St. Patrick's Day

So I thought that this clip was pretty funny about the next major holiday coming up.... Saint Patty's Day. Absolutely classic.

jimmy fallon st.pat.

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ENJOY!

Ode to Valentine's Day

I love Jimmy Fallon.... If you need a short break, check this out....

Valentine Medly (SNL)

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Hey everyone... Just a note... Some links will end up not working yet since I'm just building this blog. Hence the following.......

Anyway, sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks for reading!

Christmas Update Part Deux

Thought it would be nice to start things off with a little bit of Elvis....
It's so funny, they only look like German Shepherds about 10% of the time. I think it's because we're all so used to seeing police dogs and pictures of adults that we forget that they go through this really awkward phase in the middle......Anywho.....

Alright all.... I'm back. I don't know where the drive to get this whole thing caught up came from, but I figure I need to capitalize on it just the same. Not that I'll be able to document everything that's happened in our short married lives, but I can at least take a good stab at it. So, for anyone who reads this and finds it redundant....sorry....and tough beans. :-)

So Christmas was filled with fun, friends and family. Oh, and all the experiences that come with it. A lot of people came into town for Christmas, which made it really nice. Jim and Kathie came in from Baltimore, MD and it was great to catch up with them. They've really become digital friends. It's sad that we don't get to hang out anymore, no more football games, no more movie nights, no more backyard BBQs, but it's great to know that we can and do still stay in touch. When they came in for Christmas, we were able to steal a couple hours from their busy schedules to go out to dinner. We forced them to pose for some pictures since we just had gotten a camera and needed some practice using it!

It's always really good to catch up with old friends. It always makes me feel slightly disappointed because I wish we would have had BUSHELS of more fun before they left. Oh well, a PhD is only like what.....4 years away? Not to shabby. Actually, Rach and I brag about our friends the Gwilliams @ Johns Hopkins U all the time.

The next major group of visitors we had consisted of the number 2. Rachel's grandfather DeTar and his new beautiful young bride came into town for Christmas as they always do. They are from Tallahassee, Florida. Mr. DeTar was a professor of Biochemistry and a couple other things at Florida State U and so is always good for an academic discussion. PLUS, he's got great advice for students dealing with the bureaucracy that is higher education. Don't let those Deans and Profs push you around, you pay their electric bill....well....with the cost of tuition at most institutions, I think we also pay for their mortgage, the vacation cabin in Aspen's mortgage, the loan on the yacht, and maybe even that daily jaunt to the links for a quick, 4 hour long, break from us. HA HA, oh the life. Anyway, it's always great to see the Floridian Grandparents.

PS... Yes Rachel, I know you don't like this pic, but you're gonna have to take one for the team since it's actually the only one with both Grandpa and Carla in it that we have.... MUHU HA HA.

Oh, and one of the Jolley Family dog, Copper, just for kicks. Hey, he needs some spotlight too, right?

So I'm starting to see why it's necessary to just stay on top of this blog thing. Everyone of my posts is nearly a novel....a couple problems with that. I don't remember what I've already written about in this blog at the top, adding pictures is a pain since I have to copy and paste them into the right slots, I get so lazy by the bottom that I have no desire left to spell/grammar check, and it's time consuming..... OH well, I don't need to go to class today, I have very little school homework (although I have pounds of LSAT homework) so I might as well start a few more chapters today, eh?

We had the Poulsen family Christmas party as well along the way. As is tradition, we force the grandkids to be our little dolls and play nativity scene dress up....classic. I think this was a remarkable year though, not only did baby Jesus' head not get popped off, but I don't think there was even a fight over him at all! WOW..... That was definitely a first. I've included a couple pictures below of the whole wonderful fiasco.

And yes, Bryce still loves Harley....and I think Harley might even love him back, despite the squished look on his face....PS, I think he's just about half a second away from taking a big licking taste of Bryce's leftover food storage on his face.

Other than all that, it was just a standard, good white Christmas. If you haven't gathered it by now, yes, my family does love it's dogs.....some one has to take care of all the mutts in the world, right? One day, we'll have our little dog, cat, horse farm/family compound and then we won't have to be the neighborhood rednecks anymore....we can just be rednecks... HA HA.

