Weekend!!

Yes!  It's the weekend.  This doesn't mean that I have nothing to do, but it does mean that I'll get a few more hours of time with my husband than I normally do!  And, seriously, who wouldn't want to spend more time with this man?

Anniversary Weekend

If you look at the very bottom of our page, you'll notice that we have a ticker proclaiming that today Dave and I have been married for 369 days (Thanks Jo-Pete!).  That's right!  Sunday was our anniversary!

The last year has been a wonderful journey, and I wouldn't trade it for anything!  Okay, enough mushy stuff.  This post is to let you all know about the awesome things we did this weekend to celebrate.

First of all, on Friday I woke up to this beautiful bouquet of daisies by my bedside!  I adore daisies, and Dave loves to get them for me!  (Or at least he pretends to).

Later that day, Dave took me to get a professional massage.  I'd never had one before, and let me tell you, it was great!  I got it done at the Massage Cabin.  It's a massage practice in a home, and my massage therapist, Haruko, was great.  We didn't get any pictures of this experience but I'm sure I'll be back!

Next, on Saturday, Dave and I drove up to Bear Lake.  You may remember our bad experience floating down the Provo River, so we decided to take out a new blow up raft and try it out on a lake instead of a river.  We stopped by this place to get life jackets:

And then we hit the road!  I love road trips!

When we got to Bear Lake, we had this cute stretch of beach all to ourselves.  It was a gorgeous day at the Lake!

Here I am in our boat.

It turns out that it was a really windy day, and the wind kept blowing us back toward the shore.  So we didn't go out very far.  It's a good thing that we didn't start from the opposite shore, or the wind would have blown us all the way across the lake!  But aside from the boat, we had a lot of fun playing in the water and sunning ourselves on the beach:

It was a beautiful day, and we saw lots of birds flying around.

And of course, we decided to put the BARE back in Bear Lake!!

After we were done at Bear Lake, we headed down to Logan to stay at the Anniversary Inn.  And I'm sad to say that the only picture I got of the place was the heart-shaped tub!

I really liked this tub, and really I liked the whole place.  Our room was the Player's Clubhouse, and we had a foosball table and a putting green in our room.  The breakfast was great, as well as the sparkling cider and cheesecake that was waiting in our room when we arrived.  I would highly recommend the Anniversary Inn, whether it's your anniversary or not!
We came home on Sunday, which was our actual anniversary.  To celebrate some more we ate a few bites of our wedding cake, which we've been saving in our freezer for a year.

It was pretty good.  Originally, this cake was excellent!  A year later, the frosting really was the best part.

                                      This was Dave's reaction for the camera.  It wasn't really that bad!
All in all, it was a wonderful anniversary.  I am so happy that I found Dave and that I was wise enough to marry him.  He makes me so happy, and I hope that all of our years of marriage are as fulfilling as this first one has been.

Family Reunion

We had our Powell Family Reunion here in Utah this year, and it was a ton of fun!  Many of the activities took place at Janice's house (whose basement we live in), so we were involved with the reunion as often as we were home.  We were both working full-time during the reunion, so most of the things we did with the family were on the weekend.

The highlight of the reunion was the pig!  Some of you commented on the fact that we posted earlier about our pet pig.  Our family members were told that Dave loved the pig more than he loved me.  Well, that wasn't entirely true.  Dave loved the pig more than I loved the pig.  And that was because the pig was a butchered pig that we picked up from a meat-packing house and roasted in the ground for the reunion!

Dave roasted a pig for a church activity a few years ago, and has wanted to do it again ever since.  We were going to roast a pig for our wedding reception last year (it's been almost 1 year!), but it ended up not happening.  So Dave was really excited to do it for the reunion and practice his pig-roasting SKILLZ!

The pig was a success, and even though it was a lot of work to cook it, it was pretty fun.  All of my cousins and their kids were really interested in looking at the pig, before and after it was roasted, and it just brought a fun atmosphere to our Saturday dinner.

