Graduate School

For those of you who don't know, I have been planning on attending Graduate School. In order to sit for the CPA exam, I need 150 college credit hours. Since a normal undergraduate degree can be done in 120-130 hours, this often requires graduate school to acquire the necessary credits. Such is my situation.

After applying to a few graduate schools, I was accepted to three: Utah State University, University of Idaho, and Brigham Young University. It was a bit of a tough decision for me because BYU has one of the best accounting programs in the nation and U of I offered me a very generous scholarship. In the end, Stephanie and I felt best about attending University of Idaho. So we are going to be living in Moscow, Idaho (no not Russia) for the next year.

We will be moving there in June and are going to try to find summer jobs. I am also going to take some classes online this summer so my course load will be easier and I can complete everything by the end of next May. This also gets us out of the warm Vegas summer. I always wanted to experience an Idaho summer.

Goodbye Vegas, hello Moscow.

Graduation

On Friday, BYU-Idaho held graduation. Although Stephanie and I have left BYU-Idaho following my graduation, she has been student teaching in Las Vegas. She finished teaching a week ago and from what I can gather, did an excellent job. I heard nothing but good things and I feel she reached some students that had previously been unreachable.

Now that she is finished and graduation has been held, Stephanie is a college graduate! She can now go to most states and teach. Congratulations Steph!

Wave o' babies, wave o' babies!

No, Jon and I are not pregnant. I finished my student teaching and was really bored today. Luckily, the internet holds many entertainments for a bored newlywed. So for those of you who are wondering, here's what Jon and I's future baby will look like! Dum dum dum. (Isn't technology wonderful? Now we don't have to wonder!)

And, just for fun, I stole a copy of Lauren and Erik's wedding picture and created their future dream baby as well! Say hello to Paul Boizelle and Jackson Merkley!

Thank heavens for genetic variation right? There's no way my babies, or Lauren's babies, are ever going to be that ugly! Like Jon says, cute people make cute babies!

A Conference

To all who read this blog, I haven't been great about keeping up lately. Life has been pretty busy. Between January and April, accountants are very busy preparing taxes and performing audits on the financial statements of the past year. Work had me traveling for two weeks and then very busy while in town the following week. One week involved 65 hours of work. It can be a bit draining.

Last Sunday, Steph and I had the opportunity to hear from the leaders of our church at a regional meeting. We arrived expecting to hear from local leaders, but were happily surprised to hear from Thomas S. Monson and David A. Bednar of the Twelve Apostles. As the church has grown internationally, it as become increasingly more difficult for the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to visit everyone in the church. Technology has allowed them to speak to members of the church all over the world while staying in Salt Lake City and they are beginning to utilize this technology more frequently.

Both men spoke very well. The overall theme of the conference was on living so that the Holy Ghost can be with us to bless our lives. We were taught that we cannot force the Holy Ghost to come, we can only invite Him into our lives by keeping the commandments. We also cannot be obedient to the spirit of the law while ignoring the letter of the law. We should pray to invite the Holy Ghost and we should be "meek and humble" so we can receive it.

I left the conference happy and pensive. The conference was uplifting and also instructive. There are some things I feel I can do better so I can more fully enjoy the blessings of the companionship of the Holy Ghost. I always feel grateful to receive instruction from the Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. I look forward to hearing from all the members of the twelve this April when they address the world-wide membership.

Anime Night

It finally happened! I was beginning to wonder if it ever would happen. What is this event? Jon played dress-up with me. Here's how it went down... Stephanie was very bored one night, so she went into the bathroom and started playing with her hair. She gave herself two weird pigtails and decided they looked like anime pigtails. She ran out into the living room to show her devoted husband her new anime couture. Then she had a brilliant idea!! What if Jon also dressed up anime-style. They could totally have anime night. After about half-an-hour [sic] Jon finally relented. He put on his awesome anime duds and let Stephanie give him a sweet faux-hawk (Stephanie's really bummed that you can't really see it in the picture). And that's how Anime Jon was born. Hey, at least it's something!

What?!?!

Guess what everybody! On Monday, Jon and I will celebrate our 9 month anniversary. That's big anniversary .75! Just thought I'd remind everybody because I'm pretty excited.

Over the Hill and Still Sane!

I'm just proud as punch to announce that I just completed Week 6 of my 12 week student teaching experience. It wasn't a bad week except for the tummy aches, and the stress of unfinished paperwork. Oh and I can't leave out the detention I gave when a Hispanic student called me a dirty word in Spanish, the kids doing 'the wave' across the classroom when they think I'm not looking, or the Valentine card I confiscated that burped when you opened it. How can anyone not love Junior High? (No sarcasm intended) I'm actually really enjoying my student teaching. I have really sweet kids for the most part, so my biggest discipline problem is chatter. I've only really butted heads with one kid (dirty-Spanish-word-boy Victor). It's wonderful. So I just want to say to all those of you who read this and haven't student taught as of yet, it's not anywhere near as scary as BYU-I professors make it sound!