Tiffany's Going Back to School!

Yep, you read that right. I am going back to school. I am finally going to get a degree in Statistics!

I will be attending Utah Valley University starting August 20th.

I'm pretty much all set to go, just waiting on UVU to process a couple more documents that I've submitted (transfer credits and a financial aid request form.) We met with my advisor yesterday morning to figure out which classes I should take this semester and to remove a hold on my account. I am signed up for a math refresher workshop that happens the week before classes start since it's been more than 2 years since I've taken math classes. It's 3 days long and there's no tests or grades. I am also registered for Calculus I, Statistical Methods, and Contemporary Families. That last one is a possible requirement as my advisor didn't think the global requirement will be met with my transfer credits since BYUI classes don't completely translate. (She said there were two possible things that my AS degree from BYUI would likely not have included compared to their AS degree--Physics for Scientist & Engineers I and their Global Intercultural Requirement, which is a whole list of classes you can choose from to meet that. I have chosen the family studies class that meets that requirement because my background is in family studies so I know it's something I would enjoy.) I will be taking the Physics class & lab the following semester since the pre-requisite is Calc I.

I am still a little in shock that my 3 classes are equivalent to 12 credits. I am used to 12-14 credits being 5-6 classes. Hopefully this allows me to really focus on calc since I know that's the class I will need to dedicate more time to as it's not something that comes very easy to me.

Sometime between now and the start of my refresher workshop Ethan and I will be taking public transportation from our area to UVU so I can figure out my route. (UVU ID's come with a free UTA pass!) I've looked up the routes and it appears I will need to take the train, then transfer onto a bus to get there as well as get back. So I will likely go with Ethan to his work and catch the train since it's right by the station. There isn't a route that takes me close to our apartment, so when I'm done for the day I will have to take the bus and train back to FamilySearch and wait for Ethan to finish work.

My advisor suggested I look into getting a job in the UVU math lab or as a math grader. I've done both jobs at BYUI and loved them, so I will be looking into that as soon as I post this.

I'm pretty excited for this new adventure! I've been begging Ethan to let me go back to school since we moved down here, but nothing worked out (either because there wasn't a stats degree, meaning I'd have to settle a second time, or because it was too costly.) UVU came very unexpectedly and really just fell into place immediately. It's been an answer to my constant prayers. I was very close to accepting to settle a second time and just finish my Marriage & Family Studies degree at BYUI online because nothing had been working out. I'm also incredibly nervous to take math classes after 3 1/2ish years. But again, my prayers were answered with this refresher course.

So here's to hoping I'll have a good first semester back at it!

Three Years Later

Well, it seems I took a 3 year hiatus from this blog. Sorry to those of you who were hoping to keep up with us through here! I'll write up a quick overview of what's new and hopefully I will get back to posting once a week. Cross your fingers!!

We've moved to Pleasant Grove, UT. We're pretty big fans of how close the mountains are, but the traffic is a huuuuuge downside. Ethan was an intern for FamilySearch and is now a full time web developer for them. He absolutely loves it! He also graduated last spring!! I still spend most of my time trying to convince myself to wash, dry, AND fold the laundry all in the same day. I started working out about a month ago... but I'm not entirely sure it stuck, however I did lose about 12 lbs. I've also become an Amazon addict.  Kira's still impressing the vet by how young she looks and acts. We've finally discovered the best way to give her medicine after a recent UTI. She's taken a liking to YouTube videos of birds, squirrels, and mice; demanding in the middle of whatever you're watching that you put one on for her. I don't think we'll be surprised if we come home one day and there's either scratches engraved on our tv screen or if the whole thing is face down on the living room floor at this point. Brienna moved in with us a couple months ago, but will be moving out a week from this Friday. We will be really sad to see her go, but I'm 100% she is ready to be done with student teaching. Besides that, not a whole lot has changed. The biggest things are our move to Utah and Ethan's job. The rest is really the same as it's always been.

