September at school

Well the semester is in full swing here in Utah. Chase and I are both in school full-time and working part-time. We had to come back a little early for a job interview for Chase, which of course he nailed. About an hour after we left the interview they called and offered him the job. It's for a company called Sebo Marketing which *basically* designs websites for clients that sign up. He likes his job and gets to work with his good friend AJ Wilcox. I was fortunate enough to find a good job on campus! It's in the CITES Office in the Mckay (Education) building and so far, I go in at 8am everyday and do my homework :) They told me when they hired me that the biggest challenge with the job is the work load fluctuation, sometimes they're swamped and sometimes they're totally dead. Well I guess right now is the latter, so I do an assignment here and there, but mostly I read my textbooks and write papers for my classes. It's actually been really great and I am always caught up on my homework!

As far as I can tell, Chase likes his classes this semester, but I LOVE mine! This is my first semester as an HFL (Home and Family Living) Major and I must say my classes are awesome. Besides my GE's, I'm taking intermediate sewing, a family routines and rituals class, and a food prep in the home course. I'm getting a huge dose of sewing and every Friday I have a 3 hour foods lab. Yesterday my kitchen made doughnuts and fudge and I brought some home for Chase and he said the doughnuts were very tasty :)

Well Chase and I got some new couches. It's a long story, but here's a picture of me lounging on it. We got this couch and a matching love seat for only $375! Basically it was the deal of the century.

Nicole and Phil came out to Utah for Phil's sister's wedding and they came over Sunday afternoon to visit. Tori gets bigger everytime we see her!

Backpacking

When Chase and I got to Utah on Thursday, we couldn't move in until Monday and we needed to kill some time. Chase had to be here Friday morning for a job interview so we decided to go backpacking up in the High Uintas in Granddaddy Basin. Really Chase decided and I had to act excited... but once we started packing for it I got pretty excited. So we set out Friday and hiked for about 4 hours into a campsite before hitting the hay. The next day we fished, camped, messed around and hiked out. It was nice to get into nature and spend some time together before the start of the semester. Here are some of the pics from the trip.

Us hiking into the basin. If we look tired its because we are!The only way to cross these two merging lakes was to walk across all these logs. Harder then you would think with a huge backpack on.Chase caught a big fish early in the morning. He usually throws them back, but this one bled so much that it died... (look at Chase's hand)So we had to eat it. It was actually pretty tasty!Me in our tiny campsite. Another fish, he caught about 5 total.I wanted to make sure we left our mark once we left!

End of Summer

Well now that Chase and I are back at school I wanted to write one last post to wrap up our summer in California. We headed out to Palo Alto to Nicole and Phil's for Tori's 1st birthday. We had a fun BBQ and they made 2 cakes for Chase and Tori because their birthdays are only a day apart. It was awesome for us to hang out with Chase's family for his birthday! (I know that's really what he wanted.)
This was the "exploding cake" his mom made, its chocolate with crushed up candy bars and m&ms on it. So tasty!
Hanging out in Lodi as well. Aubrey is super good at riding the scooter now and every night she wants Chase and I to come out and ride up and down the driveway with her. Sometimes we'd rather not but it's always fun to get out of the house.
For Tamie's birthday Ryan took her jetskiing and Chase, Yeong-Hye and I tagged along. We all had a really fun time out at Hogan and I had to ride the tube behind the ski most of the time! My arms got tired, but it was so fun!
For the second part of Tamie's birthday, Ryan, Tamie, Dani, Kevin, Chase, and I went to California State Fair on a kind of triple date. We had a really fun time messing around and eating fair food (Ryan's favorite part!) and that night we saw the Weird Al concert. We were all skeptical at first but it was free and it ended up being really funny and entertaining! This is Chase and I on our way out of the fair.
The last weekend before we left Emily, Paige, Dani, Chase and I went to Santa Cruz for the day to enjoy the beach before returning to Utah! It was a nice, relaxing day with lunch at a deli, bocce ball, and walking along the Boardwalk. We did ride the Giant Dipper once, it never gets old! The only problem is that we all forgot sunscreen and got grilled up like a bunch of lobsters. Chase was the only smart one who stayed dressed and in the shade, but I don't mind a little extra tan before heading to school ;) This is Chase at the boardwalk, I suppose he's sad he'll be the only one going back to school without a tan.
The day before we left California Chase's mom called us up and said she'd be in Walnut Creek and maybe we could get together for dinner to celebrate her birthday. We headed out there and met Nicole,Phil and Tori and had a fun time, eating and watching her open her presents. She asked everyone to just give her a good book to read, so I gave her "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson, and Chase gave her "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. I hope she enjoys them!Now Chase and I are back in Utah for Fall semester.

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Anniversary Video

This is a video of Chase reading the book I made him for our anniversary. It cuts off before the end, but enjoy it anyway!

