August-October for the Garretts

I'll start off by saying that I am on blogger ALL the time reading everyone's posts, but as you may have noticed, I haven't blogged for over two months! So maybe it's time to contribute. It's overwhelming to think of and execute a topic to blog about. Maybe that's why I kind of avoid it. Plus I'm terrible at taking pictures, and blog posts without pictures are boring. So I figured I could do a stereotypical, married couple update on the last little while. AUGUST Jake and I hadn't taken any type of vacation this past summer at all, so we decided to go out to California to see my family since my mom was directing "Oliver!" for the Oakdale Community Theater. They did a fabulous job! I'm so proud fo the hard work my mom puts into theater. It seems she's always involved now with one play or another. Our anniversary is August 14th and Jake had a mandatory work meeting that day (STILL upset about it), so we decided to celebrate in San Francisco while we were in Cali.

(Jake's doing "smell no evil")

We also wanted to stay at my Granny and Grandad's farm out in there beautiful grove of trees and tent trailer. It was FREEZING and we were totally unprepared, but that place is home and even when it's freezing, it's my favorite place to be.

Willis, Jake's traveling gnome, in front of the tent trailer.

Willis with Granny and Grandad's dog Minnie.

Willis in front of the barn and a very unflattering me first thing in the morning. I forgot to mention that before we left for California I was applying for a lot of jobs and finally got a call for an interview! She wanted to interview me the day we were leaving for California (and we were planning on leaving very early in the morning). I asked her if I could interview a day earlier and she didn't sound too sure. I felt really strongly that we should postpone the trip a little for this interview, and I'm glad I did because I interviewed well and got the job! I've been working at Mountain Crest High School as a Life Skills Aide since then and I LOVE it. The kids I work with are nothing short of spectacular, entertaining and sweet. My coworkers are super fun and I actually look forward to it everyday. I wish I could post pics of all the kids! SEPTEMBER Jake interviewed for a tablet specialist position at Best Buy and got it! He's already been working there as a computer salesman since May 2010 but his new position is a lot more fun. Best Buy corporate wide hired 2 specialists from each store and so they decided to send everyone to training sessions. Jake and his coworker Josh got sent to Phoenix, Arizona the first week of September (and, unfortunately, the second week of USU's fall semester). I thought Jake had taken some pictures here but I guess not. Oh yeah... it's because I broke the camera on accident while we were in California. Oops. BUT we bought a new one just in time for my trip to Boston with my mom and sisters! Oh man, this trip deserves it's own blog post. Split up. Like into 3 parts. I don't want to do that, so I will just have to try and serve the trip justice here. My mom graduated from Northeastern University in Boston (through an online program, she still lives in California) with her masters degree! I'm trying to remember in what exactly... leadership maybe? I'm not sure. But she worked her butt off for it, and decided that since she'd promised my 3 sisters and I a trip to Boston our whole lives that this was the perfect opportunity to bring us all out there, to see her walk and to enjoy some Boston culture.I've got over 100 pics of Boston so I'll choose some highlights:

I really wanted to go on the Freedom Trail tour, which was overall a cool experience but turned out to be 3 hours long... we saw Paul Revere's grave and learned some cool facts about him, which was the best part. Anyway, this is our tour guide with a squirrel. I just like the picture.

We went to a restaurant called "Cheers!" which was modeled exactly after the bar/restaurant from the show. We met up with my mom's college buddies (haha, weird to say that) that she did online projects with over the past 2 years. It was weird to keep up conversation with total strangers for so long, but got fun after the lady with the short blonde hair drank a bit too much white wine and became more friendly. Funny group!

The three of us are big fans of the tv show "Friends", so as soon as I saw this sign I immediately thought of Joey's pickup line "How YOU doin'?". So every time we got on the subway and saw this sign we'd all say "Bow YOU doin'?!"

Okay, so it's kind of mean to make fun of total strangers' facial expressions but after this guy pulled this face so many times, Maddie and I could NOT handle it anymore, it was too funny! He was leading my mom's graduation ceremony (this is him on the big screen) and always looked SO funny! I'm glad we could capture this moment forever. Bahaha!

This is my beautiful mom all graduated!

FENWAY PARK. A total dream. One tiny step down from the amount of magic I feel at Disneyland (and that's a LOT). It was crazy because as soon as our flights were booked to go to Boston I looked for game tickets while we were there and couldn't find any that we could afford, even on stubhub.com. People told us that if we just went to the park and stood in line we might get tickets. We stood in line, hoping that would happen. I started crying, it was so emotional being outside the park finally and not being sure if we could go in. When we got to the ticket counter (after a long long line) the lady selling tickets said we got 5 of the last 10 tickets they were selling that night! We had to go to the standing area, but it was so worth it. We could see everything from up there. A total dream. Singing "Sweet Caroline" with our fellow Red Sox fans was incomparable to anything I've ever experienced.

LOVE this picture! I've got to frame it. Though it seems like they all have halos over their heads except for me... hmmm.