Some other highlights from the reunion were:
1. taking naps!
2. seeing lots of my family in church.
3. saying hi to cousins that I haven't seen for a long time.
4. playing TONS of games!  I am a game person, and while Dave is kind enough to play games with me when I want him to, he doesn't really love games as much as I do.  So during the reunion I could always find someone that wanted to play a game with me.  Some of my favorites are Banaanza and Ticket to Ride.
5. Introducing Dave to lots of new family members.  He's pretty good about remembering names, and during that week he met a lot of folks.  I was way impressed!
6. Seeing my nieces and nephews!  My sister Jill's youngest, Gabe, was just a few weeks old when Dave and I got married, and that was the last time I saw him!  So he'd grown a lot and it was fun to see him.

It was a fun week!  We are glad to have the house back to its usual peace and quiet, but we are already looking forward to the next family reunion!

Another Giveaway!!

Here's another giveaway that's being hosted on the Grosgrain blog. It's such a cute dress!

In other news, Dave and I had a great weekend. First of all, on Friday we went and stayed at a friend's cabin up Provo Canyon. Then on Saturday we stayed in Provo and worked on schoolwork. We stayed in Provo so that I could go watch my brother-in-law's basketball game. Mark's team won! Way to go, Mark!

Then on Sunday we celebrated Valentine's Day. This year, it was my turn to plan our Valentine's day. So I cooked a little bit and we went for a little walk/adventure to find a hidden treasure. It was a very relaxing day in between our two work days (We worked a lot on Monday again, with just a little bit of play).

And I think that this weekend I fell in love with my husband!

Relationships with Lawyers

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, some tips (courtesy of www.avvo.com) on how to get into/survive a relationship with a lawyer. The sad thing is, I actually agreed a little bit with some of the tips...

Birthday!

Dave is such a trickster. He and I are both really busy during the week, and he has a brief that is due next week that is keeping him extra busy working on it. So we decided that we would celebrate my birthday on the weekend instead of on the actual day.

Well, despite our plans, on my birthday he made me breakfast in bed, gave me my present anyway (even though he told me it wouldn't be ready until the weekend), had lots of his friends text me happy birthday, and surprised me with a quick ice cream break with some family and friends! He is also such a sweet heart!

Merry Gravett

I think that I've finally taken care of all of the things I need to do to officially be Merry Gravett. I've changed my name on my license, social security card, bank account, car insurance, credit card, school records, and health insurance. The last one that I did (just this week) was sending a copy of our marriage license to my credit card company. And I just have to say, I love being Mrs. Gravett! :D

A New Idea

Last night I attended a stake fireside given by Dr. John Lund, a marriage and family counselor and educator. One of the wedding presents that Dave and I got were some CDs of some lectures that he gave, and we've really enjoyed them. So I thought that I would also enjoy this fireside, and I was not disappointed.

One concept that he talked about was our purpose in our family relationships. Even if someone is really far off of the gospel path, making bad decisions, and making themselves miserable, it is not our duty to force them back. Our calling as family members is to love them, not to judge them. And they won't listen to us or be able to realize that we love them if all we do is criticize them.

Dr. Lund suggested that family members take their love to their loved ones, and then take their frustrations to the Lord. This doesn't mean ignoring things that need to change in a relationship. This doesn't mean putting up with abuse. But it does mean that because you can't force someone to change, you need to put your faith into prayer to the Lord and then just love that person anyway.

He also talked about how to approach someone with a critical thought, which he also talked about in his recorded lectures. He said that each spouse needs to tell the other person how they want to hear about their own faults. So I might say to Dave that I always want him to approach me with criticism right after I've eaten, or right after I've woken up, so that I'm physically ready to receive criticism. (I'll tell you what, I hate talking about important things right before bed because I'm usually tired and thus cranky, and the important talk usually puts off bedtime too.) And then Dave should respect that wish, and only approach me with criticisms at the times that I've told him it would be okay. This prevents him from just telling me his opinion whenever he's feeling frustrated, and it helps me be in a good frame of mind to receive his opinion well.

