Happy Thanksgiving!!

 Five days off of work was definitely something to be thankful for!  Nate had some homework, but he managed to still have fun this weekend.

Thanksgiving morning Nate and my brother-in-law played in the stake Turkey Bowl.    Nate had some good plays but got hit in the eye by the football in the first game, and lost his contact, so he got to wear glasses the whole weekend.  Doesn't he look intelligent?

My seven-year-old nephew took this picture.  That could be why we look like giants :)

We spent Thanksgiving day at my aunt and uncle's home with my sister and her family and one of my cousins and his family.  There were 16 of us total.  It was a lot of fun and the food was amazing!

Aren't these little candy turkeys so cute?

On Friday my aunt and uncle were nice enough to drive Nate and I down to the South Padre Island to watch the Basketball Tournament and let us stay with them down there.  We got there on Friday night in just enough time to watch BYU play Florida.  The game was really close- BYU ended up winning in a double overtime.  The cool thing about the arena they played in was that it only held 200 people, but there were probably only a hundred people there each game and so you were sitting in real chairs, not bleachers and had a great view.  After the game we got to shake the coach's hand and tell the players good job.  The game on Saturday was against St. Mary's and it was close, we only won by one, but thankfully we didn't have overtime again.

Friday we got to go to the beach.  They had these electric looking jelly fish all over the beach.  Luckily no one got stung.  The water was cold, but not as cold as I thought it might be.  We waded in to our ankles-I guess we are not big risk takers.

This Thanksgiving season always makes us reflect on all of our blessings, and we truly are grateful to have such loving family and friends!  Hope everyone had a great day!

Apartment

So I guess I can finally post some pictures of our apartment, now that we have lived here three months!

First, the before shots.  Our first day here, after spending three days in the car.  Here is a small sample of what we came home too:

Basically a lot of chaos.  I remember spending an hour or two looking for sheets, towels and our shower curtain.  Things I will remember to label better next time we move.  It was definitely a little overwhelming, and I think it took me about three weeks to go through every box, but now it looks like this:

The reason for the blanket over the window is that we have really bright lights outside of our window making it hard to sleep at night and we were too cheap to buy curtains, thus the blanket technique.  It's worked pretty well so far.

We had Young Women in Excellence on Wednesday this week.  It was really sweet because they brought flowers for me, the young women's president and the personal progress advisor because we are all switching wards.  It was fun to have one last combined activity.  Our Young Women are really amazing.  We have four laurels, who are probably some of the only members in their high school. Each of the four is very talented, one is the yearbook editor, one was homecoming queen, one is on the basketball team, and the other is star of their high school play, Cinderella.  In addition they all play the piano, sing etc.  And they all have really strong testimonies.  We really have a good group of young women.

Thursday night was enrichment.  I took the wife of one Nate's friends in his program.  It was all about keeping Christmas meaningful and economical.  It was fun and got me ready for Christmas.  In fact we put up our Christmas decorations last night.  We have quite a few because we got married in December.

This Friday Nate took me to Harry Potter-great movie.  We can't wait for the next one!  And he took me to a midnight yell :)  It was the last one of the season and we were already up late because of the movie.  I thought it was fun, but Nate probably has decided one is enough.  That's about all for this week, we can't wait for Thanksgiving (and a break from school and work)!

Welcome Home Elder Louder

So the highlight of our weekend was being able to meet/see Jason!  I have been hearing about him for almost two years now (he left on his mission in November, and Nate and I started dating in January), but had yet to meet him.  When we heard that he had a three hour layover in Dallas we were excited to be able to see him!

We started getting worried Saturday that we were going to miss him.  We got a late start, our first two attempts to get out of College Station were blocked by police cars, and then I started heading to the wrong direction on the freeway.  Halfway there we almost ran out of gas, and so pulled over at the first stop the GPS told us would have a gas station.  It turns out, that it was closed and we drove by another closed gas station until we finally got to a gas station, where we realized we "stood out", especially since we were dressed up for the temple.  There was even a sign on the barred door of the gas station that said, "Remove hoods before coming inside."  I was glad when we made it out of there.  We also hit some bad traffic once we got into downtown Dallas, but we finally did make it to the airport.  It ended up being okay that we were later then we planned for, because it took Jason awhile to go through customs.

