An exciting thing happened this past week with my family:

  My brother came home from Chile! We decided to drive up to Utah so that we could see him and be there for his "Homecoming" meeting.  We drove all day on Friday and then we were there on Saturday and Sunday and drive back all day Monday.  The drive was not exactly a party, but we had such a great time with family that it was worth it! We mostly just spent every second hanging out with family.  We had so much to talk about and catch up on that we didn't even have much time for our usual game playing.  We were able to see a lot of people and have some really great talks with Justin. 

We were able to take a new family picture:

 And we were able to spend some great time with my bestest friend Leah and her fiance (my cousin) Cade.  It is going to be a pretty great thing to have your best friend become a part of your family. I'm so excited!

We were also able to spend a few hours with Mike's family.  It just so happened that they were having a small family get together on Sunday night so we were able to see a lot of his siblings!  We wish we could have spent more time with them, but we enjoyed the time we got to spend with them.

It was an AWESOME weekend!

Our life

Don't anybody have a heart attack from the shock of having an update from us two week sin a row!  It's Heidi this time and I am really hoping to be better about blogging.  My excuse is always that our life is boring and I have nothing to write about, but really I think I have things to write about - I just never have time to write about them.  But my (new - haha) goal is to make time.

I have been reflecting on our life lately and how blessed we are.  We have so many of our needs and wants met.  We are so happy together and are enjoying this time of life.  We are both progressing in our professional, spiritual, and personal lives.  It is a great time of growth for us.  Like Mike said I am the Young Women President and can I just tell you how much I love it?  I truly feel like Heavenly Father has instilled in me a greater love for these girls than I thought possible.  I do wish I had more time to do everything I want for them, but isn't that how everything goes?

I'll just leave you with two pictures that I want to have documented.

This is our "Music Corner."  I was inspired to find a picture of each instrument that we play and hang above our piano and somehow found these awesome photos that match very well together!  I love my little corner and can't wait until one day when it is a whole room. :) (P.S. I also LOVE our digital piano that we got for Christmas 2010!  It is perfect for the stage of life we are in.)

And last, but definitely not least is a picture of the beautiful flowers Mike gave to me for Valentine's Day.  He had them delivered yesterday morning because he wanted me to be able to enjoy them this weekend while I am actually home and because they take a few days to bloom fully after they are delivered so they should be in full bloom on Valentine's day!  What a sweetheart!

Okay, so Heidi and I haven't been very good at adding things to the blog if you hadn't noticed... sorry about that.  I'm sure you all don't want to hear all the details of our lives in one go, but here are some of the highlights.

Two weeks ago I was released from being the elders quorum president after about a year and a half.  It was a bit of a relief to have one less big source of stress gone from my life.  Last week they put me back in the Young Men presidency so that I'm working with the deacons (12-13 year-old boys).  The bishopric understands that it isn't reasonable for me to be involved with weekday activities on a regular basis, so my calling is specifically to teach on Sunday, which is pretty easy for me to do and is something I really enjoy.  So that's a good change.

Heidi is still the Young Women president and has plenty of things to juggle between that plus teaching school, teaching a couple of piano students, and ... it feels like I'm forgetting something else, but it's probably just because she never gets any down time.  Her class this year is twice the size as it was last year, but the kids are much better behaved, so overall it's easier and a better experience.  She really enjoys working with the young women in our ward, but wishes she didn't have to be working full-time while having that calling so she had more time and energy to do things the way she would like them done.

My work on my PhD is going pretty well.  My recent calculations of when I might graduate are December of 2014.  Of course, that's all dependent on how my research goes over the next couple of years and how the writing of my dissertation goes as well, but I'm hopeful that I might be done before I turn 31 in the spring of 2015.  Yikes!

We recently hung out with some friends of ours and decorated cupcakes, which I know sounds lame, but it was a lot of fun.  Here are some of the pictures from that.  If you don't know what some of them are supposed to be, don't worry.