Blog Worthy Moment

I guess Audrey is learning about traffic lights in school because most of the time when we are in the car she is back seat driving. She'll tell us when to go, and when to stop. She'll tell us to drive faster or slow down (rarely, she likes going fast). She'll even remind us on how to get home.

Here's the Story...short but sweet.

Yesterday Patrick and Audrey are driving down the road, not a traffic light in sight and Audrey says "stop daddy."
Patrick replys, "but it's not red Audrey, there is no light."
And Audrey says, "but there's no green, either."

Look at my little critical thinker. Patrick was so impressed that she used rational to win the argument/conversation.

Out with the old & in with the new.

I guess it's that time of year. When you reevaluate your life and the things you have done over the past year and make resolutions so that you can improve the next.

What were we doing a year ago?

A year ago Patrick was in school, didn't realize he was so close to graduating, and didn't have a job. I had just finished my first semester back at UVU and was about to start my second semester back and Audrey started at Adventure Time.  

So now everything is somewhat flipped. You all already know the good news about Patrick...and I believe I'll be talking a bunch about that for the next little while. So sue me, we're excited.  And I have 6 more classes to go before I am done with school. Depending on the classes offered in the summer I should be done in August. But if they don't offer a class that I need to take then we might have to wait until December so I can take that final class in the fall. Fingers crossed that I can get that second class in the summer.


Some MAJOR things that have happened to us or that we did this past year - I'm going to attempt to think of 10.

1. Surprising Michelle and Dan at the Birth of Virginia in April.
2. Going to Washington DC for a week in May.
3. Going to Matthews graduation in June.
4. Audrey getting potty trained - all summerish.
5. Patrick getting the Internship with our congressman's office & starting part-time at Nuskin - August.
6. The NEW car - We still love it - August.
7. Me quitting marching band - Dumb People! But the best thing ever. I have my nights free and all my weekends. I love it!
8. Our 5th anniversary - that we celebrated in June since Audrey was going to be at dads for a week.
9. Patrick Graduating - FINALLY!
10. Patrick getting a full time job.

and

11. Audrey turned 4 on the same day Katherine got married.

Now for some resolutions - not in any particular order. I'm again going to try and think of 10. This should be easy.

1. Take more pictures and video of Audrey - we are losing out on her childhood and I want to preserve it - can't believe my baby is 4 years old. It goes by fast. Patrick and I have talked about it we are going to make sure we do something once a week, with Audrey, that is camera worthy and make sure that we take the time to pull it out and take pictures.
2. lose more weight. I've lost 15 so far. I have 10 or so more before I'm very very happy with myself.
3. keep my apartment cleaner - I am horrible at this - can you blame someone who works and goes to school full time?
4. Make my apartment a home - it's just a place we live and not a home. But because of this new job we're thinking we'll be moving to a bigger place so maybe that one will have to wait.
5. Get a family portrait done. We don't do this and we need to.
6. Graduate!
7. update the blog more often - I'm going to attempt to do it every 2 weeks or so.
8. Put more pictures on the blog - This should coincide with taking more pictures and writing more.
9. Totally thought this would be easy...ummmm....lame - oh this should make the family happy....think & talk about making our little family a little bigger. I am totally not making any promises.
10. Start the blog I've been thinking about doing - It would be a movie blog. I wouldn't be posting movie reviews, that's not the intent...I might do that once in a while. Let me see if I can explain it. Every one comes across the question....what movie should we watch tonight, the blog would attempt to answer that question. I would give suggestions of movies to watch, old and new. Each month would have a theme. Like January would be indie fest because of the Sundance Film Festival, March would be Best Pictures because of the Oscars. I'll do adventure months and romance months. I think it will be fun and plus I watch a ton of movies. Don't worry I won't pick some obscure movie. I'll try and make sure it's something you can order from netflix or pick up at the local blockbuster.

Anyway I think that's it for now. I'm excited for the new year. 2011 should be a great one!

This is AWESOME!

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

Some Cool Things

Life here is trekking on and it seems to be getting interesting.

