Sun Diego!

A friend of mine brought it to my attention that I haven't blogged in 4-5 months... I blame the busy summer and start of work. 

For the first time in my academic career, I got a Fall Break! It was like a new term to me, like "what's that supposed to mean??" It means I get a 5 day weekend! And that means partayyyyy!!! Loren and I had been toying with the idea of going to San Diego but didn't want to spend too much money. Fortunately, around that time we were contemplating, my dad offered his Marriott hotel points (from all his years of business travel) to us since he's retired and doesn't need them anymore. Cha-ching! Hello California!! 

So we packed our bags and shipped off Wednesday night to St. George (where the in-laws live) to cut part of the traveling time down. Here's an incredible sun rise we saw as we were filling the car up with gas.

Thursday we drove down rather leisurely, considering how badly I wanted to be at the beach. We hit some nasty storms on the way--reminded me of driving in the torrential down pours of Mississippi. Never want to do that again. We got to sunny La Jolla, California, immediately got in our swimmy suits and drove less than 5 mins to La Jolla Shores! :)

That day we didn't jump in the ocean because Loren thought there weren't enough people around to scare off the fish that could be lurking in the shallow waters. Also, this was the same beach that his sister Rachel got stung by Sting Ray years ago and he didn't want to risk another incident. So we built sand castles instead!

Cutie patootie!

My shot at an artsy photo

B-you-ti-ful!!

We went back to the hotel, ate a delish lasagna Mama Stone made for us, and watched Harry Potter 7.1 and 7.2 on tv. It was a good day :) Friday, we hit up a nice outdoor mall near by

Then we checked out Seaport Village in San Diego. 

Birds of Paradise flowers, so neat!

Blurry pic but check out how awesome this swing is--foot rest and all!!

Then we ate at a yummy Greek restaurant overlooking the water.

Gyro and something else. The Gyro was my fave

Delicious, homemade Baklava!! Totally worth the calories ^_^

After our bellies were full of goodness, we had to spend a couple hours at the beach! My main desire for going to San Diego, versus somewhere else, was to go BOOGIE BOARDING!! My first time boogie boarding was this summer in San Diego during the Stone Family Reunion and I fell in love! So of course that's all I did while there and naturally my inner legs were chaffing so bad from all the sand in the water. But I didn't care. I wore it like a badge of honor! After boogie boarding for hours, we headed down the road to La Jolla Cove to see the seals!

That white-ish part of the rock is bird poop. Thought you ought to know!

We crashed that night! Did I mention our hotel had the best continental breakfasts?! Because seriously, every morning I stuffed my face full of french toasts sticks, eggs, potatoes, yogurt, oatmeal, etc.! Mmm mmm good! Saturday morning we drove up to Mt. Soledad which has a 360 degree view of San Diego--so incredible! I wish I had Panorama on my phone!! 

The bright, white spiky building is the San Diego temple

 

I could see this from the beach and it lights up at night

After this, we drove through Balboa Park, hit up a free museum within our 15 min parking limit! 

Then we went to the Mormon Battalion visitors center. I love this place--it's so fun and interactive. I highly recommend this to anyone visiting the area! And lucky me, I ran into an old friend/co-worker who is now a sister missionary there! It was such a delight to see her!! :D

Sis. Brittany Davies in her pioneer garb :)

She's so cute.

I volunteered to dress up as one of the pioneer soldiers, since all the other visitors were shy and old.

Serious pioneer face pic

By now it was time for lunch. And what are we then ready for next? You guessed it, the beach! Loren got tired a while into boogie boarding so he slept on the beach. After 1 1/2 hours of not budging, a lady came up and shook him, then let out a sigh of relief. She said that he hadn't moved in a while and thought he was dead! Haha ;) While waiting for some good waves to come my way, I enjoyed people watching and viewing part of the Miramar Air Show--planes constantly flew by, doing nose dives and other fun tricks! It was so neat

Not an attractive look but check me out riding the wave in!!

After cleaning up, we headed to Escondido to have dinner with Grandma Stone! It was so fun to get to see her and visit with her!

