Surprise Visitors

This past weekend, we had some visitors come down and surprise us! Linn and Evan made the long drive down here to spend the weekend, and we were so excited to see them! We just hung out on Friday, talked, and played Skip-Bo (the boys won big time, unfortunately). On Saturday, we went and showed them "Our House". We'll call it ours until we find out otherwise :) It's so cute! We also went to lunch at In-n-Out and had some take-out from Cafe Rio and watched Secretariat on Addi's and Blake's awesome new projector! Thank you, NPS. It was so much to see Evan and Linn, and we really appreciated their thoughtfulness to come down and visit us kids! We love you guys!

January Recap

Well, this past month we had a couple of big things happen. First, I got a job! It's only part-time, but it's in a surgical center for an ophthalmologist, and I have really liked it so far and I'm excited about the experience I'm getting! Also, Andy and I found a house! We put in an offer on it, and the seller accepted! It's a short sale, so now we are just waiting on the bank, but we are excited! It's a super cute house and we love it. Hopefully it will be one of the few good short sale stories! Here's to hoping!

Christmas Vacation

Andy finished with his finals on the 17, and on the 19 we flew into Salt Lake! We were SO excited to see everyone, and for Andy to have a two week break from studying! Hooray! We were busy almost the whole time that we were in town, so I will just cover the highlights. Obviously, we had lots of fun game nights, I did a lot of crafting with Mom and the girls, we went shopping, we went to Cafe Rio, and we went skiing as well! We also went with Bear to Snowbird. We picked a super foggy day to go, so depth perception was basically zero, but we still had a great time (even though we are not the skiers we used to be)! The mind was willing, but the body was weak...so, so weak.

On Christmas Eve, we went and had family pictures taken with the Bergy's in the morning. We let Rachel into the picture even though technically she is not a Bergy until March. We also went and had a tasty lunch with Mom, Dad and Brookie at Cutler's.

After that, we went up to Pleasant View to visit Grandpa B. We went and visited at old McDonald's so the boys could have somewhere to play while we visited with him, and then we went back to his house for a bit. It's always so great to see Grandpa B!

For our Christmas Eve party, we went over to Grandma J's house. We had tasty, tasty food and a White Elephant exchange. Then, we went back to the Bergy's and watched The Office until the wee hours of the morning. (Blake has never seen The Office!!! We quickly remedied that!)Perfect. On Christmas, Geri, Cindy, Dawna, and Grandma J came over and we opened presents. Look at all that loot! We must have been on the nice list.

We went up to my parent's house at noon for our other half of the Christmas celebration. After the yuletide battle for Sophie's new stroller and baby calmed down and all the children were nestled away for a Christmas nap, we watched some Christmas basketball and played Rock Band and cards, and had more tasty food. As a side note, anyone who encounters Lindsay should ask to hear her heart warming rendition of Ramstein's Du Hast. A perfomance sure to go down in Christmas history and hopefully repeated often. Plus one can never go wrong when Meek is laying down the beat on the drums.

On Monday, we went to the annual Bergy Christmas Party. It was fun to catch up with some family that we don't get to see very often!

We were able to catch up with some friends over the week, as well. I did lunch with some friends from high school, and it was so fun to see them, and we did dinner and games with other friends. I found a new talent playing Catch Phrase: Godfather impersonations. Thank you to Josh for pointing that out all week. We went and saw Tangled with my family, and we also went ice skating with the Bergy's, which was a big hit!

On New Year's Eve, Andy went sledding with the troopers that were willing to withstand the cold (not me!). Andy and Jack even had to retreat to the car early and warm up with some Mary Poppins while Max and Blake set distance records at the Stake Center. Then Geri and Cindy came over for dinner and a New Year's fire work (well, sparklers) celebration. After that, Andy and I headed down to Bobbie's parent's house for a New Year's party. We played the Wii and other games, and caught up with everyone. It was so much fun! To get back at Josh for making fun of my Godfather skills, I have to mention what a skilled dancer he is. I am not kidding, the best Spice Girls dance I have ever had the privilege to witness! We drove home after my dad's birthday breakfast on Saturday. What a great two weeks! We are more homesick when we get back to Arizona after visiting with family and friends, but it's totally worth it! It was SO great to see everyone! Happy holidays!

0 for 2

We drove home from St. George on Sunday. We drove through Las Vegas to avoid the storm in Flagstaff. We were 90 miles out from Phoenix in a little town called Wickenburg. There was a random light on the highway, and the traffic backed up far enough that I did not see the light until we were on top of it and the traffic was stopped in front of us. This was the result. Many of you may not recognize this car. It is because we bought it 20 days before we crashed. Luckily, no one was hurt and we had Daren to come and rescue us (again!) so we could make it home. But the car was a total loss, and we were glad because we were a bit worried with all the damage to the front how many problems it would cause for us after it was fixed. We are 0 for 2 in returning home from St. George without incident. Not a very good stat. Hopefully we can keep the losses at two and just keep adding to the successful trips home! Fingers crossed...