1. Patrick FINALLY and I mean FINALLY graduated from BYU, but that is not even the best part.

This is divine intervention. I can not thank the lord enough for giving me the inspiration that one afternoon to do this. Am I being vague enough?

In Novemeber I decided to take a moment and search "government jobs in Utah" and came across the Utah state jobs site. On the site I found a job that I thought was perfect for Patrick. It seemed like an entry level position, they were hiring 23 people, and there were going to be doing 2 months of training in salt lake, with the possibility of being transferred to the Provo office once training was complete. So I sent it to him and he thought he had a good enough chance for it and applied. Even though he wasn't planning on really searching for something til his internship was completed.

So about a week later they called and asked for an interview on Wednesday December 1st. They then said that he would be contacted the week of the 13th with word about the job.

Skip forward a week and a half.

at 9:30 on Monday the 13th they called and offered Patrick the position (at least on of the positions). He starts January 3rd, and the training will be in the Provo office and the job will be in the Provo office. I know right!

He is going to be a caseworker for the Department of Workforce Services. The state is on a 4 day work week so even though he'll be doing four 10 hour days he'll have Fridays off.

We are both really excited about this.

2. Audrey turned 4 on Monday. Which was also Katherine's wedding. I didn't get any pictures of the night and I don't know if Michelle did either but someday we'll get them and post some of them. It was a fun night and at the dinner the entire group sang Audrey Happy Birthday. She loved it and couldn't stop smiling.

3. I'm still going through school. I don't know if I'll be done in August or next December. It all depends on what classes are offered in the summer. I might be taking ONE class next fall. But that's okay. There is a class that I've been wanting to take. It will be a lot of time and energy and that is why I've not done it yet because I can't commit to that much time. But I have a really great idea for a project and think I might want to do it then. I don't know I'll have to see if it's something that would work. I might even want to do it during the summer when it's warm outside. I'll have to think about it.

I just wanted to give you a heads up about life.

Another Blog Worthy Moment....

...brought to you by....

...The silly mind of AUDREY SPENCER.

The other week patrick had the day off from both Jasons congressional office and Nuskin so we took the opportunity to spend time together. Normally we spend time together by eating out. So this time we decided to go to Noodles and Co. LOVE IT!

As we were waiting for our food a man walked in the door with an eye patch over one eye.

Que picture of a random internet image.

Isn't this face just totally awesome?

Audrey noticed the man right away and yelled "mommy, mommy, mommy! Look at the PIRATE!" and to make sure Patrick noticed as well, she exclaimed "Daddy Daddy Daddy! look at the Scary Pirate!" and then proceeded to cower in fear with bursts of high pitched screams.

She just wouldn't shut up about the pirate. I told her to stop several times but she was just so fascinated by the real life pirate. I explained to her that sometimes people have to wear a patch to protect their eye, but that doesn't make them a pirate. But she just couldn't stop.

To make things worse the man and his group sat right next to us. Which escalated the pirate pointing. Patrick and I quickly finished...and by quickly I mean scarfed it down, in order to leave as soon as possible.

It was rather embarrassing.

I really hope the man never heard her. But in case he did.

Dear eye Patchman,
I am sorry that my, 3 almost 4 year old, daughter mistook you for a pirate. 

Update

Hi there,

I know that it has been a long time since I've posted anything about anything. It's been a long few weeks...I won't bore you with the details.

But it's been an adventure. Patrick is still doing the internship and working for Nuskin. Sometime in December he'll be switching from 4pm-10pm to 7am-1pm. That's going to make life a lot easier. It's tough. Audrey really misses her dad.

Audrey is doing great. However she has been sick non stop. First she had an ear infection, and then immediately after that she had a fever for 3 and a half days and then now it seems she has a sinus infection.