Sunset at her house

This was our final day here. We slowly made our way back home on Sunday so Loren could go to school Monday. I had that day off and played with my co-worker Kirsten :) Basically, this was the most glorious vacation: I couldn't have asked for more fun, better weather or a better partner in crime!! 

'Til we meet again, San Diego! :)

Always a Student, Never a Graduate

Hello friends and fam who read my blog, sorry for the long absence! April was a bit crazy with finals, graduating with both sets of family in town (which was pretty great) and work to do. Busy busy. And not much to blog about besides all that stuff, and who wants to read about that? Here's a summary with some pictures :)

As a 5th year senior, I didn't have many credits left necessary for graduating. I took 12 credits in the Fall, including three major classes, leaving only one GE my final semester...Humanities. I don't have anything against Humanities in general, just my first experience with it at BYU was horrendous, mainly because of the professor. If I had a blog during that semester, you'd hear a lot of ranting and complaining about that guy. Ooh did he rub me the wrong way all the time! Anyways, my friend Jessica (who's in my major and works with me) also had Humanities as her last GE and suggested we take it together from a certain professor--Lauri Haddock. She was awesome!! So funny, lively, super informative with interesting side notes since she had been to the many European towns and museums dozens of times (she hosts a tour of Europe every summer). She made me really enjoy the subject. Since this was a GE it was considered a "freshman" class, which was easy breezy for me, the 5th year senior! ;)

We had 3 exams, 2 papers and a final presentation--even better, the class was under the student limit to qualify for a TA so Lauri cancelled the second paper due to limited time to read all of them. SCORE!! As for the presentation, it had to encompass a piece of work (art, music, architecture, etc.) from each era we covered, but most of all it had to be "creative." So my group decided to cover a styrofoam sphere in blue frosting as ocean (in impasto style--look at us thinking like freshmen!) and hot glued mini M&M's in the shape of the major European countries that we covered in class...basically France and a few others. We then printed miniature pictures and pinned them to the globe where they were painted. But that wasn't enough. We recreated famous works of art. Our medium? Predominantly, candy. ^_^

Here's what another girl in my group did. View original here.

Girl with a Pearl Earring.

 Medium: Blue taffy, Coco Puff and Cheerios.

And this baby's mine! View original here.

The Scream.

Medium: Variety of flavored pull-apart Twizzlers, Charleston Chews, Smarties, and taffy. The face is made of cookie dough taffy, that's how I got the eyes and mouth. Awesome, right? Well, I'm proud :)

After we gave our presentation (which my professor enjoyed and gave us full credit on!), I rushed off to dinner with my parents. Here's a picture of us enjoying Mexican food on a previous day, it was the only one where no one's head got cut off. Don't let the camera fool you, I haven't gained 10 pounds in my face.

After eating at El Azteca :)

The day after my Humanities presentation was Commencement. I had no idea what this was about. I only knew it included a fancy, well liked speaker, sort of like a "hoo-rah" sort of speech? I had no idea you were literally paraded around in order to reach your seats! I stood around a parking lot waiting to enter the Marriott Center, to walk up the bridge to be level with the stadium, see the accoladed President and deans of the school, just to walk down some stairs and around through what I thought to be a secret tunnel to the bottom floor of the stadium, then walk up and around some more dang stairs to my seat. 

Jessica and myself, walking along the bridge. Pre-knowledge of parading.

Secret tunnel. West side of Marriott Center.

Luckily for me (and Jessica), some lady asked a couple of girls if there were sitting together. I knew they weren't since they hardly spoke to each other so I immediately raised my hand and said "we are!," having some notion that answering so would be in our favor. It was. We were quickly seated to 3rd row seats, center section in front of the speaker. Our speaker was Elder Dallin H. Oaks. :) Great guy and talk but unfortunately it was on the warm side in the stadium and the talk was carrying on a little long...so my head might've bobbed a few times..... The poopy side of sitting so close to the floor is waiting for everyone to file out of the stadium.

Elder Oaks, mid speech. I tried to be discreet.