Some photos from this year so far...

At IKEA

I cut all my hair off!

Kira decided she was a lap cat for 5 minutes.

Kira chasing an animated mouse.

Kira chasing animated birds.

We went to Lagoon with Michelle's band class!

We found a bomb diggity sushi place right by where we live.

Jordan River Temple open house

My first escape room experience

Went to the zoo for our 4th wedding anniversary where I found sleeping cats!

Brienna got married this year.

Kira loooooves checking out Amazon boxes

Graduation!

So here's the details:

July 23, 2015

Processional (where the grads walk in and appear all fancy) happens at 5:30 pm in the BYUI Center. 

Commencement (the fancy speech) will begin at 5:45 pm in the BYUI Center. Be seated by 5:30 pm at the absolute latest!! I only have a certain amount of complementary tickets, but you are more than welcome to get one from the ticket office. I do believe that they are free. If not, I know they would be cheap. You can also view this live online. Just ask me for the link! If you're dying to attend, let me know so I can see who is getting my extra tickets. 

Convocation (my actual walk across the stage) will happen at 8:00 pm in the Hinckley Chapel. Be seated by 7:45. This is free, no tickets necessary. Pictures and clapping are allowed. 

Before all the hoopla, during the day, my mom, Ethan, my grandma, and I will be at Rigby Lake and will be grilling hotdogs and hamburgers. (All the restaurants will be crowded and swimming is much more fun than sitting around.) I'd like for as much friends and family to come as possible. I don't have any times pinned down, but we'll figure it out... It is over a month away anyhow. 

I'm having graduation pictures done this coming Thursday and will be creating some kind of cute announcement to send to far away family members. If you want just a digital copy, let me know :) I know that not everyone wants my mug shot on their fridge hahaha. 

So yeah. That's all the update I've got for now. Any questions? Send them my way!

One Whole Year

We've now been married one whole year (and two days). It's kind of strange to think about since on one hand it feels like we've been married for a long time and on the other it feels like it should just be a few months since April 12th, 2014.

I've been married to this handsome man for 367 days now! :)

We're currently in Park City, UT for a little anniversary getaway and it's spring break for BYUI students, so we're going to be in Utah through Friday afternoon. We found an amazing deal through someone in the community for a 3-night stay at the Marriott Summit View. It's beautiful here! All the buildings are brightly colored and there's little shops and all sort of ski stuff. (It's a ski resort, basically.) But it's just the start of the off season (or right before it) so things are kind of sleepy around here right now. It's extremely pricey everywhere too. I picked up a little keychain (I collect them from the places I've been) and it was almost $8! But I found a small something for my mom and my grandma for mother's day AND a little hedgehog for myself. I'm hoping we can find a nice little mug for Ethan to commemorate our first anniversary getaway.

The kids made us an anniversary hotel suite the night before our anniversary. So sweet!!!! <3

Today we are planning to head into Salt Lake City for the Natural History Museum. We've been looking for some cheap or decently-priced things to do this week and so far we've come up with: Hogle Zoo ($12 per person), Natural History Museum ($11 per person), Salt Lake City Temple (free), and Temple Square (free). I found a 40% off coupon for a PaintNite in Layton that we are going to do tomorrow night. It's where you go and they teach you how to paint a picture but you can do it in your own style. It's a really popular thing right now. There's a place in Idaho Falls (The Grape Van Gogh) that I've been dying to go to, but it's pretty expensive for two people. With the  40% off coupon we only paid $50. We're going to do an endowment session with one of the sisters that taught me before I was baptized on either Wednesday or Thursday. And on whatever day we don't do the temple session, we will be going to Hogle Zoo (weather permitted... apparently the spring break memo was not received because it's supposed to snow!) And on Friday we are hitting up Trader Joe's and the mall (there's a couple things I need to pick up), then heading home. We also plan to eat at Cafe Zuppas, In-N-Out, and Popeye's. I've spent the past two nights budgeting everything out so that we don't break our bank account.