Once we got there we realized that the Dallas airport is a lot bigger than we expected, and we had set up ambiguous plans to meet "at the airport".  So we were really hoping that Jason had written down our phone numbers, which he had, and so we were able to meet up with him.

This was supposed to be as Jason stepped off of the shuttle, but Nate had just bitten into a candy bar, so we made Jason recreate it.

We decided not to make Jason take too many pictures, but I couldn't resist getting one of the brothers.  

After our quick trip to the airport we headed to the Dallas temple.  Living in College Station you have to be creative about when you go to the temple.  We both felt the importance of being able to go and that we needed to be there.  There are a lot of blessings to be gained from going to the temple.

I had to work last Saturday, but that meant that I got Friday off, and so I headed down to Houston to celebrate my nephew Zach's 7th birthday!  I forgot my camera so I don't have any pictures to post, but I had a lot of fun.  I got to go to the zoo during the day with my two youngest nephews, and then at night Zach chose ribs for his birthday dinner and for his dessert he wanted chocolate chip pumpkin bread.  A very adventurous seven year old!  Since I spent the night, that means that on Saturday I was in Houston, College Station, Dallas, then back to College Station.  I spent a total of 10 hours in the car this weekend! But it was worth it.

In other sad news, our boundaries got realigned in our ward, and Nate and I are now in the College Station 1st ward, which means that I no longer get to work with my Beehives :(  All of them are staying in the 2nd ward, but I will hopefully pass them in the halls now and then.  It is mostly just younger college aged students like us that got switched from our ward to the 1st ward.  We are wondering if it is going to be another student type ward.  I hope not, because I really like being in a family ward.  The good news is, now we will get to know even more people in the area, and some of our friends got moved with us so it will be fun.

Happy Halloween!

It's been a very Halloween filled week.  Thursday night we carved pumpkins.  Here were the before pictures:

Nate decided to carve Texas A&M's logo into his pumpkin and I chose to do Mickey Mouse.  So you can see my cheat sheet in the picture...I can't draw Mickey Mouse free hand.  And the final product:

I traced on the ATM for Nate, but you can still see the marks I made-obviously I didn't make the marks very well.  It's harder to draw on a pumpkin than a piece of paper.  And some of the letters kind of fell apart...  Our apartment complex did a competition for our pumpkins so we turned mine in and I won third place!  Which means we get $25 off next months rent.

 I even got a little trophy :) 

We didn't really dress up too much for Halloween.  I did go to a "Witches Night Out" on Friday night.  A few of the girls in our ward got together and we made caramel apples and told "scary stories."  It was a lot of fun.  Then we went to our ward's Trunk or Treat where we ran out of candy in about 20 minutes.  There were a ton of kids!

Nate's highlight of the week was having President George Bush Sr. come to one of his classes on Friday.

He and his wife Barbara came and Nate said they were very nice.  He got to shake both of their hands and President Bush even got his teacher to let them out of class an hour early and told their professor that they should all get A's.  I don't know if that second part will happen, but that would be nice. 

We are getting ready for another crazy week.  Nate has a big paper due and I will continue my job hunt.  Actually, I am going bowling with my work tomorrow.  They do lots of fun activities like volleyball and other sports, but I don't feel like the work is very challenging-basically anyone could do my job!  Enough complaining though, I am grateful to have a job!

Dallas get-away

I just finished reading over my Young Women lesson for next week and it was about gratitude.  It made me think of all of the things I am grateful for, especially for Nate-today is our ten month anniversary!  It has gone by fast and has been a lot of fun.

This weekend we got to go to Dallas.  Friday we went to the State Fair.