The sinus infection is the reason  I took her to the doctor in the first place. Her nose had been snotty for over a week and so I took her, but he informed me that she didn't have a sinus infection in fact she had an ear infection. But she never once had told me that her ear was bothering her, how would I have known? anyway she was on that for 10 days. She ended the treatment on a Thursday and then on Friday she woke up with a fever so I called the doctor and he said that she now had a virus. He said it would last for a few days and that she would be nauseous and have diarrhea. Luckily no vomit and no diarrhea. So now we are back to where we were in the first place a snotty, yucky, nose. I need to take her back but have not found the opportunity.

She still loves school and is looking forward to her birthday and Christmas. We keep getting her excited about the wedding but she just doesn't seem to understand what is going to happen that day. But she'll have fun no matter what.

I am still trekking through school. I have an insane client that I am working for. INSANE. I won't tell you who it is so that she doesn't find this if she Google's her name. But trust me she is INSANE and she makes up facts...basically she is a liar. oh well, got to please the client. Me and my team are developing a promotional video for her. So far we have finished the proposal, and the Design Document. I have made a rough draft of the script but need to finish it up. It's fun and exciting.

I am figuring out what classes to take for the remaining semesters. After this fall is finished I need 19 credits to graduate.

Here are the classes that I need to finish. 

Class Name	Credits
Senior Projects 2	3 credits
Interaction Design 2	3 credits
3D modeling and Animation	4 credits
Elective	3 credits
Elective	3 credits
Elective	3 credits
Total	19 credits

Unfortunately I've been in this major so long they have axed the Interaction Design 2 class. So I need to take a 4th elective and then my adviser will substitute the class for the required class.

New class thing of classes to take

Class Name	Credits
Senior Projects 2	3 credits
Interaction Design 2  Elective	3 credits
3D modeling and Animation	4 credits
Elective	3 credits
Elective	3 credits
Elective	3 credits
Total	19 credits

and let me tell you that finding 4 upper division classes has been no picnic.

anyway I just wanted to give you an update on life.

Blog Worthy

Every once in a while Audrey will say or do something that is refereed to now as "Blog Worthy." It's a term patrick and I have coined. I am pretty positive we are not the creators of the term but we use it quite often.

I try an make sure I write these blog worthy moments down before the thought is lost. However, the majority of the time I do not succeed in my endeavors. Although, Last night I was awesome enough to write this moment down.

Back story of the moment:

Poor Audrey has been horribly sick this entire weekend. I was not feeling well on Friday and missed work, at about 4:00 the day care (Adventure Time) called to inform me that Audrey had a fever and I needed to come and pick her up. Thank goodness I was at home. It takes about 3-5 minutes to get to Adventure Time from home. If I was at work it would have taken about 20-25 minutes to walk to the car and to drive to Adventure Time. (side note: they, as in the University powers that be, stole our amazingly close to the school employee lot and turned it into a pay lot. We didn't even get a warning. One morning we came to work and saw the lot was barricaded. We found out from our Director, who had found out the day before at about 4:30, that morning. Evil school needs to be nicer to it's employees. So now I have a 5-7 minute walk to just get inside the building.)  


All weekend Audrey has had this fever. It's been hovering around 100.4-101, for the most part. Yesterday it did spike to 102 for about an hour.  If the fever is still present this afternoon I'll be taking her to see the doctor.

Anyway, yesterday Audrey was taking a nap on her bed. Patrick and I were in the living room watching a movie. All of a sudden Patrick and I hear this weird, cough/cry come from Audrey's room. Patrick bolts into the room just in time to turn her from her back to her side as she begins to vomit. I, as I follow Patrick, grab the first bowl/container I see, dumping the contents of the container as I run, (alphabet magnets and other random junk) to catch the vomit. I got there about .5 second to late, but caught the majority in the container. GO ME!

After the episode, and a nice refreshing bath, I fix Audrey up with some Graham crackers, apple juice and a "vomit bucket". I know you shouldn't give food to an upset stomach but she was complaining of being hungry and when I said no she began to cry, and not wanting to start another episode, (we all know how she can vomit so quickly) I gave in. She actually didn't eat anything. It was more of comfort food than anything else.

