My birthday, one year, Utah State Hospital, mocktails, the temple, and football!

 It has been a very busy week!! So I guess I should start at the beginning..
Monday was great because we got to know a few of our neighbors! We hung out with a couple in the fourplex we live in and played games while a couple of the other people that live dropped by as well. It was so nice to really get to know the people that surround us. Hopefully we'll do more stuff with them in the future :)
Tuesday was my 21st birthday!! We planned to do a party later in the week but my actual birthday was very fun :) Adam got me a super fun game called Forbidden Island! It is a cooperative game (meaning that its all of the players working together to beat the game rather than each other) which I love because I don't like when games get too competitive. He also got me Tangled!! :)

This is the Forbidden Island game when we played today after church :)
So anyways, he made me a yummy breakfast in the morning too! The rest of the day I just worked a lot which turned out to be great! I work as a secretary in the Office of Digital Humanities at BYU. When I came in on Tuesday, everyone in the office knew it was my birthday which I think was due to my great boss, Bonnie :) I also had to file something in our conference room when Mel and the student computer support reps that he's in charge of were about to start their weekly meeting. haha they promptly sang me happy birthday and gave me snickerdoodle the size of my hand! Imagine 6-7 college age IT guys singing happy birthday haha it was great :) Later, Adam and I went to Red Robin for dinner to claim my free burger which of course was delicious :) Then Adam made cupcakes and Kayla and Steven came over to play my new game :) It was a very good day!
Wednesday marked one year from the time that Adam proposed :) In honor of that, we sort of recreated what we did that night. We went to the park that we fed the ducks at and where he hid the ring (and couldn't find the ring for the longest time haha). It was after dark when we went the first time so it was great going in the daylight because that park is BEAUTIFUL!! We fed the ducks which was fun because of how excited they got and they crowded around us. There was a bunch of different colored ones too :)

We walked around looking at all the benches we sat at (referring to Adam not finding the ring for a while). Someone was having a picnic at the one where he actually proposed at but it was still fun :) Then we went to Farr's for frozen yogurt which is always yummy :)
Thursday, I went to my orientation for the volunteer work I have to do at the Utah State Hospital for my Abnormal Psychology class. I am going to be working in the children's unit which I think will be very rewarding. I got to meet some of the kids even and they were so happy to see us volunteers. I think I will learn a lot from this.
Then there was Friday :D we had a birthday mocktail party for me (50s style)! We got a bunch of stuff for fake cocktails and everyone dressed up. My friend Kayla did my hair as well :) We listened to big band music, had cocktail snacks and lots of virgin drinks! It was great being with those people some I hadn't seen in a while like Carissa and KJ :) Also Adam made me a homemade chocolate cake (all by himself I might add)!! Here's some pictures from the party :)

As you can see, everyone looked so gosh darn cute!! :) A thoroughly epic birthday party :)
Then on Saturday, we worked at the temple as we always do :) It was my first time working now that I'm not in training anymore!! I felt very legit :) It is such a glorious blessing we have to be able to work in the temple while we are in Provo. What a great way to spend our Saturday afternoons :) then that evening we went over to our friends' Andre and Michelle to watch the BYU vs. U of U game which was of course very exciting :)
All around a very busy but amazing week :D

Love,
Ashley

the meaning behind the name of our blog :)

Hey you all :)

I thought I should explain briefly the meaning behind the name of our blog and the quote at the top of the page. It is from the song that was played during our first dance at our wedding reception :) It is called Mario Cart Love Song haha

Here is the original video:

Well there you go :) Enjoy!

<3 Ashley

"Fall is here, ring the bell, back to school..."

Greetings everyone!

Well, Ashley and I are now ready to embark upon another school year.  Ashley had about a four month break from school and I had a two-month break.  With that in mind, we were both ready to get back into school.  For Ashley, that had been the longest she had gone with no school since she started school!  That last week of Summer was quite busy as we prepared for school, especially for me.

I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but I am a part of a pilot program that BYU is attempting.  BYU has created 12 online courses.  These courses are for enrolled students at BYU and will be counted as part of their tuition.  Anyways, I was hired to be the TA for one of these courses.  Since they are all online, the TAs have a lot of responsibility and I spent much of the week before school learning the technological side of things, preparing the set-up, conversing with the professor and etc.

Now that a week has gone by, things have been quite a bit different.  Continuing the thread of the previous paragraph, my TA job has been going well.  We held our orientation meeting, the only in-person meeting of the entire semester, on Tuesday and it went very well.  I have since met with a few students one-on-one as the program requires and the meetings have gone well.  It is still a bit of adjusting, (including having my own cubicle to work in! Well, I share it with one other person, but still...) but it has been quite interesting.  I think it will be a very nice resume builder.

School has been another matter.  As much as Ashley and I were really bored without school, we were not prepared for the sudden decrease of time we got to spend together.  For the first few days, even when I was home with Ashley, I was required to do homework or reading for my classes.  That has made life a little challenging but we will get adjusted as the semester wears on.

Now for classes: I am taking a lot of interesting courses.  I am taking two Humanities seminar classes.  One is studying Hans Christian Andersen which has been very interesting and the other is addressing current issues in the Humanities.  For the latter course, we are focusing on the reactions to 9-11.  This is a very challenging class.  On Friday, we watched some footage from the day.  At the end of the class (there are only three students so it is pretty open) the professor remarked about how this class was going to be tough emotionally in some ways.  I responded that it was important for me since I was a child when 9-11 actually occurred to actually come to terms with this tragic event as an adult.  So I am very interested in that class, no matter how challenging the subject matter is.

I am also taking a US History course from 1945-the present.  So far, I am LOVING the class.  I knew I chose the right emphasis when I decided to read my history textbook for fun before class even started.  Right now, we are discussing the foundations of the Cold War, which has been very interesting.  I am learning a lot.  My other two courses are a computers in the humanities course where I will be learning about internet publishing, aka learning the basics of html, css, and java script.  I have had some background in java script but I am excited to learn other scripting languages.  My last course is Spanish 205 and easily the most demanding course of them all.  I am way out of my element when it comes to learning a language but it will be for the best.

Ashley is also taking a full class load.  She is taking one of the pilot courses that I was mentioning earlier in the post.  Her class is Doctrine and Covenants so it is not too hard, but she is excited to try it out.  She is also taking Abnormal Psychology, Psychology Testing, Writing within psychology, and Theatre and Media arts for a GE.  Her Abnormal Psychology will be having her favorite coursework because of her interest in psychopathology but it also requires 22 hours of volunteering during the semester at the Utah State Hospital working with the mentally ill.  It'll be a challenge to work it into the schedule but the experience should be very rewarding.  In Psychology Testing, it will require a group project which are always demanding.  She had experience last semester with a very inadequate group in her Research methods class.  She is really excited to be into her major classes but is going to be burdened with a lot of work.

On top of school, Ashley and I will still be working at the temple and working about 18-20 hours each week.  Therefore, we shall be quite busy.  We are super excited though to be able to learn at this wonderful school.  Life has been very kind to us.  For all of you, whomever chooses to read this, we wish you the best of luck in work/school/family life/whatever else you may be doing! :-)