Goings Ons

It's been a while since I updated this and I wanted to post some pictures too!


So last month John came home with Jeff's truck packed full:

 

Mackenzie enjoyed watching her first BYU bowl game, so here's looking at one cute cougar!!: 

We bought Disneyland passes this year. We went on John's birthday since he got the day free (so we saved $72 on his pass!). Cari has already got 8 times and John 6 times since we got them! Cari's family (dad, mom, Hana, and grandma-aunt and uncle always have passes) also got passes this year so we'll have fun meeting up with them as well! They just got their passes last night, so met them there. My grandma has to use a wheelchair and go on the gentle rides like It's a Small World. So we got a party of 8 all got on that ride and the Tiki Room.
Here's John eating his birthday funnel cake:

Cari's sister Hana got her pass the day after Christmas so we went also. It was crazy busy. The football teams from Oregon and Ohio State were there. Every time we saw a group of them there was someone asking to take their picture. Cari's aunt and uncle took us out to dinner at the Napa Rose, a super nice restaurant at the Grand California hotel.

We also when to Disneyland for New Year's Eve since we'll probably never do anything for New Year's Eve ever again and we figured we should check out the Disneyland party since we could this year. It was super crowded around the castle, but there was hardly anyone around Adventureland and Frontierland. We walked right on to the Haunted Mansion. They had a fireworks show at midnight then had a Fantasmic showing that we watched. They handed out Happy New Year hats and noise makers (which were really annoying). We had a lot of fun though. Here's John riding the caboose:

Since then we've been settling down at our apartment and John is enjoying being able to come home and not have homework. My big news is that I have a full-time job now. Before I was hourly with no benefits, so now I have a salary, I'm guaranteed 40 hours a week, I get vacation time and insurance. I had training the previous 2 weekends so that I can do field work. We have to have what is called Hazwoper (hazardous waste operation and emergency response). You can't even go on some of the sites we work at until you get certified. We also get yearly physicals, so I have my baseline physical done, my training done, and my steel toe boots purchased, so I'm ready to go!

Together Again

John has now finished his Master's program!! He's going to pass all his classes, so he'll be getting a nice piece of paper in the mail soon. It's great to have John back and resume our life together. It's like we're starting all over again. We're currently in the process of moving into our apartment, which is just next door to John's parents (and John's workplace). I'll be so happy once we have all our stuff gathered into 1 location as opposed to 5!!! We also bought a new Samsung 32" LCD HDTV for our new place.

Tomorrow is John's birthday and we have another splurge coming up. We're going to buy premium annual passes. California residents can do a monthly payment plan rather than paying all at once so it's very manageable. It's been a while since I've had a pass (last one expired 4 years ago...) and we haven't gone to Disneyland since August 1, 2007. So we're going to take advantage of the fact that we don't have a mortgage and we don't have kids at this time to get our fill of Disneyland for the next year!

Another piece of very happy news is something that happened on Saturday (other than John coming home). The Cowboys (who haven't won a road game in December for about 2 years) beat the previously undefeated Saints in their Superdome!!! Woohoo!!! I am still very excited about that!!!! No one believed they had a shot (and they didn't show they had a shot the previous 2 weeks). They have a lot of talent that underchieves on a regular basis, but everyone showed up to play on Saturday!!! Well, everyone except their kicker. Who missed another field goal. A field goal that could have cost the game. A field goal that left Cari pacing with 12 seconds left in the game with the Saints trying to tie it up. But we won!!! Go Dallas D!!!!!

Hope everyone has a very happy Christmas this year!!!

It's the final countdown!

Now, I hope you're hearing really cheezzzzzy '80's synths.... but yes we are on the final stretch!! John has 17 more days until he is back in CA for good!
Meanwhile, we had a great time when he came to visit for the week. It was fun to go watch Jeff and Kirsty swim at Belmont Plaza for their final time and John got to reminisce about all the meets he swam there. On Sunday we got to celebrate Emily's birthday with all her family. For the first few days of the week I was working a lot, so John and I didn't get to do much, but working late meant I could take off Friday. We had some great food and good times with the family all here for Thanksgiving. On black Friday, I went to LA with Nancy and Sarah to get fabric for valences and baby stuff (for Sarah and Jeff--not me!). We were all going to go see The Blindside, but it was all sold out for the weekend. So we're planning to see it for Christmas. On Saturday, John and I went to Victoria Gardens with Jeff and Sarah. One of my favorite stores, NY and Company (they sell tall clothes), had a sale for 50% off everything. I got a sweater, which is something I use a lot at work! John found snowboarding boots for $40! woo-hoo!