Now the Blog worthy moment: Later that night as we were putting her to bed. Patrick notices a yellow substance in the "vomit Bucket" and asks Audrey about it. She looks up at him and says Pee Pee. We both exclaim "WHAT?" At this point I was wondering how she accomplished this without Patrick and I noticing and right before I begin to scold her, she in her just kidding voice announces, "No, it's apple juice," and begins to giggle.

I love that even though this little girl was so sick and so tired, she still had the energy and the know it all to trick her parents into thinking that some apple juice was pee pee, and the fact that she thought it was so funny she laughed about it.

I really do enjoy this parenthood thing.

A new discovery

I don't know if everyone knew about this but I discovered it this weekend, yesterday in fact, the muppets have gone viral. Once in a while they'll post a new video on their you tube channel.

I've posted the Ode to Joy video but didn't realize that it was a channel devoted to muppet videos til yesterday.

These are some of my favorites that made me, Audrey and even Patrick laugh.




this was patricks favorite.



Audrey enjoyed this one.




I hope you enjoy the muppets as much as I do.

Oh Shoot..I Forgot.

another post today.

goodness I just keep thinking of things.

I don't know how many people own a blu-ray player. But yesterday Best Buy was offering the steel book for the release of Beauty and the Beast, avaliable on blu-ray /DVD/digital copy combo pack at the end of October.

The Steel book is a collectors piece. It brings some beauty (ha ha get it) to the mounds of disk cases on display.

It's $7.50 for the steel book and it (the whole $7.50) goes to the purchase price of Beauty and the Beast. In essence you get the steel book for free. So when it comes around you don't have to spend the $30 on the movie, it would be $22.

If you already own the DVD of beauty and the beast you can get a discount on this up coming release. I'm not sure how check out Disney.com they should provide some ways to do that.
 
If you're planning on getting it remember there is a manufactures coupon and a store coupon for it too. I'll be posting links to the coupons when they are made public. I LOVE this movie and just can't wait for it's release. Lion King is said to be released on blu-ray in the Fall of 2011.

The Cocoa Bean

I've never been to a cupcake cafe and have never wanted to but as we were walking home from the BYU football game on Saturday we stopped at this cafe to pass the time and hopefully miss the majority of the traffic.

I have never in my life had such an amazing cupcake. These are pictures from their blogspot sight of the cupcake I had.

Doesn't it just look yummy? It's their Raspberry Chocolate Cheesecake. (not available every day of the week, sad day!)

Patrick had their Hostess with the Mostest Cupcake. We both agreed mine tasted the best. However his was pretty awesome too.

Totally CUTE! Right?

 If you're ever in Provo near Brighams Landing, right by the stadium you should totally stop and eat.

DELICIOUS!

Here is a link to their blogspot site. (okay so I am horrible at their and there. I keep putting there for their and their for there. UGH1)

I don't own these pictures, I borrowed them from their site. my iphone picture doesn't do the cupcake justice and these show the yummyness much better.

I have no title for this post

My Goodness! It's been a long time since I have posted anything.

I guess life is getting pretty bus.

I know that I talk about patrick working a lot and how I'm so busy all the time but that's mainly my life right now. I don't really do anything else. I get up, get dress, if audrey wakes up I get to see her, go to work, go to class, continue to work, go get Audrey, play with Audrey, put her to bed, force myself to stay awake to do homework and wait for patrick to get home at 10:30.

We've been doing it for a few weeks now. It's not too bad. We'll survive.

I'm pretty sure you're bored of me talking about it. But seriously this is it. This is our life. Last night I had a dream that I didn't finish an assignment and was totally late to class and I couldn't get it in and I failed the assignment. I don't have dreams like that. It was weird.

Other than school what has been going on?

Audrey moved from the Panda class to the Lion class and is now in preschool. She can spell her name and likes to type it out on my phone. If you receive a text that just says Audrey and a few other random letters, know that it was not me who sent the text. It was Audrey.

It's really cute she'll grab my phone and start playing with it and then a few minutes later she'll come running up yelling "mommy mommy mommy, I spelled my name!".

