Tired of Waiting Yet?

You may have been wondering if we are still alive. Well, the answer is yes! We have been back from Europe for almost a month now, sadly. Well, we were tired and ready to come back, but now that we are back I wish we were there again already! Anyways, so we took literally about a thousand pictures on our 3 week trip. It took us awhile to upload them to the computer, sort through them all, get rid of the blurry ones, put captions on them so we would remember what they are all of, then upload them onto our travel blog that we have created. Sad part is, we were almost done with our travel blog when the computer died and now it is in the shop. However, people have been bugging me daily about wanting to see pictures so I am going to post the link to our travel blog even though it isn't all the way finished yet. You will just have to check back next week if you want to see the rest.

Here are a couple of important disclaimers you may want to read before looking at our travel blog: Disclaimer #1: Preston's camera had an unfortunate meeting with the Vlatva River so we had to use mine for the remainder of the trip. Mine has a crack in the lens so if you are wondering why 85% of our pictures have a dark line through them, that is why. Disclaimer #2: Almost everywhere we went, everything, especially all of the cool buildings, were under construction. Churches, cathedrals, museums, castles...you name it. You will notice many of our pictures are of scaffolding. Disclaimer #3: Europe's freeways often do not have shoulders on the side of the road where you can pull over if you decide you want to take a picture. Thus, many of our pictures are blurry from being in a moving car, and some even show the bug splats on the windshield or reflections of whatever was sitting on the dashboard at the time. Sorry about that. Disclaimer #4: We each kept a travel journal each day of our trip, which is what is written on each day of our blog. We realize it is long so you don't have to read it if you don't want to. We won't be too offended if you would rather just look at pictures. Disclaimer #5: Make sure to check if there is more than one page of pictures per blog entry. Disclaimer #6: Last but not least...PICTURES DO NOT DO JUSTICE TO ANY OF THE THINGS WE SAW!! (especially with my terrible camera and photography skills). Just know that everything we saw was 10 times prettier or cooler in real life.

Anyways, that being said, here is the link to our travel blog: http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Amber-and-Preston/Trips/2754 I am also going to post this on the sidebar of this blog in case you want to go back and check it again later when it is finished.

Au Revoir, Auf Wiedersehen, Sbohem, Arrivederci!!

I'm pretty sure everyone who knows us probably knows by now that we are going on a 3 week trip to Europe. As a matter of fact, people are probably getting pretty dang sick of us talking about it all the time. We are not trying to rub it in, I promise! We are just so stinking excited that it is actually happening.

Anyways, the time has finally come!! Our plane to Frankfurt leaves in a just a few hours. We really are so blessed and I am so grateful for this opportunity. And the best part is that I get to be there with my best friend. =)

I don't have anything exciting or new to talk about, other than my excitement for this trip and/or details of it, but that would probably make you all gag, so I will just end by saying wish us luck and see you in 3 weeks!

Don't Get Too Excited

I know you are all glad that we are finally updating our blog again, but I wouldn't get too excited. Our life is fairly uneventful so what is exciting to us will probably put you to sleep. You know what's exciting to us? Yard work. Yes, you heard me...yard work. And that's exactly what I am going to write about today so you can go ahead and move on to bigger and better things if you like. =)

So all the years that I've owned this house I've done lots of stuff to fix up the house and absolutely nothing to the yard. It slowly (along with the garage of course) turned into my own personal junkyard. Then came Preston. Wonderful Preston who takes pride in things and likes to make them nice. I'm so grateful for that quality in him. And I'm also so grateful that he is a real guy...you know, the kind who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty or work hard. He smelled like gasoline for 2 days because he was determined to fix the weed whacker but I love that about him. My kind of guy!

Anyways, we landscaped the yard, added some timber and flower beds, planted some lilac and hydrangea bushes and planted a real actual vegetable garden. I wish I had some before pictures because none of you will appreciate how good it looks now if you didn't know how ugly it was before. It's funny, it's like even the grass has magically come back to life. (Maybe that's because with Preston around it actually gets watered.) Anyways, thanks Preston for being such a good "man of the house". =)








This last one isn't exactly a before picture but it was in the process and you can kind of get a feel for the former yard ugliness.


I had to throw some pictures of Sadie in because she is cute and I get more attached to her every day. She hadn't been spayed yet when we started puppy-sitting so when she went into heat we did everything to keep dogs away from her. They were digging under our fence to get in the yard so we had to lock her inside. She was a hot commodity! I felt like we were parents locking our teenage daughter up! Anyways, it appears that our protective efforts were in vain and we are pretty sure she is going to have puppies. Sadly, it will probably be while we are in Europe so hopefully she will be okay!

Oh yeah, and did I mention that this time next week we will be on a plane to Europe!?!?!? Woohoo!!

And The Winner Is......

ME!!! Yeah, so this company did a NCAA bracket tournament and offered prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. There were about 500 people in the competition so we didn't think we stood much of a chance but we joined anyway. Turns out I came in 3rd out of 500 people. Preston (Mr. Basketball himself) came in....well, I don't want to embarrass him so I won't say a number, but let's just say i beat him by a lot! =) So pretty much I rock! And I won $50 for it, which we get to spend where ever I want. Cheesecake Factory, here we come!!! Mmmmm.

