5th Anniversary Trip

We made a last minute decision to head over to Los Angeles for our 5th Anniversary weekend.  We had so much fun! It was a quick weekend, but we made it to Knottsberry Farm and the California Science Center to see the space shuttle Endeavor.  We also caught a 3D showing of Iron Man 3. Here's a few pics from our trip.

Mike fitting really well in the shower in our hotel room. :)

This was us so excited to go on the first roller coaster.

This was us after our first roller coaster.  We seriously felt how we looked.  My stomach didn't stop doing circles for at least an hour.

Ferris Wheel

Mike driving little toy cars around a race track.

This crazy man won a gigantic stuffed animal playing one of the carnival games.  It was HILARIOUS to watch him walk around with it!  EVERYONE wanted to talk to him about it.  It is now my classroom pet.  My students named her Agnes. :)

California Science Center:

Mission Control

The Endeavor!

There is a huge beautiful rose garden behind the science center that we visited.  

The L.A. Olympic Park is also at the same place as the science center.

As you can see it was a great time.  Now if we can just make it to Maryland life will be good. :)

Maryland, here we come!

This is an update Mike put on the Mabey family blog, but I thought I'd copy it onto here so everyone can read it!

As many of you know, I've been waiting since the end of January to hear how the sequestration would affect my internship this summer.  As a reminder, I got a scholarship from the DoD that gives me a job after I graduate and requires me to spend my summers doing an internship.  There was a chance that due to budget cuts there would be no funding for interns, but all I ever heard was speculation and a promise that more information would be sent out when there were more definite circumstances.

I finally spoke to someone at the NSA this week about all this, and was reassured that funding for staffing wouldn't be negatively affected enough for interns to not have to report.  Sorry, that was a complicated way of saying that we will for sure be going to Maryland for the summer.  It sounds like they want me there for as long as possible to give me as much experience there as I can get, but I'm done with school at the end of April and Heidi's school doesn't get out until the end of May so I'll be there by myself for a month. :(

As things are right now, I don't have specific dates of going and returning, but we're still trying to figure out living details such as where we can live, viable options for transportation, etc.  We've got a lot to do between now and then, but it should be a fun experience.

Wish us luck!

San Diego!!!

I feel bad that we don't ever post, but our life is 99% school, teaching, church callings, and sleeping and nobody really wants to read about that. :)  But Labor day weekend we did something pretty fun, so I thought I would share!  We went to San Diego with some friends.  It was a blast!

We went to Sea World:

 We ate AMAZING pizza at Little Italy.

 We saw a very interesting topiary garden.

 We ate more food than either of us have ever consumed in a 3 day period.  Look at the size of that pancake!  It was blackberry granola flavored and was quite yummy.

 And of course visited the beach. 

 We also went to the new Mormon Batallion museum.  It was very cool!  Too bad this picture makes me look so small next to Mike.

 And we toured the U.S.S. Midway.  Mike was definitely not meant to be a sailor.  

 The boat behind us in this picture is the boat that "dealt" with the Bin Laden situation.  Very interesting...

 And another funny Mike picture, just for good measure!  

Let us know if any of you go to San Diego and we will definitely meet you there!!!

4 years!

Well it's been 4 years (and 3 days) since we were married.  I can't even believe how fast time flies!  I also can't believe how much happiness and fun can be had in just 4 short years.

 As I was driving to work on our anniversary I began reflecting on all that has taken place in our lives in the last four years and I was pretty impressed with us!  :) Ha-Ha!  So I thought I'd document the list, so we can remember how great these first 4 years have been.

• Mike getting his bachelors degree. (2009)
• Mike getting accepted into ASU's grad program. (2009)
• Moving to AZ! (2009)
• Me getting my bachelors degree. (2010)
• Me getting my first job teaching 5th grade. (2010)
• Mike getting an internship with Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, NM and living there for a summer. (2011)
• Mike graduating with his master's degree from ASU. (2011)
• Mike getting into the PhD program at ASU. (2011)
• Mike getting an INCREDIBLE scholarship from the Department of Defense. (more on this in a later post) (2012)

And those are just the major milestones.  That's not including all of the fun trips and fun experiences we have had.  It's been a great four years and I can definitely say with confidence that I love him more and more each day.  We both feel very blessed in our life and know that we owe it all to our Heavenly Father. 