Side note. Sometimes it's not so cute. She'll play with the settings and change things. Right now my utlities folder is titled Utilitesgaaaaaa. She has deleted apps. Important ones too! like my school one that I enter in my assignments and reminds me I have one due. She also set (don't know how she figured it out) the screen to zoom in. at first I thought she had done something to screw up the phone so I turned it off and then back on. when that didn't fix the problem I had to search the solution online. UGH!!!

She is always so proud of her accomplishment. And she should be. Being able to recognize your name and spell it, is an accomplishment for a 3 1/2 year old. She can also recognize classmates names. She knows Gavins, Ami, and Bridgers names (she knows more, but those are the ones I can remember.) by sight. It's interesting to see how at first she saw names as shapes (every A she saw was the symbol for Audrey and claimed possession of anything with an A on it ) and now she's learning that different letters (shapes) create those larger shapes. We are working on the sounds but the daycare/preschool are doing a fantastic job, so I don't try too hard.  She learns so much and does so much. It's amazing.

She spent the other day at Grandma Karens. Patrick and I dropped her off and we went to the BYU football game and audrey spent the night. The did a lot and Audrey came home exhausted but she loved every minute.

They created a book titled "My first week in the Lions Class." She wrote about all the things they had done that week. I'm going to have to take some pictures of it. It's really great.


I finally put my lessons from my design class to use and created a poster for the office. I'm pretty excited about it. what do you think?

Now that I have officially wasted your time talking about nothing. I'll let you go. :)

Total Supsense

So...after a week it's time for the big reveal.

We got a CAR! ha ha

We love it.

Its a Hyundai Santa Fe.

It's a pretty cool car.

I know not the worlds greatest surprise but we were excited about the fact that we now, after 5 years of marriage, have a second car. And that we were able to get it without a Co-signer at a 5.64% rate. (it helps when you have awesome credit) All the other first time buyer programs were 10% and you could spend no more than $10,000 unless you had a co signer. DUMB!

Wohoo, we're becoming true adults and building real credit. :)

Loads of awesomeness is happening. Patrick graduated, got a job, and has an internship at Jason Chavez Chaffetz (it would be nice to know how to spell you're congressman's name.)office. My department got funded and I'll be graduating in April. That big black nothingness, I mentioned in January, is no more.

We've been driving it like crazy. We've gone around the alpine loop, picked michelle up from the airport with it and even drove up to Park City. I think we've put like 500 miles on it and we've had it for like a week.

But we LOVE it and we are very excited.

Pictures, Pictures and More Pictures plus a video

All are from various things that we have been doing...nothing special but fun

FYI: this next video has a train horn. it's loud...turn your speakers down. I've warned you.

NEWS

I have exciting news!!!!!

I have a job..our department is funded. HAHA! Super excited about that. :) Really I can not express the joy I feel about this.

I am no longer involved with the Timpanogos Marching Band. I really don't want to go into it...but basically it did not end well because of some people (2 to be exact, one a BAD word and another a former student) and another not willing to stand up for me and what I've sacrificed for the program. It was a horrible experience and I don't want to really go into it. Maybe in time I'll let you know. If you ask please remember I'll eventually tell you. Just not today and just not tomorrow...maybe in a month or so when I'm feeling better about it.

But it actually is making life a lot easier. I now don't have to worry about work and school and Audrey and Patrick and Timpanogos. I just have to worry about the other four things. I won't be having to take time off of work to participate and that is a great thing. I've worked it out that I can be done with my bachelors in April. If I take the right classes. I am extremely thrilled.

Patrick got the job with NuSkin. Like I said earlier he's going to be doing tech support again. It's not the greatest time slot. 4pm to 10pm. We won't be seeing one another. It will be hard but we'll have a second income....finally after 2.5 years and Audrey will drop to part time in the day care. Saves us $110 a month.

So this is how last week went.