Here's some pics from the week:

 

John at Belmont

Emily and Cari at Emily's b-day party

 

Grandma Patton and a sleeping Mack-joy

I love the holidays and I loved have John back, but I need more sleep! My Sunday nap didn't catch me back up. I might be recovered by Christmas. At which John and I are thinking about getting Disneyland passports. Do the monthly plan thing (which is only for so cal residents, fyi) so we can get the premium and go a lot.

Half-Way - John's Perspective

Well, as Cari mentioned, we're at the half-way mark through this semester.... and the end couldn't come sooner.

So, what's going on in John's life..... let's take a looksey, huh??

I'm doing good up here. Just doing my last three required classes and taking two dance classes. I'm curently practicing up for the Utah Dancesport Championsh

ips that are coming up in about two weeks. I'm going to dance the American waltz, International waltz and Tango. If you want to go, they are going to be at the Wilkinson Center on BYU campus, and tickets are like 8-10 bucks. I compete the American waltz on Friday and the other two on Saturday. I recommend going on Saturday since the two International dances are my stronger ones, and there's gonna be some cool professional dancers that night or something. Worth the ten bucks to get in.

So, dancing is one of my new skills I have developed ove

r the past year. I always wanted to get into dancing ever since I was a little kid mainly because I always followed my own groove with regards to music. I like the international styles of ballroom because there's a lot of grace and flow to them. My strongest dances in my opinion are Tango and Foxtrot. Waltz is good... but I can't dance well to a slow song to save my life!! Good thing that there's a good amount of dance places in California and competitions so I can keep it up after I leave here.

Now, onto the academic portion of this. My classes aren't too bad this time around. Although I didn't score too high on some tests I've had so far, I understand the concepts. Honestly, I have never really cared about getting straight A's in my classes in college. In High School, this was a different story. Straight A's were what I looked for mainly bec

ause I didn't take that hard of a class load, relatively speaking. But in college, balancing swimming and a hard major took it's toll on my GPA, but hey. I graduated with a 3.0 and got into the masters program of Civil Engineering. I can say that I did my job well. ^.^

Also, my Masters Project is near completion. All there is left to do is talk to one of the members of my committee about my report, then print and sign. That's it!! My project was around computer modeling of driven piles subjected to lateral forces. Basically, they wanted me to analyze big steel beams that were driven in the ground and see what happened force-wise down the length of the beams. My advisor used some of the graphs I generated in a published report! So I'm a published engineer now!! YAY!!! All and all, the project was not too tough and I had fun working on it the past year. All I have to say is that I'm glad

my report was only 26 pages long (including blank pages and all the formatting) and that's shorter than the novel my older sister wrote for her thesis. I'm a happy camper!!

So many people ask me how I am faring being away from Cari... and I simply reply, "I'm slipping slowly into utter madness. Ya know, talking to myself in my apartment, seeing her there.... when she's really not there... Just the general form of madness." That usually gets a good laugh. But seriously, it's hard but bearable... just bearable. I came to a realization the other day, an epiphany if you will. I just kinda thought it would be like it was when I was single my Freshman year living in a room all to myself: Just do your homework, go to class, and play your video-games and you'll be fine. I am very wrong in this assumption mainly due to the fact that I know there's someone out there who really cares me enough to

wanna be with me for eternity..... and she's not here with me. You see, when you're single, you dream of that "special someone" and wonder if they exist. You seek and seek and hopefully find that special person who you wanna spend the rest of eternity with. But, in my case, I have found that person.... and she's not with me. I tend to look at this situation like the picture portrayed below. Yes, it's from an Japanese Animated cartoon called "Tsubasa Chronicles" (excellend anime series and worth the watch, if you're into that stuff) and it portrays our situtation to the T.

In the picture, the two protagonists are trapped in a glass bottle, separated by a glass pane. The two of them can see each-other, but cannot get past the glass wall. That's kinda how I see this time. I know there's the special someone there, I can see her through pictures, hear her voice through phone conversations and video-chat online, but we're separated by distance.... and it pains both of us to not be able to "be" with each-other. BUT, as I have mentioned, we're almost done, and we're gonna be better people and treasure the moments we have due to this time of separation.