So last weekend we had the opportunity to attend a General Conference for our church. I feel like I am surrounded by gloom and worry and stress and negativity every day because of the economy and mass killings and everything else that goes on in the world today. There was a big Newsweek article about the decline of Christianity in our country, which broke my heart. I can't even tell you how comforting it is to have the gospel of Jesus Christ as the foundation of my life. It is such a source of peace and strength and it is especially uplifting to be able to listen to the leaders of our church and be gathered together with so many people who share my beliefs. I always leave with such a feeling of hope. Hope that there are still good things and people in the world, hope that if I live my life the best I can I will be blessed, hope that I can be with my husband and family for eternity, and most importantly, hope-no, absolute knowledge-that there is a God who knows each of us individually and loves us so much more than we can possibly understand. I just wish that everyone I knew could know that for themselves because I know it would change their life.


The best part about conference was being there with my husband and best friend. It doesn't get much better than that.

I love the conference center...it is such a beautiful building. P.S. Bekah, I still think about you every time I go there. =)

Other than that, not much excitement around here. If it ever stops raining and snowing (so much for spring time) we will rototill our yard and plant a garden which I am really excited about. Oh, and we reserved our rental car for our Europe trip. Only 26 days til we leave!!!

Preston's PS

You know, I greatly enjoy reading my wife's blogs about our life... I always get a good chuckle! She's so cute and concerned about every single word, and then she goes on for half a page about how soccer stinks and isn't fun... oh girls... she's fun and I love her!!

I Love Spring Time!!!

I know I complain about Utah a lot but I have to admit...I love spring time in Utah. It doesn't last long but it is probably the most beautiful time of year here. It hasn't hit in full force yet, and we will probably get more snow (ugh), but it's definitely in the air. My daffodils are blooming and our fruit trees are starting to blossom. The grass is getting green, the sun stays out longer (yay!), and I am starting to go into project mode (always a sure sign of spring). For some reason I get more ambitious this time of year. I have a desk to refinish, a garden to plant, a garage to clean out, and closets to organize. Oddly enough, these are things I am actually excited about. =)

So to enjoy the beautiful weather yesterday Preston and I went to a Real Salt Lake game. (That's Salt Lake's Major League Soccer team, for those who don't live here). I actually have a confession to make. Preston and I are both avid sports fans. We love a good game of just about anything, however, neither of us are huge soccer fans. I kind of thought if we went to a professional game in person, we might get more excited about it. Plus, it was free and we are cheap. =) So we went to the game and the verdict was........we still don't like soccer. No offense to those of you who do. I know it is one of the most popular sports in the world but it just doesn't do anything for us. We had fun...but we didn't really have FUN, if you know what I mean. It was cool to be hanging out with friends outside in the beautiful weather, soaking up some sunshine, but that's where the fun ended. The game itself was really boring. I mean, in football you have awesome hard hits and sweet interceptions, in basketball you have awesome slam dunks and sweet 3 pointers at the buzzer. Even hockey is fun even if it's just for the great hits and the fights. P.S. there was more flopping going on in that soccer game than I have ever seen in the NBA, and that is just pathetic. I mean seriously, nobody likes a flopper. Plus, I'm pretty sure the refs make up their own rules as they go. I mean, how do you get to just decide to add 2 minutes onto the end of the game for no apparent reason??? I guess maybe we have a lot to learn about soccer but I'm pretty sure it will never happen because we just don't care.








Speaking of basketball, Preston's family came into town and we all went to a Jazz vs. Nuggets game. Unfortunately for my pride, the Nugs were a total disappointment. They played awesome in the first half but came out in the second half and apparently forgot they were playing a real game. It was ridiculous. But guess what, unlike soccer, whether my team won or not, it was still so much FUN and definitely not boring.

Catching Up!

Hey, guess what?!? I'm finally updating our blog!!! Yes, this is Amber, the lazy slacker who never keeps people updated about our life. Preston told you about a couple of the things that are going on but I will try to fill you in on the details, and maybe even add some pictures. P.S. my blog writing is just like my journal writing...the entries are so few and far between that I have to go back to months before and catch up on everything since then. First let's start with our trip to New Mexico in January. We went for 2 reasons. One was to visit Preston's sister, Saren, and our nephew Aceson. He is such a cute, happy kid and Saren was gorgeous, as always! Preston was so crazy about Aceson, he just couldn't get enough of him. The second reason was to visit Preston's grandparents and spend some time with them. We took along a tape recorder and got a personal history from them. It was so great to listen to their cool stories, and the amazing things they have experienced and endured in their lives. Hopefully soon we will have time to type it up and make a little book or something out of it. Here are some pictures from our visit:







We discovered that we have been on at least one trip every single month since we have known each other, which is a lot of trips. We have been to Seattle, California, Mexico, Idaho, Wyoming, Denver, Southwest Colorado, Estes Park Colorado, and New Mexico. Most of those we have been to several times. On the way home from New Mexico we spent a good half hour arguing over which is uglier, Wyoming or New Mexico. Preston thinks there is nowhere uglier than New Mexico. I think that even though New Mexico is very ugly, Wyoming is still uglier. I have yet to find anything pretty in Wyoming besides Yellowstone. I hate Wyoming. With a passion. Not sure why. Just do. Preston's dad lives in Wyoming now so I guess I better learn to like it!

