It shows

It's not the first time someone has told us. We know it, but it's so nice when others acknowledge it and let us know that they see it too. Dar and I have a wonderful relationship, and it shows. We are so glad we can be examples to other couples, even couples who are older than us and have been married longer. A woman who just met us last night told us that she can tell we're very happy together and that we have a special relationship and she said that it's not something we do, but it's something we have, and boy, do we know it! She also said that it's rare to have a relationship like we do, even inside the Church. They were very nice compliments, and I really felt like I should share them with you. We still don't know why we got so blessed to find and marry each other, and maybe we'll never know. But we cherish our relationship more than anything and we surely don't take it for granted! Dar is my very best friend and I am his. We are loving our Christmas break so we can be together the whole time!! I hope for those of you who aren't married yet but want to be, or you think your own relationship is less than ideal, have faith that Heavenly Father will make everything work out. It may not be in this life, like we have been blessed to have, but things happen the way they're supposed to. We all have our challenges, including Dar and me ;) Luckily for us, marriage is not one of those challenges. For those of you who have a relationship like ours, we're glad we're not the only ones that have been blessed like this, and we wish everyone could be blessed the same way! I know one of the reasons, among the many, that we are so lucky to have the marriage that we do is because we live the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We have founded our marriage upon Him from the very beginning, and try to live by His principles to the best of our ability. Another reason is because we naturally follow The 10 Commandments of a Happy Marriage. My mom got us a picture frame when we got married from Deseret Book that has these commandments on it. We have it hanging in our bedroom. Maybe I'll post them if I get some requests for it. They really are great rules for a marriage, and everyone should know them and live by them!

Christmas!!

We really had a wonderful Christmas this year. It was especially nice because both of our families simplified on gifts, so Christmas really felt like it was all about family and being together. We absolutely loved it!

We spent Christmas Eve with my family. We played some Wii Super Mario and Wii bowling together. Even the little kids got in on the fun!
Then, my family has a tradition to open our name-exchange gifts to each other on Christmas Eve.

Even baby Dakoda got a gift--she should be here sometime within the next two weeks, so watch for pics of our new niece when she comes!

D & I gave Skylar a Nightmare Before Christmas blanket that is so soft you could almost wear it! ;)

And Christmas isn't complete until you have a wrapping-paper-snow-ball-fight! Hannah and Liam absolutely loved it! Sometimes the wrapping paper is more exciting than the gifts you receive!
Christmas is also special because it's my baby brother's birthday too. Skylar turned 18 this year. It's almost impossible for a Christmas to go by without memories of the day he was born coming back into my mind. We're so glad you're in our family, Skylar! Happy 18!

He got a iTouch. Lucky duck!We spent a quiet Christmas day at D's parents house. There weren't any kids with us this year, hence the quiet :) It was really nice to spend some time with the fam though, and it was great to have Georgiana in town for Christmas! The day after Christmas we had a family activity with all the Deming clan. We all went to see Avatar (the 2nd time D & I have seen it at the theater now...great movie by the way!), and then we all ate dinner at Pirate Island. The atmosphere was really fun especially for the kiddos, but we didn't have our camera with us to capture the excitement.

This picture is funny because D's mom and grandmother had really similar coats, and his mom put his grandmother's coat on first thinking it was hers :)

3 Generations
Me, Andrea, Mom, Grandmother Jennings, Georgiana
Christmas also isn't complete until we get our picture taken by the Christmas tree, and it seems like one of D's siblings always finds their way into the background of our pictures, we love you guys! :)
Flashback to Oregon trip 2008...
Merry Christmas!!!

A Child's Request at Christmas

Milestones

As of December 14th we have officially been in our own home for a year!! What a good feeling it is to know that we're not throwing our money away by renting, and that we're building equity at the same time. We really love our condo--we love the location, we love our neighbors (the ones we know anyway), we love the club house, and we love our ward.

We saw another milestone yesterday...we hit 100,000 miles on our car! I bought the car when I was 18, fresh out of high school. It had 14 miles on it when I test drove it at the dealership, and 27 miles on it when I drove it off the lot to bring it home. We've gone through a lot, that car and us. Before we got married, D used to always say to me, I can't wait till this is my car. Haha. Good times. Yay for milestones!

