A St. George Kind of Christmas

After enjoying some snow in Utah for a few days, we headed down to St. George Christmas afternoon to spend time with the Rogers. Everyone had gotten together and we had a great time with them. We really enjoyed meeting Jeremy-the next one to join the Rogers clan. We are super excited for he and Heather to get married in May! It was a lot of fun to spend time with the Olsens and see how much Natalya and Maddox are growing.

While in St. George we all went to Zion's National Park to enjoy some time in the beautiful mountain scenery. Anna and McKay were in Hurricane with the Butler clan and were able to come join us, so that was a lot of fun. Needless to say, the highest elevation points in Houston being the freeway overpasses just simply don't do justice to the beauty of Utah. It was great to spend so much time outside, and it was even better to be spending it with family!

Brandon especially enjoyed spending some time at the playground with Dad Rogers, Maddox, and Natalya. Maddox had turned the playground into a pretty incredible bus and we all got to go on fun rides around town! Natalya loved going down the slide. She would slide down, I would push her halfway back up until Brandon could hold on to her and help her crawl the rest of the way up, and then she would go down again. She loved it. I couldn't tell who was laughing more-Natalya or Brandon. We also really loved how the static from the slide styled her hair :)

We have found that there are quite a few frisbee golf courses in the Houston region, and so it has become a fun past-time with Mom and Dad Rogers. There was a great frisbee golf course near where we were staying and so we had a lot of fun going to play with them, Heather, and Jeremy. More great time with family!

Christmas Surprise

For 2013 Brandon and I had decided that we wanted to go somewhere warm for Christmas, and so that is what we told our families-that they shouldn't expect us for Christmas because we were going to do our own thing for our first Christmas as a married couple. Then, we started looking at airline tickets. After awhile though, we decided that going to Utah was going to be cheaper in the long run, and that we would get to spend it with family which is always a great thing. We booked our Utah flights a couple months before Christmas. The great thing about that though, is that we didn't tell anyone in JaLeen's family that our plans had changed. We decided to surprise them! It turns out that the Farrell's have had plenty of surprises in their lives and enjoy them a fair bit. Christmas with the Rogers requires more planning and surprises are less than ideal, so they knew of the Utah plans in advance (the Rogers family all going to flew in from their various locations to celebrate Christmas in St. George, UT).

Brandon had arranged with his Aunt Betty and cousin Michelle to pick us up from the airport in Salt Lake City. We went out to lunch with them and then headed to Mom and Dad Farrell's house. Michelle was our lovely photographer of the event. Brandon and I walked up to the door, range the doorbell, and thoroughly enjoyed Mom's surprised/shocked/disbelieving face when she opened the door and realized who we were standing there. She was not expecting it at all! We went in and sat down and were visiting with Mom, Betty, and Michelle when Dad walked in. He had noticed the unfamiliar car in the driveway and wondered who was there. When he came in he noticed Betty and Michelle and that he didn't recognize them, glanced over Brandon and I before looking back to see if he knew who Betty and Michelle were, and then did a super quick second take as he realized Brandon and I were sitting on the couch. Yes. We were quite pleased with how well we surprised everyone. We enjoyed surprising siblings, grandparents, and the Provo Bays over the next 24 hours (yeah, Mom was so excited to share the news about our trip that she made sure we didn't hesitate in letting people know).

While in Utah, we enjoyed getting together with some of Brandon's friends to go snow shoeing. This whole cold and snow thing was great for a visit-and we LOVED being back in the mountains-but we were also very glad to get back to our warm Houston weather.

Dad kept poking me over the next few days and asking, "Are you really here?!"

With Rich, Erica, and cute baby McKay

snowshoeing with Mom and Dad

The snowman we made while snow shoeing the day before-it had since melted a bit and lost it's face :(

A Season for Celebrating

This week has been filled with celebration. Brandon started getting credit card applications in the mail for the first time in his life (celebrate the first one, and then rue the day it came for all the ones that are yet to come throughout his lifetime). That and all the paperwork being completely submitted for my degree were reason enough for us to celebrate (yeah, it doesn't take a lot for us to find a reason to pull out the Martinellis and dip strawberries in nutella)! To top it all off, we finally got the approval for our mortgage loan and are back into the house hunting game. Finding and closing on a house will be a celebratory blog post to look forward to in the future :)

Celebratory food. I finally got around to cooking a real dinner for Brandon (chicken curry with naan bread and cilantro infused rice) which was followed with some delicious dessert courtesy of Brandon.