There is so much more that I could say about Dr. Lund's talk. I would highly recommend that you buy his CDs or take an opportunity to hear him speak if you get the chance. But my take home lesson from last night is that the Atonement is so real that we really don't need to force our family members to heaven. They will get there one way or the other, regardless of our nagging. So we might as well get rid of the negative criticism and just love each other.

Five Months of Marital Bliss

That's right folks, Dave and I have been married for 5 months. And we've pretty much loved it. We think that we'll go for another 5 at least. Maybe even a year. :D

Reflection on School Year Goals

As the New Year starts, I thought I'd take a look at the school year goals I set back in October.

Work
1. I've done well with my work goal. I worked hard last semester and finished off all of my work for the semester with a bang! And I am starting 2 new jobs this semester! I'm going to be tutoring, and I'll teach a grammar class. There's also a third job that I'm applying for right now, to be a writing tutor. I hope I get it! So, with my 3 (maybe 4) jobs, I am sure going to be busy this semester! My goal now is to stay on top of my work and not get overwhelmed.

School
2. My classes were pretty time intensive last semester, and took a lot of effort. But I'm glad to say that I did very well! I'm looking forward to my classes this semester (we've already had 1 week of class, but the work hasn't really started yet), and I hope to achieve my goal of getting all As!
3. I've already accomplished my sub-goal of finding a project for my masters program. I've written the project proposal and had several people look at it. I've also started my letter of intent, although I'm not as far along with that as I thought I would be by this point. But I'm going to work hard on finishing those two things this week, and I'll have my TESOL MA application turned in by this Friday!

Personal
4 and 5. I have not done well at achieving my personal goals. I haven't journaled or been running once since I set these goals. But I'm going to try again to start these goals. I think that this semester I can get better at both of them. To do this, I'm going to make a reminder for myself, so that I think of these goals more often than once a semester!

Marriage
6. Well, Dave and I were teaching the 13-year-olds. Now he is teaching them by himself and I am teaching in the Primary. I just started teaching the Sunbeams (the 3-year-olds). In my class there are 3 little girls. This makes planning lessons for them really difficult. First of all, they want to be out of their seats and moving around a lot, so the lessons have to take that into account. You have to use a lot of activities to keep their attention. And then the second thing is that there are so few of them that the activities always go so quickly. If we had a few more students the activities would take longer, and then the activities I planned would last the whole hour that I have them. As it is, my lesson went short. I'm going to be teaching again in a couple of weeks, and I'm going to try to plan enough materials to keep the little girls busy and happy the whole time. And since this is now a goal for myself, I'm going to move it to my personal goals.

It has been fun to look back at these goals and reflect on them. I think that I'm going to set some more goals for this year, and try to take an inventory on them at least once a month. Wish me luck!

2009 Highlights

Not all of these happenings are going to be that interesting to read about, but here are some of the things that Dave and I experienced during 2009:

January: Dave and I met on January 3rd at Jason (a mutual friend)'s party. We were both smitten pretty quickly with each other. Dave had 1 extra week of vacation before he started school, a lot of which he spent hanging out with me. Then he kept commuting down to Provo to see me during the next two weeks. We started dating exclusively at the end of the month. Dave was starting his 2nd semester of law school. I was still working for an office on BYU campus where I had worked as a student, but I started new responsibilities because I was no longer in school and could take on extra work.

February: Dave and I went on a road trip to Preston, Idaho. We saw some of the places where the movie "Napoleon Dynamite" was filmed. And we discovered that we liked to spend even long amounts of time with each other! Dave started living at his parents' house in Provo during the weekends, and I bought a car from my grandma so that I could drive up and see Dave in Salt Lake during the week.

March: Dave and I experienced our first real trauma. My mother had a heart attack and I drove to Arizona to see her. I was there for a week, waiting to see how she would recover. Dave called and texted me every day, and we came out of the experience much more attached to each other. I found out that I was admitted into the TESOL certificate program at BYU.

