was my dream dress!! I found her in Seattle at a designer outlet. All the dresses there were gorgeous but they were the dresses that people would try on at stores but then have the dress ordered in. So all the dresses had been tried on 5 million times. So my dress was a little tattered and worn. The lace was coming off and it needed to be repaired. But to the rescue........Eliana, my best friend Janet it's her sister, she just finished fashion design school and she did all the alterations and made the jacket for the dress. She brought the dress back to life!! She also added the sash and I found the flower for the dress at Campus Craft and Floral, a little shop on campus. It was great I just went in there one day to see what they had and walla. I had been looking for flowers and there were about ten different ones.

The flower!!

Eliana blogged about my dress and the long process it took. She named my dress Clarysa. Check that out here. Her blog is about fashion and style and she gives some great tips. Thanks Eliana for making my dream dress come true!!


I also had some bridals taken for FREE!! I didn't post about them because I didn't want Ben to see me in the dress before the wedding day. So you can check those out here. Aria was doing some FREE sessions to update her portfolio and she did an AMAZING job too!! She brought parasols for me to use which added an Asian feel. It was perfect.


I also will have more pictures from the photographer in Blackfoot from the reception. The reception was so much FUN too!! Everyone had told me to not be disappointed when something goes wrong, because it always does. But seriously I loved everything about the day!!!
Even the drive to Blackfoot from Salt Lake.
The luncheon where Ross told a story about me peeing my pants.
The weather
All of my family and their support.
The marriage ceremony.
The Beautiful Temple.
The Pictures
All of the help and support from friends and family at the reception, it wouldn't have been able to happen without you.
The sushi, mmmmmm.
The betta fish in the centerpieces.
The Sparklers as we leftPink and Yellow
The CANDY!
The Napoleon Man tied on the back of my carThe Cake (which I thought would taste gross because wedding cake always does but when Ben shoved some up my nose gently, I got a taste of it and I LIKED IT)
The Ice Cream
Fortune Cookies (which I have 200 left over of)
The Music
The DIY projects hung up all around
The funfetti cupcakes
The 36 inch balloon
The guests
More Family
The flowers (which I thought looked purple when I picked them up but they photographed very pink in all the pictures!!)
Everything I LOVED!!!

My mom did so much to get things ready and without her nothing would have turned out the way it did. She gets an extra big HUG!!

Thanks to everyone who helped and supported us.

I loved the day and will always have such great memories or our wedding day. I was beaming and so happy in the car when we left the reception I couldn't stop smiling and telling Ben how happy I was. It really was the PERFECT DAY!