Ugly Sweater Party

Andy and I attended an Ugly Sweater Party with a group of fellow MBA couples. 

I am super proud of our ugly sweaters. 

I looked on Pinterest for ideas a couple hours before the party.

I found some and went to work.

The sweaters were from the DI.

Tinsel and ornaments from the dollar store. 

Then lots of hot glue :) 

Sweater total: $5.50 per sweater

Happy Birthday Olive

Olive turned one year old. 

I can't believe how fast my little girl has grown. 

She is active! She is crawling and climbing and walking with a push toy.

She has a big appetite and loves food, any food any time of the day.

She loves her mom and dad and clings tightly to us!

She will venture off on her own and when she does i see her watching us out of the corner of her eye. 

Charlie can make her giggle. 

When Andy walks in the door she goes wild kicking and screaming for him.

She is the sweetest and I absolutely adore her.

I enjoyed planning and hosting a party in her behalf along with 5 other friends. 

Olive was born the first week of school. 

Andy had 5 other classmates who also had babies born that same week.

So they are all days a part and i thought it would be fun to celebrate the first year all together, and to also get some priceless photos taken of the six of them.

 We had the party in our backyard. 

Its a beautiful backyard and this is the first time we have used it.

Left to right: Peter, Olive, Sadie, Ava, Jack, and Miriam

It was almost impossible to make this picture happen. 

But i think they turned out perfect!

I love seeing the different pictures and reactions of the babies.

Olive was just busy eating her cupcake the whole time. 

We had a game for the dads. Eating the doughnut off the string.

I have tons of pictures of this as well and they are hilarious, i am sure as you can imagine! 

The kids had a bubble blowing contest.

Except only one of the kids really knew how to blow a bubble.

Ava's oldest sister Isabelle was the winner! 

The others all got points for giving such a good effort. 

Then for the moms, we played Dizzy Mummy.

We had to see who could be the first to wrap a whole roll of toilet paper around them-self.

I took it seriously and spun so fast i couldn't stop when i was done. 

It was a weird feeling! 

I tied with Alicia, Sadie's mom. 

A few pictures from the last year...

We are leaving on a Jet Plane

We are getting ready to leave Provo (but only for the summer) as we embark on a new journey to San Jose, CA. Andy will be an intern at Adobe and he just finished his finals today, HOORAY! We have two weeks to prepare our house for renters and pack for San Jose. We have great renters coming to pretty much house sit while we are gone. And we have found 2 different places to live while in San Jose. One is in Los Gatos, found on airbnb, and the other is a furnished apartment in Santa Clara. We have 5 days in between the change. So we will be homeless. We are hoping to find a connection somewhere, somehow, someplace to live for just a few days. 

Habits i want to break before we head out.

1. SAY NO to binkies! 

I am ashamed to admit Charlie still has his binky BUT only when he sleeps. He is 2 1/2 so i think its time to be done all together. He is VERY attached to his binky so it won't be pretty. But we need to pull the plug. Tomorrow is the day! I told him tonight that binky is going to say goodbye tomorrow. He was fine with that. He responded, "Bye bye binky!" But i think tomorrow he will react differently when he doesn't have one. Someone told me they cut the nipple off the binky and that the child responded just fine. I will try that.

Wish me luck. Any other suggestions are welcome.

2. SAY NO to night feedings!

Olive's goal is no more night feedings. I have been feeding her once before we go to bed and then she sleeps until morning. They say that by 6 months they no longer need night feedings. So its time. I think she may take it ok. She usually is pretty easy so i think she will adapt well.

There are plenty of other things we could work on like: potty training, transition to a big boy bed, sharing a room etc. But these will have to wait. I may attempt while we are in San Jose but i may just wait until we get back. We'll see how it all goes. 

This is Charlie and our neighbor Gwyneth. They are great friends and love pushing strollers together. 

Gwyneth's dad got these cute pictures.

We had a wonderful Easter. 

Too much candy, yuck.

A special spirit thinking of our Savior, His atonement, His death, and Resurrection. 

I know that my Redeemer lives!

I loved the churches #BecauseofHim campaign. 

Throughout the whole week i was thinking, Because of Him:

i will have my family forever

i can repent, change, and be better

i live in this beautiful world!

i receive answers to my prayers

i am inspired to be the best i can be

i have these wonderful children to love

Internship Search

I just love watching Andy from
afar. I admire all the good he is
doing and will continue to do as
he uses all the gifts and talents God
has blessed him with. 

What a deal this whole internship search a has been! It has been the craziest roller coaster. Andy has been handling it all with such ease, or so it has seemed. Andy truly has been blessed with great success. We don't know why. Andy received internship offers from: Amazon, Adobe, Symantec, and Tessla. He is currently in CA meeting with Facebook. A very last minute trip. Here's the story:

Andy had declined all offers except Adobe which we were planning on going to. He had also been having interviews with Facebook but weren't planning on them going anywhere. Andy needs to sign his contract Friday for his summer internship (its Thursday). Yesterday Facebook called wanting to do another round of interviews. This would be unusual because he had already done the typical 2. He was very gracious but realized entering into this 3rd round of interviews would go past the due date for Adobe and he wasn't willing to risk not having a internship at all, so he declined their offer of another round of interviews. We were both a little bummed because this job at Facebook had great things happening. 

That conversation with FB was Wednesday afternoon. He received a call back from FB just after dinner. The recruiter said, "The team really would like to meet you, can you fly out tomorrow?" 

We were both in a bit of shock. Of coarse he said yes and he is there, in CA at Facebook now. We'll see what happens. I really am ok either way. 

