General Conference

Wasn't General Conference incredible? Thanks to the snowstorm that canceled Matt's track meet, we got to enjoy the sessions live at Steve & Jodie's instead of having to TiVo them. We loved the timing of it this year, just one week before Easter. While we usually think about Christ's birth for the entire month leading up to Christmas, we don't tend to spend much time preparing for Easter and the celebration of His resurrection. This Conference, we learned so much about our Savior and the Atonement (especially from Elder Holland), and it really puts things into the proper perspective. We're so grateful for leaders of the church and for the the opportunity that General Conference gives us to hear from them.

Spring Training & Sprinting

I was on cloud nine walking off the plane into 85-degree weather in Phoenix. Seriously, give me Matt & the sunshine and I'm a happy girl. Adding best friends and sports to the mix? Even better. Matt's roommate, Anthony, is from Scottsdale and was home for spring break, so we had our own personal tour guide of the city. We figured there was no way we could visit Arizona in March without hitting up a spring training game, so we ended up at the A's stadium to watch them play the Padres.

The next day, Clark & Shelley flew in with the same idea, so off we went to another baseball game. This time we saw the Angels take on the Mariners. Working for the Bees made me an Angels fan, so it was fun to see them play!

We had to leave the game early to get some pre-race pasta in Matt, so we enjoyed a late lunch at Macaroni Grill while catching the Sweet 16 action. Then it was off to Arizona State's Sun Angel Stadium for the big meet.

It was a night meet, beginning at 5 and ending at 10. Not only was this incredibly convenient with the heat, but it created a really cool atmosphere for the races. Matt tore it up on the track, placing 7th (of 40 big-school athletes) in the 100, shaving another two tenths off his 200 time, and running a solid first leg in the 4x400.

100 Meter Dash:

200 Meter Dash:

Prepping for the 4x400:

Fresh out of the blocks:

Impressive, no? I was glad Clark could be there to get these pictures of Matt--I'm always too busy cheering to focus on my camera, and he's always moving too fast for my little point & shoot to take a halfway-decent picture anyway.

After all that hard work, Matt definitely deserved the 4x4 meal he ordered at In-N-Out late that night. I'm not sure my sitting+cheering efforts were really worthy of the cheeseburger, fries & strawberry shake I devoured, but they sure were a great ending to a lovely little vacation.

Show of hands...

Um... that'd be me. While I was lucky to spend last weekend in sunny Arizona, there's almost nothing worse than leaving gorgeous weather and landing home in a blizzard. It's times like these I couldn't be happier that we're moving to the desert :-) Mother Nature isn't all bad, though--she was nice enough to give us a long enough break from the rain/hail/snow last Tuesday to take our engagement pictures. Sure, it was freezing cold and horribly windy... but at least we weren't wet.

On our way home from our little picture-taking adventure with McKenzie (our very talented photographer), we stopped by the Draper Temple (since Matt had never seen it). I'm still amazed at how beautiful our temples are.

The next day, we put my PTO to good use and headed down the street to do baptisms together at the Mount Timpanogos Temple. It's been neat to share those kinds of experiences with Matt throughout our engagement.

We spent the afternoon at Temple Square finalizing wedding dinner plans with Shelley and got to spend some quality time with my dad during rush hour. That night, we stayed up late playing with my family and our favorite brunettes.

And the next morning, we woke up at 4:45 a.m. to get Matt to the airport in time. Talk about a short spring break!
Good thing I got to join him in Phoenix the next day :-)

Basketball, babies & such

Matt's in town right now! He only has a short spring break inbetween track meets in Arizona, but I'll take what I can get. The main purpose of the trip, aside from spending some quality time together, is to take our engagement pictures tomorrow. Since this is our one shot, the weather is mildly unfortunate. Here's hoping Target carries cute umbrellas. Anyway, Matt flew in Sunday and we went straight up to Kaysville, where we got to hang out with these cute kids:

(Picture shamelessly stolen from Nate & Laci's blog)

Our newest niece, Annsli Claire, was born on St. Patricks Day and is such a beautiful baby. I'm lucky to be inheriting so many adorable nieces and nephews through Matt's side. We can't wait to add our own to that mix :-) From there, we headed over to Dave & Monica's to attend the Draper Temple dedication and spend the evening with them. Matt didn't get to come to Utah for the open house, so it was neat to share the dedication with him.

That would be my family at the Draper Temple Open House, if you couldn't tell.

And in other news... just thought I'd give a quick update on my pretty little ESPN bracket which, despite a less-than-perfect Day 2 (seriously, Cleveland State?), is still in the 99.4 percentile in the country and has every single one of my Elite Eight picks playing in the Sweet Sixteen. I remember when I used to be in the 99th percentile on all those standardized tests in school and let me tell you, this is way cooler :-). Go Tigers.

Perfect 16 for 16!

