Flashback Friday

When I graduated we took an amazing trip to New York City. So when Rog was negotiating his contract, he set his start date for a week after he graduated thinking we might be able to take a cool trip this week. Unfortunately we decided it wasn't the best idea seeing as how I'm in my 8th month of being pregnant. Don't worry, we'll take one eventually. Funny thing is I don't think he minded one bit. With some of his graduation money he bought a PS3, so he's been playing with that all week. Boys...

Anyway, here's a picture from our trip to New York City!

You always hear about people kissing on top of the Empire State Building, so I made sure we got a kissing picture while we were up there.

32 Weeks

7 months down, 2 (hopefully less) to go! Lately we've had lots of conversations with our little Corby about when he should come. They go like this.

Chief: Corby, your daddy was a very bad little baby. He came 6 weeks early. Don't do that! But, your mommy was a very good little baby. She came 3 weeks early. You should do that, ok?!

Corby: Ok, mommy.

He seems to be ok with the idea, so hopefully he'll listen to me! We're getting very anxious to see what our little dude looks like. I don't care as long as he's cute, but Rog would really like him to have red hair. We also have conversations with him about that, but he just tells us that we'll have to wait and see. I've given him a nice home inside of me for the past 7 months and he won't even tell us what color hair he has... What's that about? He was the same way when we'd ask him if he was a girl or boy (before we found out). Stubborn little boy!

Garage Shelves

While the girls were at the baby shower, Roger's dad and Phat Tony came down to help Rog make some storage for our garage. Well, it turned out that Rog got a HORRIBLE case of the stomach flu, so they ended up doing the whole project for us! I came home to these amazing shelves and 1 dying husband. (Seriously in our 3 years of marriage I have never seen him so sick!) I was sure that I would get it too, but luckily I didn't.

A huge thank you to Mike and Phat Tony!

Family Baby Shower

On Saturday these lovely ladies (my mom, Aunt Becky, Grandma Ririe, and Grandma Ford) threw me a baby shower.

Of course there was lots of yummy food...

And many wonderful guests came to shower our little Corbyn with gifts.

Thank you to everyone who hosted, came, or who couldn't come, but sent gifts. We are so blessed with wonderful families. Corby is spoiled already and he isn't even here yet!

Wooohoooo, he did it!!

Last Thursday and Friday, Rog officially graduated from BYU!

One word, WOOOOOHOOOOO! (That's one word, right?)

Thursday was Commencement. Roger's mom, dad, and sister, Marti drove from Colorado and my mom and dad drove from St. George to be there. Phat Tony and KD also came down from Salt Lake. Elder D. Todd Christofferson spoke about learning as it applies to achieving our eternal purpose here on this earth.

He said, "Today we recognize your very significant achievements. We are happy for you and with you. We place robes on your shoulders and mortar boards, tassels and other marks of honor upon your head and about your neck. At the same time, my plea to you is not to let this achievement or any other success or failure blind you to your central purpose on earth — to learn to do whatsoever the Lord your God may command. ... Without diminishing this day, I urge you to keep your eye on the prize. Let your cap and gown point you to the infinitely greater robe and crown that await you in God's celestial realm."

It was a beautiful, spring day for pictures. After, we had everyone over to our house for dinner.

Friday was Convocation. Because the Marriott School of Management is the biggest (and coolest), they always get to be last. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it rained all day for the other convocations, but it stopped for ours.

I made sure to make it down to take pictures of my graduate after he walked across the stage. And we made sure to take pictures with the cougar outside the stadium because we forgot when I graduated.

We rounded off the celebration by going to Outback for dinner.

I am so proud of my graduate! Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with us!

3 Years

I have lots to blog about from this weekend and I'll get to that tomorrow, but tonight I want to focus on what happened 3 years ago today...

We became Rog and Chief Phillips!

*No editing required on that picture. Yes, our day really was that good!

To celebrate I took the day off. (Rog doesn't start his big kid job until next Monday.) We slept in, did sealings at the Ogden temple, and had dinner at Pizza Pie Cafe. And then Rog got lots of brownie points by asking if we could watch our wedding video.

It was a great day and it has been an amazing 3 years! I love you honey bunches!!

Flashback Friday

As today is Rog's graduation, I thought I'd flashback to my graduation 2 years ago. It seems like such a long time ago. At that time it seemed like FOREVER until Rog would graduate, but now it's here!