After exhibiting salmon-swimming-upstream maneuvers, we finally emerged from the crowd to take a few pictures. Notice how the hand-on-hip trick worked in my favor with the unfortunate billowing graduate gown. 

 

We also had a lovely dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant with Loren's family but we regrettably did not get a picture of that. After dinner, we played Apples to Apples at the hotel. 'Twas fun, as my 2nd youngest sister-in-law would say :) The following day I graduated! Yay!! Here's proof!

I had to be at the Smith Fieldhouse at 7am. Boo! Super fortunately for me, I literally live across the street from it. No commuting or parking troubles for me, yes! The front row of people, minus the Latina looking girl (Idk her name, it's a pretty big major) were in my study group (but missing 2 other girls). Thank goodness for them or I wouldn't have gotten A's my last year and half-2 years of major classes! Notice how the hand-on-hip trick was an extremely poor choice in this shot. *Shudder*

Communication Disorders picture

Adorable graduating toddler!! (He made tons of noise during the ceremony though)

Can you see me?!

Walking! Shaking Dr. Nissen's hand

Dear parents who are reading this, please share your graduation pictures with me! ;)

Tia Tygard. My favorite person in the major and best study partner.

After graduation and more salmon like maneuvers, the 2 families gathered at Terra Mia, an Italian restaurant in the University Mall area. It was pretty good and not crowded! Dad has the only picture from that--hint hint dad. As a side note, I should give a shout out to my brother, even though I know he doesn't read this. He skipped part of work that morning, drove 45 minutes (plus however much more due to graduation traffic) and had to park 3 blocks away just to come to my graduation. What a great big brother!! We got together with him and 2 of his girls that night for dinner at Olive Garden. Yum yum :)

 The only thing I had to worry about after that was finishing up work at BYU and packing for the Washington trip! Details to follow :)

Conference Weekend & March

Two days ago, April 2nd, marked the one year anniversary of when I got engaged! It's crazy that it feels so long ago when time seems to be flying by. I've been married for almost 8 months (on the 12th) and it's been nothing but bliss! Well, besides school and work always getting in the way of "us" time. But that's the price you pay as a newlywed college student :) Isn't he so cute?

This past weekend we went down to St. George to visit Loren's family. Unfortunately, I hardly ever take pictures when I'm there. We did fun things, I just didn't document all of them. Poo. Well after we got there, we had some lunch, talked for a while and then I purchased this baby!

I've been toying with the idea of getting a sewing machine since I've been in my sewing class. Luckily for me I found it on Craigslist from a woman who lived in St. George. This really worked out since we were already going to be in St. George this weekend and even better, she dropped the price so I only paid $40 for it! My mother-in-law Patty came with me to the woman's house to make sure it was a decent machine for the price and she approved. This alone made the trip down there great! But there was more fun to come with the Stones :) Later that night we got Thai food--yuuuuummmmy!! The options for dinner were Mexican or Asian cuisine. That's basically like choosing between my dad and my mom; and that's a tough choice. We decided to go to Benja's Thai (& sushi bar) restaurant that I've seen plenty of times but just never went. Thank you for the date night, Patty and Dan, it was delish!

Saturday, we had "Waffles and Apostles"! We had a waffle breakfast before we watched General Conference to listen to the words of our beloved Apostles and Prophet Thomas S. Monson. You can check it out here. After we watched the first 2 sessions, the men went off to watch the Priesthood session while the girls went shopping! Then the guys joined us for Cold Stone ice cream--great way to end the day!

Sunday was great too! More good talks and yummy food. We even got our taxes done--woot woot!! Unfortunately we have a leak in our radiator so we couldn't leave as early as we wanted. Even worse, we left late and ran into some bad weather :( First it was just super fast wind, then some rain, then swirling snow! Legitimately swirling right at us. It was so distracting. We barely made it 30 mins out of town when we decided to return to the Stone home in fear that we'd get into an accident. When we left the next morning, this is the beauty we were greeted with, on our engagement anniversary!

Visit southern Utah and check out the red rock!