Turkey Day

I started my Thanksgiving holiday a week early by going back to SLC to work for a week! It was a blast. We crafted and played games, as usual, and I was also able to go out to dinner for an early birthday celebration! Texas Roadhouse is so tasty, and it was so much fun to see everyone! On Friday after work, I drove down with Mom and Dad to meet Andy in St. George. He had a final on Friday and drove up right after so we could play for the week! On Saturday, we went for a bike ride and we went to Brick Oven for lunch to celebrate my birthday. So yummy. After that, we went to see the new Harry Potter, and we had a tasty pasta dinner and cake on Sunday. On Monday, Andy and I went to Las Vegas on Monday to celebrate our sixth anniversary! Has it really been that long? The closest Melting Pot, which has been a tradition of ours to visit and get dessert every anniversary, was in Las Vegas so we made a dayof it. We went shopping in the afternoon and then stayed the night in the city after a tasty dessert.
The rest of the fam started coming into town on Monday. It was fun to be able to see everyone and hang out! We played lots of games, and we even introduced them to Skip-Bo, which is one of the Bergy's favorites. It was a pretty big hit! We went for runs and bike rides, watched movies, and played with the munchkins. It was great. On Black Friday, we even went out with the crazies to WalMart to get some Christmas and birthday presents! It was intense, but we were successful! We also had an inaugural mini-triathalon, I suppose you could call it. The pool was packed with families the day after Thanksgiving, so we didn't do the swimming part, but we added a scooter category to the repertoire. First, we scooted, then we ran, and then some of us biked. I had no idea, but scooting is difficult! My hamstrings were burning like crazy. Andy was going so hard that he melted his back tire! It was fun, though. It was a great week! We are so grateful to have such great families and friends!

It's Official!

We finally found out where we are going to be for the next three years! As most of you may know, with Andy's school they have the students go to Community Health Clinics for the second year, so it was up in the air where we would be come next July. We had to do a match, basically, to put in our number one choices. Ours was Phoenix. There were more people that wanted the site than available spots, so we had to write an essay on why we wanted to stay there, why it was a good match for them and Andy, etc. etc. Well, we got it! We will be in Phoenix for at least three more years! I'm excited that we don't have to a move to another state in the summer! And that means that we still have a warm place for people to come and visit! Hooray!

Wow. Just wow.

Tonight, Andy and I had a very interesting experience. Right on the border of awesome and slightly unnerving. Andy had a big test this morning, so we stayed up pretty late last night and we were both sleep-deprived. Just a disclaimer. We went to a pizza place in Mesa for a birhday party for one of Andy's buddies from school called Organ Stop Pizza. He had not been there in 18 years but used to go for his birthday with his grandparents. We thought at first that it was just organ (yes, an organ with keys and buttons) memorabilia and what have you, but that was not the case. First off, when we got there, it looked like several retirement homes had taken a field trip there or something. Old people EVERYWHERE. I'm talking white hair from wall to wall. So we got in line, ordered our pizza and sat down. After a few minutes, we hear an organ playing "It's a Small World." So we looked over and a golden organ is emerging out of the middle of the stage in a spiral fashion...

What the heck... The organist was pounding on the keys phantom of the opera style in a herring bone suit. I would not be surprised if he worked at the mortuary during the day time. There were these weird little cat puppets behind a curtain and bubbles that came from the ceiling. Andy said that we had officially entered Bizzaro world. If my sentences don't make sense...it is because I am not really sure what just happened!

(The cat puppets that dance and bark as well.)

One of our buddies made the observation that it is a mix between the Mormon Tabernacle organist and Alice in Wonderland. SO weird. The organist was really good. Apparently there are five of them that rotate nights, and between them they know over 10,000 songs. Pretty impressive. He played everything from Phantom of the Opera to Abba, the Sound of Music, and Queen. When he got to Queen, it was a really big hit. He started off with Bohemian Rhapsody, which was ridiculous, and everyone (especially those who had been drinking) sang along very enthusiastically. After that, he played "We Are the Champions" and really got them going. I can't even describe how crazy this place is. It is definately on our list if anyone wants to go there for a Pink Floyd wizard of oz moment. But SO weird.

Left: Andy and Juan Pablo, Right: Andy, Jeff and Mallory

If I wake up tomorrow and am missing a kidney, I won't be that surprised.