The Spirit of Christmas

Remember this guy from my San Francisco post?
Look familiar?
That's right. Our professor, the one that went to San Francisco with me, was asked by Greg Olsen to model as Santa Claus for this amazing painting. Way to go, Roger! *Cough* I mean...SANTA!

I really hope ours are cute!

Yes, D looked like a baby Chris Farley, and I only had peach-fuzz hair until I was two. All I have to say is we better have cute kids--whenever they come...

I should be studying....

...but I'm blogging instead.

You have no idea how happy I am to be done with going to school this semester! I've practically lived on campus since the end of August, so it's wonderful to be able to sleep in, go work out, and be lazy around the house. Yeah right...I'm still working on finishing my last take-home final for my Family Law class. I really shouldn't complain. I got off way too easy this semester. Out of the 5 classes I was taking, I ended up with 2 take-home finals. One of which was finished and handed in last Thursday. How easy is that, right? Wrong. My Family Law final consists of 13 multiple choice questions worth 26 points, half of which are tricky True/False options. The second part of my exam is a 25 point essay, both sections of which I have completed (minus some minor tweaking that needs to be done). The third section is a 50 point essay, of which I had to pick a movie to base my essay off of--Mama Mia (an awesome choice regarding paternity issue)--then apply the law to the facts of the case/movie. Whew! Not as easy as I thought it was going to be! Especially because I don't have the law memorized like my professor practically does.

I'm seriously trying to find every excuse in the book NOT to be working on my final right now: I whacked my right elbow really hard on my bathroom counter this morning, and now I get this awesome shooting pain in my elbow every time I move it...a perfectly good reason not to type, right?...minus blogging for the moment. Besides, blogging is TONS more fun than working on a final! The final actually isn't due until tomorrow night at 6:30, so I have plenty of time to procrastinate before finishing the rest of my essay last minute. The thing is: I HATE procrastinating!! If you know me well enough, you know it's one of my biggest pet peeves. I hate when I procrastinate, I hate when other people procrastinate. It just really bugs me! I hate feeling stressed on a time crunch, so I guess I'd rather feel stressed before the time crunch and get the stress out of the way before the deadline creeps up.

So, I guess I'd better get back to work rather than procrastinate...wish me luck!!

P.S. Did I mention that my awesome husband got another 4.0 for this semester? That's a straight 4.0 gpa for his Master's Degree. Way to go, Babe! You so totally rock!

This is what it's all about!!

We found Rob!! What about you?

Once you've found Rob, post this on your blog and pass him along! Enjoy!

Finally getting to Thanksgiving!

We've been a little busy, so it's nice to finally have a chance to post our Thanksgiving pictures. We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!! It came and went so quickly, but our Thanksgiving was great! We were so not ready to head back to school and work after having such an awesome Thanksgiving break, but we're already back in the swing of things and looking forward to Christmas break!! (Yes, our lives really do revolve around school.)

D & Miss Abbie hanging out in the truck - the weather was awesome!!

I think one of the highlights of our day was being able to see my awesome cousin, Christopher, ride his tricycle!! He was 1.3 pounds when he was born, and has some difficulties because of it, so it's amazing to see him grow and watch him progress. He's 9 1/2 years old now. These pictures are mostly for my family who weren't able to be there to see him.

Randy runs along behind him to make sure he doesn't run into anything. Christopher likes to watch his feet rather than watch where he's going :)
Our scrumptious turkey at D's parent's house

D, Dad, Grandmother Jennings, Josie, Ryan & part of our delicious feast

Our Thankful List '09: We are grateful for...

1. Our Father in Heaven who knows us individually and knows our struggles. He knows what we can handle and what will make us grow. We're so grateful for his perfectly designed Plan and giving us the opportunity to partake of His greatness.

2. Having a supportive spouse to go through all of the happy times and the rough times with. We truly are so bless to have each other. It's an amazing gift to be married to your best friend!

3. The Gospel in general and the power of the Priesthood. D has had the opportunity to use the Priesthood in my behalf several times this year. I am grateful to have a worthy husband, and D is grateful to be able to call on the power of God in times of great need, and times of little need too.

4. Knowledge. We are so grateful to have the opportunity to increase our education at this time in our lives. We know how important education is, and we hope to instill the love of learning in our future children as well.

5. Our circle of support. We have such wonderful family members and amazing friends who love and support us constantly. We are so grateful to have you all in our lives, and hope we can be the examples that we strive to be.

