Final Chapter

So, back to the story. We got home from the temple, and as I followed Jimmy into our home we realized we had been robbed. Someone had kicked our door in (busted through the door frame) and ransacked our home.

Was it a sign that we had not felt peace in the temple? Was it karma? Was it a “Job” (from the Bible) moment where we were being tested to our limits? Those were my thoughts as I sat on the grass crying.

The stress of these dental school decisions and periods of just waiting have been hard on my body—especially for those of you who know I get anxiety attacks. This experience was awful. (And I may or may not have called my dad and told him that I wish I could just die so that I could be a missionary in the spirit world for hundreds of years.) HA!

Luckily I have a husband that steps it up in emergency situations. He called our security company, the police, and maintenance to fix our door. He gave me Roxy who was barking like crazy in her crate. And he called our friend over to give me a blessing. And then we just waited for the police to arrive so they could take fingerprints, pictures and collect evidence.

Sigh. It was one of those awful “blah” moments where you just sit there and go “man—let’s move to Costa Rice—this just stinks (I was going to write sucks but my mom would have yelled at me”).

Burglar man, if you are reading this here is a letter for you:

Dear Burglar,
Thank you for not hurting my doggie Roxy. Thank you for not taking my wedding album, our journals, or our mission pictures. Thank you for not desecrating our property however, you tracked mud all over my apartment and left a nasty hair where our wii use to be. How come you only took our wii, 1 game, and 2 controllers and left the rest of our wii system? That was weird. And that curly, coarse, black hair was from your head right?

You took my laptop that had all of my husband’s school work on it. Now he has to spend hours making it up. Also, you could steal our identity with the information that is on the computer but please just pawn it to a shop so they’ll erase the information. It’s too stressful having your identity stolen (plus I don’t think you were smart enough).

That cash that you stole was the money we earn from doing side jobs. I was kinda ticked you took that because we had to sweat to earn that money. You probably have never had a job so you don’t know what it’s like, but shame on you.

I wish you wouldn’t have taken my husband’s new backpack because my mom spent a lot of money on it. However, I am very grateful you dumped out the notebooks and books. We’ll call it even.

Lastly, I really didn’t like how you went through all our drawers and touched our underwear. I think of you as a dirty thing, and now a dirty thing touched my stuff... How do I wash you out of my apartment? Also, didn’t your mom teach you to turn the lights off when you leave? Why did you turn all the lights on in our house?

I felt violated that you entered our home, especially between 4:30-9pm. Were you watching us? Did you know our schedule? We had lights on and our dog was barking. Do we know you? You know that there is a place reserved for those who do bad things to people while they are in the temple, right? I think you are going to the same place where that man will be who robbed us on my mission.

Also, you know that someone saw you right? Unfortunately it was a single, scared girl so you got away. I hope karma gets you run over by a bus (oops—should I be nicer?). Last question? Do you know Antione Dodson?

Please don’t come back.

Signed,


Probably one of your many victims

Part 2: Decision

I’m terrible. The only reason I’ve turned this into saga is because I ran out of time to finish my first post and now, I’ve seemed to stream along some followers (surprisingly there ARE people that read my blog).

Anyway—back to the post.

So the night before we had to make the decision we went to the temple one last time. I was praying for a miracle. Actually—I was just praying that the answer we got from Heavenly Father would be combined and then all of it given to Jimmy. I’d just follow with whatever he chose. SO—we did have a moment where we talked and expressed the feelings we felt. Very special moment; especially when your feelings are confirmed by your best friend. We decided to take the Army scholarship, and say good-bye to UOP. Sniffle.

All it really means is that Jimmy will be commissioned an officer in the US Army, we’ll have no debt, and after he graduates, we’re off to whatever base they assign us (of course we designated Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Southern California as our top choices). HA!

So everything was hunky-dory UNTIL we got home from the temple and Jimmy walked up to our apartment. When he got to the door, I heard a huge gasp and an “Oh my gosh.” I ran up to the door and when I looked in, I ran out, sat on the grass, and just sobbed.