This picture is from Convocation just after I'd walked across the stage. There was some confusion in the order in which they were calling us, so Rog barely made it down in time to take pictures with me. I'm glad he made it!

This and That

When we bought our entertainment center, I also really liked the coffee table that matched it. I wanted to get it at the same time, but Rog said we had to wait to make sure we had enough money. I kept telling him that we'd be fine, but the coffee table purchase kept getting put off. Every so often, I would check on the IKEA website to make sure it was still there. Then one day it disappeared! I was completely distraught. How would I ever find a coffee table that matched so perfectly?

On Friday, I was browsing online to try to find a replacement for the perfect coffee table, but to no avail. On a whim I told Rog to call IKEA to see if they randomly had one still in their store that wasn't showing up online. He called and surprise, they actually had some! So, we hopped right in the car and went to pick it up. Now our living room is pretty much complete!

On Saturday Rog worked all morning on our cars - changing the oil, rotating the tires, giving them much needed baths, vacuuming them out. They were very happy cars and he was a happy, satisfied husband. (I told you the garage was his favorite part of our new house.)

While he did that, I figured out where I wanted all our pictures hung and worked on my vinyl lettering using my cricut. I was worried that it would be hard, but it really was a piece of cake. I loved how it turned out, so I have plans for a few more walls.

On Saturday afternoon, I headed out in Meg to go to a baby shower up in Salt Lake. Unfortunately, I didn't get past Springville because I was in a minor fender bender. We called our doctor and they assured us that everything should be fine with Corby unless I started to bleed or have contractions. Other than being incredibly sore on Sunday from the crash, I've been fine and Corby continues to move around like a little champ. We feel very lucky that it wasn't a bad crash (the airbags didn't even go off).

Poor Meg did sustain some damage, but she's in the shop right now and we're told she should be all better by next Tuesday. Thank goodness for car insurance! A $500 deductible is much better than paying the whole bill!

The Alchemist

I've been super busy with moving and trying to get everything settled... Yesterday as of 7:00 pm I had read 33 pages of the Alchemist. But as of 10:15 pm I had finished it! I didn't have much going on, so I just sat down and read practically the whole book while Rog studied and then took his final.

The verdict: I loved it! It was a simple, yet thought-provoking read. I loved how it was about having and achieving dreams. I also loved how it talked about figuring out what you want to do and then being happy with that. Like how the candy seller was just happy to sell candy because that's what he wanted to do.

My favorite quote from the book was:

"The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself."

It made me think about how we can spend all our time worrying that something will go wrong, but worrying only causes us to suffer. Obviously if something goes wrong, we will suffer and that is unavoidable, but the suffering we cause ourselves by worrying is avoidable. Clearly this is easier said than done and I'm definitely the worst offender out there. But reading this made me want to try to stop.

If you haven't read this book, I would definitely recommend it.

Flashback Friday

I was going to post a picture from when I was studying for my last final ever, but I couldn't find it on Roger's computer. *My computer was officially pronounced dead by Rex while they were here for conference weekend. All my files are backed up, but I haven't taken the time to transfer them over to Roger's computer because I'm still trying to decide if I should buy a new one of my own. Roger's works just fine (especially since we put the memory from my computer on his) and he claims he won't ever use it after he graduates. But we are getting A LOT of money from the government. We'll see...

I took my last final ever on the last day of finals week. It was a very difficult final (Manec 453) and it took me at least 3 hours in the testing center. Trust me, that was very different from the experience Rog had on his last final. He took it last night after casually studying for a few hours. It only took him an hour and a half and he took it in the comfort of our living room.

No, I'm not bitter at all.

Anyway, instead of the picture of me frantically studying for my last final, here is a picture of my last day of class. We went to Wendy's to celebrate. Mmmm... Vanilla frosty, so much better than the original chocolate frosty!

Good luck to everyone with actual finals! Feel free to hate Rog. I know I would if I was taking finals right now!

Lately

On Friday night we went to the Senior Celebration they have for graduates and their spouses. That's one major bonus to graduating in different years! We got lots of free food, a free book, and a free BYU bag that Rog won playing Plinko.