Bonus: Cheese, TimTams, hot chocolate, best friends, and clean water.

3 posts in 1 day...

...is that bad? Make sure you scroll down and check out all three!

This one's about San Francisco!!!

One of the 1st things we saw when we got off the plane was this horse in the airport. It looks like it's made of driftwood, but it's actually metal. Pretty cool.

The view from our hotel room--foggy, yes. But you can see the ocean!

The 1st night we attended a reception where our school received a certificate of accreditation for our Certified Family Life Education program. Yay us!
Kristen, Janice, Ron, Me, Alisa, Caryl, Kristalyn, and Roger (a.k.a. Santa Claus)

After doing some volunteering Thursday morning and taking a nap, we got on a couple of tour buses and made our way to San Francisco. This awesome building was there waiting to welcome us! :)

Santa taking a picture of us...he really was a blast to have with us. Thanks for coming, Roger!!

The crew:
Lindsay, Hillary, Me, Janice, Santa
Carson, Kristen, Caryl, Ron

Our evening pretty much took place at Pier 39

Fun sour dough creations

Digging in and feasting on our sour dough

You should have seen all the boats!

Ron sharing our precious sour dough with the seagulls!!
(More of this story to come below)

Janice finally found her boyfriend in San Francisco!

Alcatraz
Someday D and I will go to San Fran and take a tour. It's one of our dreams.

The Golden Gate Bridge

I promise there is a reason a took a picture of this seagull. Here's the rest of the "feeding sour dough to the seagulls" story...
Ron had just given me a chunk of some yummy chocolate sour dough bread with chocolate chips and raisins. I was holding it in my hand and trying to take a picture at the same time, so the bread was up by my head. All of a sudden, my bread was gone! This ginormous seagull (it really was a huge seagull! This picture doesn't do it justice) flew in right over my head and snatched it right out of my hand, then swallowed the entire thing whole! So, if you look at it's neck, you can see the bulge, which is actually my chunk of chocolate sour dough bread. Janice said the look on my face was priceless. Man! I wish we had gotten it on video!
Moral of the story: Don't hold a chunk of scrumptious bread up by your head and expect to hang onto it while you're by the ocean. A seagull will come and steal it!

Tons of sea lions at Pier 39

These random toilets on the street cracked me up. I had to get a picture!

Street performers singing "Red Wine." Love that song!

We ate dinner at Joe's Crab Shack, although we really ended up there because our whole group of girls had to use the restroom. Seriously! You cannot easily find a public restroom in San Francisco! We really had to search! But it ended up being a good find because we had great food (most of us anyway) and some fun dancing with the waitresses.
(*Note: I do realize that I just posted a picture of public toilets out on the street, but none of us would have actually used them...they were pretty gross on the inside!)

Friday was filled with Conferencing at the NCFR for most of our group. I spent the day (and most of the trip, actually) sleeping in the hotel room because I got sick the day after we got there, and was miserable!! I still tried to enjoy myself as much as I could, and I had great people with me who took wonderful care of me while I was away from my hubby. Then Saturday evening our group went back to San Francisco in our mini-bus we rented. We did some driving around the Golden Gate Park, and saw some amazing houses and beautiful streets. We drove down Lombard street in our 12 passenger van, and drove across the Golden Gate Bridge a couple of times. It really was a blast! (Despite being sick and feeling miserable.)

Unfortunately you can't tell from the picture how steep this road really was.
This is an amazing view of San Fran from Twin Peaks. There is a street close by named "Deming." I seriously wanted to stop and get a picture....maybe next time.

Janice & I weren't feeling too great after our delicious dinner, probably from eating too much, but that didn't stop us from going to Ghirardelli Square where we got some scrumptious chocolate!

The next morning, Sunday, we flew back to SLC. Despite not getting out of the trip what I expected or hoped for, I still had a good time. Out of our 4-day conference, I was only able to attend one 45 minute session, and even had to leave early because I was coughing so much! I was sick enough the first couple of days we thought I might have swine flu because I had a lot of the symptoms, but never got a fever. Being sick pretty much forced me to change my plans, but that's why we try to be flexible! Luckily Ron was the only other person who was sick, but he wasn't nearly as bad as I was. Thank goodness!

Thanks, Ron, for allowing us the opportunity to attend a conference and get the experience! Thanks to everyone who came and made the trip a blast! It's so great to be back home with my sweetheart though!