So now, getting off the depressing topic which is the huge elephant in the room... I'm seriously doing fine. I'm eating well, exercising regularly, and learning new tricks with my skill toys!! I need to do a few videos displaying the new tricks I have learned... but I'm not sure when that will happen. Keep posted to my youtube profile, Theferrell1 , to see what I cook up in the next few months. The weather is beautiful and that is going to make for some great video footage!!

Well, I've spent enough time on this. I gotta get back to my homework!! Take care everyone, and next post will be after a wonderful week home during the Thanksgiving break.

- John

At the halfway mark

We've reached the over halfway point!! John and I have now survived 2 months living in 2 separate states. John will be coming down for a whole week 3 weeks from now. Then he'll be finishing up finals and moving back to CA in another 4 weeks after that!!

A couple weekends ago I got to fly up to visit John. John got me an edible arrangement. I LOVE chocolate covered strawberries!!!

Doesn't that look just delicious?!

We went out to lunch with my older sister, Tracie, and a good friend, Leilani. We splurged a little and got one of those oil burners at the Body Shop. There was one that we had seen before that we really liked so we saw they still had it so we decided to get it. We enjoyed wonderful smells in the apartment for the rest of the weekend... We rented New in Town since John had already seen it twice and loved and wanted me to see it too.

On Sunday we went to temple square before the airport because we have had really really bad luck with traffic in Utah whenever I fly in or out. It was nice though. The weather was perfect for a fall day.

 

I hate Utah for the snow, but I do love the fall. The colors are beautiful. I love driving up Provo canyon in the fall and seeing all the changing colors.

Since John and I didn't want to wait 5 weeks to see each other again, we met up in Vegas and visited with his aunt and grandma last weekend. Grandma Patton gave us a tour of her house since I had never been there before. Other than that we just relaxed, watched some football, and played cards (I got whooped bad). Traffic kind of sucked on the way home as could be expected, but it was made better because I found the Cowboys game on the radio and they were actually playing well and dominating the game!! New favorite player = miles austin. Thank you to the o-line for protecting romo!!

Saying goodbye to Mackenzie before going to Vegas.

In Vegas.

A blowout weekend

Visiting John was great this weekend. It made up for all the disappointments (BYU getting blown out at home, Cowboys losing-no surprise there).
Saturday morning we went to play volleyball with John's stake (they play every week, plus his ward every Wednesday). I've never gotten more beat up playing volleyball than I did that day! Usually I'll bruise my knees or something from landing to hard on them. This time, I didn't land too hard on my knees so I didn't get knee bruises. However, my arms and wrists were messed up! I got big bruises and my wrists were tweaked (have better movement now). And I messed my left quad from getting more low balls than usual. It was fun though and there was a guy coaching and giving tips. Stuff I didn't learn on my 6th grade volleyball team. :)
We got free pedicures (you get 1 free salon service each month at the Branbury), looked at beach cruisers (though cheaper in UT, the selection is much better in CA), and ate lunch at a Peruvian restaurant. Good stuff. Watched the BYU game with Sara and Caleb. Resorted to eating ice cream while being depressed and playing wii instead of watching the rest of the massacre. On Sunday, we finally got to meet my friend Lindsay's husband Matt.
So the other blowout of the weekend was on Sunday night after Doug picked me up from LAX. We were driving down the 105 in the carpool lane and hit something. Blew the tire. The hole in the side of the tire was about 1" in diameter. It was so big! (Tried to take a pic but camera was dead) And the rim got dented up. The CHP stopped by and told us the other car that pulled off the road behind us got the 2 right tires taken out. They set up a traffic break to try and find it, but had no luck. So we didn't get home til about midnight. And I felt pretty hammered the next day. The good news is that, even though the tire company is going out of business, they had 2 more of those same tires.
Overall a good weekend although with a couple blowouts.

Going to visit John!!!

Today is a special day because I get to visit John for the first time this semester! We've both been pretty busy so it hasn't been too horrible. And we're basically a fourth of the way through! I get to visit again in October, John comes down for Nike Cup and Thanksgiving, and finally he comes back for good in December. Yay!! We thought about getting tickets to the Florida St game this weekend, but it's $50 for the end zone nose-bleeds. So we opted for watching it on TV. Let's go Cougars!!!

So I've gotten through my first 2 months at Tetra Tech. I've pretty much had full-time work to do with the exception of this past week where I had barely anything. I'm sort of in-between projects, so I spent the whole week asking people for stuff to do. I'm really really hoping that the project we're waiting on starts next week! Once it starts, it will be solid full-time work for at least a month. *crosses fingers*