Anyways, the next thing that happened was Preston's birthday. I bought him a new watch and the Band of Brothers DVD set. I was super excited because the DVD set is usually like $60 in the store but I got it on EBay for $18 and it was in great condition. I love being a bargain shopper!! We spent pretty much all of the next 3 days watching the whole thing. It was really good! I actually really liked it a lot.


Preston got to choose where we went for his birthday dinner and he chose Tucano's, which I was happy about because I love Tucano's. For those of you who have never been there; Tucanos is a Brazilian bbq place where they come by your table every few minutes with a different kind of meat you can try, as well as grilled pineapple, which is delicious. We like it a lot, so it was fun. For dessert I told Preston I would make whatever cake he wanted. He LOVES raspberry cheesecake so I told him I would make it. As we all know, I am not the most domestic girl in the world but it turned out pretty good if I do say so myself!



A couple of days later was Valentines Day. We were going to go cross country skiing but decided to be lazy and hang out at the house instead (watching Band of Brothers, of course). We went to Chilis for dinner cuz we had a gift card and we love free dinner. =) Preston didn't do much for me on Valentines because we were attached at the hip all day and he had no way of being able to surprise me. A couple of days later I came home from work and he had candles lit all over the house and beautiful Tulips (my all-time favorite flower) on the table, a fire in the fireplace (which is one of my favorite things) and our wedding CD playing in the background. We danced in the living room for a few minutes and then he presented me with a jar full of paper slips. The jar is labeled "Reasons why I love you, why I miss you when you are gone, and why I am glad you married me". It is filled with little strips of paper. I'm only allowed to read 2 a day but they have all been great! Some examples of things he wrote are: "you love trucks and refuse to drive anything else", "You like and know how to build things", "You are so competitive", "You call the Utah Jazz gay because of their purple uniforms", "You're just so cute and short without shoes on", "You hate girly stuff, especially cheerleaders", "You're a sucker for baby animals", and "you are so cute when you get excited about something". Some others he wrote were about me being so OCD, my obsession with making lists for everything, and that I love camping and the outdoors. The reason this meant so much to me is because I am not your typical girl and all through my single years I used to remind myself that someday I would find someone who would love me for all of those things and find them endearing....lo and behold, here I am with an amazing husband who loves all of my weird quirkiness. I am so lucky!!



Another new thing is that we have a dog, well, temporarily. Aspen, Preston's sister, moved to a new place that doesn't allow pets so we are keeping her here for awhile. It has actually been really fun having her around. She has a fun and crazy personality that keeps us entertained. Her pictures don't really do justice to how cute she is in real life.



Preston officially got accepted to the Engineering Program here at BYU. He is doing great in all of his courses and just found out he is in the top 1/8 of his class. He studies hard and is so self-disciplined. I really admire him for that. He has also decided recently that he plans to pursue a masters degree in Aerospace Engineering. I'm excited for him that he knows what direction he wants to go in. I really am so proud and grateful to have such an ambitious, intelligent husband.

Next weekend Preston's brother and Dad are coming down from Wyoming and Saren and Eddie are coming up from New Mexico. We, along with Aspen and Aunt Lisa and Uncle Carl and their kids, are all going to the Nuggets v. Jazz game in Salt Lake. I am super excited cuz I haven't been to a Nuggets game in forever! I am pretty sure I will be the only one cheering for the Nuggets but you better believe that's not going to stop me!!! Go Nuggets!!


These are pictures from when the Nuggets stomped on the Jazz a couple of months ago. Take that stupid pansy Jazz!!!

So here is the most exciting of all of our news! Preston already touched on this but I'm going to say it anyway. We are going to Europe in May for almost 3 weeks and we are soooo excited! When we first started looking at tickets they were almost $1,000 a piece. We ended up getting really lucky and finding them on sale for $600 a piece, round trip from Salt Lake to Frankfurt, Germany. The sale ended literally within a couple of hours of us buying it so we consider it a huge blessing. That saved us $800!!! So we are going to Germany, The Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, and Northern Italy. I have been trying to learn the basics of German and I sound terrible and ridiculous. Hahah. It's fun though. So anyways, we are going to rent a car (brave, I know) and drive through all of those countries. It will be a lot of stuff to fit into 3 weeks but we don't care. Who knows when we will have this opportunity again!! Here are some pictures of some of the places we are going:






Preston is mocking me for putting up all these pictures even though we haven't been there yet. I don't care though because I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!

Anyways, that's what's going on in our lives. Sorry this is so long and boring because I had to catch up on so much. Maybe next time I will be better! Hahaha, yeah right. =)