Saturday, February 23, 2008

Playing catch up

Well, we have really neglected our blog the last few months. Between the bar exam, moving, starting new jobs, our computer crashing, and just staying busy, we haven't done a good job of keeping up to date. So now we are playing catch up. This entry will hopefully summarize the missed months.

July 2007
Jeff spent most of July studying for the bar exam. Luckily, his firm was willing to pay him full
salary while he studied, even though he didn't work at all during July. On July 24th and 25th (yep, he was stuck in a room taking an exam on the 24th of July) he took the Utah bar exam. It may have been the worst two days of his life.
July was also spent finishing up our home purchase. We got the house (pictured in the previous post) in Farmington, Utah. We closed on the house two days after the bar exam and moved in a few days later. We owe a big thanks to both of our parents for helping us move on last minute's notice.

August 2007
Throughout the month, we slowly moved in to our new home. Aubree transferred to the Shopko pharmacy in Bountiful. Jeff started his job at the Utah Supreme Court.
We also took a short trip to Seattle for the annual Basque Elders Reunion. Every year, Jeff gets together with some of his missionary companions from his days in Basque Country. This year, we traveled to Seattle to the home of Jon and Emily Burnette. It was a lot of fun visiting the Seattle area and visiting with friends.



























September 2007

We sold Aubree's Chevy Lumina for a whopping $600. We felt lucky to get that much out of it. It came without hubcaps but with lots of dents (courtesy of an unfortunate deer that got in Aubree's way a few years ago). For the first time in our marriage, we purchased a new car (at least it's new to us)--a 2005 Toyota Camry. It's a big step up from the Lumina!



























October 2007

Jeff found out that he passed the Utah bar exam and he was officially admitted into the Utah Bar.

November 2007
We celebrated our five year anniversary by taking a short trip. We went to Utah County and spent the day doing "activities of compromise": Aubree agreed to go golfing with Jeff at Hobble Creek during the day, and then Jeff agreed to go to a musical (Thoroughly Modern Millie) with Aubree at night. We also spent Sunday visiting our niece Katelyn. Also, to celebrate our anniversary, Aubree made Jeff a cherry pie. This may seem insignificant, but ever since we got married, Aubree has been promising to make Jeff a cherry pie because it's his favorite dessert. Finally, after five years, she made good on her promise!

































December 2007

We enjoyed decorating our home for Christmas. We hadn't had a Christmas tree in four years, and we never really decorated our apartment, but since we had a house, we finally figured it was worth getting out all the decorations and getting a tree. We had a great Christmas and were able to visit both families. We spent Christmas morning opening presents with Jeff's family, then spent Christmas afternoon eating and playing Guitar Hero with Aubree's family.

































January 2008

Just work and more work. Jeff decided he needed something more to do, so he took a part-time job teaching night classes at Utah Career College. He teaches two paralegal classes on Mondays and Wednesdays.

February 2008

Two weekends ago, we took a quick trip down to St. George to get out of the snow. We had never been to a session in the St. George temple, so we made sure to do that. We also went on a tour of Brigham Young's home, went to a movie, went shopping at the outlet stores, and just relaxed. It was also a good opportunity to several people from Jeff's mission. We had lunch in Cedar City with Stan and Barbara Shakespeare, a senior missionary couple Jeff served with in Las Arenas. We visited Jeff's mission president and his wife in their gorgeous new home in St. George. We also visited one of Jeff's companions, Jared Cope, and his wife Arianne in Cedar City. It was Jared and Arianne that introduced us to Settlers of Catan a few years ago, so it was only appropriate that we played a game of Settlers with them (Aubree wants it noted that she won). On our way home, we stopped and spent Sunday with Jared, Ginger, and Katelyn in Aurora.






















There, now we're up to date! We'll try not to fall so far behind in the future.