Excuse me while I interrupt the regular blogging schedule, but it's finally March Madness... and my ESPN bracket just went 16 for 16 today! I'm feeling a bit like my buddies over at Western Kentucky:

Here's a closer look :-)

K, fully aware that this is totally unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but still. Though I've had some pretty impressive brackets in the past (finishing in ESPN's top 2% overall in high school haha), I've never had a perfect first round day... And since I picked Utah State to win tomorrow (what?!), I'm living it up while I can :-)

Le Fantome de l'Opera

Once upon a time, I read The Phantom of the Opera in French (you know, back when I could speak a bit more French than just "quelle heure est il?")... and ever since, I've been dying to see the Broadway version. After all, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom is a classic. So when we found out the national tour of Phantom was coming to Denver, we jumped on it! We got the tickets last fall in lieu of Valentines' gifts for each other and had a wonderful time at the show last weekend.

It was AMAZING. Mesmerizing. The part of the Phantom was played by John Cudia, who just finished playing the actual Phantom on Broadway for a few years. Let me tell you, he is impressive.

We originally bought our tickets with the Hendrickses, but Steve's brother came into town that weekend so we ended up going with Mikey Bear and Jaleah, one of my best friends who flew to CO with me this time around:

It was such a perfect night! I'm so lucky I got a fiance who appreciates these kinds of things. Other snippets from the weekend: We spent Friday night at the Pann's with Mike & J, Chase & Haley, and GP.

Matt and I had a friendly little game of pool, in which I blew a 4-ball lead because I couldn't get the 8-ball in. Typical.

And since Matt didn't have a track meet on Saturday (they had a break before outdoor starts next weekend), we had time to go to a ballroom dance class that morning to learn the basics of the Waltz. He is such a good sport.

Just Another Weekend in the Springs

Matt had his last indoor track meet. Can't wait for outdoor to start!

One of my favorite high school friends, Chelsey, runs for Utah so she was in town for the meet. We got to steal her from the team hotel for a bit on Friday night and had a great time just hanging out at the townhouse:

On Saturday night, we went out with Anthony and Caroline for New York-style pizza and bowling:

And since Anthony had to wear a sling on his right arm and bowl lefty, the rest of us did, too :-)

I don't think anyone broke 80. Since that's rare for me anyway, I enjoyed the company on the scoreboard.

100's Night!

Hundredths night (aka 100's night for all of us to lazy to pronounce the "th") is one of the most anticipated traditions at the Academy. 100 nights before graduation, the seniors all go to a big dinner where they are given their first assignments. Then they take off for the weekend while the freshmen "decorate" their rooms. Supposedly, the more they like the senior, the more they'll mess up their rooms--& if they really hate the senior, they'll clean his room to white-glove perfection. A little backwards, but it's sure fun! Since there was a track meet on 100's night, the track team held their own dinner for all the seniors & Coach was nice enough to let me come. So while we were chowing down on pizza & celebrating our new assignment...

...the freshmen in Matt's squad were busy making his room into this masterpiece that we found on Monday:

Those cups strung along the rubber bands were all full of FLOUR.

You can't see it in the picture above, but blocking the doorway was rows upon rows of paper cups filled with water... and stapled together so we couldn't pick them up. The "0" and "9" in the middle of the room were also stapled. Nice.

Cleaning it up was actually quite entertaining--it felt kind of like one of those spy movies where you have to be careful not to set off an alarm (except our nemesis was millions of tiny cups of flour that might spill all over us and we were cleaning, not saving the world... but close enough).

The best part, though, had to be the annoying music playing on Anthony's radio on the OTHER side of the room.

Those freshmen put in some serious effort! I think it's safe to say these seniors are well-liked.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, not only do we have less than 100 days till Matt's graduation but we also have less than 100 days till our wedding!!! It feels like it was just barely 384 days. Or 731 days. Time sure flies.

Roses are Red, Falcons are Blue...

When Air Force's track coaches talked to Matt about joining the team as a sprinter, we assumed he would spend a few months conditioning and then start racing when the outdoor season began at the end of March. After all, he was just getting over his hamstring injuries and hadn't run track for, oh, SEVEN YEARS. Turns out the coaches had a different time frame in mind! After just a couple weeks of training, they had Matt in an invitational, running sprints for the Academy.

It's been such a blast! Matt's been tearing it up on the track and I've had a lot of fun cheering for him. In fact, plenty of people have had fun cheering him on--Matt's had quite the fan club, thanks to the Hendricks fam and his buddies :-)

In his first race, his 60 meter time (they run 60M instead of 100 in indoor) was just one tenth off of what it was when he was the state champ as a junior & senior. Not bad, right? He's just been shaving time off in each consecutive meet. And while we're giving the update, Matt had another meet this weekend, where he took 4th in the 60M and 2nd in the 200M!

Last weekend was a busy one, with 100's Night (next post), a big invitational, Valentine's Day and Presidents' Day.
Matt and I got up bright and early for his races on Saturday morning...
...only to have the power go out at the meet! Hard to host an indoor invitational with no power. The meet was delayed three hours, so we went back to the Hendricks' and let Matt take a nap (compliments of the sleep mask that treats me so well on all of my flights). Back up at the Academy, Matt took second in his heat and made it to the finals in the 60M (out of 50+ runners)! So fun. The meet ended much later than scheduled because of the blackout, though. Luckily for us, we went on our big Valentine's date to the Cliff House two weekends before so it didn't spoil our plans.

