The Holiday Season

Well it was quite the holiday season with Brent and I traveling from coast to coast as usual! We flew from Tampa to Sacramento where we did a massive rendezvous with the 20 people coming into CA to spend the holidays together. My parents and brother were coming in from Australia after my Grandmother's funeral as well as my Aunties Barbara and Diana, their husbands, and four of my cousins. My Auntie Diana and fam had been planning to come for the past year and my Auntie Barb and Uncle Rob decided last minute to come back with my parents, so it was a nice surprise! My sister-in-law and two nieces and my sister Esther drove in from Utah and my Sister Beth, her husband and my new nephew flew in from Texas. When we finally all converged and gathered our luggage, we packed the cars to the brim and drove the long 5 hours to my parents house (they live way far up in the boonies).

I love this photo of frozen juniper berries

We had a blast together, and my Aussie family celebrated their first ever white christmas, they were very excited. We did lots of sledding, snow-man building, ice skating, and bundling up. Brent and I drove to Mt. Shasta the day after Christmas and spent the afternoon snowboarding - good times!

My Uncles Rob & Manuel and cousin Jono enjoying their first white christmas; Brent and I at Burney Falls


Snowboarding at Mount Shasta

We also broke the news to the family that Brent and I are engaged. We have been talking about it for a long time and since we were with everyone we decided to spill the beans in person. Neither of us are into big deal weddings so we generally keep all this stuff low key, so this may be the first you have heard of this! :) We bought a beautiful opal ring and I love it. Opal is my favorite stone and I love having it and a very unique ring too. No date yet, but we are looking at probably sometime in early 2010.


Brent and I in the snow; My pretty ring

It was fun to get together with the family, it had been a few years since my immediate family had all been together so that plus the extra added family made for a fun vacation and good visit!


The girls got matching PJs!


The whole fam damily!

Brent and I then flew out from Reno to Washington DC to spend New Year's Eve with some of our DC friends. We had an initial big bash planned but as life goes, things happened and it got honed down to just Brent, myself and our friend Liz, who we were staying with. We still had a ton of fun though and went to dinner at an all you can eat Tapas restaurant and ate a ton, it was so good! We then went back to Liz's place and watched the ball drop, played trivial pursuit and were all so tired at 12:30 - getting old sucks!


My friend Liz and I


Brent and I got all gussied up!

On the 1st, we went to the Museum of Natural History and enjoyed ourselves there. It was surprising brimming with people, which made Brent and I happy that there are still people out there interested in science and willing to spend their holiday looking at it!
On the 2nd, we took a bus up to New York to visit Brent's Uncle and Cousin for a couple days. We also met up with my Auntie Diana and fam who were thoroughly enjoying New York City for the first time. Brent showed them around Chinatown and Little Italy and we had a great time buying cheap crappy souvenirs and eating expensive (but really good) cannoli.


Hanging with my Auntie and fam in NYC

After our cross-country adventure we flew back to Tampa and are now trying to sort and pack everything for our upcoming move to Australia.
Hope everyone had a good holiday!

Bitter-Sweet

I had two large events happen in the past few days, one good and one bad. On Sunday, my Grandma Joan Perritt died. She was a wonderful grandma and I love her so much and will miss her. I am sad that I can't make the funeral in Australia, but I got to spend a wonderful afternoon with her a few months ago. When I went to Sydney for my job interview in September, I spent an afternoon with Grandma and it was great. The last time I had seen her before that was so no good, she didn't even remember who I was (she had very advanced dementia). When I saw her in September she smiled and lit up when I walked into the room and held my hand when I sat next to her. She said, "oh what are you doing here, I am so happy you are here!" She told me she loved me and that I had the most beautiful smile she had ever seen. To which of course I replied, "good genes!" My grandma was a wonderful woman and I will miss her dearly.



The good event was that yesterday Brent and I finished our MBA's and I are done with school! It was so nice to turn in our final final last night and walk out of the classroom knowing we were completely done. We are excited! We won't be attending the graduation ceremony since we will be in Australia, but I am putting up a photo from our graduation from our first Master's degree - we would look the same in this graduation!

