Happy Anniversary Ry-O

So today is our second marriage anniversary and honestly we haven't done much because we're still recovering from our awful flight home last night. So in honor of our anniversary I thought I'd list a few of the many things that I LOVE about my husband.

1. He's the friendliest person, can talk to anyone, and typically can find out the life story of a stranger in five minutes.
2. He's amazing with kids and is the best uncle in the world.
3. He's ticklish in about every spot, which makes great fun when you're bored in church.
4. He takes me to see chick flicks, and doesn't sigh when they get mushy gushy.
5. The best little dad to our dog, baby lulu.
6. Stays up late with me to watch my favorite shows even though he has an early day.
7. Loves to cook, but doesn't take over (anymore :) when i'm in the kitchen.
8. A food connoisseur, he truly enjoys food from every culture (especially korea), and treats me to amazingly delicious meals.
9. Loves his family and friends, a wonderful son and brother, and would give an arm and a leg to help them out.
10. Is spiritual, and has a deep love of the gospel and for Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

Just a few things that I love about my husband. Thank you for an amazing two years, I can't wait to share many more adventures with you.

Love, Cait

What's been happening the last month?

Sweetest Baby Lanaea

Ryan and Cordell

Mama and Baby

Performing on her "stage"

At the restaurant for Eric's birthday dinner

I love all of their faces in this picture

They learn fast

Lanaea showing everyone at the table where her belly is, classy

Our gift to Michelle: a nursing cover, and a bouquet of burp clothes

So snuggly, i love it!

Braed-o

The new mommy

Braeden's favorite pastime, and Ryan's

Mi papa y mi nieto

So sweet!

This past month I've had A LOT of things happen, mostly to my family, but it effects me too right? So my sister, her sweet husband and darling daughter moved to Michigan for Cordell to attend Michigan state for residency and to finish specializing in dentistry. So we had them come over to our house for dinner. It was great fun! We gave them a tour of our house, bbq'd, ate some delicious dinner, went for a walk, and ate cherry cobbler, yum-yum! They moved two weeks ago and it was a very emotional goodbye :( But they are very happy and are enjoying a more relaxing environment, with a cute home and a backyard!

Also, on June 8th my baby nephew was born, yeah! His name is Davis Ryan Jesperson and he looks exactly like his older brother. He's a good little eater and is so sweet and snuggly! We went to San Diego over a week ago to go visit him and my family and had a wonderful relaxing weekend.

Now for us, Ryan coordinated a manager's conference for all of the plasma center managers and they are all here this week. So I've been helping to get things set up, and delivering food, and going to lunch and dinner which will continue through out this week. And in ten days we leave for a cruise with Ryan's family to the caribbean! Yeah I'm so excited and have been hitting the gym most everyday to be ready to live in a bathing suit for ten days :) Oh also, I've decided to get my personal training license, so I'll hopefully be certified by the end of summer! Yeah!

Most enjoyable Day

My school

Our reaction to my grades

I had a wonderful day today! Many of you may know, or not know, that I am going to a community college right now. When we left Idaho I had three years of college under my belt and an associates degree, and I would have had only one year of school had we stayed. But my husband graduated and a year in Rexburg just didn't make sense because his career is here in California. So anyways, I was in the process of transferring to Cal State Fullerton when I was told that there were only two classes that I was missing, and those were public speaking and a critical thinking class. I was so annoyed because here I have over 100 credits and now I would have to take two 100 level classes just to transfer. Lame.

So anyways, this spring semester I took philosophy, public speaking, and political science (a requirement for cal state schools). They were all pretty ok classes, fun somedays and just a drag others. But in my philosophy class we really discussed constrovesrial issues and openly shared our thoughts and ideas. My teacher was really good at making a respectful environment where we could share our opinions. He's really knowledgeable about all religions and cultures, but my classmates were for the most part crazy liberals who wanted the government to legalize basically everything. This class at times was difficult because I felt so alone in my values, but I also enjoyed being exposed to others opinions. The idea of marriage and families and morals were so foreign to them. Marriage should basically be obsolete as far as they were concerned. And for the first time in my life I felt really "peculiar" like I didn't identify with anyone in the class, it was really a poignant feeling. But I don't mind being different.