Some brightly colored buildings in the area.

I've also spent some time looking up low carb dinner recipes because I have been diagnosed with the dysmetabolic syndrome. It's completely reversible, but I have to go on an extremely low carb diet and take some meds. Getting this taken care of should bring back my periods and help me lose weight as well as reminding my body that it can't produce insulin willy-nilly and choose to not recognize that it's there. The thyroid is still an issue, as it will be for my entire life, but we're working on getting that in check too.

The building across from ours.
(The picture of our building isn't missing, so I will have to take another one later.)

The winter semester for school is completely over! I'm officially done with everything that I need for my Associate's Degree, but since I don't walk until spring semester I'm going to take a choir class and possibly an art class (if I can get into one since it's an override only type deal). Ethan will have 15 credits if everything goes as planned. I'll still have my math tutoring job, but it will be my last semester with it since I have to give it up when I graduate. And speaking of graduation, announcements will come to your mailboxes around late June. Spring classes are full swing starting April 20th and even though I will not be taking any actual classes I'm still dreading it, haha.

A random, fancy moose!

Well, I'm going to see if I can get Ethan awake so we can check out the free breakfast downstairs... wish me luck!

February: A Month of Changes

This past month we made some big decisions. The first being that I will complete my Associates Degree this semester and not finish my Bachelor's Degree (for now, anyways.) The second being for me to see an Endocrinologist. And the final, relating more to the first decision, what I will do for work after April.

After much unrest, pondering, and prayer I have come to the decision to end my education here at BYU-Idaho with only an Associate's. As much as it disappoints me to have spent four years working really hard towards a Bachelor's and in the end only taking a two year degree, it's what we have decided will be best for me. Even after getting President Clark's permission to have a Math Ed minor and making it so that I will have the math background I need for teaching, my degree would not have been able to get me the jobs that I really want. I wouldn't have enough Marriage & Family background to go for a Masters (which is what you need to pursue a career in that field) because I only have a minor in it. And I wouldn't have any teaching experience besides tutoring, nor would I have had any education classes under my belt. And because I wouldn't have a Bachelor's in a core subject (like an actual Math degree), a majority of schools would not accept me into their teaching certification programs unless I was already hired by a school. With the limited background and education I would have, it's extremely unlikely that a school would hire me. Along with this, the harder I pushed to complete more schooling the more miserable I felt and the harder it became to make things work out. I reached a point where every night I'd get so frustrated with life that I would end up crying into Ethan's arms for extended periods of time. We spent weeks discussing what I should do and even arguing about it (he wanted me to do what I felt was right, but I wanted him to just tell me what to do). I have worried myself to the core thinking about how disappointed Ethan's parents will be in me and what my mom would think of me just "giving up", but Ethan has told me many times that I need to do what's right for me, and that I should maybe listen to the persistent feeling I've been getting about working from home so I can focus on getting my health to where it needs to be to start a family, and to not worry about what others think of me. (I'm also pretty sure he's tired of me being so cranky about the whole thing...) So I will finish the last remaining foundations course I need to get my associates and call it good. I have felt so much better since we settled on this. I still don't like to think about what others will say, but I feel better knowing that I will have time to focus on some other things that have really needed my attention (for example, things relating to the following paragraph). I've fought very hard to make things work so I can teach math and it's time I just let things go. Heavenly Father obviously has a different plan for me than I had for myself, it seems.