Our Exchange Student

On July 26th we got our Korean exchange student that is going to live with my family for the next 10 months! Her name is Yeong-Hye (Young-Heh) and she is 15 and a sophomore in high school. She arrived on Saturday and started school on Monday and then on Tuesday, my parents left for Hawaii, so I was left here to assimilate her to American culture...!
The week was actually really great and Chase and I both bonded with her really well. One night Colin had a friend over and we all went outside and after a failed badminton attempt (too windy!) we ended up playing an excellent game of croquet in which I got poison and killed everyone! Yeong-Hye actually did really well and Colin only blew his stack a few times. After a few days in high school, we pulled Yeong-Hye out on a pre-arranged absence to transfer her to an intensive English program for two weeks. Hopefully that will be long enough for her to understand her teachers better! Overall she is a joy to have and Aubrey is so enthralled by her that she is Aubrey's new favorite and I get left alone whenever she is around.

Chase's Family Reunion

Last weekend was Chase's family reunion in Avila Beach. It was a lot of fun and good to meet all his extended family again. When you meet them of course they always remember me and say that we met at my wedding, but I met so many people! I told Chase this and he just said "Welcome to my world" and I got no sympathy at all! I guess it just shows me that I should be more sensitive to his situation here in Lodi. We got there Thursday night and went out to dinner with everyone at a restaurant with AMAZING fish tacos. I guess all my worrying was for nothing because as soon as we sat down talking to everyone was totally natural and fun. I love his relatives! Friday everyone went to Morro Bay which was about 45 minutes away from our hotel and went whale watching. We saw a lot of whales and it was cool except it took like 5 hours and on the way back everyone got sick and 3 people barfed!

This is Morro rock and Chase!Alex and Ashlee seeing the whales, I must've just missed a picture of the whales!
And Chase on the open ocean.
That night back in Avila Beach we walked around the local farmers market and bought food for dinner and dessert. We ate on the pier and it was so fun, I want to go to farmer's markets every day!

This is us on the pier, poor Chase got roasted on the whale boat. Who knew that you could get burned on an overcast day??
After the farmers market that night we went down the beach a little ways and had a bonfire and roasted smores. This was the time for everyone to tell stories about Chase's Grandma and just talk and enjoy themselves without worrying about throwing up like we did on the boat! Haha.
Us at the bonfire.
The next day we went to Morro Bay again and went to a restaurant called the Coffee Pot for breakfast and met the owner who is this amazing guy who wrote the book Double Luck about his own life growing up as a Chinese orphan. Then everyone went out on kayaks in the bay for a couple hours. I was paranoid about getting wet but Chase was nice and didn't splash me at all, so it was really fun! Then that night we had a BBQ at our hotel for Grandma's birthday and everyone gave her presents. Sunday was the last day and we checked out of our hotel room and went to Grandma's house in San Luis Obispo for a delicious brunch and then to church in her ward. It was so small we basically doubled it with the 15 or so people that came to church with her! Then we drove home in time to celebrate my mom's birthday with dinner. The weekend ended up being tons of fun and I enjoyed spending time with all of Chase's relatives, hopefully we'll be able to visit some of them before the summer is over!

Our summer.

This summer has been really crazy. We moved to California with my family so Chase could "work", but we've ended up going on so many trips, it truly is a summer vacation! Chase has been interning at my dad's engineering company and he says he's gaining a lot of experience. I didn't get a job so I could help my mom take care of Aubrey and my Grandpa who lives with us. He has Parkinson's disease and some dementia so it's IMPOSSIBLE to leave him alone at the house. There is some outside help, but she can't live here so either my mom or I have to be here pretty much all the time. It's fun to play with Aubrey everyday though! My mom says we can't have too much fun because she remembers EVERYTHING and she'll want to play like that everyday! Aubrey and I swinging, one of her favorite activities. She might look scared, but she's not! Besides that we've had some fun vacations! It started when we left Utah and drove to Bakersfield to see Chase's family.
Chase's dad had to set the timer and run to get in the pic.. haha. It was really fun spending time with them and we even got to celebrate my birthday and our anniversary!
Chase got me a huge present for my birthday and it ended up being an amazing new set of pots! He was just as happy as I was.
For our anniversary I made Chase a book called "Our Story" and it told the story of how we met until we got married. I tried to upload a video of Chase reading it but it wasn't working, I'll try again later.
After Bakersfield we drove to Monterey for the weekend as a present from Chase :) We went to the pier Friday night and the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Saturday. It was so fun! I don't know why I haven't tried this being married thing earlier! Haha. This is a pic of us on the pier.
Here we are outside the aquarium... I bet Chase thinks he's pretty lucky!
After the weekend we finally headed into Lodi for the summer. Besides watching Aubrey and spending time with my mom, we've also been camping for memorial weekend, gone to Bako again for Ashlee's graduation, had numerous BBQ's, had a reception for Beth's wedding, and gone to the desert for a week! Here are some of our favorite pics from the desert trip. All us girls in the truck about to drive out to the dry lake bed. Somehow Beth managed to get into the picture too! On the dry lake bed with my honey :) We were setting up for the bowling ball cannon, and be "we" I mean the boys dug the hole while the girls watched. Out with the shotguns. Chase was amazing, I only looked it... haha. Fireworks. Chase was getting creative with the bottle rockets, shooting them from his fly. I was okay shooting them from a bush.