A couple questions are answered in the above pictures... Yes, you can fit us all in a very small room with lots of other stuff in it, and Yes, you can get a family picture with 4 dogs in it that are 95% doing what you want them to. Maybe that's because they're well behaved, or maybe it's because every one of them is in some sort of pain, or looking at what they thought could be the next meal......the cat walking underneath the camera... I guess we'll never know, will we.

And yes.... I still have a hot wife that hasn't divorced me yet! In my defense, I warned her that this whole marriage things was FOR-E-VER, but she said yes, and now she's stuck forever!

One more thing, before this epic ends.... you never know when your picture is being taken anymore... I bet you're already on YouTube.....no? You don't think so? Well, I can take care of that then. Anyway, smile!

Christmas Update

Yes, yes, I know... It's like 2 months after Christmas and I'm just posting. The overall rate at which I post is steadily increasing though, right? I can see why most people post weekly/daily/bi-weekly or somewhere in between... I can hardly remember Christmas! Doesn't even feel like it came and went. Well, where to start? Rachel and I spent most of our Christmas break with 2 goals in mind... Find time to relax after the incredibly rough Fall semester and get everything caught up and ready for the Spring semester so that we wouldn't be so stressed. Thankfully, we accomplished both of those reasonably well. We had left a bunch of little, unimportant things on a to do list because we just couldn't get to them during the semester....well....when you do that, for an entire semester, things really pile up.

So, where to begin?

I think the most major thing that happened over Christmas was the fact that Rach and I got a digital camera finally.... yes, we are finally into the 21st century with everyone else. As sad as it is, I think we were the last people in the modern world to get a digital camera. This makes posting pictures much easier! For those who don't know, this was the necessary outcome of some stupid thief. I don't just mean he/she was stupid because they stole my camera while we were on vacation, I think they're stupid because of the whole pile of cameras, mine was definitely the cheapest, non-digital 35-mm there.... At least go for the digital, right? Anyway, so now we can post pictures without having to scan them in and the whatnot.

insert random picture here.....

Something that had to be done, but wasn't all that fun, over the break was Corey's house flooding..... twice. So the first time it flooded and killed the laminate flooring in the kitchen. We ripped it out, and laid tile. Then the laminate in the living area was doused (both due to the poor plumbing of a refrigerator line by the crappy previous owner) and that floor was ripped up, partially replaced, and laid back down. So, moral of the story...... when buying a house, ask the owner to list EVERYTHING that they did themselves. Then, immediately inspect and fix these things. Especially if the owner was under 30 years old. Check out the tile we laid though, we were pretty proud of it....If anyone needs tile that you know....let us know, we're pretty cheap too!

Also, one of Ryan's mom's bathroom just for measure.

Rach and I did a little seclusion exercise after the semester ended....it was great. We went to Daniel's Summit Lodge for 2 night before Christmas. Wonderful. There were only 4 rooms filled when we were there, so we pretty much had the run of the place. Since it's geared toward adults, it has a separated spa/pool area that is open 24/7. Oh, and cell phones don't work there very well.... especially when they are turned off! ha ha. So we slept about 14 hours, watched several movies a day, went to the pool, hung out at the restaurant, and tromped around in several feet of snow. It was so perfect. I think after each semester we're going to implement this practice. Find somewhere to go that gets us away from everything. We could've just done that at home, but we wouldn't have.... we have to force ourselves to do nothing by putting ourselves in a place where we can't do anything.... it's great.

Rachel also got her wedding 'storybook' for Christmas. She loved that, it's been on our to do list forever, but her mom and the photographer got together and really did a nice job on it. Unfortunately we didn't have our camera yet, so I don't have any pictures of her opening it....sad.
Another major event that happened was my dad earning his scouting wood badge and another award. These are pretty big time scouting awards, taking years in leadership positions to earn. He really changed the scouting program here in our home ward.... basically from non-existent to thriving. It's all related to the potential number of eagle awards that could be obtained verses the number that are obtained. Anyway, I thought I'd throw in a couple pictures of that because it was really neat to see all the people who came to support him... mainly, his friends, which I haven't seen for awhile in a setting other than the deer hunt or at the cabins....so that was really cool.

Well, I think the next blog is going to be focused on everyone that we saw over the break, and I'll get it up soon. As for now, I'm off to judge an elementary school science fair!