 

Here's an updated family picture that was taken by a very dear friend a few weeks ago.

 And here's this one, just because I like it a lot. :)

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.

 

What do you think?

I made this for Mike for our anniversary next week. I think I like it - I'm still worried it's too cheesy, but I was thinking about it and I would love it if my parents had something like this. I hope he likes it.

Click here to view this photo book larger

Major Update!!!

Ok, ok I know I stink at this. I think that my problem is that I put off blogging so much that it gets to be REALLY overwhelming when I think of catching up! So I'm thinking maybe a bulleted list will make the task feel a little less overwhelming. So here's an update, in no particular order:

• Life is good! We are super busy with everything, but overall happy.
• Biggest news: We are moving to Albuquerque for the summer! Mike got an awesome internship with Sandia National Labs! We'll be there from mid-May to July. Figuring out housing for just 10 weeks is not very fun... Plus our lease is up in our current apt in March so we need to decide how many times we want to move in the next 6 months. Ugh!
• Second biggest news: Mike got into the PhD program at ASU! Woohoo! He was a little stressed about this... He is really excited! This means we will definitely be in Arizona for approx. another 4 years from right now. Yay for blazing hot summers! At least we get a little bit of a break this summer, right? The usual high in ABQ is 92!!! Woot! Woot!
• Christmas was great! We spent tons of time being bounced around from family to family. We got to see almost every single family member that lives in Utah! Almost...we would have if it wouldn't have been for the stupid snow! A few of the highlights: meeting our new nephew Porter, going to Caleb's (Mike's oldest nephew) "farewell,"Anderson family reunion, talking to Justin (my brother on a mission in Chile) over Skype for over an hour, relaxing and not thinking about work for two weeks, and lots of yummy yummy mom-made dinners!
• We got a piano! This is so exciting for me, I don't even know how to convey the happiness! Piano is my thing, my outlet. So I was pretty thrilled when we found a good deal. We decided on a digital piano because of how not-permanent our life is right now. We actually bought it in Utah and crammed it into our car to bring it home. It was an adventure, but I have been so happy! I've played it every day since we got it! I love it!
• Teaching is going great. It's exhausting and I feel like never have the energy to do anything else with my life. But I'm working on finding a balance. I really enjoy having my own class and being able to find cool things to do with them. I get frustrated a lot, but I think that comes with the territory.
• School is good for Mike. He is super busy! His goal is to get his thesis done by mid-April. Yikes! To top it off he was called as the Elder's Quorum President back in October. We've seen a lot of blessings come from this and he's been doing awesome at balancing all that he has going on in his life.

That's all of the updates I can think of. I think another reason why I never update this blog is because our life isn't that exciting. But I'll try and get better. (I always say that.) Here's to hoping I update my blog before another 5 months passes by!

Back to School...Back to School...

I HAVE A JOB!!!

Yes, it's true, by some miracle I was able to obtain a teaching job in this dreadful Arizona economy. I am the newest 5th grade (yes 5th grade - scary!) teacher at Saddleback Elementary School in Maricopa. It's a commute of about 30 minutes, but the commute doesn't involve driving towards Phoenix, so I'll take it. :)

I start tomorrow morning - 8 o'clock on the dot. It's possibly the most terrifying thing I have done in my life, but we'll see. I'll let you know after tomorrow. The scariest part is that I have a week, yes 1 week, before school starts. It starts a week from tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes you can all start praying for me now. :) I think I'll be ok, it sounds like there are a lot of helpful teachers around that will help me along the way. I can do it!

Anyway, wanted to share that exciting bit of news quick. I'm hoping to do a good job of documenting this adventure, but I'm expecting it to be largely time consuming. I'll try.

Summer is definitely here!