One word sums it up: fried.  Everything was fried.  This years winner for "Most Creative" fried food was Fried Beer, we didn't try it, but we did try the "Best Taste" winner which was Texas Fried Fritos Pie.

It is chili and cheese in a fritos crust and deep fried.  MMM!  I couldn't believe all of the fried food people were eating!  I think just the Frito Pie took a year off of my life, although it was really good.

Other highlights included the pig racing and light show they did at night.  So when it got dark, they coordinated lights and water to music, it was pretty cool.  If it wasn't getting so late I would upload the video of it on here, but it takes awhile, and I am getting sleepy.

Saturday morning we went to the Dallas Temple.  It was definitely very unique looking.

You have to be creative about when you get to go to the temple, since it is so far away here.

And of course, we went to the BYU Football game, I am almost embarrassed to mention it since Jennifer pointed out that is all we talk about on our blog.  I guess the only time we do something worth writing about centers around a football game.  Anyways,  I won't dwell on it too long since BYU lost, although not as badly as some thought they might have.  It was still fun to  be able to cheer for BYU again!  Go Cougars!

A month in Aggieland

I can't believe that it has been over a month since we got here! In some ways it has flown by and in other ways it feels like we have been here for a long time. I'm finally starting to recognize people at church and we know our way around town pretty well now.

Here's a few highlights from the last week.

Allison and Brock (my sister and brother-in-law) came up with their four kids for the Texas A&M v. Florida International game.

 It was embarrassing.  No one has even heard of Florida International, yet they were creaming Texas A&M for the first three quarters.  Then A&M made a comeback in the fourth quarter, but we had left by then.  We've decided BYU football games are a lot louder and have people cheering on all sides, whereas A&M has a lot of spirit in the student section and the rest of the stadium is dead.  The best part is definitely the band.  Here's one of their cool formations they do:

Before the game we had sloppy joe's and taught my youngest nephew how to walk.  He is 16 months old but still just likes to crawl everywhere.

You can see a little bit of our front room in the video. That will be my goal for next week is to take the "after" shots of our apartment. I have some before pictures that will scare anyone.

Nate and I also finally got our ring picture.  Everyone buys a Texas A&M ring when they graduate and they are these HUGE pieces of gold on people's hands, it's hard not to notice them.  A guys ring costs about $900!  They hand out the rings three times a year and parents, grandparents etc. come for it. This is the ring that they have out front of the building Nate works in.  A lot of people take their wedding pictures under this ring.

Where's Waldo? Here's a picture of the ring day Nate just worked at.  He's the one in the middle looking up at the camera.
Beyond that, I finished my second week of work.  My job is getting better but I am still not loving it.  The company has a "big brother" sort of feel to it and I don't feel like I really get to use my brain a lot at work.  I am still looking elsewhere but we will see what happens.  I guess I should have a more positive outlook and I am grateful to have income and something to do right now. 

Nate won an award today in Elder's Quorum for 2nd place in the washer tournament. We had a ward activity yesterday where we threw washers onto a board ten feet in front of us with a hole in it. In one turn Nate got three of the washers in the hole in a row. What can I say, Nate is athletic. Even when it comes to washer throwing. I thought it was pretty funny. So now we have a ribbon with a washer on it.  Don't know what we're going to do with that one...

BTHO Louisiana Tech

Last week Andrea and I got to experience our first Texas A&M fightin Aggie football game!


Can't you see how excited we are? Texas A&M has many traditions, and one of those traditions is that students who are juniors or higher can say "whoop" and link the fingers together like you're shooting a gun and point above your shoulder and lift your left leg up. It's pretty fun.

So we started our adventure off by tailgating. We walked around for two hours and it was hot! I mean really hot. By the time we started working our way to the stadium I was sweaty and tired. It took us almost a half hour to make it into the stadium, but when we did, we got to come to these seats:

We sat on the 10 yard line on the 2nd row!

