A Bit About Us...

I’m always writing about Bracken, (and let’s face it, most of you would rather see pictures of and hear about him :), but I thought I’d post about what Brian and I have been up to.

We’re still living in Cedar. Brian has two more years of undergraduate work left before he can apply for medical school. In the mean time we’re enjoying being closer to my family and get to see them fairly often. We’ve moved every summer since we’ve been married for Brian to sell security systems (in Denver, Philadelphia and Minneapolis), but we’re staying in Cedar City this summer. Summer sales have been a good experience for us, but Brian is very ready for a break, and he needs to get patient exposure before medical school anyway.

Brian just finished his finals and maintained his 4.0 GPA! He had some difficult classes this last semester, but he studies so hard and I’m glad it paid off for him. He also just became certified as an EMT and is hoping to get a job on the ambulance or at the hospital this summer. Now that school is over, we are planning our summer garden, taking a few trips, going camping, and enjoying just spending some time together as a family. Brian has taken between 18-21 credits each semester and hasn’t had a summer break since before his mission, so he’s ready for a chance to relax a bit.

We’re actually really excited about our garden. Last year I had a little herb garden, but this will be our first time growing our own vegetable garden. So we’ve bought all our seeds and started some transplants. Brian has a part time job managing the SUU student garden over the summer and we’ve been working on getting that ready to go. There are a bunch of cows, horses and sheep out by our garden and Bracken is always pointing at the cows and “moo”-ing at them. He also gets filthy out there digging, throwing, and eating dirt…but that’s healthy for a little boy, right?

Brian and I discovered caucus meetings this year. A friend asked me to come to our precincts caucus meeting to vote for him and I found out that is where each neighborhood chooses delegates to represent them at their party’s convention. At the convention the delegates vote to choose which candidates will run to represent their party in the November election. Sorry for the explanation if you already knew that, but I didn’t until recently. Brian and I were elected to be county delegates, so we studied up on all the candidates, went to meetings to listen to them speak and ask questions, and got lots of brochures in the mail. Being a delegate and going to the county convention was a good experience, and we learned a lot.

My little sister Shaylee is going to school at SUU now and I’ve loved having her around. We go to the gym together and have started running. I just enjoy having her around, coming over to cook with me or just hanging out. Speaking of running, Shay and I had planned to run a 10K (about 6 miles) last month, and trained so hard for it. My family all came down and even the little kids ran for part of the way. Shaylee finished it, and my Dad even ran the whole way! I was so proud of them. I was bummed though because I injured my knee running and had to stop so I didn’t hurt it more. It’s healing up now though, and I’ve started running again, I just have to build my endurance back up. Brian bought me a sewing machine for Christmas (gasp! Who would’ve ever thought I’d want or use one?). I love it! I haven’t sewed any big projects with it yet, but I’ve patched a few of our older jeans so you can’t even tell, mended a whole pile of things, and made a taggie blankets with my sister Linsy. (The green one is Linsy's, the brown/blue one is mine.)
Those are a few of the things we’ve been up to. We’re loving each day of warmer weather and actually being able to see each other!