April: Dave and I talked a lot about marriage this month. We discussed what it would mean for us to be attending different schools 40 miles apart. And we continued our courtship. I moved into a house in Provo and continued to enjoy work. And I replaced the alternator in my car.

May: Dave took his finals. Then he proposed! And he had appendicitis. This was a busy month for him. I took care of him, had to replace the fuel pump on my car, and continued working.

June: Dave and I kept preparing for our marriage. Dave took classes during the summer time and worked. And I drove to New York with my friend Emily. Also, Dave and I floated the Provo River and did all kinds of summery things. I'm looking forward to doing that again next year!

July: Dave and I celebrated the 4th of July, hiked, swam, and generally had fun. We sent out our wedding invitations. We read a lot of "Dandelion Wine" together (I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for an easy, pleasant read). And we started moving some of our belongings into our new home.

August: Dave and I got married! We spent about 4 days in Arizona before we got married, then spent our honeymoon in the White Mountains in eastern Arizona. The last night of our honeymoon we camped at Goblin Valley in Utah (I can't believe that no one commented on my post about Goblin Valley, since Dave and I were trying to trick people into thinking that we'd spent our whole honeymoon there). And then at the end of the month I started school!

September: Dave and I started our commuting life style, Dave taking the train to school and me taking the bus to school. And we started to get more settled into married life.

October: I set some goals for the school year. Dave and I babysat my niece and nephews, and decided that it's going to be several years before we have any kids. We fell more in love!

November: Dave and I continued on with school and work. Dave got hired to work at the attorney general's office. And we went to Arizona for our first Thanksgiving together. It was a fun trip.

December: I finished my first semester of grad school! I have one semester left in my certificate program, and I am applying in January to BYU's MA program. Dave and I celebrated our first Christmas together! And we are excited to celebrate our first year of knowing each other on January 3rd, 2010!

Honeymoon

Okay, so this isn't a thankful post. But I finally got our honeymoon pictures off of Dave's camera, so I'm going to post them.

Here we are, driving to our honeymoon:



We headed from eastern Arizona to the southeast corner of Utah:



That's right! We camped at Goblin Valley! It was great. Here's our campsight:


We were really close to the goblins. I'd never been here before, so I didn't know what to expect. I certainly didn't expect this sign:


So, apparently the park was concerned about bicyclists causing damage to the goblins. However, Dave and I found that they were pretty sturdy:




A lot of these formations looked like smurfs, I thought:





What a crazy place to have a honeymoon! It was a lot of fun!

The Spirit of Thanksgiving!!

For you faithful blog followers (Hi Mom!), you'll remember that last year I tried to make all of my November posts about things that I'm thankful for. And I'm going to do that again this November! Feel free to play along!

I'm thankful for the upcoming winter. Several weeks ago, I told Dave that I thought winter had arrived. There was snow on the mountains and a chill in the air. And of course Dave made fun of me, because it was only the beginning of October. We've joked about that frequently since then, when it's been especially warm. One of us (usually Dave) will say, "It must be winter!"

Well, this last week we did get our first snow down in South Jordan, and it was lovely! Dave and I were snug in our home and watched it fall past the windows. Then, when we were ready for a break from homework, we went for a barefoot run in the new snow. It's a family tradition of mine. It was so fun, and it was even funner to go back inside and snuggle up to get warm again.

So, I'm thankful for winter, because it is a new season in the never-ending cycle of seasons. And I'm thankful for the opportunities it gives me to snuggle up with my honey!

School Year Goals

If you remember this post, you'll know that I decided to set some goals for this school year. Here they are:

Work Goals:
1. I will work hard! Next semester, I will possibly be looking for another job, because one of my current jobs conflicts with my class schedule. So I think that I will try to get individual tutoring jobs that I can schedule flexibly around my classes.