In other news, during the previous weeks, we went to a Vocal Point concert!! Last semester I was obsessed with the tv show The Sing-Off so it was so fun to see these guys in concert! It kinda stunk because some of the guys from the group on the tv show were no longer in the group. But they still sounded great! Here's a picture I wasn't allowed to take...oh well.

And we also went to Tucanos to celebrate my birthday. That's a fun little tradition we've got going on. They have a birthday club where it's a BOGO free meal deal. That makes for a happy (and fat) couple :)

Another time we babysat my nieces. Here's an adorable picture of Katelyn, where you can also check out my new bangs :)

For St. Patrick's day, we had Mexican food, not corned beef and cabbage. My full Irish grandfather must've been disappointed in me that day. But we discovered our new favorite Mexican restaurant, called "El Azteca"! We ate yummy green lime and cilantro chicken enchiladas and amazing green horchata! Even better, they have a salsa bar with a sweet but slightly spicy salsa--mmmmm! 

Shamrock crispy--how festive

Well, those are our adventures. Until next time!

Spring Forward to 23!

Happy 1st anniversary of my blog (plus a few weeks)!! To be honest, a year ago I had a feeling I was going to get engaged soon and wanted to be able to share our story when it happened, as opposed to starting the blog after we were married. So I figured that creating a blog around my birthday was a good ploy. The unfortunate part was that I couldn't make my URL thestones@blogspot.com. That would've been quite a surprise to a lot of people. Oh well. And although this blog includes things about me and Loren, it's written by me so that's whose name is in the URL. 

Anywho...

My Birthday was March 10th and I turned the big 2-3. Nothing real special about that birthday except that it was the first of my married life so therefore, it was cause for celebration :) My big, not-going-to-happen wish was to go to Southern California and spend it on the beach. But that would mean having to take off work and shirk other responsibilities. It's a good thing I have Loren to keep me grounded and disciplined or I'd be in trouble, ha. We'll make it to CA eventually but for my bday adventure, we went to Park City, UT! Neither of us have been and I've heard good things about it so I thought that would be a good way to travel but not go crazy.

We enjoyed about an hour of beautiful snow covered mountain scenery as we drove up to Park City. 

Once we got there, we went up and down Main Street, looked at art galleries, shops and then got some grub. 

After our tummies were full, we didn't feel like walking anymore. So we drove up a little farther and went on the Alpine Coaster. It's a baby roller coaster that whips around surprisingly fast. I'm trying to work Loren up to going on a massive, tumbling, twirling roller coaster at a Six Flags or something ^_^ hehe. I rode it full throttle without touching the brakes once! Here's the video I took of the ride, if you'd like to see. Enjoy!

When my little cart stopped, Loren laughed at how all my hair was windblown and practically glued to the chair but then took a second look and said "your look like a model." That always makes a girl feel good ^_^  I don't think so but I like the look of my hair.

 After the coaster, we ventured over to the Olympic Park! Remember how Salt Lake City was the host to the 2002 Winter Olympics? Anyways, I've always wanted to see it. We didn't do too much but go through the museum. We could've paid $$$ to go on a sled or luge ride where the Olympians competed but our wallet wanted to hold on to our money. We still enjoyed going around looking at a few videos, the pictures, playing with a few of the hands-on activities, etc.

That's the great speed skater Apollo Aton Ono. He's Japanese-American from Washington--my mom and I love him!!

There's part of the race course

After that we just did a little more window shopping then made the trek back to Provo and saw more beautiful scenery. You'll see some nice sun reflections off my window because there was no way I was going to open the window to have 55 degree, 60mph wind freeze my hand to make me drop my phone :)

In Provo, I did a little clothes shopping at Target (thank you parentals!) while Loren played games on my phone--thank goodness for smart phones and their apps! Then we finally headed home after picking up some pizza and ice cream cake! I don't remember the last time I had one of those for a birthday. It was absolutely delicious. Loren even had a special message written on it :D  Too bad Cold Stone messed it up... There's not supposed to be two I's next to each other. Oh well, I knew what he meant.

Au Domoni Iko is Fijian for "I love you"

Of course I opened presents, too!!