I've been treated for Hypothyroidism since fall of 2010. It's been good and bad at times, but things were mostly good with a really great peak Winter of 2013 when I felt so good that I briefly considered conquering the world. But since the beginning of last year, things have gone downhill very quickly. I stopped having periods and needed to sleep through entire days to feel like I had any little trace of energy. I saw a doctor about my missing periods and they tested for pregnancy (negative) and increased my medication. I got one period after that and haven't had one since (with pregnancy tests still coming up negative, mind you). My legs keep swelling up to the point that I feel like they are going to burst (thankfully my feet don't swell up that bad anymore!) And I was still so, so tired every day. Finally, we decided that I needed to go to a different doctor--someone with a lot of experience in Hypothyroidism. I talked with my mom about how we planned to start trying to get pregnant later this year, but it didn't seem like I'd ever be able to with the way things have been going. She told me to look up an endocrinologist and go. I had my first appointment yesterday. Dr. Vance seems extremely knowledgable and experienced with this kind of thing. He's also funny and he made me feel so much better about the entire situation. He said that while my thyroid is really low, it's not what's causing everything. He believes that I have what's called Dysmetabolic Syndrome X. (I have some lab testing that I am going in for tomorrow to confirm this and will be meeting with him again next Thursday.

Part of my worry about taking my Associate's instead of a Bachelor's is that the only places I'd be able to work would be fast food, retail (like Wal-Mart or whatnot), and other jobs that I really don't want to do for the rest of my life. Graduating in April (I will still walk in July since my mom and grandma are coming up then) means I will lose my favorite job (working on campus at the Math Study Center) and decent pay. [[I'm still not sure how I feel about that, but that's a rant for another time haha.]] Ethan still has at least one more year of school, so will need to rely on me still working. So we've decided that when I graduate, I will try to get into substitute teaching since you need at least 60 credits to do so. With this, if I'm too busy with other things I can turn down jobs or if we need more money I can accept more jobs. I will continue tutoring, just not on camps. (I currently tutor an 8th grader and a 9th grader.) I will have to be more proactive in getting my information out there so that I can get more students to tutor, but it's been a nice supplementary income so far, so it's definitely something I will keep. Especially since I enjoy teaching math. Besides these two definite things, there's a few other things I can do to bring in money... A long time a go I opened an Etsy account to sell my handmade cards. I never posted any to sell because I just didn't have time to make custom orders or to make enough to sell while working as a tutor and going to school. After April, I will have the time to dedicate to that. So I will be looking further into actually opening up that Etsy shop to the public. Also, I will have more time to dedicate to blogging and digital designing. There are a lot of people out there who make a living off of blogging and I plan to research that more and try to get something going there. These two things aren't for sure, but I want to give them a shot, especially since a little bit of money is better than no money at all. If none of these things pan out, I can always apply around town and in Idaho Falls, but I would like to try these options first. And it's possible that substitute teaching might even open the door for me to get certified to teach math! I'm not going to count on that happening, but it gives me a glimmer of hope that will keep me going.

Update! Christmas through February

Hola. Weren't sure if we were still around? We are. I just haven't dedicated as much time to this blog as I would have liked. Regardless, it's about time I let everyone know what we've been up to. Hopefully you all still want to know what's going on in our lives, haha.

Christmas came and left quicker than I expected. We had a wonderful break! We moved about 5 days before Christmas and the only room we had completed unpacking was our bedroom--even the closet wasn't completely unpacked by Christmas!--so we put up our Christmas tree in the corner of our room. We spent Christmas eve with the Stewart family and Christmas day with just the two of us. We had planned to go to Lander with the rest of the family, but Ethan was scheduled to work the two days after Christmas so we stayed home. (And unpacked the kitchen as well as made lots of Christmas goodies like gingerbread cookies and peppermint bark.) Ethan's work ended up not having work for him so we stayed home for basically nothing, but it gave us some wonderful time to just be with each other without school and work.

For New Year's and my birthday we went to Aunt Pamela's. It was a nice, relaxing break with family. The day after, we spent the whole day shopping in Idaho Falls. Coming home to fill our cabinets and refrigerator with so much food was really awesome because much of it has lasted us through February.