School Goals:
2. I will get all As. This is going to be hard. Graduate school has been harder than I thought it would be. But I'm glad that it's hard. I have wanted to go back to school, and I'm willing to put the effort into it. So, all As - that's three this semester and three next semester.
3. I will apply to BYU's MA TESOL program, and be accepted. In order to accomplish this, I'm going to need to do a couple sub-goals:
a. I will find a project that I can do for my masters (They give the option between a thesis and a project.), This will involve talking to a few people down at the ELC to see what needs to be done.
b. I will start writing my letter of intent now, so I can have it looked at and edited by a few people.

Personal Goals:
4. I will journal at least once a week. I blog now, but I can't really say a lot of things on this blog. And blogging on my blog makes me want to read all of the blogs I subscribe to, and that can be a real time-waster during the week.
5. I will run for 20 minutes, three times a week. That is only the commitment of 1 hour per week. I can do that. I need to do that.

Marriage Goals:
6. Dave and I teach the 13-year-olds at church. My goal is that we will prepare good lessons for them that are involving and meaningful.

My hand felt naked yesterday!

I accidentally went to school without my ring on, and it felt very weird all day long. When Dave and I were dating and getting close to being engaged, I thought that it would take a long time to get used to wearing my ring, and I thought it would be uncomfortable with it on at first. But I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly it became a part of my hand. And I definitely missed it yesterday!

In other news, I love being married! I love all of the "firsts" that Dave and I get to experience. Today was our first frost as a married couple! It is getting nice and cool here this week, and it feels so comfortable to wear a coat. I don't think this cold spell is the start of winter yet. It'll get warm again, at least for a little while. But we're starting our first fall together. And it's lovely.

It's Finally Happened!

Several of you have alluded to this post (or the lack of it) in your comments. I have been kind of slow to get to this, but I'm really busy right now. And I promised myself at the beginning of my blogging career that I would never feel guilty or apologize for not doing something (blogging) that I was only doing for fun in the first place.

That having been said, I'm REALLY excited for this post! I've been thinking about it for a long time. Let me tell you how long:

In January, I discovered a blog. December and January were big blogging months for me, because I had just graduated from BYU and I was single, and I had a ton of time to read. I read on the 100 Hour Board quite frequently, and I would explore links to other blogs from blogs I already subscribed to. It was a very carefree time.

As I was saying, in January I discovered a specific blog: The Single Mormon Girl's Guide to Life. I thought it was fun. There was commentary on being single, on dealing with relatives and friends who make awkward/tactless comments about you being single, etc. I don't have a problem with being 25 and single, but it was still fun to read. I went back and read all the archived posts. And I found one post that I could really identify with. The author talks about a candy drawer in her family's house, and how everyone would leave the same old things in it, eating them only when they were desperate for sugar. She compared this to dating:

"I want someone new to come into my candy drawer ecosystem, open the drawer and see that banana flavored Laffy Taffy and say to themselves… ‘WOW. These are my FAVORITE! How did this get left in here? What dummy would leave a banana Laffy Taffy in the candy drawer? I’m so glad my favorite candy is in this candy drawer…what a lucky guy I am!’"

It's true! I really wanted someone to truly appreciate me while I was truly appreciating them. I wanted to find a guy (a piece of candy) that was my favorite, and think that I was the luckiest person in the world to get him before he was snatched up by someone else. And I wanted him to feel the same about me.

And it's finally happened! It started out when Dave and I had been dating not very long. I had read the Candy Drawer post, and I was going to write about it on my blog and comment about it. But something funny happened. Dave said to me one time, "You're my favorite!" I was shocked. This was exactly what I wanted someone to say to me! And it continued. We still say that to each other. So I decided to wait to comment on this post until things had progressed more with me and Dave.



Dave and I got engaged on Saturday! We're going to be married on August 15th, 2009, in the Snowflake Arizona Temple! And I can say that we are indeed each other's favorites. I'm so happy!

Guest post from Dave anyone???