The game wasn't that exciting and I was not impressed with Texas A&M in the first half. They turned the ball over four times! They mishandled three punts/kickoffs and fumbled once. It was a pretty sad half, but the last play of the first half was amazing and it turned the tide for A&M. The Aggies were fifty yards away from the endzone, and Jerrod Johnson got the ball with no time left and threw up a prayer towards the endzone. An aggie somehow caught the ball on the five yard line, and then ran untouched into the endzone for a touchdown! Whoop!

While on the second row, we got to see a lot of fun things:

This is the official mascot of Texas A&M.  Reveille

This is a picture of the marching band.  They do some incredible formations and it was fun to see them walking through the lines like you can see in the picture.

The Yell Leaders

As promised here are pictures of the yell leaders from the practice we went to. We are really excited to go to midnight yell practice on Friday, assuming the rain calms down a bit. We have had really heavy rain the last two days. I enjoy Texas storms though. Then Saturday we are going to go to some tailgate parties and the game!

Yell Practice

No we are not doing the "thumbs up" sign. We are doing the sign for "gig 'em!" I don't even know where to begin. This was our second night here. Nate had a yell practice that he had to go to for work. Hundreds of freshman came to learn the cheers of Texas A&M. There are a ton! I was so mad that I forgot my camera! Luckily a coworker of Nate's took this picture for us, but the thing I really wanted to capture was the yell leaders. They were 20 something year old men wearing overalls with an ATM on the butt (that's the symbol to recognize Texas A&M) and then scriptures and other things written all over their overalls. There are five yell leaders, and I guess they have to be elected. It is a bigger deal than being the quarter back on the football team according to some people. Texas A&M has some crazy traditions. There are too many to explain and I don't understand some of them but you have to check out this website sometime when you get bored.  You can read all about the traditions.  Here is an excerpt about the Gig 'em sign:

Pinky Downs, class of 1906 and a member of the Board of Regents from 1923 to 1933, is credited with the Gig ‘Em hand sign. At the 1930 Yell Practice before the TCU football game, Downs shouted out, "What are we going to do to those Horned Frogs?" Answering his own question, he replied, “Gig ‘Em, Aggies!” while making a fist with his thumb extended. A “gig” is a spear-like tool used for hunting frogs. The gesture became known as the first hand sign of The Southwest Conference.

I will have to include other excerpts as time goes on.  I can't wait to go to our first midnight yell practice (they do it the Friday before each game at midnight).  Anyways, I love the school spirit that everyone has here.  Go Aggies! (and Cougars!)

On the Road

We headed out on our new adventure August 21st after the wedding of our good friends.  My cousin married Nate's old roommate (and yes we did help to introduce them ;).  The wedding was a lot of fun and we will miss our Wackee Six partners. Three days later we made it to Texas.  

Day one we saw a lot this:

We spent the night in Monticello and other than the temple there was literally nothing there. Nate told me he had never played Mad Libs so I said that we should buy some at the store when we go to Monticello so that we could entertain ourselves the next day.  He tried to explain to me that there wouldn't be any stores in Monticello.  I didn't believe him and said there must be something.  Yeah there was nothing.  But we did enjoy seeing the temple.  The drive through Southern Utah was by far the prettiest part of the trip.  I am already planning our vacation to Moab.

Day two we saw a lot of this:

We passed through a lot of heavy rain. Luckily Nate was driving for that part!

Day three...well that part was in Western Texas and there really wasn't much to take a picture of there. A lot of small towns with nothing in them. But we did see something fun when we stopped to get gas:



If you can't read the trailer it says "Bread of Life Mobile Ministry". Church on the go.

Anyways, we are in College Station now. A lot more has happened that I will have to write about one day. We were promised wireless internet in our apartment but so far the signal doesn't reach us, so we are sitting by the pool right now to get the signal better. Sitting by the pool in August at 10:00 at night in Texas isn't bad, but if it was noon we would be roasting.