Murphy Oil Corp. had their annual Christmas Party. It took us back to the days of dressing up for high school dances. We had a great time, and it was really nice to meet a lot of the people from work that Brandon talks about frequently. The company had arranged for a photographer to come in and take photos of everyone, so...we'll count that as our incredibly informal Christmas card to our dear family and friends who stumble across the blog. Yay for Murphy making that easier for us ;)

Most importantly though, we are enjoying having a season dedicated to celebrating the birth and life of our Savior Jesus Christ. We have been doing a modified version of the 12 days of Christmas for a less active family that Brandon is assigned to home teach in our apartment complex. We have never met them, but we have really enjoyed dropping off little pieces of a nativity scene with different stories about the significance of each one every night. We hope to meet them at the end of all of this and hope that this really helps them draw closer to Christ this Christmas season. We hope that everyone takes a moment to pause during the hustle and bustle of the holiday season to reflect on how we can better receive the gift of Christ in our lives, and to ponder what gift we can give to Him this coming year.

El Fin!

It is all done. All the hours and hours of work, restless nights, sleeping on campus on a blown up camping pad in the Richards Building, countless numbers of papers written, a couple publications, wondering if I was truly insane, skype conferences with a committee etc etc…it has finally ended and I am done with my Masters Degree in Public Health!!!!!!

Take THAT MPH program requirements-I Beat you!

I had a great week in Utah (minus the fact that I missed Brandon) where I got to do the oral defense for my project and fieldwork, and just spend a lot of time with family. I flew in on Tuesday and was welcomed with about 8 inches of snow. It is beautiful and I enjoyed the snow while there, but I am grateful we don’t have to drive in it, shovel it, freeze in it etc. here in Houston

Welcome to Utah!

Wednesday was a great day. It turns out that I have the most supportive family anyone could hope for. Brandon was with me via phone/text throughout the day wishing me well and keeping me in prayers that everything would go well. Dad and I made sure that we had plenty of treats to “bribe” my committee members with at the defense meeting ;) Anna drove all the way down from Logan to hear me talk about the work I’ve been doing in Houston. Special thanks to everyone who took the time to come to the defense: Dad, Mom, Grandma Bay, Aaron, Anna, and Steve and Nicole. Thanks to everyone who sent me messages wishing me well also. It was all incredibly helpful. And thanks to my committee who patiently helped me get through everything and all my final edits and revisions. They patiently put up with all my racquetball games/absences, marriage, moving to Texas, changing my entire project when unforeseen events occurred with my data from Uganda etc. They were so great! After a two hour defense meeting the verdict was announced: “Pass with revisions.” I made final changes to my report, submitted it, and now get to enjoy throwing out all the papers I have collected as part of this experience.

It. Is. Done.

Sigh of Relief.

I am so grateful for an incredible husband who has been so patient with me through all of this too. He has put up with my frustrations, emotional breakdowns, papers all over the apartment as I sorted through surveys and research, my confusions with figuring how to do what I wanted to in Excel (yes, he is a master of Microsoft Excel and deserves his own Masters degree just for figuring out how to solve all of my problems). I could go on and on with how grateful I am for all of his support in this, but as that would lead to an unreasonably long blog post, I will just summarize…He is the BEST!

The rest of the week was spent just enjoying time with family and making revisions. It was a nice break, but I was sure glad to get back to Brandon at the end of the week. It also worked out well that I left Utah just before a big snowstorm hit and closed down the airport. Phew!

Lovely parents

Had a great evening enjoying the lights at temple square. Yes, this included a stop for warm soup and rolls at the
 Lion House Restaurant mid light viewing to thaw out a bit :)

Now, on to the next exciting adventures life has in store for Brandon and I.