Girl Date

My Sister-In-Law Brooke is having the first Tucker girl in March, so for her baby shower we took the opportunity to have a girl date.We had lunch at the Macaroni Grill (my first experience there) and it was delicious! I totally missed the memo about wearing pink though.

Then we got manicures at this cute little Vietnamese salon. (also a first for me)

We hung out for the rest of the day at my apartment and opened presents, talked forever, and watched a chick flick.

I love my In-Laws. I can't believe we all get along so well. We could have kept talking for hours and not realized it if we didn't have our hubby's and chillin's to get back too. I'm so glad we are back in Boise and that we all live so close.

Brooke, congradulations again!! We can't wait to have a little Tucker niece to play with. And Annette, we love you and talked about how much we miss you for most of the day. Thank you for being such a great example and an awesome Grandma/Mom. Every night Brady tries to plan how and when we can go back to visit you again.

MEWWY CHWISTMAS!!!

This is in front of Tom and Annette's Christmas tree after zone conference on Christmas Eve.

This picture summarizes our Christmas Eve. After finally having the last zone conference done and returning from a Christmas party, we tried to watch a movie. As you can tell, I'm the only one that was able to watch it.

Brady woke up earlier than anyone at 9:00 and took pictures of the "children" waking up on Christmas morning.

I saved these jammies for Brady to open up here in Jackson.

The parents present from the whole family.

My new sweater!

You can never have too many ties!

These are our looks of pure shock and gratitude. We had accepted the fact that santa wasn't coming to Mississippi, but to our utter shock he definitely delivered! THANK YOU TOM AND ANNETTE aka santa!!!!

It didn't take us long to break out our present

This is by far my favorite part of the day. It was so much fun playing rock band 2 with Tom and Annette!

After our Christmas partying, we went for a drive and walked around a swamp.

We didn't see any alligators, so we did our best to imitate them.

Thank you Tom and Annette for a wonderful Christmas!!!

I'm goin to Jackson!

Brady and I flew out to Mississippi on Friday morning to see his parents for Christmas, but first on Thursday night we saw the lights at temple square. During a talk in sacrament in Louisiana, Brady's mom reminded everyone that Christmas lights are symbolic of how Christ is the Light of the World. What a magnificent display there is around the Salt Lake Temple. It really got us in the Christmas spirit. This is in the Joseph Smith Building. It was beautifully decorated too. Today is his birthday so it was wonderful to to be reminded of our wonderful Prophet and all that he has done.

We finally made it to Jackson, Mississippi on Friday night.

This is Brady's super excited anxious look when we first saw his parents.

It is so good to be here with them. It felt like we hadn't see them in FOREVER, and now if feels so normal to be here, it is hard to think that we won't be able to drop by every week.

They gave us one day to relax to fool us into thinking that they had spare time and then the next day showed us the real craziness of their lives. So far we've driven 9 hours, been to five big cities, and two states, been to three different hotels, had two zone conferences on back to back days with another one tomorrow morning, and wrapped over 600 presents in newspaper for the missionaries...all in three days. This is Brady living off of 5 hours of sleep every night for three days. No, really we are loving it, we don't mind the sleep deprivation and we get way more than Tom and Annette.

The missionaries playing the garbage can game. Probably the biggest group that has ever played it!

Aren't they just the best looking Mission President couple ever!

Me and Brady with the Shreveport Louisiana zone.

Randomness

Some things i made for my new little nieces. (except the nursing cover, Jay had cute left over fabric so i attempted to make one for her)

Us girls went to Chillies to party with Jay before she had her little baby.

The nastious bug i've ever seen! we thought it was a tarantula at first, it was as big as one.

We carved pumpkins with some friends for FHE. Ours is the Holy one. (After we were finished i realized that the one i wanted to copy was done with a drill. ours was not as cool)

Brady at the hospital with Jaylynn and Marks new little girl Aisley. Doesn't he look so good holding a baby girl?!

Second attempt at carving a pumpkin. it is supposed to be me and brady. our first attempt rotted while we were in twin falls and left a moldy mushy mess all over our carpet.

Brady and I went bowling on halloween which was a real treat cuz i LOVE bowling and Brady does not. i even have my own bowling shoes. It was way fun. i bowled a turkey and brady bowled a double.
I was only there in spirit

White Coat Ceremony

Brady's Pharmacy class had a white coat ceremony where they welcome the new students into Pharmacy school. It was really a nice event and reminded me of a graduation. I wish I would have recorded it so I could compare it to his actual graduation. They called each student up one by one and "coated" them, had them sign around a poster of the pharmacy code, gave some of them scholarships, took pictures, had tons of speakers, and had appetizers and dessert. I'm pretty sure it will be the exact same at his real graduation.
I'm really proud of him and we are just so excited that he is in pharmacy school. He has been doing really well at studying and his tests have gone really well so far.

Love ya Babe!

Scout Mountain

On labor day, Brady and I decided to go hiking and cook dutchoven mushroom chicken dinner and strawberry peach cobbler. mmmmmmm. I never realized that Pocatello is so surrounded by beautiful mountains. Brady is already threatening to live in poky forever instead of boise because of all the outdoorsy stuff. Of course that idea doesn't fly with me so i'll try my best to make him hate poky by the end of four years.

My man chopping wood all mannly like.
It was a really fun trip, we even saw a deer run right in front of us while hiking, and two more deer while driving home. The camp was only 15 min from our house, so i think we'll be having a few more trips like this, if not just to roast mallows!

Pocatello

So, we are finally in Pocatello, and we finally got our housing figured out. The story:
In June i had an interview in Pocatello at a dental office so while i was interviewing brady went looking for housing. When i got done, we looked up a real estate agent to show us around town to get a feel for the housing market. We decided we liked the new look of townhouses and thought they would suit us well. When we got back to twin we talked to a loan officer to see how much i would need to make as a hygienist to afford the town house. He asked what i would do if i couldn't find a job and i said i would commute to twin until i found a job. So he said we could just punch in the income we were getting and say we were commuting to see if we would be approved at that time. That way we could move in sooner. We got pre-approved and started papers on the townhouse. Because of advice from family and friends, plus the seller's irritating real estate agent, and the fact that our banker died in a car crash a few days later, we decided that we should re-look for a house instead. In July we went with another bank who said that everything would be fine and to go ahead and make on offer on a house that we liked. So we did. But a we couldn't get the loan to go through which is understandable, i just wish we would have known before we started this 2 month long process. So while Brady was in orientation 4 days before school started, i desperately looked for an apartment that we could lease month to month. We found one that was actually cute and was way cheaper than any rent we've ever payed before. We got it friday, drove to twin and packed all our things that night,(thank you mark, jay and jeff!!!) and moved to poky the next day after going to my cousins wedding. Suprisingly we liked our little apartment which has two bedrooms and tons of closet storage. We realized that it will take me a while to get a good job, brady only has a 25% chance of being in poky for his fourth year of school, and that we weren't willing to pay more than double our rent to get a house almost the same size. So we luckily got out of the contract due to our financing problem since i don't have a job yet, and we are happy to be staying in our inexpensive cute apartment. (mostly we love our furniture on loan from tom and annette. Thanks!!)