Through out the class my teacher would call on each class member specifically, but I noticed he often asked me what I thought. Now, I decided I wasn't going to bring my religion into the classroom, I was just going to let people accept me for me instead of judging me right off, based on stereotypes and rumors, but I also wasn't going to hide it either. I had a paper in his class where I expressed my worldview. Every single aspect I explained, from how I looked at nature, to myself, to others, to objects, I said it all. So obviously, my religion was threaded through out the essay. And in one of my teacher's lectures he asked my opinion on why i thought some people who are deeply religious condemn other religions to hell. He said, "Cait what do you think?" I thought, wow, does he think I'm one of these people? So I answered, 'I think people do this because they have so much vested into their religion, and they are worried about what would happen if they ended up being wrong, so they sometimes try to eliminate that possibility." He asked, "and what religion are you?" And clearly he knew the answer to this. So, I said I was mormon and he asked me, what does my religion feel about other religions, are they going to hell? I said, we don't believe that we are automatically sent to heaven just because we're mormon, it's based on the lives we lead, the choices we make. And I said there is truth in everything, all religion's have something to bring to the table, and we don't eliminate other's just because they aren't mormon. I also said, we don't believe in just a heaven, or just a hell, we believe that we will be rewarded with glory based upon our choices. And he complimented mormons for that fact, that we are very accepting of others and we don't shun other religions. And I came to the conclusion that he was trying to help shed a positive light on our church (I think).

So today I took my final. I did really well and I ended up getting an "A" in the class (he graded my test right away and gave me my overall score). So as I was leaving he said, "Cait, I just wanted to say that I know we argued about things in class, but I really enjoyed arguing with you. And I want to you to know that I really appreciated your presence in class." I felt so great! I know that he respected me, but when he said this I realized that my thoughts and ideas didn't go on deaf ears. Sometimes we think that the little things we say or do don't matter, but someone is always watching and is influenced by your example. And before I walked away I noticed he was reading a talk by Elder Holland. Wow!

So I ended this semester with all A's and the cherry on top of today was getting book buyback money! Yeah! And later I'm going to the temple, what an awesome day!

Happy ending.

So I posted just yesterday morning about our craigslist problem. But I am happy to say that all of our items were given away to one very deserving woman. In the midst of receiving calls for people to come get our stuff, I received a very anxious phone call from a woman desperate to come get our stuff. I said, I was sorry but everything had already been spoken for, she said her name was Katie and that if no one came that I'd call her and let her come get whatever was left. I took down her number, and said I would call her, not thinking I would even need to do so. But she sounded so sweet and so desperate that I felt horrible that there was nothing left to give her. So, like I said, no one showed up. So I decided yesterday after I got home that I would call Katie and see if she wanted anything that was left over. She was SO excited!!! She also said how awful it was that no one had even called me to tell me they weren't coming, but I told her I was happy they didn't so we could help her. So she came over, we put everything in her car, and she was the happiest little lady!! It felt so good to really help someone who needed it and not give our free stuff to these losers who didn't even have the decency to call us. Well it was a happy ending, and we have a de-cluttered house :)

Craigslist you tease...

This past week I have been overwhelmed by my house. I kept finding things that needed to be put away, but we had so much stuff taking up our closet space. So the other night I decided our house needed to be de-cluttered, and we needed to donate all of our junk. Yesterday I came home from school around five, and got to work. I got all of the things I wanted to put on craigslist together, took pictures, and posted them in the free section, with pictures included. I posted, a floor lamp, table lamp, laundry sorter, and a very nice ottoman my mother-in-law gave us (beautiful, but not my style). Within 5-10 minutes I received phone call, after phone call of people wanting to come pick up my stuff. I was on the phone with one person giving them directions to my house, and five people called during that 3 minute conversation. I was so happy, within a few minutes I had everything arranged to be picked up. Mind you, I had a total of 10 calls, and 15 emails for my stuff, so I felt bad about all of the people that called in but I had to tell them they were already spoken for. Anyways, I wait for everyone to stop by, and I start to clean out my closets, Ryan and I threw away loads of stuff, and put together boxes to be donated. And, the hours pass, and NO ONE SHOWS UP! I had all of these people call to pick up the stuff, and many more dying to get the FREE stuff, and no one shows up. I was so irritated! So today I'm going to post all of my items again and specify that if they can't get here within an hour, don't bother showing up, because I don't want to waste another night waiting for people to come get my FREE stuff, when I could have easily dropped everything off at a goodwill so quickly! Sorry for the vent, but I had to get that out. Have a lovely Memorial day weekend, I'll be cleaning out my house, laying by the pool, and working on my summer tan :)

Twilight sleepover

Preparation for the party, this actually was after I had slept so it's coming off, but the girls loved my "Edward bite."