Wait—there is more (whenever I have time to write it). (*sounds* “duhn duhn duhn”). Part 3 coming soon.

He looks like a G.I. Joe!

2nd Lieutenant: US Army

My brothers want to know when we get a granade launcher...

Big news!

So we have some big news...(I love that about 20 of you readers are hoping to read here that I'm pregnant--yeah--GOTCHA)...

Ok our big news isn't that we're pregnant (hopefully we'll have that news this year sometime); but we do have some big news.

Let me start from 2 weeks ago:
We were placed between a rock and a hard place for the past 2 weeks and the decision was most difficult because we had to choose between good and better. Jimmy got offered the U.S. Army scholarship that would pay for dental school, insurance, fees, books, housing, (plus a hundred other benefits) and in exchange, after he finishes dental school, he'd have to give 4 years to the Army as a dentist. Our predicament? The Army would not pay for dental school at UOP in San Francisco. SIGH. UOP was our number 1 school. So we had to choose between $500k in debt, OR go to our number 1 dental school. You may think this is a no-brainer--but it wasn't for us.

So we prayed, fasted, templed (is that a verb), and were given 2 weeks to make the decision. As you can see from the way I'm writing, I was leaning toward taking the scholarship. Jimmy was leaning more toward going to UOP. Well--let me tell you what happened the night before we had to make the decision.

Stay tuned...

Snowboarding

Over President's Day weekend we got to spend a lot of time with the family up at Lake Tahoe. We heard there would be fresh powder due to the 7 days of constant snow, but we didn't know how deep that powder would be. I took us 7 hours to get from Sacramento to Tahoe (a 2 hour drive normally). At one point on I-80, we were throwing the football around over the big rigs, just hanging out with the other folks who were stranded for hours on the road with us. The funniest part was watching people trying to scramble and find a spot to go to the bathroom.

Tyler, Zach, Emily, Daniel and Me (Jimmy was studying--as usual)
We're missing a brother here...sniffle.

Daniel and Emily

Me and Jimmy. We had FRESH, sweet, deep, powder both days we snowboarded.

Love my board. Yes we did name our dog Roxy after the brand.

We missed you Travy!

Valentine's Day Ideas

Do you need sweet, tender, romantic ideas this Valentine's Day for your lovey?

Go to my mom's blog for ideas!

San Francisco...our new home?

Me and Jimmy went to San Francisco this weekend to see UOP and some potential apartments. What I learned? I love that city. I love that dental school. I love California. I love the people there. JUST LOVE IT! It's such an active city. Everyone was running, playing outside, walking their dogs, and enjoying the outdoors. The downside? I DON'T love how expensive or how liberal it is.

Here is the view from UOP's roof. I don't know why Jim always closes his eyes--the sun was barely out! The other dental students told us their wives will meet up with them once a week for lunch and sometimes eat up there with that quiet view. LOVE IT!
This is the view from one of the places we'd possibly live. It's where all the other mormon students live at. And yes--check out the doggie purse!

Me, Jimmy, and our girl Nikki also went to a MMA fight. You ever been to one? INTENSE! Luckily Nikki and Jimmy explained to me how the scoring worked.

You can almost hear the music and smell the pot from this picture!

Oh and of course we had to go to the beach. We met up with a friend from CT--Natalie Larsen Kershaw and her little pup Jack.

Roxy LOVED being chased by Jack as you can see.

She did not, however, like getting too close to the water.

Capitola CA in January

My CT friends always asked me what I loved so much about living in California.
Well folks, here were are in January. Enough said.

It was kinda annoying fighting for waves with this crowd. No one was up for the "party wave."
Here's Jimmy

Yeah--we did NOT surf those big waves.

But we did TRY to catch some of these above

Surfing in the morning--just walking back to the beach house. Thanks Natasha!

Santa Cruz

Jimmy with our new cousin in law to be Allen.

We had to leave her behind...but I just had to include a picture of her in here.

Here's Jimmy surfing. I'm bummed no one got one of me. These waves were pretty big for us so we caught the smaller ones after all the really good people let those go by. Man I love CA!