5 Things...

5 things I was doing 10 years ago:
1. Serving as School Spirit Commissioner
2. Going to plays in Ashland, OR
3. Enjoying long summers at the Beach House in Santa Barbara
4. Performing in Little Shop of Horrors as a do-op girl
5. Dreaming of going to college and leaving town!

5 things on my to-do list:
1. Figure out how to cook shark steak
2. Finish my homework
3. Submit Brent's visa application
4. Buy my plane ticket to Australia
5. Plan our New Year's bash in Philadelphia

5 snacks I enjoy:
1. Pumpkin spice frappucino
2. Chips and Salsa
3. Popcorn
4. Brownies
5. Cheese and crackers

5 things I would do if I were a millionaire:
1. Pay off school loans and other debt
2. Buy a house
3. See the rest of the world
4. Invest
5. Start my own company

5 places I've lived:
1. Calgary, Canada
2. USA: California, Utah, Texas, New York, Florida
3. Europe: Austria, England, Switzerland, Netherlands
4. Bangkok, Thailand
5. Australia: Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and soon Canberra

5 jobs I've had:
1. Math & Science tutor
2. BYU Alumni Association records specialist
3. Pacific Materials Lab assistant office manager
4. Utah State Historical Society architechtural preservation assistant
5. Project Manager at Global Human Rights Defence (Netherlands)

5 people I tag:
1. Bethany
2. Heidi
3. Christy
4. Starla
5. Gilly

Visiting the Fam in Utah

My little sister had surgery so I decided to go to Utah to help her out and visit the fam for a couple days. My mum came out too so not everyone was there, but a good chunk! My brother and sister in law and two gorgeous nieces live in Utah as well so it was a good time.

Claire Dressed up as Jazzercize girl


Me with the girls (post-cupcake)

I hadn't seen anyone for close to a year and a half so it was really nice to see them and I had fun. I helped Esther out at the hospital and at home, ran some errands on campus for her and otherwise just hung out and played with everyone.

Me and Mum and Me and Esther

My nieces, Josie and Claire, both had birthdays coming up so we had a little combined birthday party for them. I made Penguin cupcakes for them and they turned out pretty well. The girls were so excited for them all day. Josie helped me decorate them and she did a good job! All day Claire kept saying "time for cake? time for cake?" it was pretty funny.


The penguin cupcakes


Claire very excited about the cupcakes!

Happy Halloween!

I love halloween, though my pumpkins are still sitting on the table uncarved - sad! I thought we would get a lot of trick or treaters because we live in a large culdsac neighborhood, but we ended up only getting one group of four boys. I was totally bummed out! But we went to a fun party at the Blue Martini in downtown Tampa and that was fun.
Brent and I dressed up as characters from the anime cartoon Inuyasha. Brent was the title character and I was his fellow demon-slaying Japanese school girl superhero, Kagome. I made my costume a couple months ago when we went to an Anime festival in Orlando, so it was fun to be able to use it again!


Brent as Inuyasha and me as Kagome




The actual characters

BIG news!!

I found out last week I got the job in Australia! I am totally excited. It is with the Department of Veteran Affairs and it starts February 2 in Canberra. I am busy working on Brent's visa and getting everything all ready to move across the world (again). Hurray!!

Happy Birthday to Me!

I can now no longer deny that I am in my "upper" twenties and though the thought of getting even older is a bit depressing, I managed to have a great day! My birthday was on the 19th and I decided I wanted to go surfing so Brent and I drove to the other side of Florida to Cocoa Beach (only about two hours or so from Tampa). It was a nice day, but crappy waves. I was a bit bummed out, but still got a board and headed out. It was so nice just to be out in the water paddling around and on a board. The current was crazy strong and the wind brought in some funky sideways waves as well so it was altogether bad surfing conditions combined with my now muscle-free upper body. I need to do some serious working out! But it was a really fun day and Brent stuck it out for me even though he really hates the beach. Love him! I also went to Ron Jon's, the largest surf shop in the world, it was awesome. If only I had the money to buy lots of stuff! In the end, I settled for a little surfboard keychain at $3 a pop - boy to I love to splurge!