For those of you who don't know what a Whirley Pop is, it's a big pot with a crank and spinning "blade" on the bottom to pop your own popcorn and then add yummy flavors to it!! Loren always wants to make popcorn but I don't like it plain. This way we can eat it all the time, in more than one scrumptious way! Thank you mom & dad in-law!!!  They also wrote a sweet note saying I'm their favorite daughter-in-law. YES!! But when Danny gets married, I'll have some competition...

This is a cute jewelry box because all my jewelry is stashed in a drawer. That's no way to keep your stuff nice for very long.  The first picture is me trying to figure out how to open the sides, ha. And Loren said he'd even paint something cool on it--I'm excited for that! This next picture depicts what my dad likes to say as "making out like a bandit!" Btw, that color blue would have been one of my wedding colors last year except that it was no where to be found! This year it's seriously all over Target!! Oh well.

Thank you family for making my not special numbered birthday great!! I was one happy birthday girl ;)

P.S. The "Spring Forward" part of the title is because the day after my bday was Daylight Savings...but we didn't know that. Thank goodness for iPhones that change the time automatically!! We woke up on Sunday feeling exhausted and making it to church on time, which is more than we can say for 3/4 of our ward...ha.

Still Surviving.

I miss blogging. Deja vu... I'm pretty sure I've said that in a recent post. I haven't done it in a while because I've been super busy lately. I made it a goal to blog more but that was a bust. So I'll just try to blog enough so people will know we're alive and not completely boring :)

Our lives so far are: stressful, scheduled yet still somewhat procrastinated (mainly on my part), include lots of late nights, yearning for the future to come quicker, and trying to see the silver lining in everything. 

Success story for the Stones: Loren didn't have a job for the first half of the semester which was really stressful for him. He wouldn't even look at our bank account, thinking our money was depleting. Super fortunately for us, the Lord was looking out for us! Loren's sister Jessica said her work was hiring so he sent in his application and her manager called Loren and told him that because she trusts Jessica, she won't interview Loren but just give him the job! At first I wasn't too excited for it because he would be working until 10pm (the reason we didn't want him to continue working at his last job for this semester) and he would be a delivery boy using our car, hardly getting compensated for the miles. He was ok with it all, he was just excited to add money to our bank account. After his first pay check, he decided to investigate the damage to our savings only to discover we hadn't lost any money! We were blessed with a chunk of money left over from his grant for school and money from my tuition since I'm not taking a full load of classes. PLUS, he delivered food to a lot of generous people who all tipped him a few bucks every time. Loren said he'd get back to the restaurant and listen to the other drivers who'd complain that no one tipped them. We were doing what we could to say our prayers and read our scriptures at night and pay our tithing every month and it definitely paid off, more than we were hoping! This definitely gives me a testimony in paying your tithing :) Other than that, Loren is good! He's got some fun but demanding classes with lots of homework assignments. But he's a smart kid and does a good job planning ahead to get his homework done on time, if not early every time. I should learn from him.

As for me, I'm doing all right. Humanities isn't as demanding as I thought but sewing is worse than expected! Who knew sewing was so time consuming, particular and hard?! Goodness, my back kills all the time from hunching over the sewing machine making sure my seam line is straight! I have a 3 hour lab twice a week but I stay in the sewing lab on campus until 10pm at least one night a week. Yet I still don't finish whatever I'm working on. Crazy.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T. That's what I have for my mother-in-law Patty. She's a seamstress and a darn good one!! She made her daughters these dresses for my wedding.

Nice, huh? I can't even imagine making a dress! I was complaining about how hard it was to make PJ but that was nothing compared to a SHIRT. And a dress is basically a very long shirt. Gag. Go you, Patty! I hope to be somewhat as good as you! (Pictures of what I've made soon to come, k everybody?)

As for where I'm going for grad school--stay tuned. I still have a couple of schools to hear back from and if/when I get accepted, I'll be shouting for joy and posting ALL about it! Other than working, school, sewing, and waiting to hear back from a terribly nice school, we've got nothing big going on. But just you wait, something big will come around! ;)