On our last day in Boston we took a trip to Amherst, where our hero and favorite poet Emily Dickinson was born and raised. They had a great tour of her home, and her brother Austin's home next door. We weren't allowed to take pictures, but sometimes that's better. Having a camera can be distracting from your overall experience and memory of the event. It was so awe-inspiring to be where she once was. Her grave site is just down the road a little way. Amherst is a great place. I've been home from Boston for a month and a half now and still miss it everyday. I wouldn't mind if Jake got a job there someday. OCTOBER This month has, for some reason, felt very long. But in a good way! We had lots of things going on, many of which I don't have pictures for and have already forgotten about, I'm sure. The first weekend in October my sister Carolyn and I went down to Spanish Fork to see my brother, his wife and 2 kids. They recently moved there from Orem and I hadn't seen their house yet. I really love it; it feels like it suits them very well. I love my two nephews, Will and Jack more than most anything in this world, so it was fun to see them. The next weekend my brother Oliver and his wife Kim came to Logan to visit. I love when they come see us! They always plan it out about a month in advance so that Jake has enough time to get work off. It's a long drive and it's great that they like us enough to come for a whole day. Jake, Oliver, Kim and I went to the temple in the morning together, which was really special.

This is what the Logan LDS temple looks like. Isn't it beautiful? After that we got together with Carolyn and went to visit Mallory at work (Little Caesar's) for some lunch. After Mal was off work she and her super cool boyfriend Wren joined us to carve pumpkins!

Everyone else's pumpkins turned out really well; I don't have a lot of patience for anything crafty and so I usually speed through and it turns out awful. Maybe next year I'll try again. :) On Thursday night one of my very BFFs Suebin had a cello recital. I know how stressful and overwhelming recital day can be, especially without a lot of family around it's almost unbearable I'm sure. Suebin is from Korea so her family was unable to come. I wanted to be with her as much as I could that day so she would have calm nerves! So we went to Serendipity hair salon and she got her hair and makeup done. She was so beautiful! I listened to her practice for a while , and then went to her recital. Even though I knew she was prepared I was so nervous for her because I always remember how I feel in recitals. She was flawless! I'm so happy for Suebin, she is extremely talented.

Right after the recital Jake drove me to Kaysville so that I could stay with his brother John and sister Rachel while his parents were at the Las Vegas Ragnar over the weekend. It was fun to stay in a big house, cook meals and kind of play "mom" for a couple of days. John was gone working or with friends most of the time but Rachel and I had a ton of fun! She helped me bake cookies, run errands, do the dishes, plan a baby shower, did my nails, watched movies with me, we stayed up talking a few times... I just love that girl more now than I ever did. She'll be 12 in July, such a fun age. On Saturday I threw my sister-in-law Maryanne a baby shower for her first girl! She's having her the end of November and I can hardly wait to have a niece! The planning was a lot easier than I thought it would be, and people showed up so I think it went pretty well! Mary was so sweet to let me throw it for her!

Mary with a cake made out of rolled up (unused! haha) diapers!

Mary's friend (and I love her too!) Amy with my nephew Jack. He obviously wasn't in the mood for a picture, but they're always so cute together I had to try. She's basically an aunt to him :)

Oliver and Kim playing with one of Mary's presents, a bag full of finger puppets! Oliver and Kim are having a boy in January, which I am also excited about and planning a shower for her in December :) This past Friday night was our church's Halloween party, called a trunk-or-treat. It's where everyone brings their cars and parks them in the parking lot and hands out candy to the kids in our church ward. So much fun! We don't have kids but up until last week we taught sunday school to the cute little toddlers, so we just had to go and see what they dressed up as. As some of you may know, Jake is obsessed with garden gnomes. He has a collection of about 20, his office, he snagged a bunch of Gnomeo and Juliet stuff from Best Buy after they were done advertising for it, he made an antenna ball gnome for the car... it's a lot. So obviously (not so obviously, actually, it was my cousin Hilary's idea) we had to be gnomes!

This is the side view of my costume. The women gnomes are usually plump, so I just had to do it! It's nice that I don't feel the need anymore to wear figure flattering costumes, since I'm married. I wouldn't consider it letting myself go, but Jake got a good laugh out of it so I think I won in the end.

Jake just looks super creepy and angry in this picture, it's kind of funny. We put baby powder in his beard so it would be white.

I guess that pretty much brings us to now! Jake and I have been enjoying this season for many reasons, one of them being all the scary movies that are on TV. We record a lot of them from AMC, which edits out the scariest and goriest parts for tv which I like. I have a weak stomach when it comes to super scary stuff. This year we've watched almost all of the Halloween (Michael Meyers) movies. It has just the right amount (at least on tv) of jumpy parts so that it's scary but I can still sleep at night. Although, as I'm typing this in my living room I can hear what I've been hearing since the beginning of October: the neighbors have the Halloween theme music playing from nightfall til about 11 pm every single night. Very unsettling. I just have to hold off until tomorrow night and hopefully then they'll replace all the creepy decorations and music with Santa and Christmas music! Thanks for reading!