Adobe is also a great place to work. And the companies are both in the same area of CA. 

We'll see. 

Andy and I are so excited for this week to be done. 

Because by tomorrow we will know for a surety (or so i think) where we will be heading this summer. 

I feel so proud of Andy. He truly is a natural in this whole business scene. I am amazed how personable he is with the people he meets. And ultimately, he told me, he just wants to support our family. I love him. 

I am so grateful for all the hard work he puts into his schooling and job hunt and still making plenty of time for us. When he is home, he's home. I couldn't ask anything more of him.

BYU

Eeek, BYU is my title. Let me tell you about my relationship with BYU. I was raised in a home where BYU was the rival. BYU was always spoken about with a hint or more of negativity. We are Aggies. My dad the biggest of them all. He is true blue through and through. My dad always considered a mixed marriage to be a marriage to anyone not graduated from Utah State. Two of my siblings have "mixed marriages". Andy and I are lucky not to have the mixed marriage jokes thrown at us, our marriage is pure (so this partially sarcastic but with a hint of truth). But everything is about to change. 

Andy was accepted to BYU with a Dean's Scholarship. They have great opportunities, its a family environment, VERY reasonable cost, close to family, and it really is a great program. The more Andy talks to the guys in the program the more we see how he could really excel there. We haven't heard back from the other schools yet. But everything is pointing to BYU and that this is right for our family. And being raised as a BYU non-supporter, this has been hard. 

When we were on campus for his interview a few weeks ago, as i walked around on campus, i felt happy. I felt like i could have been in Logan. I love college life. I love the campus feeling. And although its not Utah State it had a similar feeling. I was very surprised how normal it felt. So there it is. We are going to BYU. I will live in Provo. And it will be a shocking day the day my dad comes to visit. I hope he can survive the next two years knowing that his daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren are living in Utah County.

i hope he knows i will forever and always be an AGGIE!

Get to Know Andy

As Andy prepares his applications for MBA school, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading his essays. Andy is a great writer! I didn't know that when we got married. I am learning new things about Andy everyday as he writes these essays. This essay i am including has been his first kind of "fun" essay to write and I wanted to share. It's a bit embarrassing having our writing next to each other. For mine is much more simple minded than his. I'm so proud of my husband, and am grateful he has some skills to pass on to our children.

What song would you be and why?

written by Andrew Kinji Watanabe

I recently read Malcom Gladwell's book "Blink" which explores how people make split second decisions. One of the ideas discussed by Gladwell is that the mind has a remarkable way of intuiting the right path before our logical processes arrive at the same conclusion. It stands to reason then, that I should write this essay about the first song that came to mind, MMMBop, by the Nineties boy-band Hanson. Fortunately for both of us, I finished the book which goes on to explain that our intuitive responses can also be completely wrong. As such, I pick Aaron Copeland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" instead.

Admission: I am Copeland’s common man, or in other words my endowments are average. This is not just self-effacing commentary; I graduated in the middle of my high school class, I am five foot ten and I am biracial (which is essentially the average of two races). I have long believed that if I ever amount to something, it will be proof that the average man can become great. Despite my average skill set I have camped a few thousand feet from the crater of an active Ecuadorian volcano, climbed Yosemite’s Half Dome in the middle of the night and scored in the 92nd percentile on the GMAT. I fully plan on proving to the world and to my children that an average man can achieve greatness and hope that Berkley will be a part of that.

You should listen to the song while reading, it makes it even more exciting. 

a GMAT miracle

I want to share a little miracle that recently happened in our family.

Last year, Andy took the GMAT test to prepare for MBA school. He didn't do great on the test. He decided to continue to study and try again later. As he looked at MBA programs at various Universities it was obvious he was going to need to do much better on the test. Andy talked to some BYU recruiters and they said if he could get his score up at a minimum of 20 points all wasn't lost. He continued to study, look at different programs, and hope we could go to a good school. With all the studying, Andy didn't feel like he was getting any better. He would take practice test after practice test. He would score a little higher at times and lower at other times. It was hard to see any progress, he was becoming discouraged. He was very humble through all of this. He made comments like, "i can only do the best and hope the Lord will make up the difference." He had a great attitude. He kept working so hard and sacrificing to study for the test. 

Test day came too quickly. I gave Andy a kiss goodbye and told him he could do it! Its a 3 1/2 hour test so i said lots of little prayers for Andy. They were things like, "Help him to focus and remember the things he studied" "Help him do well that he can have more confidence as he applies to different schools". I know many family members prayed for him as well. When i finally received a call from him and he was all done, the sound of his voice was unbelief, pure happiness, humbled, grateful, and sounding as if on the verge of tears. He was in shock. Andy scored 80 points higher than his previous test. He said, "I didn't even consider that i could score that high." He also said that he stared at his screen for a long moment in disbelief and wonderment. Then got a big smile, left the room and he told me he literally jumped for joy! That made me laugh :) He said, "well the Lord made up the difference". And we are so grateful!

This is just a small step but a very important one. Its a door to more opportunities. Andy is looking at applying to schools he hadn't considered before. There is lots more work to do. Essays to write and applications to fill out. Then we wait. I know the Lords hand is in our lives. He is mindful of each of us and our situations. He wants the very best for us. We will try to continue to show him our gratitude everyday by the way we live.

Have you ever year booked yourself? Andy did. They put your face in a bunch of different types of bodies. Here are a few fun ones of Andy. Some super studly and believable and some a bit scary :) Its crazy! This is my husband!!