On Saturday I got very acquainted with my laundry room. We had a lot of random stuff to wash from the move. I think I did like 5 loads. I LOVE having my own laundry room so much and I'm sure I'll appreciate it even more when Corby comes! Then I got a haircut. I cut off more than I normally would because it grows like a weed these days, but still only one person has noticed. I'll miss working with Toni - she is so observant! We finished off the day by going to the Best of Divine Comedy complements of Rex.

On Sunday we went to our new ward for the first time. We were dreading it, but it actually wasn't so bad. It'll just take some getting used to. We had dinner with the Partridges and the Martinez - LOVE them!

I finally broke down and bought some maternity clothes. I found a deal where if you spent $100 on maternity clothes between gap.com and oldnavy.com, you got $20 off. I actually got some cute stuff. (As cute as you can get with maternity clothes anyway.)

I also finally finished our taxes! We were very pleasantly surprised when we learned we could get the $8,000 first-time homebuyer credit on our 2009 return. We thought we would have to wait until our 2010 return, so it felt like we hit the jackpot!

Tuesday was Rog's last class. This semester has been ridiculously easy for him. Finals start tomorrow and he only has one final left to take. It's a take-home final, so he might even be able to finish it tonight - before finals even officially start.

We've been trying to ride up to Provo/Orem together for work/school and to not make more than one trip a day if at all possible (to save on gas). Yesterday we had our prenatal class at 7:00, so instead of going home for dinner and then coming back, we ate at J Dawgs (a hot dog place right by BYU that everyone raves about). We'd never been before, so we decided we should go before Rog graduates. I have one word to describe it - AMAZING! When people would talk about it, I would always wonder how a hot dog could be so good. It was all about the special sauce. Now that we've tried it, I realize it's probably a good thing we didn't try it sooner. We will be back! Here we are taking our first bites.

It looks like spring is finally here, graduation is only a week away, Corby's kicking away and growing bigger every day, and I'm almost in the single digits for days left of work. Yes, life is good right now.

Flashback Friday

This picture is from Easter 2 years ago. We celebrated a few weeks early with my grandparents because they were going to be out of town on the actual day. So we had Diana and Jason over for the actual day. We had homemade rolls, funeral potatoes, jello, asparagus, and ham (bought from the deli). It was fun to be the host.

Oh and I have to point out that I made the skirt I'm wearing in my sewing class that I was taking that semester.

Conference Weekend

We had a great conference weekend! We got to spend a lot of time with both sides of our family. Rex and Edda came and stayed with us for Rex's mission reunion. Edda's parents had their kids, so it was kind of fun to hang out with just Rex and Edda.

Friday afternoon Phat Tony helped Rog put shelves in our coat closet. We don't have many coats and we decided we'd rather have more storage for kitchen stuff. They turned out GREAT!

We had calzones for dinner with Rex, Edda, KD, and Phat Tony. Then they all headed to mission reunions, so we had the Pughs over to play Lost Cities and dye eggs.

Saturday morning we had yummy french toast for breakfast (courtesy of Rex). Taylor, Martha, and Phat Tony came for that and then stayed to watch the morning session of conference while I did Taylor's taxes.

During priesthood session, Emily and I watched the Holiday and I made this spring craft. I'm pretty much in love with how it turned out.

Sunday morning we went to the Ririe Waffle Breakfast at my Grandpa Ririe's house. We stayed to watch the morning session and then headed to the Conference Center to watch the afternoon session.

It seemed like every other talk this conference was about the importance of being good parents. Seeing as how we are going to be parents soon (in like 2 months!), this really hit home with us. I can't wait to get the Conference Ensign, so I can really take everything in!

After conference we headed to the Ford's for Easter dinner complete with an Easter eggs hunt! This year it was just me and Rog. It was sad that Diana and Jason weren't there. (It's been the 4 of us the past few Easters.) But it's fun to think that next year Jared and Corby will take their places!

Announcing...

Rog's graduation from BYU! Some of you (mostly family) will be receiving one of these in the mail in the next few days, but I thought I would post it for everyone else. We decided we couldn't justify paying for the official BYU Announcements this year, so we had my very amazing and talented brother make these. They turned out so good that I'm kicking myself for paying for the official ones when I graduated!

Thanks Jared! You're the best!!

Happy Easter!

I don't know why it takes me so long to get my cake pictures posted. Here is last week's cake. We didn't learn the basketweave, but I really wanted to give my cake an Easter basket effect, so I taught myself. I think it turned out very well.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!