With the big date checked off, we just laid low that night with Texas Roadhouse, serenades by Matt, and homemade fondue.

Hope you all had a sweet Valentine's Day, too :-)

California, Here We Come!!!

Well, the results are in and we’re excited, to say the least! We didn’t get our #1-Los Angeles or #3-Boston (props to those who know me so well!), but we got a pretty decent runner-up: Edwards Air Force Base—an hour and a half outside of L.A.

Apparently, we'll get to enjoy goreous sunrises and sunsets (in my case, sunsets...), as well as the occasional space shuttle landing.

Full disclosure: Back in August, when we were making our list, I only half-jokingly told Matt that if he gets Edwards, I’m not coming. When Jodie picked me up from the airport on Friday (since Matt was racing), I told her I’d be happy with anywhere on our list-just as long as it wasn’t Edwards. And then, when we opened up our base assignment and saw Edwards, I almost expected them to be kidding. For those of you who aren’t aware, Edwards is the one in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

Thankfully, there’s WAY more to Edwards than meets the eye (literally). Turns out, Matt’s job will be pretty amazing there. Edwards is in the middle of the desert because they need all that space to test their new toys (it’s where they first debuted the F-22s and other cool things like that). As an engineer, Matt gets to work with that. According to a few high-ranking officers we’ve talked to since we got the news, his time spent working at Edwards will do incredible things for Matt's career in the future—both in the Air Force and out. Not bad.

Meanwhile, we’re actually loving the location. Obviously we would have preferred the big cities but besides those two, the rest of the locations on our list were also at least an hour away from the next major city. And if you’re going to live 90 miles from a big city, it might as well be Los Angeles! Within a two-hour drive we’ll have: a temple, the beach, Disneyland, Six Flags, plenty of college and pro sports, Broadway plays, and all sorts of shopping, restaurants and entertainment. Plus, some of our closest family friends are in Bakersfield, which means if I need a mom Tamara is just 80 minutes away. Oh, and home? A quick 8.5 hour drive, with my extended family three hours closer than that. And let’s not forget my most favorite thing since we’re in the middle of winter—the weather! According to the monthly averages, it's really similar to Sacramento's. Year-round marathon training, thank goodness.

We’ve now officially learned the whole “Needs of the Air Force come first” thing first-hand. The majority of guys with Matt’s specific job ended up at either Eglin AFB in Florida (two hours outside of Mobile, Alabama) or Wright Patterson in Ohio (an hour between Columbus and Cincinnati). So, we actually feel pretty darn lucky to be heading where we are. And while I'm sure there will be times when I just sit at home and wonder how we got there, at the end of the day it's comforting that the Lord knows what He's doing.

And let’s be honest: after spending 2 ½ years apart by the time our wedding rolls around, we’re happy to be living anywhere as long as we’re together :-)

The fact that I get to move back to California with my Matt is just icing on the cake.

Many adventures sure to come.

PS-Remember those track pictures I talked about? And Valentine's Day? And the infamous 100's Night festivities? I'll be home in Utah this weekend so I plan on actually getting caught up in life, including one months worth of laundry, wedding plans, taxes, and this blog. Stay tuned :-)

Guess where we're moving!

No, really--guess!

Matt & I don't find out until Friday night and (as a planner who at age 14 had her life mapped out through age 20) the wait has been driving me CRAZY! So I figured we all might as well have a little fun with it :-)

We submitted a list last August with the top 8 bases we’d like to move to ranked in order of preference. When Matt did this with his job, he got his #1 pick so we’re pretty hopeful we’ll at least get one of our top 3. Although we’re happy to go anywhere as long as we’re finally together (and we want to eventually live in a few of these places), we're crossing our fingers that we get to go to our #1 or #3 pick pick this time around (#2 got its ranking for the job description). Technically, though, the Air Force could send us wherever they want –on our list or off—so this is way up in the air!

So… back to the little game. Feel free to make two guesses (and say why!): 1- What our #1 & #3 are (let’s see how well you know us!) and 2- Where the Air Force will actually send us.

In no particular order...

A: Georgia
We'd be smack dab in the middle of Atlanta and Savannah.

B: Los Angeles
Matt would work downtown and we'd live in the base housing, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean.

C: Florida
We actually have 3 different Florida bases on our list, giving us a 37.5% chance of moving there.
When we made the list, this is what I had in mind...

Now I'm thinking more along these lines...

Yes, that is an ALLIGATOR on the doorstep. Anyway.

D. Boston
We'd live just outside the historic and very expensive city.

E: Vandenberg
In between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, Matt (the engineer) would be involved in the west coast shuttle launches.

F: Other
Colorado Springs, Utah, New Mexico, Middle of the Mojave Desert...

Results coming SOON!!!