As usual, I am slower than dirt at updating my blog, but every time I do blog I make a resolve to do better...hopefully someday it will actually stick. Maybe when our life gets a little more exciting... We've been able to do a few fun things since school got out. Here are some updates:

We bought Ticket to Ride for our anniversary present to each other. We love it and play it probably a little too much. :)

We went to Utah!! Woohoo! Always the highlight of my life. :) I got to spend almost 2 weeks there! And Mike joined me for the last few days.

I spent lots of time chilling with my sisters (this picture is missing Whitney because she was already in bed...we forgot to get a picture of all 4 of us - I guess we'll do it next time!)

And we had an AWESOME Mabey reunion over Memorial Day weekend! It was great!

We went to Hill Air Force Base:

And to the Zoo!!!

We also took a family picture, which was super exciting because we hadn't had one done since my wedding.

And here is our little family photo:

Oh and I chopped off like 7 inches of my hair...super scary, but I think I like it. Truthfully the jury's still out. :)

I'm finally done!

Yet again, it's been a while! But I have a good excuse! I've been finishing up my bachelors degree! Hallelujah!!!!! It feels really great to be done! I finished student teaching, turned in my portfolio, and looked at pictures off of USU's website of what my graduation looked like. Mike just finished his finals today and my graduation would have been this past Saturday, so there was no (feasible) way for us to get to Utah in time. But that's ok. It still feels wonderful to be done!

Now my job is to find a job. I think job hunting would have to bee on my top 3 list of things I hate. But that's ok too! I've been looking, but things seem to be pretty bleak. There's a big proposition that is hopefully going to pass here in Arizona that will raise the sales tax in order to have more funding for education. If it passes then there will be quite a few more openings and hopefully I can find something. I've been told that it will probably be July before I know anything though. Fun fun!

Our lives are great though! We've just finished up the crazy holiday season for our little family. My b-day April 9th, Mike's April 29th, and our Anniversary on May 10th. It makes for a lot of presents (or the lack there-of) and dinner dates in a short amount of time. We had a lot of fun though! We did Chinese for my b-day, Italian for Mike's, and made homemade pita's for our anniversary. We ended up having a blast on our anniversary! Mike somehow managed to get most of the day off work, so we hung out and did nothing! It was great! We watched "Somewhere In Time" (tear) while we ate a fancy breakfast and mostly lounged around, but in the afternoon we decided to head out to the mall. I know it's cheesy, but since the 2nd anniversary is the cotton anniversary we bought each other new cotton t-shirts (pictures to come), plus this awesome game:

We've had a lot of fun playing it every day since. :)

Our plan for the summer is to hang out here in Tempe and cook...we're kind of dreading the heat, but it's been in the low 80's so far this week = heaven! Mike has funding to keep doing his research - he has to have his thesis proposal ready and proposed (?) by the beginning of fall semester. My plan is to spend a lot of time applying for teaching positions and work almost full time doing Mad Science Summer Camps. It's the same after school program I was doing this past fall, but full time during the summer. It should be a lot of fun and it will give me a good amount of free time to find jobs.

I'm really hoping to get better about updating my blog, so hopefully that will actually happen.

I know, I know it's been a while...

So our life has been a little crazy, hence me not updated my blog in FOREVER! Basically, I live and breathe "student teaching" and all Mike does is work and school. Even on the weekends. Sunday's are the only reason we are still alive. That being said: we love life! Although life is crazy, we still have about an hour every night to enjoy each other a little bit before we need to go to bed and start over the next day. Mike always keeps me laughing and we love watching "our" shows and playing games.
Here are a few photo updates:
Our Valentines Dinner (we're not much for the super cheesy romantic thing so this was about the best we could do - ha ha!)

We barbecued with our good friends the Rafferty's on Presidents Day - this picture isn't the greatest, but it's better than nothing.

Here's the most recent Anderson family picture - we took this just the day before Mike and I had to go back to Arizona. It was very last minute, but I think it turned out quite well.

And here's the one with just the kids. The urgency of this picture was because Justin left for his mission to Chile in February and we wanted one last picture.