My cute beehives

"This one" decided to kiss the cut out every chance she got.

The biggest fan of all, she saw the movie 11 times in theaters.

"Pin the lips on Edward."

Our toilet paper mayhem

Ok so just like every twelve and thirteen year old girl in America, my beehives are OB-sessed with Twilight, seriously it's ridiculous. So we had a sleepover last night, and we started at 6:30, ate pizza, played a game. Which consisted of "pinning the lips on Edward." Yikes, these girls are ready to kiss a poster if that means being close to their dear Edward. So anyways, we had that game, took pictures with a cardboard cut-out of Edward, watched Twilight, complete with every single miniscule, useless fact about the movie, or the book. No joke, they know the chapter, the page and the paragraph where each scene is. So yeah, watched the movie, ate junk, got sick, played telephone with secrets like "edward and jacob are yummalicious." I was shocked how many ways they could use the words "sexy" and "edward" in one sentence. We toilet papered one of the young women's house, and screamed out the windows all around town :) Then we watched "Sydney White" and our sweet 2nd counselor waited on those girls hand and foot, i don't think they lifted a finger all night except to put food into their mouths. We went to bed at 1:30, woke up at 8:00, had a delicious waffle breakfast and sent them on their ways. I love those girls, but I can only handle 1 sleepover a year. I had a good time with them, I just can't get over the screaming. I'm glad I don't have teenagers right now, yikes! Hope everyone has a wonderful saturday and I'm sorry you have to endure this explosion of twilight craze.

Long Beach Grand Prix

This is what the indy cars look like

This is us in our suite, we over look the area where the cars pit. They can change tires, give and oil change, and fill up gas in 7 seconds, it's craze-o

Dario Franchitti, the winner of this years race.

Danica Patrick, she took 4th. I was pretty amazed, and happy that a girl took fourth :)

So last weekend we went to the Long Beach Toyota Grand Prix. It's every year in April for three days and it's a whole lotta cars. Not really my thing but I enjoy being into car racing every now and then. So there are all types of cars involved. There are the indy cars, which are the main event, celebrity car races, drifting, and supped up car racing, i obviously don't know all of the technical terms, but it's serious business. And we get to watch in style, in our covered area that's privately catered and everyone waits on you hand and foot, we are very spoiled people. Anyways, here are some pictures from the races, not too many because we basically get the same ones every year. But enjoy!

Maui madness, and big bear fun

My first surfing lesson, fancy foam board, complete with beautiful crocs. We needed them because of the rocky beach.

I got up the first time, yeah!

My handsome husband, eating lunch in downtown Lahaina.

Crandallius, our glorious sand castle

A gift from the sun, and from my surfing lesson.

In Banyan tree park, Lahaina

Cocktail whale watching cruise. Cocktails and a two hour boat ride=crazy drunkards getting sea sick

Biking down the Haleakala mountains

Macadamia nut pancakes with coconut syrup, in a word, divine.

Haleakala countryside

One of the best sushi dishes i've ever eaten, splendid

Helicopter ride around Maui and Molokai

Our view from the helicopter. A must if you visit Hawaii

Me swinging on a rope through a waterfall, it was so great! This was on the road to Hana, unfortunately we had to make our Luau so we couldn't go all of the way but we stopped at some amazing places.

Our Luau

Our hotel

Playing shuffleboard on our last day

It decided to rain our last day, our reaction.

On the beach in front of our hotel

Bowling in Big bear's classy "bowling barn"

It takes real muscles to bowl

My adorable sister and her sweet baby Lanaea

Big bear lake

Our informative hike.

Cordell is a fan of caramel apples

No words

Hello my beautifully gorgeous friends and family! I'm finally updating our blog. So we headed home from Maui a week ago and arrived in LAX at 5Am, then we headed home, slept from 7Am-1Pm, then left for Big Bear and arrived at the cabin at 6Pm, yikes. then we bowled the night away and sat in a luke warm hot tub while it snowed around us. After our wonderful weekend, we had Easter sunday and this week I've been without a husband and finished a ten page paper, so for now I'm a free woman and ready for the toyota grand prix in long beach. so i've been crazy busy. Loads of pictures but I hope you enjoy. We had a wonderful beyond amazing spring break!!!!