Wednesday-horrible horrible practice with timp, which ended up with me feeling as though I should resign. Which I did.
Thursday - patrick gets job with NuSkin
Friday - I find out about my job being saved
Saturday - another amazing thing happened. I don't know if I am ready to tell yet. I sort of want to bask in the knowledge of people trying to guess. OOOOOHHHH lets have a poll. HAHA Vote :)

So go and vote.

Anyway I just want you all to know I am doing well. I have a million and a half picture that I've taken over the past few weeks that I am eager to show you. I just have to transfer them to my computer. Most likely it will be my next post.

Weekly Update & big news!

Nothing too interesting has been happening at the Spencer household. Patrick got a Temp position at SOS staffing and will be working at Nuskin for the next 3 weeks boxing various items. He says it's been hurting his back because he has been standing for 8 hours at a time. But he says he'll get used to it. Matthew Garner, Amy's husband has been working the same shift and Patrick has enjoyed talking to someone he knows. He said it makes the day go faster when he's talking with him.

On Monday Nuskin posted that a Tech position is available. The same position Patrick worked at 2 and a half years ago. He went ahead and applied for the position and has an interview with the HR rep, Natalie, on Thursday. He's hoping he gets it.

Well, I might as well announce it. No, I am not pregnant. But, Patrick is considering going to Law School. So there is a chance that in one year from now we'll be gone to grad school. He's thinking he wants to go to Michigan States Law program since they offer a degree in government law and he's really interested in returning to the Detroit area. (yes, Michigan State is in East Lansing, but maybe we'll end up moving the 2 hours to the Detroit area.) I'm a little excited about this new adventure. We don't know if it's going to happen, yet. but at least we're thinking about it.

So news with Audrey. She FINALLY DID IT! She is potty trained....well mostly. But she goes pee pee in the potty all on her own. I don't have to remind her, I don't have to ask if she needs to go. She can go an entire day being dry. Except for anytime she is napping. Poop is another story...but she is trying.
This morning, when I was getting her ready for school and had her sitting on the potty. She said to me, the potty is for babies and the toilet is for big girls and ran to the toilet and sat down. Maybe the potty chair will be gone in the near future. WooHoo! no more dumping pee and poo into the toilet and then cleaning the chair. (I'm super excited about that) Seriously, If I've not explained it before I'll explain it again. I HATE POTTY TRAINING.

Patrick talked to Audreys teacher ( think it was traci, I can't remember) at Adventure Time, the daycare she is at. Apparently every time she has to go potty she smiles, winks at the teacher. The teacher then asks Audrey if she is ready and Audrey responds that she's ready and runs off and goes potty all by herself. She refuses to have the teacher help her. I'm so proud of my little one.

SEPTEMBER PEOPLE! We've been working on this since SEPTEMBER! I am ecstatic about this.

A few weeks ago Patricks mom, Karen, took Audrey to see Toy Story 3 and bought audrey this adorable mini Jessie doll.

We've been looking at the Disney Store to see if we could find a matching Bullseye and Woody doll, we just couldn't track one down. 2 nights ago we were at the Store, looking again, and I found them. We got the last Bullseye and the the 2nd to last woody. Audrey was so excited and ran around the store having woody ride on Bullseyes back. She slept with all three that night.

She loves these characters so much, and believes that they are so real that yesterday when we were getting in the car Audrey wouldn't let me leave until woody was buckled up in his own seat.

Calendar

I thought that I would be good and keep you updated about the assignments we have to do in the graphic computer applications class, but there have been some horrible...horrible assignments and I was really only doing the bear minimum. I ended up just giving up on updating about the class. However, this week we had to make a calendar. And I thought I did a fairly good job and wanted to post it.

The two months are printed on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of cardstock then cut in half.

I think Novembers quote is my favorite...it may not be nice but it's pretty funny

here is an idea of how it would look on the wall. note: it's not spiral bound. 

In the office we are going to print and spiral bound these for our students. They'll have the dates of the workshops and activities the department is putting on as well as detailed info about all events on the back of the calendar. I'm pretty excited. We are going to stop at december but my OCD-ness took over and I couldn't have december all alone on the page.