School started the Monday after and won't end until April 10th. I started work again (I only work during the school semesters since I tutor for a handful of the math classes taught here) the following week with many more hours than I had last semester. A lot of changes have come to the Math Study Center, so work has been pretty stressful for me lately. Things are beginning to settle down, but I'm not sure how I feel about some of the changes yet. I'm really hoping they will branch off the online lab! Ethan has been consistently working (his work had been calling him to say there was no work for him for practically all of December and the beginning of January), which has been great for our bank account, but I miss having him home more. I've made my tutoring schedule somewhat mimic his work schedule so that we're both working at the same time. Sometimes that's nice, but other times it's really annoying because I never get to be home either.

We made some fairly big decisions this past month (which I will elaborate on in another post), so February has been full of changes for us. After a ridiculous fiasco with PayPal and Wal-Mart, we finally decided to just buy a couch from someone in town. It's kind of a cheap couch, but it's really comfortable and looks really nice in our living room. We also bought a wooden glider rocking chair from a friend in town. The upholstery job on the cushions needs to be fixed a little bit, which I'm happy to tackle once I get some spare time. The chair was a bright blue that I spray painted a shiny chocolate brown. It took me four days to complete and I still have the foot stool left to do, but I'm happy that our living room is finally coming together. We have curtains up in our windows now and it's really beginning to feel like a home! My mom sent me wall decorations for my birthday. We've hung a handful of them, but we've been waiting until we got a couch to hang the rest. Hopefully that's something we can do this weekend! (We bough the couch on Friday a few hours before we left for the CCHS alumni basketball game that Ethan played in.)

Overall, we haven't been up to a whole lot, but the little we have been up to has kept us really busy. And I'm VERY excited to finally have our apartment coming together and I think Ethan's really enjoying it as well. I'm just hoping that soon we will be able to enjoy it more together.

Our First Christmas Card

Since September I've been dreaming of taking family pictures so that I could whip together a really cute Christmas card to mail out to our family & friends.

October came and went and I hadn't done much besides think of what colors I wanted us to wear for pictures.

November arrived and we decided to move to a nicer and pet friendly apartment. Which, sadly, meant less funds for us this semester because rent will be higher for us starting Dec. 20th. So having someone do our pictures sorta went out the window. BUT! I remembered we took family pictures on Thanksgiving at Aunt Pamela's last year, so why not jut have someone snag a few good ones of just Ethan and me this year? Brienna didn't come with us to Wyoming and Grandpa Stewart was sick, so Rusty wasn't there very long, so no one even planned on taking family pictures. Ethan and I decided we'd have someone grab one or two of us on Sunday after church, but then Sunday morning I woke up with a really sore back and didn't sleep well because of it. Meaning I wasn't in the mood for pictures. I didn't even go with them to church that morning :(

We came home and I considered maybe finding someone doing a special on a mini shoot, but I never really made an effort to look into it. So one evening when I was at work, I looked up Christmas cards on Minted.com, hoping that there would be a cute one that didn't require us to have a family picture included. I found one, but when writing the little update for the year I discovered that the most exciting things I could think of to write were: we got married, we went on a cruise, we bought a car, and we're moving. (Now that I think about it, that really would have sufficed... oh well, it's too late now.) So I chose the option of putting a small, random picture in place of the text. Because we didn't have any good pictures of us (we're REALLY terrible at documenting anything so I've noticed... next year's new year's resolution?), I plopped one of our engagement pictures in the space allotted.

I felt satisfied and ordered them. About two hours later, I realized I could have saved the progress and asked Ethan what to write for the update when I got off work. By then I couldn't cancel the order because Minted is wicked fast and had them in the queue for printing already. I figured I could just write a message on each of them when I addressed and stamped them up... but when that time came I changed my mind. Addressing is quite the task as it is, why add more to it especially when I needed to make the new address stand out to people (by adding an arrow and "our new address!" below it)?

So long story not made very short, here's the front of our Christmas card. I'm not posting the back because the internet doesn't need to have a picture of our address available for the universe, so you'll just have to wait until you get yours in the mail.

PS: If you want to make sure you're on our list to get one, please comment!

We've got 35 and only sent maybe 15 of them.